Daily Archives: August 29, 2025

Croatians suddenly realise that EU CSAM rules include hidden pervasive chat control surveillance, turning the EU into Big Brother – dissaprove massively.

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“The Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia Andrej Plenkovic, at yesterday’s press conference, accused the opposition of upheld the proposal of a regulation of the European Parliament and the Council on the establishment of rules for the prevention and combating sexual abuse of children COM (2022) 209, which is (unpopularly referred to as ‘chat control’ because, in the case of the adoption of the proposal in its integral form, it would allow the bodies of criminal prosecution to be subject to the legal prosecution of the private communication of all citizens.

[…]

On June 17, the Bosnian MP, as well as colleagues from the SDP, HDZ and the vast majority of other European MPs supported the Proposal for Amendments to the Directive on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography from 2011. Although both legislative documents were adopted within the same package of EU strategies for a more effective fight against child abuse and have a similar name, two documents are intrinsically different – one is the regulation, the other directive, they have different rapporteurs and entered the procedure for as many as two years apart.”

‘We’ve already spoken about it’

“The basic difference, however, is that the proposal to amend the Directive does not contain any mention of ‘chat control’, i.e. the mass surveillance of citizens. MP Bosnian, as well as colleagues from the party We Can! They strongly oppose the proposal for a regulation that supports the monitoring of the content of private conversations of all citizens and which will only be voted on in the European Parliament. Such a proposal directly violates Article 7. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, as confirmed by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the ruling “Schrems I” (paragraph 94), and the same position was confirmed by the Legal Service of the Council of the EU.

In the previous European Parliament, the Greens resisted mass surveillance, focusing on monitoring suspicious users – the security services must first identify suspicious users and then monitor them, not the other way around. People who abuse the internet to commit criminal acts must be recognized and isolated by the numerous services for whom it is a job, but not in a way of mass, but focused surveillance of individuals.

We all have the right to privacy, because privacy must remain a secure space for our human identity. Finally, the representative of Bosanac invites Prime Minister Plenković to oppose this harmful proposal at the European Council and protect the right to privacy of Croatian citizens,” Gordan Bosanca’s office said in a statement.

Source: Bosnian accuses Plenkovic of lying: ‘I urge him to counter that proposal’

Parliamentary questions are being asked as well

A review conducted under the Danish Presidency examining the proposal for a regulation on combatting online child sexual abuse material – dubbed the ‘Chat Control’ or CSAM regulation – has raised new, grave concerns about the respect of fundamental rights in the EU.

As it stands, the proposal envisages mass scanning of private communications, including encrypted conversations, raising serious issues of compliance with Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights by threatening to undermine the data security of citizens, businesses and institutions. A mandatory weakening of end-to-end encryption would create security gaps open to exploitation by cybercriminals, rival states and terrorist organisations, and would also harm the competitiveness of our digital economy.

At the same time, the proposed technical approach is based on automated content analysis tools which produce high rates of false positives, creating the risk that innocent users could be wrongly incriminated, while the effectiveness of this approach in protecting children has not been proven. Parliament and the Council have repeatedly rejected mass surveillance.

  • 1.Considering the mandatory scanning of all private communications, is the proposed regulation compatible with Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights?

  • 2.How will it ensure that child protection is achieved through targeted measures that are proven to be effective, without violating the fundamental rights of all citizens?

  • 3.How does it intend to prevent the negative impact on cybersecurity and economic competitiveness caused by weakening encryption?

Source: Proposed Chat Control law presents new blow for privacy

Samsung turns Tizen OS smartwatches into junk and won’t allow you to download the apps anymore soon.

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Tizen OS is on track to lose full support by the end of 2025, Samsung has announced, marking the end of an era that began in 2018 with the original Galaxy Watch. And right now, Samsung is offering up to $100 in trade-in credit for your Tizen Galaxy Watch.

This includes the Galaxy Watch 3, Galaxy Watch Active 2, Galaxy Watch Active, and the original Galaxy Watch. Considering that most major retailers like Best Buy only offer between $5-15 dollars for these trade-ins, that’s a significant boost, as 9to5Google notes.

Samsung ditched Tizen OS, the company’s proprietary operating system, starting with the Galaxy Watch 4 in 2021 as it pivoted to Google’s Wear OS. Now, Samsung has outlined a termination schedule for Tizen watches, according to screenshots first shared by TechIssuesToday of a notice purportedly from a member of the Galaxy Store Operation. It looks like Samsung is gradually phasing out support for Tizen on its Galaxy Store, culminating in a full shutdown by September 2025. You can find the timeline below:

  • September 30, 2024: The Galaxy Store will cease sales of paid Tizen watch content, including apps, watch faces, and more.
  • May 31, 2025: The Galaxy Store will discontinue new downloads of free Tizen watch content.
  • September 30, 2025: The “My Apps” section in the Galaxy Store will stop allowing re-downloads, effectively shutting the door on accessing any further paid or free Tizen content.

The latest iteration of the Galaxy Watch is the Galaxy Watch 6. It runs Wear OS 4, the newest version of Google‘s Android smartwatch software that comes layered with Samsung’s One UI 5 Watch for Galaxy-specific experiences. In practice, that means the watch is loaded with familiar Google apps, but has built-in programs like Samsung Health and Bixby, too.

But a new Galaxy Watch 6 doesn’t come cheap. While you can often catch it on sale (just check out our best Galaxy Watch 6 deals), it’s sticker price of $300 can be a tough sell for some.

[…]

Source: Samsung’s phasing out its Tizen smartwatches — and boosting trade-ins to $100 for Galaxy Watch 3 and older | Tom’s Guide

Another product made broken by the manufacturer and turned into e-waste.

One Step method turns PVC plastic into fuel with 95% efficiency at room temperature

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[…]One-step conversion and outputs

At the end of the process, the products include the main components of petrol (gasoline), chemical raw materials, and hydrochloric acid. The scientists say that means the output could feed into water treatment, metal processing, pharmaceuticals, food production, and the petroleum industry.

As the authors put it, “The method supports a circular economy by converting diverse plastic waste into valuable products in a single step.” To carry out the conversion, the team combines plastic waste with light isoalkanes, hydrocarbon byproducts available from refinery processes.

According to the paper, the process yields “gasoline range” hydrocarbons, mainly molecules with six to 12 carbons, which are the primary component of gasoline. The recovered hydrochloric acid can be safely neutralized and reused as a raw material, potentially displacing several high-temperature, energy-intensive production routes described in the paper.

Tackling PVC’s chlorine problem

The researchers frame the advance in the context of the plastics that dominate global waste streams. Most plastic waste consists of polyolefins, especially polyethylene and polypropylene, which account for roughly half of global output, while polyvinyl chloride (PVC) contributes about 10 percent.

These materials span packaging, containers, pipes, appliances, medical devices, and clothing. PVC, made using vinyl chloride (a colorless gas classed as a carcinogen by the US Environmental Protection Agency), is a particular challenge because traditional waste-to-energy methods, including incineration, require PVC to be dechlorinated before processing to avoid releasing toxic compounds.

Chemical upcycling pathways aiming to break plastic into high-grade components typically require high-temperature dechlorination as a separate step. Dechlorination, removing or neutralizing chlorine from chlorinated compounds, is necessary to prevent harmful effects and to prepare materials for sensitive applications.

The new study proposes combining these steps. “We present here a strategy for upgrading discarded PVC into chlorine-free fuel range hydrocarbons and [hydrochloric acid] in a single-stage process,” the researchers said.

Efficiency and real-world waste

Reported conversion efficiencies underscore the potential for real-world use. At 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius), the process reached 95 percent conversion for soft PVC pipes and 99 percent for rigid PVC pipes and PVC wires.

In tests that mixed PVC materials with polyolefin waste, the method achieved a 96 percent solid conversion efficiency at 80 degrees Celsius (176 degrees Fahrenheit). The team describes the approach as applicable beyond laboratory-clean samples.

“The process is suitable for handling real-world mixed and contaminated PVC and polyolefin waste streams,” the paper states. SCMP points to an ECNU social media post citing the study, which characterized the achievement as a first, efficiently converting difficult-to-degrade mixed plastic waste into premium petrol at ambient temperature and pressure in a single step.

Source: World’s first method turns plastic into fuel with 95% efficiency

The Threat Of Extreme Statutory Damages For Copyright Almost Certainly Made Anthropic Settle With Authors: Not the Use of Books for training, but the idiots used pirated books for training

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In what may be the least surprising news in the world of copyright and the internet, Anthropic just agreed to settle the copyright lawsuit that everyone’s been watching, but not for the reasons most people think. This isn’t about AI training being found to infringe copyright—in fact, Anthropic won on that issue. Instead, it’s about how copyright’s broken statutory damages system can turn a narrow legal loss into a company-ending threat, forcing settlements even when the core dispute goes your way.

Anthropic had done something remarkably stupid beyond just training: they downloaded unauthorized copies of works and stored them in an internal “pirate library” for future reference. Judge Alsup was crystal clear that while the training itself was fair use, building and maintaining this library of unauthorized copies was straightforward infringement. This wasn’t some edge case—it was basic copyright violation that Anthropic should have known better than to engage in.

And while there were some defenses to this, it would likely be tough to succeed at trial with the position Judge Alsup had put them in.

The question then was about liability. Because of copyright’s absolutely ridiculous statutory damages (up to $150k per work if the infringement was found to be “willful”), which need not bear any relationship to the actual damages, Anthropic could have been on the hook for trillions of dollars in damages just in this one case. That’s not something any company is going to roll the dice on, and I’m sure that the conversation was more or less: if you win and we get hit with statutory damages, the company will shut down and you will get nothing. Instead, let’s come to some sort of deal and get the lawyers (and the named author plaintiffs) paid.

While the amount of the settlement hasn’t been revealed yet, the amount authors get paid is going to come out eventually, and… I guarantee that it will not be much.

[…]

Instead what will happen—what always happens with these collective licensing deals—is that a few of the bigger names will get wealthy, but mainly the middleman will get wealthy. These kinds of schemes only tend to enrich the middlemen (often leading to corruption).

So this result is hardly surprising. Anthropic had to settle rather than face shutting down. But my guess is that authors are going to be incredibly disappointed by how much they end up getting from the settlement. Judge Alsup still has to approve the settlement, and some people may protest it, but it would be a much bigger surprise if he somehow rejects it.

Source: The Threat Of Extreme Statutory Damages For Copyright Almost Certainly Made Anthropic Settle With Authors | Techdirt

Developer Unlocks Suddenly Paywalled Echelon Exercise Bikes But Thinks DMCA says He Can’t Legally Release His Software

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An app developer has jailbroken Echelon exercise bikes to restore functionality that the company put behind a paywall last month, but copyright laws prevent him from being allowed to legally release it.

Last month, Peloton competitor Echelon pushed a firmware update to its exercise equipment that forces its machines to connect to the company’s servers in order to work properly. Echelon was popular in part because it was possible to connect Echelon bikes, treadmills, and rowing machines to free or cheap third-party apps and collect information like pedaling power, distance traveled, and other basic functionality that one might want from a piece of exercise equipment. With the new firmware update, the machines work only with constant internet access and getting anything beyond extremely basic functionality requires an Echelon subscription, which can cost hundreds of dollars a year.

[…]

App engineer Ricky Witherspoon, who makes an app called SyncSpin that used to work with Echelon bikes, told 404 Media that he successfully restored offline functionality to Echelon equipment and won the Fulu Foundation bounty. But he and the foundation said that he cannot open source or release it because doing so would run afoul of Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the wide-ranging copyright law that in part governs reverse engineering. There are various exemptions to Section 1201, but most of them allow for jailbreaks like the one Witherspoon developed to only be used for personal use.

“It’s like picking a lock, and it’s a lock that I own in my own house. I bought this bike, it was unlocked when I bought it, why can’t I distribute this to people who don’t have the technical expertise I do?” Witherspoon told 404 Media. “It would be one thing if they sold the bike with this limitation up front, but that’s not the case. They reached into my house and forced this update on me without users knowing. It’s just really unfortunate.”

[…]

“A lot of people chose Echelon’s ecosystem because they didn’t want to be locked into using Echelon’s app. There was this third-party ecosystem. That was their draw to the bike in the first place,” O’Reilly said. “But now, if the manufacturer can come in and push a firmware update that requires you to pay for subscription features that you used to have on a device you bought in the first place, well, you don’t really own it.”

“I think this is part of the broader trend of enshittification, right?,” O’Reilly added. “Consumers are feeling this across the board, whether it’s devices we bought or apps we use—it’s clear that what we thought we were getting is not continuing to be provided to us.”

Witherspoon says that, basically, Echelon added an authentication layer to its products, where the piece of exercise equipment checks to make sure that it is online and connected to Echelon’s servers before it begins to send information from the equipment to an app over Bluetooth. “There’s this precondition where the bike offers an authentication challenge before it will stream those values. It is like a true digital lock,” he said. “Once you give the bike the key, it works like it used to. I had to insert this [authentication layer] into the code of my app, and now it works.”

[…]

Witherspoon has now essentially restored functionality that he used to have to his own bike, which he said he bought in the first place because of its ability to work offline and its ability to connect to third-party apps. But others will only be able to do it if they design similar software, or if they never update the bike’s firmware. Witherspoon said that he made the old version of his SyncSpin app free and has plastered it with a warning urging people to not open the official Echelon app, because it will update the firmware on their equipment and will break functionality. Roberto Viola, the developer of a popular third-party exercise app called QZ, wrote extensively about how Echelon has broken his popular app: “Without warning, Echelon pushed a firmware update. It didn’t just upgrade features—it locked down the entire device. From now on, bikes, treadmills, and rowers must connect to Echelon’s servers just to boot,” he wrote. “No internet? No workout. Even basic offline usage is impossible.

[…]

Witherspoon told me that he is willing to talk to other developers about how he did this, but that he is not willing to release the jailbreak on his own: “I don’t feel like going down a legal rabbit hole, so for now it’s just about spreading awareness that this is possible, and that there’s another example of egregious behavior from a company like this […] if one day releasing this was made legal, I would absolutely open source this. I can legally talk about how I did this to a certain degree, and if someone else wants to do this, they can open source it if they want to.”

Source: Developer Unlocks Newly Enshittified Echelon Exercise Bikes But Can’t Legally Release His Software

I do not think that this is the way the DMCA works, but if it is, it needs some serious revision.

German banks block EUR 10B in ‘unauthorized’ PayPal direct debits

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Shoppers and merchants in Germany found themselves dealing with billions of euros in frozen transactions this week, thanks to an apparent failure in PayPal’s fraud-detection systems.

According to the Association of German Banks, the problem hit on Monday when banks noticed a slew of recent unauthorized direct debits from PayPal. The body said the banks responded in various ways, which is one way of putting it – the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that some stopped all PayPal transactions, with the total number of frozen payments likely to be around €10 billion.

A spokesperson for the German Savings Banks Association (DSGV), which represents hundreds of regional banks across the country, confirmed the issue to The Register. The DSGV said PayPal had assured it the problem was resolved, adding that PayPal payments had been running smoothly since Tuesday morning and the US payments platform was informing affected customers “directly.”

The DSGV said the unauthorized payments had a “significant impact on transactions throughout Europe, particularly in Germany.” However, there have been no confirmed reports of the incident being felt outside Germany. Austrian media reported that the banks there had seen no problems.

[…]

PayPal’s reputational hit in Germany is likely to be exacerbated by last week’s reports of hackers offering millions of PayPal credentials that they claimed PayPal had recently exposed in plaintext. The hackers’ claims appear dubious, with PayPal denying any recent breach, but the reports gained significant traction in Germany.

“It’s possible that the data is incorrect or outdated,” read a Wednesday advisory from the German consumer organization Stiftung Warentest, which bundled the leak report with this week’s snafu. “Nonetheless, PayPal users should change their passwords as a precaution.” ®

Source: Euro banks block ‘unauthorized’ PayPal direct debits • The Register