An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Oculus may have officially discontinued its low-end Oculus Go headset last year, but the company has one more "official" update to help future-proof the hardware. On Thursday, Oculus released an unlocked build of the Oculus Go operating system, allowing for "full root access" on more than 2 million existing units. Oculus "Consulting CTO" (and former id Software co-founder) John Carmack announced his plans for this update last month, saying it was something he had "been pushing on for years." In part, the unlocking is an attempt to guarantee that Go hardware will continue to be fully functional well into the future, allowing for "a randomly discovered shrink wrapped headset twenty years from now [to] be able to update to the final software version, long after over-the-air update servers have been shut down," Carmack wrote.

Before that, though, the update will allow tinkerers to "repurpose the hardware for more things today," as Carmack puts it. Go hardware running the unlocked OS will no longer check for a Facebook signature at the kernel level, meaning developers can create new versions of low-level system software for the entire Android-based OS. That could allow for custom versions of low-level features like the app launcher and the removal of otherwise locked system apps. The update also allows for easy sideloading of apps outside of Go's store interface, though this was already possible on older OS versions.

Intel has open-sourced ControlFlag , a tool that uses machine learning to detect problems in computer code -- ideally to reduce the time required to debug apps and software. From a report: In tests, the company's machine programming research team says that ControlFlag has found hundreds of defects in proprietary, "production-quality" software, demonstrating its usefulness. "Last year, ControlFlag identified a code anomaly in Client URL (cURL), a computer software project transferring data using various network protocols over one billion times a day," Intel principal AI scientist Justin Gottschlich wrote in a blog post on LinkedIn.

"Most recently, ControlFlag achieved state-of-the-art results by identifying hundreds of latent defects related to memory and potential system crash bugs in proprietary production-level software. In addition, ControlFlag found dozens of novel anomalies on several high-quality open-source software repositories." The demand for quality code draws an ever-growing number of aspiring programmers to the profession. After years of study, they learn to translate abstracts into concrete, executable programs -- but most spend the majority of their working hours not programming. A recent study found that the IT industry spent an estimated $2 trillion in 2020 in software development costs associated with debugging code, with an estimated 50% of IT budgets spent on debugging.

ISPs around the world claim the unprecedented bandwidth demands Netflix's Squid Game is placing on their broadband networks means they should be getting more money. From a report: But experts say that's not how telecom networks work, suggesting that already cash-flush telecom giants are just positioning themselves for an underserved hand out. The popular South Korean thriller, a not so thinly-veiled critique of late-stage capitalism, tracks a group of indebted people who compete in deadly children's games for cash. According to Netflix, Squid Game is the most popular show in company history, the number one program in 94 countries, and has been watched by 142 million households. ISPs around the world also claim the show's popularity is driving a massive surge in bandwidth consumption, and they want their cut.

In South Korea, Internet service provider SK Broadband sued Netflix earlier this month, claiming that between May and September the ISP's network traffic jumped 24 times to 1.2 trillion bits of data processed every second. This surge is Netflix's fault, the ISP insists, and Netflix should be held financially responsible. In the UK, British Telecom executives have been making similar complaints, insisting that Netflix should be forced to help pay for the surge in network traffic caused by the show. But broadband experts say that's not how broadband networks actually work. "It makes no sense for ISPs to cry victim because they provide a popular service, and are expected to provide it," John Bergmayer, telecom expert at consumer group Public Knowledge told Motherboard. "People subscribe to broadband to do things like stream video, and it's broadband customers who are requesting all these Squid Game streams. They are not somehow imposed on ISPs by Netflix."

Epic Games is ending a pandemic-inspired policy of granting every other Friday off, sparking an uproar among staff. From a report: An internal Slack channel was filled with pleas from employees for the game publisher to reconsider. Several people said the extra vacation days had helped their mental health, allowed them to be better parents and even improved their productivity while working on updates for Fortnite, which is one of world's most popular games. Epic said the policy was always meant to be temporary and that the company's goal was to allow employees and contractors to take paid time off on their own schedules. The company also closes for two-week breaks in the summer and winter.

"Right now, we are seeing lots of Fridays off for deep work, and lots of people who must work Fridays anyways," Chief Operating Officer Daniel Vogel wrote in an email to staff reviewed by Bloomberg. "This meant that many people were not benefiting from this policy equally." But in a survey of 581 employees reviewed by Bloomberg, 93% said they had found the alternating Fridays off to be "extremely beneficial" and 61% said they felt worried, guilty or stressed when taking separate vacation days. Almost 90% of employees said they wanted to keep Fridays off as a standard.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Over the last few years the justified fixation on the bad behavior of Google, Amazon, Facebook and other Silicon Valley giants has let the abuses of the telecom sector fly under the radar. But a new FTC report showcases how when it comes to consumer privacy, broadband providers are every bit as terrible as you thought they were. The new FTC report studied the privacy practices of six unnamed broadband ISPs and their advertising arms, and found that the companies routinely collect an ocean of consumer location, browsing, and behavioral data. They then share this data with dodgy middlemen via elaborate business arrangements that often aren't adequately disclosed to broadband consumers.

"Even though several of the ISPs promise not to sell consumers personal data, they allow it to be used, transferred, and monetized by others and hide disclosures about such practices in fine print of their privacy policies," the FTC report said. The FTC also found that while many ISPs provide consumers tools allowing them to opt out of granular data collection, those tools are cumbersome to use -- when they work at all. "Many of the ISPs also claim to offer consumers choices about how their data is used and allow them to access such data," the FTC said. "The FTC found, however, that many of these companies often make it difficult for consumers to exercise such choices and sometimes even nudge them to share even more information." ISPs often provide privacy-specific website portals proclaiming to provide users with a wide variety of opt out options but these choices are often "illusory," the FTC found.

EFF: The Utah Supreme Court is the latest stop in EFF's roving campaign to establish your Fifth Amendment right to refuse to provide your password to law enforcement. Yesterday, along with the ACLU, we filed an amicus brief in State v. Valdez, arguing that the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination prevents the police from forcing suspects to reveal the contents of their minds. That includes revealing a memorized passcode or directly entering the passcode to unlock a device.

In Valdez, the defendant was charged with kidnapping his ex-girlfriend after arranging a meeting under false pretenses. During his arrest, police found a cell phone in Valdez's pocket that they wanted to search for evidence that he set up the meeting, but Valdez refused to tell them the passcode. Unlike many other cases raising these issues, however, the police didn't bother seeking a court order to compel Valdez to reveal his passcode. Instead, during trial, the prosecution offered testimony and argument about his refusal. The defense argued that this violated the defendant's Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, which also prevents the state from commenting on his silence. The court of appeals agreed, and now the state has appealed to the Utah Supreme Court.

Russia's boldest moves to censor the internet began in the most mundane of ways -- with a series of bureaucratic emails and forms. From a report: The messages, sent by Russia's powerful internet regulator, demanded technical details -- like traffic numbers, equipment specifications and connection speeds -- from companies that provide internet and telecommunications services across the country. Then the black boxes arrived. The telecom companies had no choice but to step aside as government-approved technicians installed the equipment alongside their own computer systems and servers. Sometimes caged behind lock and key, the new gear linked back to a command center in Moscow, giving authorities startling new powers to block, filter and slow down websites that they did not want the Russian public to see.

The process, underway since 2019, represents the start of perhaps the world's most ambitious digital censorship effort outside of China. Under President Vladimir V. Putin, who once called the internet a "C.I.A. project" and views the web as a threat to his power, the Russian government is attempting to bring the countryâ(TM)s once open and freewheeling internet to heel. The gear has been tucked inside the equipment rooms of Russia's largest telecom and internet service providers, including Rostelecom, MTS, MegaFon and Vympelcom, a senior Russian lawmaker revealed this year. It affects the vast majority of the country's more than 120 million wireless and home internet users, according to researchers and activists. The world got its first glimpse of Russia's new tools in action when Twitter was slowed to a crawl in the country this spring. It was the first time the filtering system had been put to work, researchers and activists said. Other sites have since been blocked, including several linked to the jailed opposition leader Alexei A. Navalny.

Scott Gilbertson, writing for The Register: The legacy of Internet Explorer 6 haunts web developer nightmares to this day. Microsoft's browser of yore made their lives miserable and it's only slightly hyperbolic to say it very nearly destroyed the entire internet. It really was that bad, kids. It made us walk to school in the snow. Uphill. Both ways. You wouldn't understand. Or maybe you would. Today developers who want to use "cutting-edge" web APIs find themselves resorting to the same kind of browser-specific workarounds, but this time the browser dragging things down comes from Apple. Apple's Safari lags considerably behind its peers in supporting web features. Whether it's far enough behind to be considered "the new IE" is debatable and may say more about the shadow IE still casts across the web than it does about Safari. But Safari -- or more specifically the WebKit engine that powers it -- is well behind the competition. According to the Web Platform Tests dashboard, Chrome-based browsers support 94 per cent of the test suite, and Firefox pulls off 91 per cent, but Safari only manages 71 per cent.

On the desktop this doesn't matter all that much because users can always switch to Google Chrome (or even better, Vivaldi). On iOS devices, however, that's not possible. According to Apple's App Store rules: "apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript." Every iPhone user is a Safari/WebKit user whether they use Safari or Chrome. Apple has a browser monopoly on iOS, which is something Microsoft was never able to achieve with IE. In Windows you could at least install Firefox. If you do that on iOS it might say Firefox, but you're still using WebKit. The reality is if you have an iOS device, you use Safari and are bound by its limitations. Another thing web developers find distressing is Apple's slow development cycle. Apple updates Safari roughly every six months at best. Blink-based browsers update every six weeks (soon every four), Firefox releases every four weeks, and Brave releases every three. This means that not only is Apple slow to add new features, but its development cycle means that even simple bug fixes have to wait a long time before they actually land on users' devices. Safari workarounds are not quick fixes. If your website is affected by a Safari bug, you can expect to wait up to a year before the problem is solved. One theme that emerges when you dig into the Web Platform Tests data on Safari's shortcomings is that even where WebKit has implemented a feature, it's often not complete.

ISayWeOnlyToBePolite writes: The new social network founded by former President Trump may violate the terms of use of the software on which it is based. On Wednesday night, after Trump revealed the TRUTH social app, Twitter users began to note that the network appeared to be based on an open-source social networking software called Mastodon, which allows people to modify the underlying code so long as they abide by its license. But the Trump network appears to have taken the publicly available code for the website while violating the terms that make it free to use.

Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko told TPM in an email that TRUTH appeared to violate the terms of use that the software sets forth: making the source code available, and having a copy of the general product license available to users. "I do intend to seek legal counsel on the situation though," Rochko told TPM, while declining to discuss any specific legal action he may be contemplating. "Compliance with our AGPLv3 license is very important to me as that is the sole basis upon which I and other developers are willing to give away years of work for free," Rochko added.

The AGPL license mandates that software developed for free -- like Mastodon -- remain publicly available after its been modified. Under the license, TRUTH needs to share any modifications to Mastodon's code. The requirement allows developers to remain aware of how the software is being used so long as its run on public servers, continuing the chain by which different open-source developers continue to work on and further modify code that's been created. Former President Trump announced plans to launch the social media platform yesterday, saying his goal is to rival the tech companies that have denied him the megaphone that was paramount to his rise. TRUTH social will be open to "invited users" for a beta launch in November, with plans for it to launch publicly beginning early next year.

With that said, the "invite only" system has already run into some problems, according to Slashdot reader slack_justyb. Some users were able to sign up to create accounts using a publicly available link, allowing them to generate their own handles, like @donaldtrump.

"Apparently a bug in GPSD, the daemon responsible for deriving time from the GPS system, is going to trigger on October 24, 2021, jumping the time back to March of 2002," writes Slashdot reader suutar. "There's a fix that's been committed since August, but of course not everything is up to date." ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes: This will be ugly. Or, as Stephen Williams, who uncovered the bug put it, "I have a feeling that there will be some 'interesting moments' in the early morning when a bunch of the world's stratum 1 NTP servers using GPSD take the long strange trip back to 2002." GPSD maintainer Gary E. Miller has acknowledged the problem, and a fix has been made to the code. To be exact, the fix is in August 2021's GPSD 3.23 release. So, what's the problem if the fix is already in?

Well, there are two problems. First, it won't be backported to previous releases. If you're still using an older version, you may be out of luck. Second, as Miller observed, not all distros "pick up GPSD updates or upstream their patches. [This] is a very sore spot with me." So, just because your operating system is up to date does not mean that it will have the necessary GPSD fix. Miller suggests that you check it and do it yourself: "I [am] gonna fall back on Greg K_H's dictum: All users must update."

Oh, wondering what the mysterious root cause of all this commotion GPS Week Rollover? It's a legacy GPS problem. The GPS signal GPS week number uses a 10-bit code with a maximum value of 1,023. This means every 19.7 years; the GPS week number rolls over to zero. Or, as Miller noted, "This code is a 1024 week time warp waiting to happen." So, check your systems now for this problem. And, if, like most of us, you're relying on someone upstream from you for the correct time, check with them to make sure they've taken care of this forthcoming trouble.

Just when some wireless carriers were trying to move away from phone giveways, T-Mobile upped the ante on Thursday with a deal offering new customers as much as $1,000 if they switch. From a report: The second-largest U.S. wireless carrier said that starting Friday consumers who bring a bill from their current provider to a T-Mobile store can get a prepaid debit card for any remaining amount owed on their phone, up to $1,000. Rivals AT&T and Verizon reported stronger-than-expected subscriber gains this week after using phone giveaways to help prime the pump in the third quarter.

AMD and Microsoft have issued patches to address the slowdowns reported with Ryzen processors when Windows 11 launched. Engadget reports: The latest chipset driver (version 3.10.08.506) should take care of the UEFI CPPC2 issue, which in some cases didn't "preferentially schedule threads on a processor's fastest core," AMD said. That could have slowed down apps that are sensitive to CPU thread performance. AMD noted that the problem was likely more noticeable in more powerful processors with more than eight cores and 65W or higher Thermal Design Power (TDP).

Meanwhile, Microsoft is rolling out a software update tackling a bug that increased L3 cache latency. The issue impacted apps that need quick memory access, which in turn caused CPUs to slow down by up to 15 percent. The patch, Windows 11 update KB5006746, will be available starting today, but at the time of writing, a page containing instructions for installing it isn't yet live. You should be able to install it via Windows Update too.

Almost two years after a wave of complaints flooded Google's support forums about YouTube accounts getting hijacked even if users had two-factor authentication enabled, Google's security team has finally tracked down the root cause of these attacks. From a report: In a report published today, the Google Threat Analysis Group (TAG) attributed these incidents to "a group of hackers recruited in a Russian-speaking forum." TAG said the hackers operated by reaching out to victims via email with various types of business opportunities. YouTubers were typically lured with potential sponsorship deals. Victims were asked to install and test various applications and then publish a review. Apps typically used in these schemes involved antivirus software, VPN clients, music players, photo editors, PC optimizers, or online games.

But unbeknownst to the targets, the hackers hid malware inside the apps. Once the YouTube creators received and installed the demo app, the installer would drop malware on their devices, malware which would extract login credentials and authentication cookies from their browsers and send the stolen data to a remote server. The hackers would then use the authentication cookies to access a YouTuber's account -- bypassing the need to enter a two-factor authentication (2FA) token -- and move to change passwords and the account's recovery email and phone numbers. With the victims locked out of their accounts, the hackers would typically sell the hijacked YouTube channel on underground marketplaces for stolen identities.

Twitter is publicly sharing research findings today that show that the platform's algorithms amplify tweets from right-wing politicians and content from right-leaning news outlets more than people and content from the political left. From a report: The research did not identify whether or not the algorithms that run Twitter's Home feed are actually biased toward conservative political content, because the conclusions only show bias in amplification, not what caused it. Rumman Chowdhury, the head of Twitter's machine learning, ethics, transparency and accountability team, called it "the what, not the why" in an interview with Protocol. "We can see that it is happening. We are not entirely sure why it is happening. To be clear, some of it could be user-driven, people's actions on the platform, we are not sure what it is. It's just important that we share this information," Chowdhury said. The META team plans to conduct what she called a "root-cause analysis" to try to discover the "why," and that analysis will likely include creating testable hypotheses about how people use the platform that could help show whether it's the way users interact with Twitter or the algorithm itself that is causing this uneven amplification. Twitter didn't define for itself what news outlets and politicians are "right-leaning" or belong to right-wing political parties, instead using definitions from other researchers outside the company. The study looked at millions of tweets from politicians across seven countries and hundreds of millions of tweets of links from news outlets, not tweets from the outlets themselves.

Quick Google Stadia recap: Things have not been great. From a report: Google's AAA cloud gaming service launched in 2019 to middling reviews and since then has severely undershot Google's sales and usage estimates by hundreds of thousands of users. The company shut down its first-party studio, "Stadia Games & Entertainment (SG&E)," before it could ever develop a game, and it did so one week after lead executive Phil Harrison gave the division a positive progress report. Several key executives have left the struggling division, like Assassin's Creed co-creator and SG&E leader Jade Raymond, Stadia's VP and head of product, John Justice, and Engineering Lead Justin Uberti.

When Google killed the game division at the beginning of the year, an accompanying blog post hinted that big changes were coming to Google's strategy: "In 2021, we're expanding our efforts to help game developers and publishers take advantage of our platform technology and deliver games directly to their players." Rather than continuing to push Stadia as a consumer-facing, branded service, Google seems to want to pivot the service to what would essentially be "Google Cloud Gaming Platform." This would be a back-end, white-label service that could power other companies' products, just like a million other Google Cloud products, like database hosting and push messaging. Google said it believes a back-end service "is the best path to building Stadia into a long-term, sustainable business." This all brings us to this Batman game presented by AT&T Wireless.

Google is lowering commissions on all subscription-based businesses on the Google Play Store, the company announced today. From a report: Previously, the company had followed Apple's move by reducing commissions from 30% to 15% on the first $1 million of developer earnings. Now, it will lower the fees specifically for app makers who generate revenue through recurring subscriptions. Instead of charging them 30% in the first year, which lowers to 15% in year two and beyond, Google says developers will only be charged 15% from day one. The company says 99% of developers will qualify for a service fee of 15% or less, as Google is also further reducing fees for specific vertical apps in the Play Media Experience Program. These will be adjusted to as low as 10%, it says.

As investors race to capitalize on surging interest in cryptocurrencies, startups are getting creative in how they onboard a generation of crypto users to their first wallets. From a report: Worldcoin is perhaps one of the most audacious efforts to bribe the world to embrace their currency. The startup, founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Alex Blania, wants to put a crypto wallet (and some of their currency) onto every human's smartphone, but in order to do so they have to build a way to determine whether someone is a unique human. Worldcoin is aiming to make their proof-of-personhood network in the least dystopian way possible, that being said, it still requires scanning a billion people's eyeballs with a 5-pound chromatic sphere called "The Orb."

The internet has developed with a very amorphous mesh of user networks. Bot networks operate alongside real people using their real identities, alongside users impersonating real people, alongside pseudonymous users. This can be a recipe for misaligned user incentives, as modern social media platforms have showcased, but when it comes to finance it can also be a recipe for fraud and inequality. Worldcoin wants to avoid all of that while ensuring equitable distribution of their currency, ensuring that each human on earth only signs up for one wallet in their network. Worldcoin CEO Alex Blania tells TechCrunch that the currency is part of a larger effort to drive a more unified and equitable global economy driven by the internet economy, something cryptocurrencies notably haven't nailed in their first several years.

Nvidia's new RTX 3080 plan for GeForce Now is probably the biggest upgrade for its cloud-streaming service since it turned on RTX ray tracing for subscribers over two years ago. From a report: The new plan is targeted at more traditional gamers for whom 60fps simply doesn't cut it, and it'll cost $100 for every six months you're signed up. In addition to the RTX ray tracing of the Priority plan, it offers 8-hour sessions, up to 1440p and 120fps gaming on PC and Mac (1600p on MacBooks), 4K HDR 60fps with 7.1 surround audio on Nvidia Shield (using DLSS) and up to 120fps on select Android devices. On iOS, GeForce Now has to use Safari rather than a dedicated app, which likely either can't handle or is too locked down to hit the higher frame rates.) According to the company, MacBooks are the second most popular device it sees used by the service, which isn't surprising given how poor the Mac's gaming is compared to PCs. The new MacBook Pro models, with their 120Hz displays, will be able to take advantage of the higher resolution and frame rates.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Donald Trump has announced plans to launch a social media platform called TRUTH Social that will rolled be out early next year. The former president, who was banned from Facebook and Twitter earlier this year, says his goal is to rival the tech companies that have denied him the megaphone that was paramount to his rise. "I'm excited to soon begin sharing my thoughts on TRUTH social and to fight back against big tech," Trump said in a statement. Trump announced the news in a press release on Wednesday, saying the platform will be open to "invited users" for a beta launch in November, with plans to make it available to the broader public in the beginning of next year. Truth social will be a product of a new venture called the Trump Media & Technology Group which was created through a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp. The group said it seeks to become a publicly listed company. Users can sign up to be put on a waiting list or pre-order the app via the App Store.

New submitter Motard writes: Dallara Indy Lights racing cars outfitted as autonomous vehicles by Clemson University and programmed by various international collegiate teams will participate in a 20-lap race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday, Oct. 23rd 2021. The event will be livestreamed by the Indy Autonomous Challenge website. Nine teams representing 21 universities from 9 different countries will compete for a $1 million prize. [The second and third-placed teams will receive $250,000 and $500,000 respectively. Only those that complete the race in 25 minutes or less will be eligible for prize money.]