Social media users could be cut off from other accounts on platforms such as Twitter if they do not sign up for ID verification, under government proposals to tackle anonymous trolls. From a report: Popular services including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram will be required to give users the option to opt in or opt out from receiving messages, replies and content from unverified or anonymous accounts. Verified users could also block unverified or anonymous accounts from seeing their content under the opt in/opt out proposals. This means people or organisations without verified accounts -- symbolised by a blue tick on Twitter and Instagram -- would be blocked from communicating with, or being seen by, accounts that have opted out from interactions with unverified sources.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said platforms had a number of options for verifying users, including using government-issued ID such as a passport to open an account or using two-factor authentication, where a platform sends a prompt to a user's mobile phone. The new system will be introduced under the online safety bill, which requires tech firms to protect users from harmful content or face the threat of substantial fines imposed by Ofcom, the communications regulator. The culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, said: "Tech firms have a responsibility to stop anonymous trolls polluting their platforms." She added: "People will now have more control over who can contact them and be able to stop the tidal wave of hate served up to them by rogue algorithms."

With sanctions on Russia ramping up following its invasion of Ukraine, Google's YouTube is under pressure to remove or cut commercial ties with some of its most prolific pro-Russian channels. From a report: The online video giant has a massive reach in Russia and has long been a popular platform for both government critics and state-backed media. But now officials in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe are discussing restrictions that could target groups and people with huge audiences on the platform, creating a dilemma for the Alphabet-owned business. European Union sanctions, for instance, would target Vladimir Solovyov, a TV and radio journalist behind a YouTube channel with more than 1 million subscribers. An EU report issued on Wednesday said that "Solovyov is known for his extremely hostile attitude toward Ukraine and praise of the Russian government." A four-hour video livestream published overnight on his YouTube channel about the Russian military attacks had over 2.7 million views within its first nine hours. That video also ran advertisements, at least for U.S. viewers.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: [T]he last couple Windows 11 Insider Preview builds have augmented Windows 11's touchscreen capabilities. The build released to Dev channel users last week included new gestures, changes to how snapping windows works when in tablet mode, and a few other improvements. And a new build released today totally overhauls the taskbar for touchscreens.

Windows 11 in its current form adds more space between icons when you're using your device as a tablet, but the new preview goes further. When you're using apps, the taskbar will shrink to a narrow strip across the bottom of the screen: it's still tall enough to show the clock and your network, sound, and battery status icons, but all your pinned apps and other system tray icons are hidden. Swiping up from the bottom of the screen or closing an app window brings up a new, larger version of the taskbar with larger, more finger-friendly icons and spacing. The taskbar disappears again once you've launched your app. "Windows 11 still doesn't have a dedicated Tablet Mode toggle like Windows 10 did," notes Ars. "Instead, the OS relies on signals from your hardware to enable and disable the tablet-centric UI tweaks."

echo123 shares a report from the Washington Post: The U.S. Postal Service finalized plans Wednesday to purchase up to 148,000 gasoline-powered mail delivery trucks (Warning: paywalled; alternative source), defying Biden administration officials' objections that the multibillion dollar contract would undercut the nation's climate goals. The White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency asked the Postal Service this month to reassess its plan to replace its delivery fleet with 90% gas-powered trucks and 10% electric vehicles, at a cost of as much as $11.3 billion. The contract, orchestrated by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, offers only a 0.4-mile-per-gallon fuel economy improvement over the agency's current fleet.

Federal climate science officials said the Postal Service vastly underestimated the emissions of its proposed fleet of "Next Generation Delivery Vehicles," or NGDVs, and accused the mail agency of fudging the math of its environmental studies to justify such a large purchase of internal combustion engine trucks. But DeJoy, a holdover from the Trump administration, has called his agency's investment in green transportation "ambitious," even as environmental groups and even other postal leaders have privately questioned it. [...] Environmental advocates assailed the agency's decision, saying it would lock in decades of climate-warming emissions and worsen air pollution. The Postal Service plans call for the new trucks, built by Oshkosh Defense, to hit the streets in 2023 and remain in service for at least 20 years.

DeJoy said in a statement that the agency was open to pursuing more electric vehicles if "additional funding - from either internal or congressional sources -- becomes available." But he added that the agency had "waited long enough" for new vehicles. The White House and EPA had asked the Postal Service to conduct a supplemental environmental impact statement on the new fleet and to hold a public hearing on its procurement plan. The Postal Service rejected those requests: Mark Guilfoil, the agency's vice president of supply management, said they "would not add value" to the mail service's analysis. Now that the Postal Service has finalized it agreement with Oshkosh, environmentalists are expected to file lawsuits challenging it on the grounds that the agency's environmental review failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act. They will probably base their case on the litany of problems Biden administration officials previously identified with the agency's technical analysis.

theodp writes: In the just-published March 2022 issue Communications of the ACM, former CACM Editor-in-Chief Moshe Y. Vardi takes tech companies -- and their officers and technical leaders -- to task over the societal risk posed by surveillance capitalism in "ACM, Ethics, and Corporate Behavior." Vardi writes: "Surveillance capitalism is perfectly legal, and enormously profitable, but it is unethical, many people believe, including me. After all, the ACM Code of Professional Ethics starts with 'Computing professionals' actions change the world. To act responsibly, they should reflect upon the wider impacts of their work, consistently supporting the public good.' It would be extremely difficult to argue that surveillance capitalism supports the public good."

"The biggest problem that computing faces today is not that AI technology is unethical -- though machine bias is a serious issue -- but that AI technology is used by large and powerful corporations to support a business model that is, arguably, unethical. Yet, with the exception of FAccT, I have seen practically no serious discussion in the ACM community of its relationship with surveillance-capitalism corporations. For example, the ACM Turing Award, ACM's highest award, is now accompanied by a prize of $1 million, supported by Google."

"Furthermore, the issue is not just ACM's relationship with tech companies. We must also consider how we view officers and technical leaders in these companies. Seriously holding members of our community accountable for the decisions of the institutions they lead raises important questions. How do we apply the standard of 'have not committed any action that violates the ACM Code of Ethics and ACM's Core Values' to such people? It is time for us to have difficult and nuanced conversations on responsible computing, ethics, corporate behavior, and professional responsibility."

Volvo has unleashed a big improvement in customer satisfaction after equipping its 1,500 service engineers with an Apple Watch to use during their day. What, on the face of it, seems a small change reflects extensive cultural change across the company, which is actively engaged in digital transformation across its business. Computerworld's Jonny Evans reports: Volvo has equipped its engineers (Personal Service Technicians) with an Apple Watch and iPhone (running the Volvo Service app) to help them work more efficiently than before. The company's primary focus is to improve customer service, as it recognizes that technicians are the main point of customer contact across the life of the Volvo they drive. So, how can an Apple Watch in a garage improve customer service?

- In use, the engineer will receive a Notification when a customer arrives at the garage with their car.
- The watch will show the customer's name, relevant notes, and car details.
- During the repair, engineers can access information -- and once the repair is complete, they can directly call the customer to tell them.
- They can also schedule and make a subsequent follow-up call.

The benefit is that with all this information being made available through the Watch (and accompanying iPhone app), engineers don't need to use printed records, or access a PC to stay up to date. That's not only time-consuming, but learning how to use these systems takes up time. The company told me it took up to 6 months to train new recruits on the 15 different IT systems Volvo used before. Now, thanks to smart analysis and smart integration of legacy systems, what technicians need to know is always with them. The result is that paperwork doesn't disappear, technicians/engineers can stay focused, essential customer contact records aren't lost and engineers always have clarity and purpose. It all sounds so simple. It should sound simple. But it isn't simple. [...]

The project is already generating positive results. The company told me that 80% of technicians who use the app have increased their total customer satisfaction scores. Volvo also cites a 30% increase in post-service follow up calls and emails to customers, thanks to the tech pushing complex processes out of the way. Digitalization Director Markus Lundstrom said: "With the Volvo Service app we're connecting people through technology. At one workshop, customers report a 37% improvement in the ability to access their Personal Service Technician." The company also reported a 40% decrease in paper printouts. Volvo is also seeing the technicians use their new kit to get other tasks done. "Some of our teams use the Walkie-Talkie feature to communicate with each other across the facility," they said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In 2021, Reddit's users created nearly 5.8 billion posts, comments, private messages and chats across the platform, with 297,161,752 later being removed by moderators (around 175.8k), removed by site admins (108.6K), and the authors themselves (12.6K). Content can be removed for a variety of reasons. 'Content manipulation' is the largest category and encompasses spam, community interference (so-call 'brigading'), vote manipulation, and similar issues. For the purpose of this report, however, we'll home in on the copyright issues faced by Reddit during the last year and how the site responded to them.

In common with the vast majority of large companies based in the US, Reddit has to follow the requirements of the DMCA which means that when it receives a valid copyright notice, it must comply by taking the identified content down. On the other hand, when submitters send notices that are incomplete or invalid in some other way, Reddit does not. "In 2021, Reddit received 177,450 copyright notices reporting 920,672 pieces of content. This represents an increase of 104% from 2020. We removed 665,898 pieces of content in response to these takedown notices," the company reveals in the latest edition of its transparency report.

Under the DMCA, Reddit is also required to take "appropriate action" against so-called "repeat infringers", which in the company's case can involve the termination of not only user accounts but also entire subreddit communities, especially ones where "excessive amounts" of infringing content keep getting posted. "In 2021, Reddit permanently suspended 2,813 users and banned 2,625 subreddits for excessive copyright infringement," the company writes. These figures represent a substantial increase over those published for 2020. In that year, Reddit banned just 303 users and terminated 514 subreddits. Although overall copyright complaints are up 104% on the previous year, the site's termination policy doesn't appear to have changed significantly. "With around 297 million pieces of content removed by Reddit in 2021, the 665,898 pieces removed on copyright grounds represent a small fraction of the overall problem," concludes the report. "However, with user accounts and entire communities on the line, consequences can be great when errant users repeatedly and intentionally overstep the line."

joshuark writes: FreeDOS has put out release 1.3, the latest release in 6-years. Some of the improvements since the 1.2 release, include: new FreeCOM 0.85a, new Kernel 2043 and an 8086 version with FAT32 support, floppy edition now uses compression...let's party like it's 1994.

More specifics can be found at the SourceForge project page.

Virgin Hyperloop recently fired half of its workforce as the company is shifting its focus from transporting passengers to cargo, Financial Times reported. Interesting Engineering reports: Services of a total of 111 members of its staff were terminated in what was an unanticipated move according to the employees. A company spokesperson told FT that the COVID-19 pandemic had changed many things and the company was shifting focus to address the needs of the global supply chain. With a leaner staff setup, the company was hopeful of becoming more agile and cost-efficient as it focused on the cargo segment. DP World, a state-owned logistics group that holds a 76 percent stake in Virgin Hyperloop, told FT that 15 of its potential customers were interested in moving cargo through its infrastructure rather than humans since it involved less risk and required less regulatory approvals.

According to a Fortune report though, the company has found only one potential client in its lifetime, Saudi Arabia which is now keen on building a hyperloop cargo link between its port city of Jeddah and capital city of Riyadh. DP World spokesperson also told FT that profits from the project could be reinvested in building the human-compatible Virgin Hyperloop in the future.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: As Russian troops and armored vehicles begin moving into Ukrainian territory, social media accounts sharing images and videos from the eastern Donbas and Luhansk regions have been a crucial source of information, sharing footage of Russian helicopters heading toward Crimea or tank divisions moving to the border. But as the conflict intensifies, many researchers sharing this primary material taken from social media -- commonly known as open-source intelligence or OSINT -- have found their Twitter accounts unexpectedly suspended.

On the night of February 22nd, OSINT researcher Kyle Glen was locked out of his account for 12 hours, according to tweets from Glen and a post shared by another OSINT organization. Security analyst Oliver Alexander also claimed to have been locked out of his account twice in 24 hours. Outside of the Anglosphere, the French-language OSINT account Neurone Intelligence, Spanish-language account Mundo en Conflicto, and Brazilian OSINT account Noticias e Guerras were also affected. A Twitter thread compiled by Nick Waters, an analyst at the pioneering OSINT organization Bellingcat, lists more account suspensions. In a tweet, Alexander shared a screenshot with a message stating that the account had been locked for violating Twitter rules, though the exact rule violation was not specified.

Researchers raised concerns that the account suspension could have been part of a mass reporting campaign intended to disable OSINT accounts during a Russian invasion. In a statement, Twitter spokesperson Elizabeth Busby said that action had been taken against these accounts in error and was not part of a coordinated campaign. "We've been proactively monitoring for emerging narratives that are violative of our policies, and, in this instance, we took enforcement action on a number of accounts in error," Busby said. "We're expeditiously reviewing these actions and have already proactively reinstated access to a number of affected accounts. The claims that the errors were a coordinated bot campaign or the result of mass reporting is inaccurate." When asked what content policies the suspended accounts were believed to have violated, Busby pointed The Verge to Twitter's synthetic and manipulated media policy, which deals with the sharing of misinformation on the platform. For those interested in a live map showing the current areas of conflict in Ukraine with corresponding social media posts/media, check out Liveuamap.

DidgetMaster writes: Hard drive costs now hover around $20 per terabyte (TB). Drives bigger than 20TB are now available. Fast SSDs are more expensive, but the average user can now afford these in TB capacities as well. Yet, we are still using antiquated file systems that were designed decades ago when the biggest drives were much less than a single gigabyte (GB). Their oversized file records and slow directory traversal search algorithms make finding files on volumes that can hold more than 100 million files a nightmare. Rather than flexible tagging systems that could make searches quick and easy, they have things like "extended attributes" that are painfully slow to search on. Indexing services can be built on top of them, but these are not an integral part of the file system so they can be bypassed and become out of sync with the file system itself.

It is time to replace file systems with something better. A local object store that can effectively manage hundreds of millions of files and find things in seconds based on file type and/or tags attached is possible. File systems are usually free and come with your operating system, so there seems to be little incentive for someone to build a new system from scratch, but just like we needed the internet to come along and change everything we need a better data storage manager.

See Didgets for an example of what is possible. In a Substack article, Didgets developer Andy Lawrence argues his system solves many of the problems associated with the antiquated file systems still in use today. "With Didgets, each record is only 64 bytes which means a table with 200 million records is less than 13GB total, which is much more manageable," writes Lawrence. Didgets also has "a small field in its metadata record that tells whether the file is a photo or a document or a video or some other type," helping to dramatically speed up searches.

Do you think it's time to replace file systems with an alternative system, such as Didgets? Why or why not?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Waymo, the autonomous driving arm of Alphabet, was granted a win on Tuesday when a California court ruled it could keep certain details regarding its AV technology secret. The company filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Motor Vehicles in late January in order to keep some information about its autonomous vehicle deployment permit, as well as emails between the DMV and the company, redacted from a public record request, which was originally filed by an undisclosed third party. The ruling by the California Superior Court, Sacramento could set a precedent for broader trade secret protection, at least in the autonomous vehicle industry, involving public access to information that has to do with public safety, but which businesses claim contain trade secrets.

In its lawsuit, Waymo argued being forced to reveal trade secrets would undermine its investments into automated driving technology and have a "chilling effect across the industry" where the DMV is no longer a safe space for companies to transparently share information about their tech. "We're pleased that the court reached the right decision in granting Waymo's request for a preliminary injunction, precluding the disclosure of competitively-sensitive trade secrets that Waymo had included in the permit application it submitted to the CA DMV," a Waymo spokesperson told TechCrunch. "We will continue to openly share safety and other data on our autonomous driving technology and operations, while recognizing that detailed technical information we share with regulators is not always appropriate for sharing with the public." [...] "These R&D efforts take many years and an enormous financial investment," reads Waymo's declaration shared with the court. "Waymo's AV development began as part of Google in 2009 before Waymo became its own company in 2016; therefore, Waymo's AVs have been in development for more than 12 years. Waymo has invested truly significant amounts researching and developing its AV products." It is difficult, however, to determine whether or not the information actually contains trade secrets without being able to see any of it.

"The question is, can the company derive economic value purely from not sharing that information with others?" Matthew Wansley, former general counsel of nuTonomy (which Aptiv acquired) and a law professor at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law in New York, told TechCrunch. [...] "I looked through the complaint that Waymo filed, and the categories of information they're talking about are pretty broad," said Wansley. "Are there trade secrets in that set of information that they sent? Probably, there are some. Does it include all of the information they sent? Almost certainly not. The only thing that would surprise me is if everything they're claiming is a trade secret is actually a trade secret. But without knowing the specific information that they share with regulators, it's just hard to know." And now the public will never know. In an effort to assuage any fears about its technology, the report notes that Waymo "has submitted a safety self-assessment to the U.S. Department of Transportation, and is publishing a law enforcement interaction guide and a detailed description of its safety methodologies."

U.S. regulators are warning that 5G wireless operations could affect radio altimeters in most Boeing 737 aircraft and impact crew workload and airplane landings. From a report: The Federal Aviation Administration's directive affects Boeing's 737s, except its 200 and 200-c series, a Federal Register notice posted online on Wednesday said. It added that their "radio altimeters cannot be relied upon to perform their intended function if they experience interference from wireless broadband operations in the 3.7-3.98 GHz frequency band (5G C-Band)." The FAA said in the notice, scheduled to be formally published on Thursday, that regulators had determined that "during approach, landings, and go-arounds, as a result of this interference, certain airplane systems may not properly function". That would result in "increased lightcrew workload while on approach with the flight director, autothrottle, or autopilot engaged, which could result in reduced ability of the flight crew to maintain safe flight and landing of the airplane," it said.

Facebook parent company Meta Platforms is building a digital voice assistant to help people interact hands-free with physical devices, such as the company's Portal video-calling device and, eventually, augmented-reality glasses. From a report: Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said the company is building the assistant in preparation for the so-called metaverse, a more immersive version of the internet that will let people interact online through virtual and AR glasses. Digital assistants will need to "learn the way humans do" to help users navigate this new online world, Zuckerberg said during a presentation on Wednesday. "When we have glasses on our faces, that will be the first time an AI system will be able to really see the world from our perspective -- see what we see, hear what we hear and more," Zuckerberg added, saying he hopes to eventually build AI assistants that can "move between virtual and physical worlds." The AI assistant doesn't have a name, but Meta is calling the effort "Project CAIRaoke."

In a Google support forum post, Chrome's Support Manager Craig announced that mobile Chrome 100 will do away with the browser's data-saving feature -- the release is due to make its way to the stable channel on March 29, 2022. From a report: The mode will also stop working on previous versions of the browser from that day. Besides several improvements to Chrome over the years to reduce data usage and improve page load times, Google has also seen mobile data costs decrease in many countries. Thus, it believes the data saving mode is no longer relevant in today's world.

Russian President Vladimir Putin can do a lot more damage in Ukraine and the United States is prepared to respond by withholding technology and resources if he does, deputy U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said on Wednesday. From a report: Such measures were not announced on Tuesday as part of a round of sanctions unveiled by President Joe Biden to punish Putin for recognizing two breakaway regions of Ukraine as independent and deploying troops into the regions to "keep the peace." "President Putin clearly has the ability to do much more than he has done so far," Adeyemo said in an interview with CNBC.

In response, the Biden administration could deprive Russia of a vast swath of low- and high-tech U.S. and foreign-made goods, from commercial electronics and computers to semiconductors and aircraft parts, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters. "The key thing that President Putin needs to consider is whether he wants to ensure that Russia's economy is able to grow, that he has the resources he needs to be able to project power in the future. If he chooses to invade, what we're telling him very directly, is that we're going to cut that off.

If you're a Google Workspace user, the classic Hangouts messaging service will start to disappear next month as part of the transition to Google Chat. From a report: Google has announced that it'll make Google Chat its default chat application beginning March 22nd, meaning users will be redirected to Chat when they try to visit Hangouts in Gmail on the web, or try to use the old Hangouts mobile apps. The shift from Google Hangouts to Google Chat is the latest step in Google's constantly evolving messaging strategy, which generally gets more confusing the more you read about it. This particular migration kicked into gear in June 2020, and focusses on the messaging service integrated with Gmail. Google Chat should not be confused with GChat, the unofficial name for Google Talk, which was officially killed off in 2017 and replaced with -- you guessed it -- Hangouts.

Activity on OpenSea, the world's largest marketplace for digital collectibles, likely dropped precipitously after a phishing attack that saw traders lose as much as an estimated $3 million. From a report: Trading in nonfungible tokens plummeted in recent days, according to data provider DappRadar. OpenSea's seven-day trading volume was down 37% as of Tuesday, DappRadar found. An unidentified hacker stole 254 tokens from OpenSea users by sending a malicious email asking to transfer their assets to a new contract. Around 17 traders signed the contract, which effectively acted as a blank check, giving the hacker access to all of the NFTs stored on their wallet. Some of those assets have since been sold, netting the perpetrator a hefty gain. Devin Finzer, OpenSea's chief executive officer, valued the total amount stolen at $1.7 million on Sunday, but researchers since have valued the pile at anywhere between $2 million and $3 million. Among the stolen NFTs included four Bored Apes, three of which were later sold on rival platform LooksRare for a combined $667,000, according to data from blockchain security service PeckShield.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Frontier, a national Internet Service Provider (ISP), is now bringing 2 Gbps broadband to all its fiber customers. While Frontier is best known for its rural DSL internet service, the company has been expanding its fiber network. Frontier's 2 Gbps service will be available to approximately 4 million customers in 19 states as part of its launch. This 2 Gbps service is symmetrical; this means you'll get 2 Gbps speeds both up and down. Frontier's not the only one that offers multi-Gbps speeds. AT&T, Google Fiber, Verizon Fios, Xfinity, and Ziply Fiber also offer this level of performance, but none of them offer it over their entire network like Frontier.

Elon Musk said that Tesla is working to make Steam's library of video games work on its onboard vehicle computer. Electrek reports: As we previously reported, Tesla has a team of software engineers working on video games in Seattle and they recently started building a similar team in Austin. The automaker has been building a video game platform called Tesla Arcade inside its vehicles, and it has been working with video game studios to port games to it. Right now, it is mainly to create some added value to its ownership experience, but Tesla might have bigger plans for gaming inside its vehicles. In preparation for that, the automaker has been releasing more video games in its Tesla Arcade and it has indicated that it might turn it into a business.

Now Musk announced on Twitter today that Tesla is working to make Steam's library of games work directly on Tesla's software instead of porting specific games: "We're working through the general case of making Steam games work on a Tesla vs specific titles. Former is obviously where we should be long-term." In the Twitter thread, Musk reiterated his goal to make Cyberpunk, a demanding game graphic-wise, work on the upcoming Cybertruck.