Twitch has launched a tool that uses machine learning to detect users trying to rejoin chat channels from which they have been banned for abusive behaviour. The gaming-focused livestreaming website said "bad actors" often created new accounts to continue to harass people. From a report: But the new system would warn streamers and chat moderators if a user was a "likely" or "possible" ban evader. It is part of Twitch's long-running efforts to reduce hate and harassment. The company has been criticised over "hate raids", in which unscrupulous streamers send their followers or even automated bots to other channels to harass someone. Often the victims belong to minority or marginalised groups. Creators had demanded the Amazon-owned company do more to counter this kind of hate speech. In September, Twitch announced "phone-verified chat", enabling streamers to require some or all users to verify a phone number before chatting. And the same month, it began legal action against unidentified users allegedly involved in "chat-based attacks against marginalised streamers."

Windows 11's taskbar is a giant step back in usability compared to Windows 10, and now Microsoft is starting to make improvements. A new update that's currently being tested by Windows Insiders brings the clock and date back to the taskbar on secondary or multiple monitors. From a report: It's a change that multiple monitor users will appreciate, as many have had to install third-party apps like ElevenClock just to get this basic functionality in Windows 11. I've not been shy about criticizing the changes made to the taskbar in Windows 11. I hate the new taskbar, so I'm happy to see Microsoft make this initial change. There's still much more to be improved, and hopefully we see the return of being able to drag and drop files onto taskbar apps and the general customization options. Elsewhere, Microsoft is also making some improvements to the Start menu in Windows 11. The latest 22509 Insider build includes the ability to configure the Start menu to show more pins or more recommendations instead. That makes the Start menu a little more customizable, although many Windows 11 users are also opting for third-party apps here, too.

China is planning to ban companies from going public on foreign stock markets through variable interest entities -- Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter -- closing a loophole long used by the country's technology industry to raise capital from overseas investors. From the report: The ban, intended in part to address concerns over data security, is among changes included in a new draft of China's overseas listing rules that may be finalized as soon as this month, said the people, asking not to be identified discussing private information. Companies using the so-called VIE structure would still be allowed to pursue initial public offerings in Hong Kong, subject to regulatory approval, the people said. The China Securities Regulatory Commission said on its website Wednesday that a media report about banning the overseas listings of companies using the VIE structure is not true, without giving further details. [...] The overhaul would represent one of Beijing's biggest steps to crack down on overseas listings following the New York IPO of ride-hailing giant Didi Global, which proceeded despite regulatory concerns.

A new browser extension promises to show you which products in your Amazon search results are sold by brands that are either owned by or are exclusive to Amazon, giving you a better idea of who's selling what you're buying. The Verge reports: It's called Amazon Brand Detector, and it uses a list of Amazon brands created by The Markup, along with filters and other techniques (detailed here) to detect and highlight products that are a part of Amazon's Our Brands program. The Markup created this extension after its investigation into how Amazon ranks its in-house brands in search results and says the tool (available for Chrome-like browsers and Firefox) is designed to make searches more transparent. When we tested it, it obviously highlighted Amazon Basics and Essentials products, but it also drew attention to results that were otherwise indistinguishable from ones not affiliated with Amazon: a dog leash labeled as being made by Panykoo, socks by Teebulen, a sweater by Ofeefan.

While Amazon marked some of those results as "featured from our brands," that wasn't the case for all of them. That advisory text is also small and grey, making it easy to miss if you're casually browsing (especially since there may not be any notice of the affiliation on the actual product page), and it didn't show up on every result the tool highlighted. Amazon isn't necessarily shadowy about these brands: it has a page that lists its "private and select exclusive brands," many of which have legit-sounding names: Happy Belly, Wag, Nature's Wonder. Some are private labels owned by Amazon, where some are "curated selections" sold exclusively on Amazon but not necessarily operated by the company. According to The Markup, the extension "does not collect any data" and should be compatible with other extensions.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: When a scammer wants to set up an account on Amazon, Discord, or a spread of other online services, sometimes a thing that stands in their way is SMS verification. The site will require them to enter a phone number to receive a text message which they'll then need to input back into the site. Sites often do this to prevent people from making fraudulent accounts in bulk. But fraudsters can turn to large scale, automated services to lease them phone numbers for less than a cent. One of those is 5SIM, a website that members of the video game cheating community mention as a way to fulfill the request for SMS verification.

Various YouTube videos uploaded by the company explain how people can use its service explicitly for getting through the SMS verification stage of various sites. The videos include instructions specifically on PayPal, Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, and dating site Plenty of Fish. Instagram told Motherboard it is concerned by sites that suggest people can use services to bypass Instagram's measures to then abuse the platform. Instagram said it uses SMS verification to prevent the creation of fake accounts and to make account recovery possible. "We have many measures in place to protect against scripted account creation and block millions of fake accounts at registration every day," an Instagram spokesperson said.

Some online services don't allow users to perform SMS verification with VoIP numbers, presumably in an effort to mitigate against fraud. 5SIM's numbers, however, are just like ordinary phone numbers, the site claims. When people buy 5SIM's services, they must only use it for receiving texts related to an online account. "Different SMS will [be] rejected," the website adds. 5SIM also offers an API to automate parts of the service. 5SIM's rules say that customers are "Forbidden to use the service for any illegal purposes as well as not to take actions that harm the service and (or) third parties." The website also includes a denylist of words that its service may block. In an email to Motherboard, 5SIM said: "5sim service is prohibited to use for illegal purposes. In cases, where fraudulent operations with registered accounts are detected, restrictions may be imposed on the 5sim account until the circumstances are clarified. 5sim is used by those who want to get a discount or bonus, webmasters, SMM specialists, owners of business for advertising and increasing business loyalty."

Microsoft has decided to add "Buy Now, Pay Later" financing options to its Edge browser in the U.S. -- and the overwhelming response has been negative. The Register reports: The Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) option pops up at the browser level (rather than on checkout at an ecommerce site) and permits users to split any purchase between $35 and $1,000 made via Edge into four instalments spread over six weeks. The system is powered by Zip, previously Quadpay, and offers a Chrome extension for users who want to split their payments (interest-free if you make the payments on time, although Zip charges $1 per installment). Microsoft has now bundled the platform into Edge.

Feedback could charitably be described as negative so far, as demonstrated by the tags assigned to the post on Microsoft's Tech Community site. Comments (numbering 119 at time of writing) posted by visitors to the site can be pretty much summed up thusly: "This [is] a cheap and disgusting move from Microsoft and edge team to the browser users. You should be ashamed for pushing such crap to users. Listening to the users checkout flows, suggesting third party services. Bloating the browser. Seriously, be better and more responsible." "It's deeply shocking this is built into the base Windows OS on billions of devices," writes cybersecurity expert Kevin Beaumont in a tweet. "I feel like I should start a GoFundMe for Microsoft, or teach them how to beg bounty, as clearly they need the money."

Consumers logged online Monday and spent $10.7 billion, marking a 1.4% decrease from year-ago levels, according to data released Tuesday by Adobe Analytics. This year's tally marks the first time that Adobe has tracked a slowdown in spending on major shopping days. CNBC reports: Despite the slowdown, Adobe expects the entire holiday season will see record-breaking e-commerce activity, as shoppers spread out their dollars over more days. So far, from Nov. 1 through Cyber Monday, consumers in the United States have spent $109.8 billion online, which is up 11.9% year over year, Adobe said. And on 22 of those days, consumers purchased more than $3 billion worth of goods, another new milestone, it said. Adobe anticipates digital sales from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31 will hit $207 billion, which would represent record gains of 10%.

Last Cyber Monday, retailers rang up $10.8 billion in sales on the web, as more people stayed home and avoided shopping in retailers' stores due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. It marked a record day for e-commerce purchases in the U.S. The slight deceleration in online spending follows a similar pattern that played out on Thanksgiving Day and on Black Friday this year, as shoppers appeared to have spread out their dollars onto more days rather than squeezing their shopping into "Cyber Week."

Retailers rang up $8.9 billion in sales online on Black Friday, down from the record of about $9 billion spent on the Friday after Thanksgiving a year earlier, Adobe said. And on Thanksgiving Day, consumers spent $5.1 billion on the internet, flat from year-ago levels. [...] Shopper traffic on Black Friday was up 47.5% compared with year-ago levels, but was still down 28.3% versus 2019, according to separate data from Sensormatic Solutions.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Record: A recently discovered FBI training document shows that US law enforcement can gain limited access to the content of encrypted messages from secure messaging services like iMessage, Line, and WhatsApp, but not to messages sent via Signal, Telegram, Threema, Viber, WeChat, or Wickr. The document, obtained earlier this month following a FOIA request filed by Property of the People, a US nonprofit dedicated to government transparency, appears to contain training advice for what kind of data agents can obtain from the operators of encrypted messaging services and the legal processes they have to go through.

Dated to January 7, 2021, the document doesn't include any new information but does a good job at providing an up-to-date summary of what type of information the FBI can currently obtain from each of the listed services. [...] While the document confirms that the FBI can't gain access to encrypted messages sent through some services, the other type of information they can glean from providers might still help authorities in other aspects of their investigations. The content of the document, which may be hard to read due to some font rendering issues, is also available in the table [embedded in the article]. Of note, the table above does not include details about Keybase, a recent end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) service that has been gaining in popularity. The service was acquired by video conferencing software maker Zoom in May 2020.

SpaceX's Starlink unit is testing its space-based internet service with several aircraft and wants to offer in-flight connection to airlines "as soon as possible," a company vice president said. From a report: Starlink is in talks with several airlines about offering in-flight broadband connections, Jonathan Hofeller, vice president of commercial sales, said Tuesday on a panel at the Airline Passenger Experience Association gathering in Long Beach, California. That would put the company in direct competition with Viasat, Intelsat SA, Telesat and others. Starlink is producing six satellites a week at its assembly site near Seattle, Hofeller said. It is also moving to a more sophisticated version.

David Marcus, one of the top executives at Meta Platforms and the co-creator of the yet-to-be-launched Diem digital currency, is leaving the company after seven years to pursue other projects. From a report: Marcus, who joined the Facebook parent company in 2014 from PayPal Holdings, ran the Messenger service for years before moving over to form the company's blockchain division in 2018. He spent the last few years building Novi, the company's digital wallet that launched in October, and co-founded Diem, a digital currency formerly known as Libra that was intended as a way for people to send money cross-border.

Getting Diem off the ground has proven to be a struggle for Meta and Marcus. Since the project was unveiled in 2019 -- with great fanfare and dozens of partners -- the currency's debut has been delayed and its original ambitions have been scaled back. Diem faced pushback from lawmakers and regulators when it was announced, and while Meta is still a partner on the effort, Diem is now run independently. Marcus's departure adds more uncertainty to Meta's digital payment push, but the longtime entrepreneur and angel investor says he has an itch to create something outside the company.

Twitter updated its private information safety policy this morning to ban sharing images or videos of private individuals without their consent. From a report: The platform already banned users from sharing others' personal information without permission, like their address or location, identity documents, non-public contact information, financial information or medical data. But this update makes these anti-harassment and anti-doxxing policies more robust. This doesn't mean that Twitter will require consent from all individuals in a photo or video before its posted. But if a person depicted wants the media taken down, Twitter will take it down.

Regulators in the U.K. on Tuesday said they have directed Facebook parent company Meta to sell Giphy after finding "the takeover could reduce competition between social media platforms and increase Facebook's already significant market power." From a report: Facebook agreed to buy Giphy in May of last year for an estimated price of $400 million. The deal almost immediately invited antitrust scrutiny, given the increased attention to Facebook's growing market power.

In a statement, the U.K.'s competition and markets authority concluded that the deal would be anticompetitive because Facebook could theoretically increase market power by "denying or limiting other platforms' access to Giphy GIFs," or "changing the terms of access," to its GIFs for competitive sites. Regulators also determined that the deal was uncompetitive because it shut down Giphy's advertising business, therefore eliminating Giphy's competition to Facebook's ad business. As a result, regulators said Facebook "will also be required to reinstate the innovative advertising services that Giphy offered before the merger."

Finland's first quantum computer was commissioned at a research center near the capital Helsinki, where scientists will use it to study next-generation computing power. From a report: The 5 quantum-bit computer was developed "to learn how to build a quantum computer, how to program one and how to operate one in the future," Pekka Pursula, research manager at the VTT Technical Research Centre, said by phone on Tuesday. The machine was the joint work of VTT and quantum computing hardware company IQM Finland Oy. "This 5-qubit computer has relatively low computational power, and it's not enough to solve practical problems," Pursula said. The researchers plan to build a 50-qubit machine by 2024 that could be used for applications such as modeling viruses and drugs, and designing materials that today's technology is ill-equipped to handle.

Finland is working to stop a flood of text messages of an unknown origin that are spreading malware. From a report: The messages with malicious links to malware called FluBot number in the millions, according to Aino-Maria Vayrynen, information security specialist at the National Cyber Security Centre. Telia Co AB, the country's second-biggest telecommunications operator, has intercepted some hundreds of thousands of messages. "The malware attack is extremely exceptional and very worrying," Teemu Makela, chief information security officer at Elisa Oyj, the largest telecoms operator, said by phone. "Considerable numbers of text messages are flying around."

Lawmakers including Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chuck Schumer introduced a bill to crack down on "cyber Grinches" using bots to quickly snap up entire inventories of popular holiday toys and resell them at higher prices. Bloomberg reports: "This bill seeks to stop Cyber Grinch greed from ruining kids' holidays," Blumenthal says in a statement. "New tools are needed to block cyber scammers who snap up supplies of popular toys and resell them at astronomic prices. Price gouging hot toys by Grinch bots should have zero tolerance." The legislation, also introduced in the House of Representatives, would apply to e-commerce sites to ban bots from bypassing security measures on online retail portals. However, with Congress facing urgent deadlines to avoid a federal government shutdown and a debt limit default, it's unclear the bill will move in time to save Christmas.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from India Today: For the first time in history, a commercial Airbus plane made a successful landing on the white continent of Antarctica. One of the company's A340 planes touched down on an ice runway earlier this month, paving the way for more tourism on the frozen landmass. The A340 took off on the morning of November 2 from Cape Town, South Africa before flying 2,500 nautical miles (4,630 km) to Antarctica. It then achieved an aviation first by successfully landing on a runway made of "blue glacial ice," according to the aircraft's pilot, Captain Carlos Mirpuri.

CNN reported that the historic flight was operated by Hi Fly, a boutique aviation company, and was chartered by Wolf's Gang luxury adventure camp. The aircraft will be used this season to fly a small number of tourists, alongside scientists and cargo to the icy continent. There was "attention and anxiety" in the cockpit as the 190-tonne plane approached the runway in Antarctica. Captain Mirpuri detailed how the runway had to have special grooves carved into it to allow for more friction as the aircraft landed, which would have otherwise slipped down the icy course due to its heavy supply cargo. The pilots also had to wear special eye gear due to the glare coming off the polar ice. Thankfully, Mirpuri and the rest of the A340's crew managed to land safely and they took less than three hours to deliver all of the cargo.

James Rundle writes via the Wall Street Journal: A few years ago, executives at Intel began to realize they had a problem. The company was making dozens of new products each year, from chips to software platforms, but it didn't have a formal method for cataloging and storing older technology so engineers could test it for security flaws. [...] Intel's answer to this conundrum was to create a warehouse and laboratory in Costa Rica, where the company already had a research-and-development lab, to store the breadth of its technology and make the devices available for remote testing. After planning began in mid-2018, the Long-Term Retention Lab was up and running in the second half of 2019. The lab gives Intel, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif., and has more than 100,000 employees, a centralized, secure location where security tests can be run from anywhere in the world. Access to the building is strictly controlled and approved by senior managers, while surveillance cameras watch the equipment at all times. Even its location is secret -- Intel representatives declined to say where exactly it is.

The lab brings commercial value to Intel, [said Mohsen Fazlian, general manager of Intel's product assurance and security unit.], citing company research that shows customers are more likely to buy technology from manufacturers that proactively test their products. [...] The lab has changed Intel's product development. All new technology is now built with the facility in mind, with technical documentation created to allow engineers to support it for up to 10 years, and units are sent to the lab before they are released, Mr. Fazlian said. "Hopefully, I will never find myself searching eBay for Intel hardware again," he said.

The Korean National Police Agency (KNPA) is pushing for the implementation of conditional driver's licenses for the elderly by 2025, Yonhap News reports. How they'll determine who gets to keep their licenses will be via virtual reality. The Next Web reports: As of Monday, a three-year research project has been introduced, which will employ VR tech to assess whether drivers aged 65 years and older can remain behind the wheel. The program's total budget is expected to reach approximately $3 million (3.6 billion won). Contrary to other countries around the word, South Korea has no strict regulations regarding the driving license of seniors, unless they test positive for dementia. Currently, two measures apply: the three-year license renewal period for those aged 75 years and older, and the voluntary return of the driver's license for people over 65 years-old. However, the KNPA is still raising concerns over the number of accidents attributed to senior drivers, as well as the continuous aging of the country's population.

The VR test will asses driving, cognitive, and memory skills using a VR headset, close to how virtual reality technology is used in dementia clinics to check the brain functions of older people. While the specifics are yet to be disclosed, a similar academic research by independent scientists has run an experiment, testing driving performance evaluation based on virtual reality tech. The researchers conducted driving simulator experiments to measure various driving behaviors under many different driving conditions, in order to examine the participants' visual acuity. The virtual simulations included two scenarios: daytime and nighttime highway driving. In both cases, three unexpected incidents were created to test the drivers' performance [...].

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The CEOs of 13 large European telecom companies today called on tech giants -- presumably including Netflix and other big US companies -- to pay for a portion of the Internet service providers' network upgrade costs. In a "joint CEO statement," the European telcos described their proposal as a "renewed effort to rebalance the relationship between global technology giants and the European digital ecosystem." The letter makes an argument similar to one that AT&T and other US-based ISPs have made at times over the past 15 years, that tech companies delivering content over the Internet get a "free" ride and should subsidize the cost of building last-mile networks that connect homes to broadband access. These arguments generally don't mention the fact that tech giants already pay for their own Internet bandwidth costs and that Netflix and others have built their own content-delivery networks to help deliver the traffic that home-Internet customers choose to receive.

Today's letter from European ISPs was signed by the CEOs of A1 Telekom Austria Group, Vivacom, Proximus Group, Telenor Group, KPN, Altice Portugal, Deutsche Telekom, BT Group, Telia Company, Telefonica, Vodafone Group, Orange Group, and Swisscom. They wrote: "Large and increasing part of network traffic is generated and monetized by big tech platforms, but it requires continuous, intensive network investment and planning by the telecommunications sector. This model -- which enables EU citizens to enjoy the fruits of the digital transformation -- can only be sustainable if such big tech platforms also contribute fairly to network costs." The European telcos didn't mention any specific tech giants, but Reuters wrote today that "US-listed giants such as Netflix and Facebook are companies they have in mind." The letter also discusses other regulatory topics related to fiber and mobile broadband, saying that "regulation must fully reflect market realities... Namely, that telecom operators compete face-to-face with services by big tech."

As wafer costs increase, so are the costs of GPUs. According to a post on the Board Forums, AMD says it's increasing the price of its RX 6000 series GPUs by 10 percent across the board. ExtremeTech reports: This pricing change will apparently occur in the next shipment of GPUs to its partners, which will apparently drive up the price of these GPUs by $20 to $40 USD. This news arrives just in time for the holiday shopping season, when demand for GPUs is expected to increase even more, as if that is even possible.

According to a translation of the board posting, AMD is citing TSMC wafer costs as the reason for the change, and as we reported earlier, sub-16nm prices, including 12nm, 7nm, and 5nm, are said to have increased roughly 10 percent, while TSMC's older nodes have gone up by as much as 20 percent. AMD seems to be passing this price increase along to its partners, who in turn are passing it along to us, the customer, or the scalper, as it were. Then the scalper passes it along to us, the gamers. Although, as Videocardz points out AMD also produces its CPUs at TSMC and there hasn't been a similar across-the-board increase, which is curious.