An anonymous reader shares a report: Two weeks ago, World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee sent an NFT of the web's original source code to the auction block with a starting bid of just $1,000. Yesterday, Sotheby's announced that the crypto asset sold for $5.4 million. The sum makes Berners-Lee's work one of the priciest NFTs of all time. The digital package included not just the source code but also a letter from Berners-Lee reflecting on the creation of the web, some original HTML documents, an SVG "poster" of thousands of lines of code, and a 30-minute visualization of the code being typed on a screen.

But there's a twist. An eagle-eyed researcher pointed out on Twitter that the animation initially posted on the Sotheby's site had errors in the code, possibly introduced when the person making the video fed the Objective-C code through an app or web service to produce the typing effect in the animation. Instead of angle brackets that are present in the code (), the HTML codes for the symbols ( & lt; and & gt;) appeared instead. On the poster, which was made by a Python script created by Berners-Lee, the brackets appear correct. Presumably, they are also correct in the code itself. The code was corrected in later animations, raising questions about this particular NFT and NFTs as a whole.

President Vladimir Putin has signed a law that obliges foreign social media giants to open offices in Russia, a document published by the government on Thursday showed, the latest move by Moscow to exert greater control over Big Tech. From a report: The Russian authorities are keen to strengthen their control of the internet and to reduce their dependence on foreign companies and countries. In particular, they have objected in the past to political opponents of the Kremlin using foreign social media platforms to organise what they say are illegal protests and to publicise politically-tinged investigations into alleged corruption. Moscow has fined firms for failing to delete content it says is illegal, slowing down the speed of Twitter as punishment, and on Wednesday opened a new case against Alphabet subsidiary Google for breaching personal data legislation.

Apple executives have taken swipes at Google in the past over its privacy practices. But the iPhone maker trusts Google enough so that over the past year it has dramatically increased the amount of Apple user data it stores in Google's cloud, The Information reported [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], citing a person with direct knowledge of the matter. From the report: The increase cements Apple's status as the largest corporate client for Google's storage service, dwarfing other high-profile Google customers such as ByteDance and Spotify. As of mid-May, Apple was on track to spend around $300 million on Google cloud storage this year, which would represent an increase of roughly 50% from all of 2020, the person said. Inside Google's cloud unit, the person said, staffers have even given Apple a code name that hints at its size: Bigfoot.

A wireless pacemaker that can dissolve in the body has been created for patients who need only temporary help to regulate their heartbeat. The Guardian reports: While pacemakers can already be used for temporary periods, experts say there are problems, including that leads placed through the skin can pose an infection risk. The external power supply and control system can become accidentally dislodged, and heart tissue can be damaged when the device is removed. Now researchers say they have developed a battery-free pacemaker that can be implanted directly on to the surface of the heart and absorbed by the body when no longer needed. The device -- which Rogers said would cost about $100 -- is free of leads and can be controlled and programmed from outside the body.

Writing in the journal Nature Biotechnology, Rogers and colleagues report how they made the device -- which is thin, flexible and weighs less than half a gram -- from materials including magnesium, tungsten, silicon and a polymer known as PLGA, all of which are compatible with the body but which undergo chemical reactions that allow them to dissolve and be absorbed over time. The device, which resembles a tiny tennis racket in shape, is powered by wireless technology in which radio frequency power from an external device is sent to a receiver within the pacemaker where it is converted into an electrical current that is used to regulate the heart. Rogers said similar technology was used in applications such as wireless charging of smartphones and electric toothbrushes.

Earlier today at around 11:45 AM EDT, Virgin Orbit successfully launched its first commercial satellites from their LauncherOne rocket, which blasted off from beneath the wing of a Boeing 747. TechCrunch reports: On board, Virgin Orbit carried seven payloads, including the first-ever defense satellite for the Netherlands, as well as cubsats developed by the U.S. Department of Defense for its Rapid Agile Launch initiative. The initiative is seeking to test the viability of flying small spacecraft to space on relatively short notice on launch platforms with increased flexibility, which Virgin Orbit's provides thanks to its ability to take off horizontally from more or less conventional runways. Virgin Orbit also carried two Earth observation satellites for Polish startup SatRevolution, and it will be delivering more in future flights to help build out that company's planned 14-spacecraft constellation.

In January, Virgin Orbit completed its final demonstration mission, reaching orbit for the first time with LauncherOne. That paved the way for this mission, and the company plans to increase the pace and frequency of its commercial missions, with at least one more planned tentatively for later this year and many more in 2022. In terms of payload capacity, Virgin Orbit's Launcher One can carry around 1,100 pounds to low Earth orbit, which compares favorably with the capacity of Rocket Lab's Electron, which can carry around 661 pounds to the same destination.

Mac OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion can now be downloaded for free from Apple's website. "Apple has kept OS X 10.7 Lion and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion available for customers who have machines limited to the older software, but until recently, Apple was charging $19.99 to get download codes for the updates," notes MacRumors. "The $19.99 fee dates back to when Apple used to charge for Mac updates. Apple began making Mac updates free with the launch of OS X 10.9 Mavericks, which also marked the shift from big cat names to California landmark names." From the report: Mac OS X Lion is compatible with Macs that have an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor, a minimum of 2GB RAM, and 7GB storage space. Mac OS X Mountain Lion is compatible with the following Macs: iMac (Mid 2007-2020), MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer), MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer), MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer), Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer), Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer), and Xserve (Early 2009). Macs that shipped with Mac OS X Mavericks or later are not compatible with the installer, however.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: SMS is widely regarded as an insecure form of two-factor authentication, and another example of this has just emerged. A carrier looks to be injecting ads into the Google verification code used to sign in to services like Gmail. Action Launcher developer Chris Lacy today tweeted how his Google verification code -- which starts with "G-" -- featured an "SMS AD." The advertisement -- for a VPN -- includes a quick message and short URL. For those that immediately suspect this is just a phishing attempt, the verification code is legitimate and was requested by Lacy to successfully verify a login attempt. Google Messages even flagged the link/message as spam. As such, Googlers responding to the thread suspect this is an occurrence of a carrier appending an ad -- note the extra spaces -- into a real text message. It's very unlikely that Google's security teams would allow advertising into a very crucial part of the login process where end user trust is paramount.

Google issued the following statement to us today: "These are not our ads and we are currently working with the wireless carrier to understand why this happened." Google confirms that the "SMS AD" did not originate from its own advertising network. Meanwhile, it's working with the wireless carrier in question to find out what occurred. Lacy has decided "not to state the carrier for privacy reasons," and Google did not share that information either.

An anonymous reader writes: Following in the footsteps of browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome is also in line to receive an HTTPS-Only Mode that will upgrade all unencrypted HTTP connections to encrypted HTTPS alternatives, where possible.

Currently, the new Chrome HTTPS-Only Mode is still under development in Chrome Canary distributions. Work is being done to add specific settings in the browser's interface, and no actual HTTP-to-HTTPS functionality is currently present. The feature is expected to be ready for Chrome 93, set to be released later this fall.

Microsoft and Google have decided to stop playing nice. From a report: The two tech giants recently ended a years-long truce during which they agreed not to aim their substantial lobbying firepower against each other. With regulators around the world threatening to impose limits on the power of the biggest technology companies, the two rivals -- which compete in web search, cloud computing and artificial intelligence -- are now free to step up behind-the-scenes lobbying efforts and public complaints against one another. The old non-aggression pact, forged at the time by two new CEOs wanting a fresh start on a formerly acrimonious relationship, had already been fraying before it lapsed in April. The companies feuded publicly over a proposal to force Google to pay news publishers for content and squabbled more quietly over technology for selling search ads. Neither company is eager to extend or renew the alliance, according to people familiar with each companies' thinking, who weren't authorized to discuss confidential relationships.

Britain's proposed new internet law entails a government power grab with worrying implications for freedom of speech, according to civil liberties groups, academics and the tech industry. From a report: The groups are concerned the proposed Online Safety Bill would hand to Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden disproportionate powers in the name of protecting users from "harmful" content. The Bill allow him to "modify" a code of practice -- the blueprint created by the regulator Ofcom for how tech companies should protect users -- to ensure it "reflects government policy." Critics say such powers, which were set out in a draft of the proposed law published in May and due for imminent scrutiny by MPs and peers, could undermine the regulator's independence and potentially politicize the regulation of the internet.

"The notion that a political appointee will have the unilateral power to alter the legal boundaries of free speech based on the political whims of the moment frankly makes the blood run cold," said Heather Burns, policy manager at the Open Rights Group. The draft bill -- which hasn't yet begun its formal passage through parliament -- is due to be checked line-by-line by legislators before being brought back to parliament later this year, where it will then pass through the stages it needs to end up on the statute books. The U.K. government and opposition parties are currently finalizing which lawmakers will sit on the pre-legislative committee.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After coming close to imposing a near-total ban on municipal broadband networks, Ohio's Republican-controlled legislature has reportedly dropped the proposed law in final negotiations over the state budget. The final budget agreement "axed a proposal to limit local governments from offering broadband services," The Columbus Dispatch wrote. With a June 30 deadline looming, Ohio's House and Senate approved the budget and sent it to Gov. Mike DeWine for final approval on Monday night, the Dispatch wrote.

As we wrote earlier this month, the Ohio Senate approved a version of the budget containing an amendment (PDF) that would have forced existing municipal broadband services to shut down and prevented the formation of new public networks. The proposed law was reportedly "inserted without prior public discussion," and no state senator publicly sponsored the amendment. It was approved in a party-line vote as Democrats opposed the restrictions in municipal broadband. The House version did not contain the amendment, and it was dropped during negotiations between the House and Senate.

Lawmakers apparently relented to public pressure from supporters of municipal broadband and cities and towns that operate the networks. People and businesses from Fairlawn, where the city-run FairlawnGig network offers fiber Internet, played a significant role in the protests. FairlawnGig itself asked users to put pressure on lawmakers, and the subscribers did so in great numbers. "We had a real grassroots movement here in Fairlawn. We are thrilled our residents, subscribers, and businesses came together and helped us defeat this amendment," Fairlawn Service Director Ernie Staten said yesterday, according to an article by the Community Networks team at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). "We appreciate that the State of Ohio recognizes that municipal broadband has a place in this state and we hope to continue this great endeavor." Fairlawn subscribers sent more than 700 emails telling lawmakers, "Don't take this (municipal broadband) away!" Staten said. The report notes that while Ohio's legislature isn't banning public networks, at least for now, it "is apparently not letting municipal networks apply for a new round of funding."

"While Staten celebrated the removal of the budget amendment, he called the victory 'bittersweet,' as municipalities and electric cooperatives in the state do not have access to the proposed $250 million broadband expansion grant program that will be established when, and if, Gov. Dewine signs the budget into law," the ILSR wrote. The outcome of that isn't certain yet. "We have been asking for a small definition change to add municipalities and electric coops, but unless they changed the language, I believe the House version stands," Staten told the ILSR.

The U.S. government's highway safety agency has ordered automakers to report any crashes involving fully autonomous vehicles or partially automated driver assist systems. The Associated Press reports: The move Tuesday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicates the agency is taking a tougher stance on automated vehicle safety than in the past. It has been reluctant to issue any regulations of the new technology for fear of hampering adoption of the potentially life-saving systems. The order requires vehicle and equipment manufacturers and companies that operate the vehicles to report crashes on public roads involving fully autonomous vehicles, or those in which driver assist systems were operating immediately before or during a crash.

"By mandating crash reporting, the agency will have access to critical data that will help quickly identify safety issues that could emerge in these automated systems," NHTSA Acting Administrator Steven Cliff said in a statement. The agency says it will look for potential safety defects, and the information could cause it to send out a crash investigation team or open a defect investigation. Companies have to report crashes involving fully autonomous or partially automated vehicles within one day of learning about them, if they involve a hospital-treated injury, a death, air bag deployment, pedestrians or bicyclists, or were serious enough for a vehicle to be towed away. Other crashes involving vehicles equipped with the systems involving injury or property damage have to be reported every month. The requirement does not apply to consumers who own vehicles or auto dealers. NHTSA says in a statement that the data can show if there are common patterns in crashes involving the systems.

Law enforcement has seized the servers and customer logs for DoubleVPN, a double-encryption service commonly used by threat actors to evade detection while performing malicious activities. BleepingComputer reports: DoubleVPN is a Russian-based VPN service that double-encrypts data sent through their service. When using the service, requests are encrypted and transmitted to one VPN server, which sends it to another VPN server, which finally connects to the final destination. The doublevpn.com [archive.org] website was seized today by law enforcement, who stated that they gained access to the servers for DoubleVPN and took personal information, logs, and statistics for the service's customers.

"On 29th of June 2021, law enforcement took down DoubleVPN. Law enforcement gained access to the servers of DoubleVPN and seized personal information, logs and statistics kept by DoubleVPN about all of its customers. DoubleVPN's owners failed to provide the services they promised," says the now-seized doublevpn.com website. "International law enforcement continues to work collectively against facilitators of cybercrime, wherever and however it is committed. The investigation regarding customer data of this network will continue." Europol has confirmed to BleepingComputer that the seizure message is legitimate and that they will be providing more information about the operation tomorrow.

Canada will ban the sale of fuel-burning new cars and light-duty trucks from 2035 in an effort to reach net-zero emissions across the country by 2050, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government said on Tuesday. Reuters reports: Only zero-emissions cars and trucks can be sold from 2035, according to a statement, adding that a mixture of investments and regulations will help industry transition toward that goal. The government also said it will set interim targets for 2025 and 2030. "We are committed to aligning Canada's zero-emission vehicles sales targets with those of the most ambitious North American jurisdictions," Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said in the statement. "We will work with the United States to harmonize fuel efficiency regulations and we're investing in consumer rebates, charging stations, business tax breaks and industry transition costs," Wilkinson added.

"Canada cannot reach our greenhouse gas targets if emissions from cars, SUVs and pickups, which are currently growing, are not curtailed," said Keith Brooks, programs director at advocacy group Environmental Defence, who welcomed the move. Brooks said only 3.5% of vehicles now sold in Canada are electric and that the government needs to do more to support the market for zero-emissions vehicles.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet, written by David Gewirtz: Windows 11 won't run on many current Windows machines. We do know (we think) that only certain processors will be supported, only 64-bit machines will be supported, and only machines with a TPM chip will run Windows 11. What does that mean for you and me? It means that many machines will be left behind. They will become the walking dead, unable to upgrade, but still shambling along.

My biggest concern, of course, is security. For those who pay, Windows 7 security updates will be available through January 2023. It's not easy for smaller businesses and individuals to get that support, but it's there. Mainstream support for Windows 8 and 8.1 is over, but extended support is available through January 2023. WIndows 10 support, especially for those abandoned by Windows 11's restrictive update policy, will end in October 2025, but Ed tells me he thinks that will be extended. That's good news because there are roughly 1.3 billion Windows 10 devices out there. How many won't be able to upgrade? That's not a question we know the answer to now, but [ZDNet's guru of all things Windows, Ed Bott] tells me he's working on constructing an estimate, so keep checking back into his column.

Some machines will be left behind despite owners' preferences. Many others will remain behind because their owners either don't know how, don't care, or refuse to upgrade. Others can't upgrade, because they're reliant on legacy software that only runs on older machines. No matter the reason, expect millions of Windows 10 machines to be in the wild for a decade or more -- each an ever-increasing magnet for malware, each an ever-increasing danger to other machines they might encounter and infect. All that brings me back to my machines and yours. Even if you and I are stuck on Windows 10, we still have a good four years of support. That gives us four years to come up with a replacement plan, which is more than enough time. For those of you who will choose "hell no, I won't go," it gives you time to ascertain security risks of running unprotected, and find ways to protect those legacy machines.

Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan helped turn Google into an ad giant. Now they're starting over with a service whose only customers are its users. From a report: A new search engine? One that people have to pay to use? At first blush, it may seem like a textbook example of a startup idea destined never to get anywhere. By definition, any new search engine competes with Google, whose 90 percent-plus market share leaves little oxygen for other players. And we've been accustomed to getting our search for free since well before there was a Google -- which might make paying for it sound like being expected to purchase a phone book. But Neeva is indeed a new search engine, officially launching today, that carries a subscription fee.

Though it's extremely similar to Google in many respects -- with a few twists of its own -- it dumps the web giant's venerable ad-based business model in the interest of avoiding distractions, privacy quandaries, and other compromises. It's free for three months -- long enough for users to grow accustomed to it without obligation -- and $4.95 a month thereafter. Apps for iPhones and iPads, and browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Brave, are part of the deal. Neeva may have a certain whiff of improbability about it, but its cofounders, Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan, are the furthest thing from naifs. Two long-time Google executives with more than a quarter-century of experience at the web giant between them, they have an insider's understanding of how it operates. Moreover, about 30 percent of the roughly 60-person staff they've assembled at Neeva consists of ex-Googlers, including Hall-of-Famers such as Udi Manber (a former head of Google search) and Darin Fisher (one of the inventors of Chrome). They've also secured $77.5 million in funding, including investments from venture-capital titans Greylock and Sequoia.

Elon Musk said on Tuesday that total investments in Starlink would reach between $5 billion and $10 billion before the satellite internet venture achieves positive cash flow. From a report: Over the lifetime of the project, total investments could run to $20-$30 billion, the Tesla CEO told the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. "It's a lot, basically," Musk said in a video interview from California.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Google stopped prioritizing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) format in its Top News carousel last month. This means website owners no longer need to publish an extra set of pages written in the AMP format. Instead sites need to meet what Google calls "Core Web Vitals." This sounds like great news. As a long-time critic of Google AMP, I wish I could say that Google AMP is over and done with, but I'm not convinced. As I wrote years ago when it launched, Google's AMP is bad -- bad in a potentially web-destroying way. It's bad for how the web is built, it's bad for publishers of credible online content, and it's bad for consumers of that content. Google AMP is only good for one party: Google. Unfortunately, the same can be said of Core Web Vitals.

[...] Before I get into why AMP's replacement might be worse, it would help to back up and define what AMP is, because things have changed since it launched. AMP is now an open-source web component framework developed by the AMP Open Source Project. See Google anywhere in that sentence? No, no you don't. Google has distanced itself from AMP considerably over the years, but it hasn't given up control. Google AMP began with the stated goal of speeding up the web. The logic behind AMP goes like this: web developers suck at making fast websites, let's strip out all the stuff people don't need and cache it on our super-fast servers. That sounds good. It's not hard to see how well-meaning people would get behind that idea. The problem is that being fast isn't what makes the web great. It's part of it, but it's not the most important part.

[...] Now AMP is no longer required of publishers, those of us shouting about how this is bad can just shut up now, right? Unfortunately, there are problems with AMP's replacement as well. And those problems go right back to what was wrong with AMP in the first place: Google is in charge of it. As web developer Ethan Marcotte points out: "While the shift to Core Web Vitals is a step in the right direction, it also means that Google alone determines what a 'great page experience' means." Currently it means your page should mostly load in 2.5 seconds. That's not a very high bar to be honest, but it is still a bar and the web does not do bars. Worse, that requirement might change tomorrow. Marcotte makes it clear that he thinks deprioritizing AMP in favor of Core Web Vitals is a very good thing, but I'm not so sure that's true. Neither, it seems, is Marcotte, who goes on to note that Google has "taken its proprietary document format, and swapped it out for a proprietary set of performance statistics that has even less external oversight."

Facebook shares posted their biggest intraday gain in two months after it won a dismissal of two antitrust cases, pushing its market value above $1 trillion for the first time. The social-media giant jumped as much as 4.4%, the most since April 29 after a judge granted Facebook's request to dismiss the complaints filed last year by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general. Reader phalse phace writes: A federal court on Monday dismissed the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust complaint against Facebook, dealing a major setback for the agency's complaint that could have resulted in Facebook divesting Instagram and WhatsApp.

"Although the Court does not agree with all of Facebook's contentions here, it ultimately concurs that the agency's complaint is legally insufficient and must therefore be dismissed," reads the filing from U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. "The FTC has failed to plead enough facts to plausibly establish a necessary element of all of its Section 2 claims -- namely, that Facebook has monopoly power in the market for Personal Social Networking (PSN) Services." The court dismissed the complaint, not the case, meaning the FTC could file its complaint once again.

Neowin: Microsoft today released the first-ever Windows 11 build to Insiders in the Dev channel, bringing build 22000.51. While most of the announced features made it to the build, there are a few missing ones such as support for Android apps. The firm also posted a few known issues for the release. In addition to the build, the company has also posted clarification about the confusion surrounding the minimum system requirements.

The firm starts off by acknowledging that there has been confusion caused by the PC Health Check tool, something that was updated late last week after negative feedback from users about the lack of clarity on Windows 11 compatibility. It says that the tool was "not fully prepared to share the level of detail or accuracy you expected from us on why a Windows 10 PC doesn't meet upgrade requirements," which is why the company is taking down the tool to address the feedback, adding that the tool will be "back online" later in the fall, closer to the general availability of Windows 11. In a blog post, the company adds: [...] Using the principles above, we are confident that devices running on Intel 8th generation processors and AMD Zen 2 as well as Qualcomm 7 and 8 Series will meet our principles around security and reliability and minimum system requirements for Windows 11. As we release to Windows Insiders and partner with our OEMs, we will test to identify devices running on Intel 7th generation and AMD Zen 1 that may meet our principles.