Proton Mail Suspended Journalist Accounts at Request of some Cybersecurity Agency without any process

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The company behind the Proton Mail email service, Proton, describes itself as a “neutral and safe haven for your personal data, committed to defending your freedom.”

But last month, Proton disabled email accounts belonging to journalists reporting on security breaches of various South Korean government computer systems following a complaint by an unspecified cybersecurity agency. After a public outcry, and multiple weeks, the journalists’ accounts were eventually reinstated — but the reporters and editors involved still want answers on how and why Proton decided to shut down the accounts in the first place.

Martin Shelton, deputy director of digital security at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, highlighted that numerous newsrooms use Proton’s services as alternatives to something like Gmail “specifically to avoid situations like this,” pointing out that “While it’s good to see that Proton is reconsidering account suspensions, journalists are among the users who need these and similar tools most.” Newsrooms like The Intercept, the Boston Globe, and the Tampa Bay Times all rely on Proton Mail for emailed tip submissions.

Shelton noted that perhaps Proton should “prioritize responding to journalists about account suspensions privately, rather than when they go viral.”

On Reddit, Proton’s official account stated that “Proton did not knowingly block journalists’ email accounts” and that the “situation has unfortunately been blown out of proportion.” Proton did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

The two journalists whose accounts were disabled were working on an article published in the August issue of the long-running hacker zine Phrack. The story described how a sophisticated hacking operation — what’s known in cybersecurity parlance as an APT, or advanced persistent threat — had wormed its way into a number of South Korean computer networks, including those of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the military Defense Counterintelligence Command, or DCC.

The journalists, who published their story under the names Saber and cyb0rg, describe the hack as being consistent with the work of Kimsuky, a notorious North Korean state-backed APT sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2023.

As they pieced the story together, emails viewed by The Intercept show that the authors followed cybersecurity best practices and conducted what’s known as responsible disclosure: notifying affected parties that a vulnerability has been discovered in their systems prior to publicizing the incident.

Saber and cyb0rg created a dedicated Proton Mail account to coordinate the responsible disclosures, then proceeded to notify the impacted parties, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the DCC, and also notified South Korean cybersecurity organizations like the Korea Internet and Security Agency, and KrCERT/CC, the state-sponsored Computer Emergency Response Team. According to emails viewed by The Intercept, KrCERT wrote back to the authors, thanking them for their disclosure.

A note on cybersecurity jargon: CERTs are agencies consisting of cybersecurity experts specializing in dealing with and responding to security incidents. CERTs exist in over 70 countries — with some countries having multiple CERTs each specializing in a particular field such as the financial sector — and may be government-sponsored or private organizations. They adhere to a set of formal technical standards, such as being expected to react to reported cybersecurity threats and security incidents. A high-profile example of a CERT agency in the U.S. is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, which has recently been gutted by the Trump administration.

A week after the print issue of Phrack came out, and a few days before the digital version was released, Saber and cyb0rg found that the Proton account they had set up for the responsible disclosure notifications had been suspended. A day later, Saber discovered that his personal Proton Mail account had also been suspended. Phrack posted a timeline of the account suspensions at the top of the published article, and later highlighted the timeline in a viral social media post. Both accounts were suspended owing to an unspecified “potential policy violation,” according to screenshots of account login attempts reviewed by The Intercept.

The suspension notice instructed the authors to fill out Proton’s abuse appeals form if they believed the suspension was in error. Saber did so, and received a reply from a member of Proton Mail’s Abuse Team who went by the name Dante.

In an email viewed by The Intercept, Dante told Saber that their account “has been disabled as a result of a direct connection to an account that was taken down due to violations of our terms and conditions while being used in a malicious manner.” Dante also provided a link to Proton’s terms of service, going on to state, “We have clearly indicated that any account used for unauthorized activities, will be sanctioned accordingly.” The response concluded by stating, “We consider that allowing access to your account will cause further damage to our service, therefore we will keep the account suspended.”

On August 22, a Phrack editors reached out to Proton, writing that no hacked data was passed through the suspended email accounts, and asked if the account suspension incident could be deescalated. After receiving no response from Proton, the editor sent a follow-up email on September 6. Proton once again did not reply to the email.

On September 9, the official Phrack X account made a post asking Proton’s official account asking why Proton was “cancelling journalists and ghosting us,” adding: “need help calibrating your moral compass?” The post quickly went viral, garnering over 150,000 views.

Proton’s official account replied the following day, stating that Proton had been “alerted by a CERT that certain accounts were being misused by hackers in violation of Proton’s Terms of Service. This led to a cluster of accounts being disabled. Our team is now reviewing these cases individually to determine if any can be restored.” Proton then stated that they “stand with journalists” but “cannot see the content of accounts and therefore cannot always know when anti-abuse measures may inadvertently affect legitimate activism.”

Proton did not publicly specify which CERT had alerted them, and didn’t answer The Intercept’s request for the name of the specific CERT which had sent the alert. KrCERT also did not reply to The Intercept’s question about whether they were the CERT that had sent the alert to Proton.

Later in the day, Proton’s founder and CEO Andy Yen posted on X that the two accounts had been reinstated. Neither Yen nor Proton explained why the accounts had been reinstated, whether they had been found to not violate the terms of service after all, why had they been suspended in the first place, or why a member of the Proton Abuse Team reiterated that the accounts had violated the terms of service during Saber’s appeals process.

Phrack noted that the account suspensions created a “real impact to the author. The author was unable to answer media requests about the article.” The co-authors, Phrack pointed out, were also in the midst of the responsible disclosure process and working together with the various affected South Korean organizations to help fix their systems. “All this was denied and ruined by Proton,” Phrack stated.

Phrack editors said that the incident leaves them “concerned what this means to other whistleblowers or journalists. The community needs assurance that Proton does not disable accounts unless Proton has a court order or the crime (or ToS violation) is apparent.”

Source: Proton Mail Suspended Journalist Accounts at Request of Cybersecurity Agency

If Proton can’t view the content of accounts, how did Proton verify some random CERTs claims to make the decision to close the accounts? And how did Proton review to see if they could be restored? Is it Proton policy to decide that people are guilty before proven innocent? This attitude justifies people blowing up about this incident – because it shows how vulnerable they are to random whims of Proton instead of any kind of transparent diligent process.

Which games are used to fund Russia’s wars?

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Escape from Tarkov, a popular multiplayer extraction shooter created by Russia’s Battlestate Games, is set for release on Steam, the world’s largest PC gaming platform. The launch comes despite glaring evidence that the studio’s leadership, including head developer Nikita Buyanov, has maintained ties to Russia’s arms industry and associates who joined Moscow-backed forces in eastern Ukraine during Russia’s invasion in 2014.

[…]

Before the full-scale war, Buyanov and his team collaborated repeatedly with Kalashnikov, Russia’s weapons giant, recording promotional videos. He appeared alongside Dmitry “Goblin” Puchkov, a Kremlin-aligned blogger who called for the genocide of all Ukrainians. Other members of Battlestate’s circle openly fundraise for Russian troops and post invasion symbols on their pages.

Battlestate also maintained close ties with the 715 Team, a Kaliningrad-based crew of gun enthusiasts and “tactical trainers” with a massive YouTube following, where Buyanov was a frequent guest. The group built its brand through weapons tests and collaborations with Kalashnikov, but after the full-scale invasion, its leader, Roman “Khors” Chernov, began appearing in occupied Donetsk, declaring support for Russia’s war. At minimum, the crew provided material support in the form of fundraisers for Russian troops, blurring the line between hobbyist content and active participation in the invasion.

Their presence bled into Tarkov itself: players on Reddit—among them Georgian YouTuber Gattsu—noted pro-Kremlin graffiti and 715 references inside the game, along with official merchandise tied to the group. For a time, one playable character type in Tarkov was even labeled “hohol,” a derogatory Russian slur for Ukrainians. The overlap between Battlestate’s in-game world and its real-world circle of collaborators shows how deeply entwined the studio became with figures who went from gaming culture to fighting in Russia’s war.

[Note: here War Thunder is mentioned for filming with Russian bloggers and Russian weapons. This argument seems weak, as War Thunder is about all kinds of weapons and can hardly work without using Russian ones]

Squad 22: ZOV

The most brazen example is Squad 22: ZOV, released on Steam in May 2025 and openly endorsed by Russia’s Defense Ministry. Developed by SPN Studio, the game reframes the invasion of Ukraine as a “liberation” and packages war crimes as playable missions: the first free campaign is the “liberation of Mariupol,” where more than 10,000 civilians were killed, with further missions available for purchase to reenact Russia’s 2014 invasion of Donbas and Crimea. On Steam, the title is advertised as “recommended by the Russian military” for cadet training, and its ZOV branding deliberately echoes the extremist symbols painted on Russian tanks and missiles.

Russia’s War Crimes Simulator? What Squad 22 ZOV Game Was Really Made For
Read more

Behind the project is Alexander Tolkach, a former Russian diplomat with a background in behavioral “influence games” and suspected intelligence ties. His work is backed by RVKO, a Kremlin-linked foundation that supports Russian soldiers, raising fears that in-game purchases could funnel directly into the war effort

[…]

Steam continues to operate in Russia despite sanctions, allowing Russian players to access and pay for games through workarounds. At the same time, Steam has complied with Russian censorship demands—removing titles or restricting access when ordered by state agencies.

[…]

Russia’s war in Ukraine has already forced major publishers to act. Ubisoft, EA, and Rockstar pulled sales from Russia and Belarus. Steam, Epic, and GOG stopped accepting ruble payments. But Russian developers remain adept at evading scrutiny—registering companies in Cyprus, Hungary, or the UK while continuing to sell to Western audiences. Western platforms, eager for content, rarely ask questions.

[…]

Gamers don’t need to be told what to play—but they deserve to know where their money goes.

[…]

 

Source: Escape from Tarkov’s Release Raises Questions About Ties to Russia’s War Efforts — UNITED24 Media

I researched every attempt to stop fascism in history. The success rate is 0%.

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In 1933, German conservatives thought they could control Hitler. Two years later, they were being executed in their own homes. I spent weeks researching this question, desperately looking for counter-examples, for hope, for any time in history where people successfully stopped fascists after they started winning elections.

Here’s what I found: Once fascists win power democratically, they have never been removed democratically. Not once. Ever.

I know that sounds impossible. I kept digging, thinking surely someone, somewhere, stopped them. The actual record is so much worse than you think.

Let’s start with Germany because everyone thinks they know this story. Franz von Papen, the conservative politician who convinced President Hindenburg to make Hitler Chancellor, said “We’ve hired him” in January 1933. He thought he was so clever. Within 18 months, the Nazis were machine-gunning von Papen’s allies in their homes during the Night of Long Knives. Von Papen himself barely escaped to Austria with his life. Every single conservative who thought they could “control” or “moderate” Hitler was either dead, in exile, or groveling for survival by 1934.

Italy was even dumber, if that’s possible. October 1922, Mussolini announces he’s marching on Rome with 30,000 blackshirts. Except here’s the thing: they were poorly armed, disorganized, and the Italian military could have crushed them in about three hours. The King had his generals ready. He had martial law papers drawn up. The military was waiting for the order. Instead, he invited Mussolini to form a government. Just handed him power. Twenty-three years later, partisans hung Mussolini’s corpse upside down at a gas station while crowds beat it with sticks. The king died in exile. Hundreds of thousands of Italians died for that moment of cowardice.

Spain might be the worst because everyone saw it coming. Three years of escalating fascist violence. Actual assassination attempts. Then in 1936, Franco and his generals launch a straight-up military coup. The Spanish Republic begged for help. France said “not our problem.” Britain said “both sides are bad.” America declared neutrality. The result? Franco ruled for 39 years. He died peacefully in his bed in 1975. They’re still finding mass graves in Spain. Still. In 2025.

Want something more recent? Look at Hungary. Orbán won democratically in 2010. By 2011 he’d rewritten the constitution. By 2012 he controlled the media. By 2013 he’d gutted the judiciary. It’s 2025 and he’s still in power. The EU has been “very concerned” for fourteen fucking years. They’ve written strongly worded letters. They’ve held meetings. Hungary is now a one-party state in the middle of Europe and everyone just… accepts it.

Okay, but surely someone, somewhere, stopped them?

Finland 1932 is the only clean win I can find. The fascist Lapua Movement tried an armed coup before they’d secured government power. The military stayed loyal to democracy, crushed the rebellion, and banned the movement. That’s it. That’s the success story. One time out of roughly fifty attempts, fascists were stopped because they were stupid enough to try violence before winning elections.

France in 1934 looked like a victory for about five minutes. Fascist leagues tried to storm parliament on February 6th. Six days later, twelve million workers went on general strike. Twelve million. The entire country stopped. No trains, no factories, no shops, nothing. The fascists backed down. Great victory, right? Except those exact same fascists enthusiastically collaborated when the Nazis invaded six years later. They just waited.

Portugal’s fascist regime finally fell in 1974. After 48 years. How? Military officers launched a coup. Democratic resistance had been crushed for five decades. International pressure meant nothing. The dictator Salazar died in 1970 and his successor just kept going until the military said enough. That’s your success story: wait half a century and hope the military gets tired.

The pattern is so consistent it’s almost funny if it weren’t so terrifying. Every single time it goes like this: Conservatives panic about socialism or progressives or whatever. They ally with fascists as the “lesser evil.” Fascists take power. Fascists immediately purge the conservatives who helped them. Then it’s 30-50 years of dictatorship. This happened in Germany, Italy, Spain, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Portugal, Croatia, Romania, and Hungary.

Want to know how many times conservatives successfully “controlled” the fascists they allied with? Zero. Want to know how many times fascists purged the conservatives after taking power? All of them. Every single time.

And here’s the part that breaks your heart. Violence works. For them. Fascists use violence while claiming to be victims. They create chaos that “requires” their authoritarian solution. Then they purge anyone who opposes them. Meanwhile, democrats keep insisting on following rules that fascists completely ignore. They file lawsuits. They write editorials. They vote on resolutions. And fascists just laugh and keep consolidating power.

The statistics are brutal. Fascist takeovers prevented after winning power democratically: zero. Average length of fascist rule once established: 31 years. Fascist regimes removed by voting: zero. Fascist regimes removed by asking nicely: zero. Most were removed by war or military coups, and tens of millions died in the process.

I’m not allowed to make the obvious contemporary comparisons, but you’re already making them in your head. “We can control him” is being said right now, in 2025, by people who apparently never cracked a history book.

Based on the historical record, there are exactly three ways this goes. Option one: Stop them before they take power. Option two: War. Option three: Wait for them to die of old age.

[…]

Source: I researched every attempt to stop fascism in history. The success rate is 0%.

Small Businesses Face a New Threat: Pay Up or Be Flooded With Bad Reviews

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Scammers are extorting small businesses worldwide by threatening to flood their Google Maps profiles with fake one-star reviews or demanding payment to remove reviews already posted, according to The New York Times. Fraudsters target service businesses dependent on online ratings — movers, roofers, contractors — demanding hundreds of dollars per incident. The Times story documents many cases, including of one Los Angeles contractor Natalia Piper, who paid $250 to multiple scammers after her rating plummeted from 5.0 to 3.6 stars.

Industry watchdog Fake Review Watch documented over 150 affected businesses globally. The scammers typically operate from Pakistan and Bangladesh using WhatsApp to contact victims.

Source: Small Businesses Face a New Threat: Pay Up or Be Flooded With Bad Reviews

NB The article says that Google will remove fake reviews, but my experience is that there is a non-transparent review process that takes over half a year and then ends up with no removal (despite all the reviews placed by the reviewers being negative and repetitive, eg. saying things like “does not pay bills”) with absolutely no recourse.

Outlook out in North America, Microsoft scrambles for a fix

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Microsoft confirmed a major email service outage across North America that is stopping inboxes from filling up and may be hitting other apps when logging in.

“We’re investigating an issue affecting a portion of infrastructure in North America, where users may be unable to access their mailbox via any Exchange Online connection method,” it stated in a notice at 0936 in its home time zone (1636 UTC for the rest of customers.)

Outlook outage on the map

The usual suspects are out, but no word on a fix yet – Click to enlarge

The problem is more than just the standard stutter – two hours later, Microsoft was still baffled. Microsoft has been digging through its data banks without success and blocked inboxes and unstable traffic persist. There have been unconfirmed reports of OneDrive being affected too.

“We’re continuing to evaluate service telemetry for potential system irregularities contributing to impact, and in parallel we’re applying some changes to optimize affected mailbox infrastructure,” it added two hours later.

Redmond has said it’ll update us as new information comes in, but Downdetector reports a big surge of problems for Outlook online and Microsoft 365 users starting around four hours after Microsoft said there are issues with its code. On its public support page, it was reporting “Service degradation on Microsoft consumer products.”

Things have been a bit rocky for Microsoft of late, and Outlook in particular. In July, users of the service got an 11-hour break from email when the app wasn’t “performing as efficiently as expected.” That was a software fix that went wrong, which looks very likely in this case too.

It’s in the clear on Azure problems in the Middle East; however, that’s looking like a cable break on land or sea.

[…]

Source: Outlook out in North America, Microsoft scrambles for a fix • The Register

Revanced looking for legal help from Spotify

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ReVanced has received a DMCA takedown notice from Spotify regarding the Unlock Premium patch.

Spotify claims that

  • The patch is a derivative of their copyrighted works, and
  • It circumvents Spotify’s technological protection measures under DMCA 1201(a) (such as encryption and transfer key protocols).

Find the full DMCA notice here.

Their arguments

    • They say the patch enables access to copyrighted content by bypassing encryption, transfer key protocols, and premium feature restrictions (like skipping).
    • They argue this is circumvention, even though the patch does not enable downloads or give access to songs that are otherwise unavailable on free Spotify.

Our understanding

      • The patch does not copy Spotify’s code.
      • Songs on Spotify Free remain accessible without the patch; premium-only features mainly affect convenience (e.g., skipping).
      • The app requires attestation to prevent it from becoming unusable if modified.
      • However, legal precedent (e.g., 321 Studios v. MGM, MDY v. Blizzard) shows courts sometimes view bypassing software restrictions as circumvention, even when it’s about features and not direct access to copyrighted works.

Why this matters

    • If attestation bypass alone constitutes a DMCA 1201 violation, then not only premium but also the “make the app work when patched” functionality could be affected.

We are seeking legal expertise to better understand our position and risks until our deadline of one business day.

    If you have legal knowledge in copyright/DMCA or know someone who does, to guide us in this matter, please reach out to us:

    • (Preferred) Directly on social media sites (Discord preferred), you can find on the footer of this page.
    • Via mail at spotify-dmca@revanced.app.

Study Directly Links Emissions from Fossil Fuel Producers to Devastating Heatwaves

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A new study directly links hundreds of major heatwaves since 2000 to the emissions from fossil fuel and cement producers. Among its fundings, the researchers conclude that as many as a quarter of all heatwaves since the start of this century would have been “virtually impossible” without emissions from any of the world’s 14 largest fossil fuel and cement producers.

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, shows that greenhouse gas emissions from 180 of the world’s biggest cement, oil, and gas producers have significantly contributed to climate change over the last two decades.

They linked the emissions to 213 heatwaves, finding the pollution made the extreme heat more likely and intense. Of those 213 events, 53 were made 10,000 times more likely as a result of the emissions, according to the researchers.

The fight for climate accountability

The findings could bolster legal efforts to hold the world’s biggest polluters responsible for the consequences of their emissions, experts said. In July, the International Court of Justice ruled that states that fail to prevent climate harm may have to pay compensation, and in May, a German high court ruled that major emitters can be held liable for climate impacts. And some U.S. states have passed similar laws.

Still, despite dozens of lawsuits filed since 2004, no court has penalized emitters for causing climate change, researchers wrote in an accompanying viewpoint.

[…]

Quilcaille and his colleagues assessed the historical greenhouse gas emissions from 180 “carbon majors,” a group that includes fossil fuel companies, state-owned entities, and fossil fuel and cement emissions produced by nation states.

In all, these sources were responsible for nearly 57% of historical global emissions between 1850 and 2023, the analysis revealed.

The researchers then used climate models to compare global temperature trends in a world with greenhouse gas emissions to temperatures in a world without those emissions. Then, they estimated the impact of human-driven global warming on 213 heatwaves recorded between 2000 and 2023, finding direct links to top emitters and these extreme weather events.

“For a while, it was argued that any individual contributor to climate change was making too small or too diffuse a contribution to ever be linked to any particular impact. And this emerging science, both this paper and others, is showing that that’s not true,” Chris Callahan, a climate scientist at Indiana University who was not involved in the study, told The Associated Press.

Source: Study Directly Links Emissions from Fossil Fuel Producers to Devastating Heatwaves

Albania appoints AI bot as minister to tackle corruption

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PRISTINA – A new minister in Albania charged to handle public procurement will be impervious to bribes, threats, or attempts to curry favour.

That is because Diella, as she is called, is an AI-generated bot.

Prime Minister Edi Rama, who is about to begin his fourth term, said on Sept 11 that Diella, which means “sun” in Albanian, will manage and award all public tenders in which the government contracts private companies for various projects.

“Diella is the first Cabinet member who isn’t physically present, but is virtually created by AI,” Mr Rama said during a speech unveiling his new Cabinet. She will help make Albania “a country where public tenders are 100 per cent free of corruption”.

The awarding of such contracts has long been a source of corruption scandals in Albania, a Balkan country that experts say is a hub for gangs seeking to launder their money from trafficking drugs and weapons across the world, and where graft has reached the corridors of power.

That image has complicated Albania’s accession to the European Union, which Mr Rama wants to achieve by 2030 but which political analysts say is ambitious.

The government did not provide details of what human oversight there might be for Diella, or address risks that someone could manipulate the artificial intelligence bot.

[…]

Source: Albania appoints AI bot as minister to tackle corruption | The Straits Times

Japanese Warship Fires Railgun At Target Vessel For The First Time

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Japan’s Acquisition Technology & Logistics Agency (ATLA) has released new pictures from testing of a prototype electromagnetic railgun aboard the testbed warship JS Asuka earlier this year. ATLA also asserts that it is the first time anyone has successfully fired a ship-mounted railgun at an actual target vessel. Japan continues to push ahead with railgun development, a technology the U.S. Navy notably halted work on in the early 2020s, despite showing promise, due to significant technological hurdles.

JS Asuka, a one-of-its-kind dedicated experimental vessel with a 6,200-ton-displacement belonging to the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF), was first spotted with the railgun in a turret installed on its stern flight deck in April, as TWZ reported on at the time. Additional views of the ship in this configuration emerged afterward.

A picture ATLA released yesterday of the turreted railgun installed on JS Asuka‘s flight deck earlier this year. ATLA
A picture of JS Asuka from around the time of the railgun testing that ATLA also released yesterday. White shipping containers associated with the weapon mounted on the ship’s stern flight deck are visible. ATLA
An earlier picture offering a clearer view of the railgun turret installed on JS Asuka’s stern flight deck. @HNlEHupY4Nr6hRM

“ATLA conducted the Ship-board Railgun Shooting Test from June to early July this year with the support of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force,” according to a post yesterday on the agency’s official Instagram page. “It’s the first time that a ship-mounted railgun was successfully fired at a real ship.”

One of the pictures accompanying ATLA’s Instagram post, seen at the top of this story, which was also shared on the agency’s other social media accounts, shows the railgun being fired. What looks to be a radar array and an electro-optical and/or infrared camera system are also seen in the image on a separate turret.

A close-up of what looks to be a turret with a radar array and an electro-optical and/or infrared camera system seen in the new picture of the railgun being test fired. ATLA

Another, seen below, shows a tug-like ship in the crosshairs of a targeting system. Additional pictures of the tug have now also emerged clearly showing target boards on the port and starboard sides of its funnel, as well as one facing the stern.

ATLA

So far, ATLA has not released any imagery of target vessels actually being struck by projectiles fired from the railgun mounted on Asuka. The agency says more details will be provided at its upcoming Defense Technology Symposium in November.

Back in 2023, ATLA said it had conducted the first-ever successful firing of a railgun from any ship. The agency did not name the vessel used in those tests.

[…]

Source: Japanese Warship Fires Railgun At Target Vessel For The First Time

We beat Chat Control but the fight isn’t over – another surveillance law that mandates companies to save user data for Europol is making its way right now and there is less than 24 hours to give the EU feedback!

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Please follow this link to the questionnaire and help save our future – otherwise total surveillance like never seen before will strip you of every privacy and later fundamental rights you have as a EU citizen

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Information

The previous data retention law was declared illegal in 2014 by CJEU (EU’s highest court) for being mass surveillance and violating human rights.

Since most EU states refused to follow the court order and the EU commission refused to enforce it, CJEU recently caved in to political pressure and changed their stance on mass surveillance, making it legal.

And that instantly spawned this data retention law that is more far fetching than the original, that was deemed illegal. Here you can read the entire plan that EU is following. Briefly:

they want to sanction unlicensed messaging apps, hosting services and websites that don’t spy on users (and impose criminal penalties)

mandatory data retention, all your online activity must be tied to your identity

end of privacy friendly VPN’s and other services

cooperate with hardware manufacturers to ensure lawful access by design (backdoors for phones and computers)

prison for everybody who doesn’t comply

If you don’t know what the best options for some questions are, privacy wise, check out this answering guide by Edri(european digital rights organization)

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1neecov/we_beat_chat_control_but_the_fight_isnt_over/

Don’t forget the politicians when you look at who fucked up tech

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The epigram for my forthcoming book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It is a quote from Ed Zitron: “I hate them for what they’ve done to the computer” (Ed even recorded a little cameo of this for the audiobook):

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/enshittification-the-drm-free-audiobook/

Ed’s a smart and passionate guy, and this was definitely the quote to sum up the rage I felt as I wrote the book. Ed’s got a whole theory of who “they” are and “what they did to the computer,” which he calls “the Rot Economy”:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/

The Rot Economy describes the ideology of bosses, starting with monsters like GE’s Jack Welch, who financialized companies, optimizing them for making short term cash gains for investors, at the expense of their workers, their customers, their products and services, and, ultimately, their long-term health.

For Ed, these bosses (especially tech bosses) are the sociopaths who destroyed “the computer” (a stand-in for tech more generally). I don’t disagree at all. The there is a direct, undeniable line from the ideas and conduct of tech bosses and the tech hellscape we live in today. A good read on this subject is Anil Dash’s scorching post from yesterday, “How Tim Cook sold out Steve Jobs”:

https://www.anildash.com/2025/09/09/how-tim-cook-sold-out-steve-jobs/

I find the Rot Economy hypothesis entirely compelling, but also, incomplete. Ed’s explaining why we should hate the players and why we should hate the game, but the enshittification thesis goes even further and explains why we need to hate the umpires – the policymakers, enforcers, economists and legal theorists who created the enshittogenic environment in which the Rot Economy took hold.

Some early reviews of Enshittification have expressed dissatisfaction with book’s “solutions” section, complaining that all the solutions are policy oriented, and there’s nothing suggested for us to do in our capacity as individual consumers:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/31/unsatisfying-answers/#systemic-problems

Those criticisms are correct: there is nothing we can do as individual consumers. Agonizing about your consumption choices will not fight enshittification any more than conscientiously sorting your recycling will end the climate emergency. Enshittification isn’t caused by “lazy consumers” who choose “convenience” or are “too cheap to pay for online services”:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/12/give-me-convenience/#or-give-me-death

The wellspring of enshittification isn’t poor consumption choices, it’s poor policy choices. The reason monsters are able to destroy our online lives isn’t their personal moral failings, it’s the system that rewards predatory, deceptive and unfair commercial practices and elevates their foremost practitioners to positions of power within firms:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

And here’s the kicker: we know where those policy choices came from! The people who made these policy choices did so in living memory. They were warned at the time about the foreseeable consequences of their choices. They made those choices anyway. They faced zero consequences for doing so, even after every one of the prophesied horrors came to pass. Not only were they spared consequences for their actions, but they prospered as a result – they are revered as statesmen, lawyers, scholars and titans of economics.

As Trashfuture showrunner Riley Quinn often says, the curse of being a leftist is that you have object permanence – you actually remember the stuff that happened and how it happened. You don’t live in an eternal now that has no causal relationship to the past.

It’s not enough to hate the player, nor the game – we’ve got to remember the crooked umps who rigged the match. We have to say their names, because that’s how we root out their terrible ideas and ensure that our policy interventions make real change. If Elon Musk OD’ed on ketamine tomorrow, there’d be ten Big Balls who’d tear each others’ throats out in the ensuing succession fight, and the next guy would be just as stupid, racist, and authoritarian. Musk, Cook, Zuck, Pichai, Nadella, Larry Ellison – they’re just filling the monster-shaped holes that policy-makers installed in our society.

Start with Robert Bork, the jurist who championed the “consumer welfare” theory of antitrust, which promotes monopolies as efficient and counsels policymakers not to punish companies that take over markets, because the only way to really dominate a market is to be so good that everyone chooses your products and services. Wouldn’t it just be perverse to use public funds to shut down the public’s favorite companies? Bork was a virulent racist, a Nixonite criminal, and he was dead wrong about the law and the economics of monopoly:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/

Bork’s legacy of pro-monopoly advocacy is, unsurprisingly, monopolies. Monopolies that make everything more expensive and worse: from athletic shoes to microchips, glass bottles to pharmaceuticals, pro wrestling to eyeglasses:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

These monopolies did not arise because of the iron laws of economics. They are not the product of the great forces of history. They are the direct and undeniable consequence of Robert Bork convincing the world’s governments to embrace his bullshit, pro-monopoly policies.

Satan took Bork to hell in 2012, but you know who’s still with us? Bruce Lehman. Bruce Lehman was Bill Clinton’s copyright czar, the man who, in his own words, “did an end-run around Congress” by getting an UN treaty passed that obliged its signatories to ban reverse engineering:

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1353-the-naked-emperor/episode/16145640-ctrl-ctrl-ctrl

Lehman’s used the treaty to get Congress to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and section 1201 of the DMCA made it a felony to break DRM. Bruce Lehman is why farmers can’t fix their own tractors, hospitals can’t fix their own ventilators, and your mechanic can’t fix your car. He’s why, when the manufacturer of your artificial eyes bricks a computer that is permanently wired to your nervous system, no one else can revive it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/12/unsafe-at-any-speed/

Bruce Lehman is why you can’t use the apps of your choosing on your phone or games console. He’s why we can’t preserve beloved old video games. He’s why Apple and Google get to steal 30 cents out of every dollar you send to a performer, software author, or creator through an app:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/01/its-not-the-crime/#its-the-coverup

Yeah, Tim Cook is a venal billionaire who owes his wealth to the Chinese sweatshops of iPhone City, where they had to install suicide nets to catch the workers who’d rather end it all than work another day for Tim Apple, but Tim Cook’s power over those workers is owed to Bruce Lehman and Robert Bork.

Then there’s the ISP sector, whose Net Neutrality violations and underinvestment mean that people who live in the country where the internet was invented have some of the slowest, most expensive internet in the world. Big ISP bosses are some of the worst people on Earth. Take Thomas Rutledge, who CEO of Charter/Spectrum when covid broke out. At the time, Rutledge was America’s highest-paid CEO. He dictated that his back-office staff could not work from home (imagine a telco boss who doesn’t believe in telework!), and those back-offices all turned into super-spreader sites. Rutledge’s field workers – the people who came to our homes and upgraded our internet so we could work from home – did not get PPE or danger pay. Instead, they got vouchers exclusively redeemable at restaurants that had shut down during the pandemic:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/22/filternet/#thomas-rutledge-murderer

Fuck Thomas Rutledge and may his name be a curse forever. But the reason Thomas Rutledge – and all the other terrible telco bosses – were able to reap millions by supplying us with dogshit internet while literally murdering their employees was that Trump’s FCC chairman, an ex-Verizon lawyer named Ajit Pai, let them get away with it:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/12/ajit-pai/#pai

Ajit Pai engaged in some of the most flagrant cheating ever seen in American regulation (prior to Jan 20, 2025, at least). When he decided to kill Net Neutrality, he accepted obviously fraudulent comments into the official record, including one million identical comments from @pornhub.com email addresses, as well as millions of comments whose return addresses were taken from darknet data-dumps, including the email addresses of dead people and of sitting US senators who supported Net Neutrality:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/10/digital-redlining/#stop-confusing-the-issue-with-relevant-facts

Pai – and his co-conspirators – are the umps who rigged the game. Hate Thomas Rutledge to be sure, but to prevent people like Rutledge from gaining power over your digital life in future, you must remember Ajit Pai with the special form of white-hot rage that keeps people like him from ever making policy decisions again.

Then there’s Canada’s hall of shame, which is full of monsters. Two of my least favorite are James Moore and Tony Clement, who, as ministers under Stephen Harper, rammed through a Canadian version of the DMCA, 2012’s Bill C-11, despite their own consultation, which found that Canadians overwhelmingly rejected the idea:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/15/radical-extremists/#sex-pest

Clement (now a disgraced sex-pest) and Moore (still accepted into polite society as a corporate lawyer) are the reason that Canada’s Right to Repair and interop laws are dead on arrival. They’re also why Canada can’t retaliate against Trump’s tariffs by jailbreaking US products, making everything cheaper for Canadians and birthing new, global Canadian tech businesses:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/beauty-eh/#its-the-only-war-the-yankees-lost-except-for-vietnam-and-also-the-alamo-and-the-bay-of-ham

In Europe, there’s Axel Voss, the man behind 2019’s “filternet” proposal, which requires tech platforms to spend hundreds of millions of euros for copyright filters that use AI to process everything posted to the public internet in Europe and block anything the AI thinks is “copyrighted”:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/03/26/article-13-will-wreck-the-internet-because-swedish-meps-accidentally-pushed-the-wrong-voting-button/

For years, Voss maintained that none of this was true, that there would be no filters, and dismissed his critics as hysterical fools:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/04/03/after-months-of-insisting-that-article13-doesnt-require-filters-top-eu-commissioner-says-article-13-requires-filters/

But then, after his law passed, he admitted he “didn’t know what he was voting for”:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/14/father-of-the-catastrophic-copyright-directive-reveals-he-didnt-know-what-he-was-voting-for/

Fuck the media lobbyists who spent hundreds of millions of euros to push this catastrophic law through:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/12/13/clash-of-the-corporate-titans-whos-spending-what-in-europes-copyright-directive-battle/

But especially and forever, fuck Axel Voss, the policymaker who helped turn those corporate bribes into policy.

Ed Zitron is right to hate the people who implement the Rot Economy for what they did to the computer. But those people are only doing what policymakers let them do. Corporate monsters thrive in an enshittogenic environment.

But political monsters are the ones create that enshittogenic environment. They’re the ones who are terraforming our planet to sideline human life and replace it with the immortal colony organisms we call “limited liability corporations.”

Source: Pluralistic: Hate the player AND the game (10 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

My blue is your blue: different people’s brains process colours in the same way

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Is the colour you see the same as what I see? It’s a question that has puzzled both philosophers and neuroscientists for decades, but has proved notoriously difficult to answer.

Now, a study that recorded the brain activity of 15 participants suggests that colours are represented and processed in the same way across different people. The findings were published in the Journal of Neuroscience on 8 September1.

“Now we know that when you see red or green or whatever colour, that it activates your brain very similarly to my brain,” says study co-author Andreas Bartels, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Tübingen in Germany. “Even at a very low level, things are represented similarly across different brains, and that is a fundamentally new discovery.”

[…]

The pair used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare activity in the brains of a group of people while they viewed different colours.

Source: My blue is your blue: different people’s brains process colours in the same way

They could then predict what colour people were seeing based on the scans.

Launch Your Name Around Moon in 2026 on NASA’s Artemis II Mission

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NASA is inviting the public to join the agency’s Artemis II test flight as four astronauts venture around the Moon and back to test systems and hardware needed for deep space exploration. As part of the agency’s “Send Your Name with Artemis II” effort, anyone can claim their spot by signing up before Jan. 21.

Participants will launch their name aboard the Orion spacecraft and SLS (Space Launch System) rocket alongside NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

“Artemis II is a key test flight in our effort to return humans to the Moon’s surface and build toward future missions to Mars, and it’s also an opportunity to inspire people across the globe and to give them an opportunity to follow along as we lead the way in human exploration deeper into space,” said Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The collected names will be put on an SD card loaded aboard Orion before launch. In return, participants can download a boarding pass with their name on it as a collectable.

To add your name and receive an English-language boarding pass, visit: 

https://go.nasa.gov/artemisnames
 

To add your name and receive a Spanish-language boarding pass, visit:

https://go.nasa.gov/TuNombreArtemis

 
As part of a Golden Age of innovation and exploration, the approximately 10-day Artemis II test flight, launching no later than April 2026, is the first crewed flight under NASA’s Artemis campaign. It is another step toward new U.S.-crewed missions on the Moon’s surface that will help the agency prepare to send the first astronauts – Americans – to Mars.

To learn more about the mission visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission/artemis-ii/

Source: Launch Your Name Around Moon in 2026 on NASA’s Artemis II Mission  – NASA

Plex tells users to reset passwords after new data breach. Again.

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Popular media streaming platform Plex has informed its users of yet another data breach, urging them to change their passwords as soon as possible. 

Criminals often target media streaming platforms because they deal with sensitive information. Plex has fallen victim to a similar intrusion in the past, and a couple of years ago went through a very similar situation.

Now, Plex has revealed that an unauthorized third party gained access to one of its databases, exposing information on a limited number of customers.

The compromised data may include email addresses, usernames, securely hashed passwords, and authentication information. The company underlines that no credit card information has been affected because that type of information is not stored on those kinds of servers.

It’s a relief that the passwords are hashed because it means they are not readable, but it’s still a good idea to change the Plex passwords as quickly as possible.

Containment and response

 

According to Plex, the breach was contained quickly, and the method the attacker used was identified and addressed.

“We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this situation may cause you. We take pride in our security systems, which helped us quickly detect this incident, and we want to assure you that we are working swiftly to prevent potential future incidents from occurring,” said the company.

Plex has outlined two actions users must take, depending on their sign-in methods:

Password-based login: Users have to reset their Plex account password immediately via ‘https://plex.tv/reset’. The company recommends checking the option to “Sign out connected devices after password change,” which will log out all devices and require reauthentication with the new password.

SSO login: Users should log out of all active sessions through ‘https://plex.tv/security’ and sign back in as normal.

Plex is also strongly encouraging users to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) for added protection if they haven’t already done so.

Source: Plex tells users to reset passwords after new data breach

Maker of remote working software Teams orders employees back to office

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Microsoft is rolling out a new return-to-office policy that will see first Redmond, then US, and then global staff getting back on-prem at least three days a week.

“How we work has forever changed,” Microsoft’s Chief People Officer Amy Coleman told staff in a blog post. And that change will start in Redmond by the end of February. If you work within a 50-mile radius of the office, Microsoft has already emailed you if it expects your attendance, she said.

The changes will spread across the rest of America and then internationally on an unspecified timescale. We’ve asked for clarification and will update this article if it comes in.

Coleman’s note looked to get ahead of possible criticisms that mandatory RTO policies serve as a backdoor way to reduce headcount, as employees who’d moved far away from offices to take advantage of companies’ remote work policies may find it difficult or unpalatable to uproot again.

“Importantly, this update is not about reducing headcount,” she wrote. “It’s about working together in a way that enables us to meet our customers’ needs.”

[…]

Source: Microsoft employees ordered back to office • The Register

So… Microsoft Teams doesn’t work very well? Or is it just American Micromanagement at its best?

Judge rejects Anthropic’s record-breaking $1.5 billion settlement for AI book piracy lawsuit because it looks like a publisher and lawyer grab

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Judge William Alsup has rejected the record-breaking $1.5 billion settlement Anthropic has agreed to for a piracy lawsuit filed by writers. According to Bloomberg Law, the federal judge is concerned that the class lawyers struck a deal that will be forced “down the throat of authors.” Alsup reportedly felt misled by the deal and said it was “nowhere close to complete.” In his order, he said he was “disappointed that counsel have left important questions to be answered in the future,” including the list of works involved in the case, the list of authors, the process of notifying members of the class and the claim form class members can use to get their part of the settlement.

If you’ll recall, the plaintiffs sued Anthropic over the company’s use of pirated copies of their works to train its large language models. Around 500,000 authors are involved in the lawsuit, and they’re expected to receive $3,000 per work. “This landmark settlement far surpasses any other known copyright recovery,” one of the lawyers representing the authors said in a statement. However, Alsup had an “uneasy feeling about hangers on with all [that] money on the table.” He explained that class members “get the shaft” in a lot of class actions once the monetary settlement has been established and lawyers stopped caring.

Alsup told the lawyers that they must give the class members “very good notice” about the settlement and design a claim form that gives them the choice to opt in or out. They also have to ensure that Anthropic cannot be sued for the same issue in the future. The judge gave the lawyers until September 15 to submit a final list of works involved in the lawsuit. He also wrote in his order that the works list, class members list and the claim form all have to be examined and approved by the court by October 10 before he grants the settlement his preliminary approval.

Source: Judge rejects Anthropic’s record-breaking $1.5 billion settlement for AI copyright lawsuit

Of course this was only a small part of the actual lawsuit, which sought to establish that copyright precluded AIs from reading books without permission. This was struck down by the judge. The idiocy of Anthropic in using pirated books to train their AI beggars belief, but that is what they were punished for.

The reason the copyright lawsuit was put up was so that the copyright holders (the publishers, not the actual writers of the books – although that is what these publishers are telling you) could win megabucks. Now that the settlement has gone for piracy, the publishers and lawyers still want the megabucks, without sharing it with the actual writers. The judge says no.

Scientists figure out why the flu is deadly for older patients

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Scientists have discovered why older people are more likely to suffer severely from the flu, and can now use their findings to address this risk.

In a new study, which is published in PNAS, experts discovered that older people produce a glycosylated protein called apoplipoprotein D (ApoD), which is involved in lipid metabolism and inflammation, at much higher levels than in younger people. This has the effect of reducing the patient’s ability to resist virus infection, resulting in a more serious disease outcome.

The team established that highly elevated ApoD production with age in the lung drives extensive tissue damage during infection to reduce the protective antiviral type I interferon response.

[…]

They identified ApoD as an age-related cell factor that impairs the activation of the immune system’s antiviral response to influenza virus infection by causing extensive breakdown of mitochondria (mitophagy) resulting in greater production of virus and lung damage during infection. Mitochondria are essential for cellular production of energy and for induction of protective interferons.

ApoD is therefore a target for therapeutic intervention to protect against severe influenza virus infection in the elderly which would have a major impact on reducing morbidity and mortality in the aging population.

[…]

Source: Why the flu turns deadly for older adults, and how scientists found the cause | ScienceDaily

Microsoft software reselling dispute heads back to UK court

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Microsoft’s tussle with UK-based reseller ValueLicensing over the sale of secondhand licenses returns to the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal this week, with the Windows behemoth now claiming that selling pre-owned Office and Windows software is unlawful.

ValueLicensing’s representatives say this week’s trial – due to start tomorrow – will “address whether the entire pre-owned license market was lawful – with Microsoft arguing that it was not lawful to resell pre-owned Office and Windows software at all.”

This stems from a May 2025 agreement that the scope of copyright issues now central to Microsoft’s defense needs to be determined.

The case has the potential to blow a hole in the European reselling market. According to ValueLicensing, “if Microsoft’s argument is correct, it would mean that the entire resale market in Europe should not exist.”

The ValueLicensing case has rumbled on for years, beginning with allegations that Microsoft stifled the supply of pre-owned licenses by offering attractive subscription deals to public and private sector organizations in return for the surrender of perpetual licenses. ValueLicensing (and companies like it) operated a business model based on organizations selling their perpetual licenses and resellers selling them on to customers at a discount.

ValueLicensing alleged that Microsoft added clauses to customer contracts aimed at restricting the resale of perpetual licenses. In return for accepting those contracts, customers were given a discount.

Judging by the case so far [PDF], it appears that this practice was a policy at Microsoft.

According to ValueLicensing, Microsoft’s allegedly anti-competitive antics and attempts to eliminate the secondhand software license market have cost it £270 million in lost profits.

Microsoft’s argument [PDF] is that it owns the copyright to the non-program bits of Office – the graphical user interface, for example – to which rules around software reselling (the European Software Directive) do not apply.

ValueLicensing boss Jonathan Horley noted the timing of the copyright claim. “It’s a remarkable coincidence that their defense against ValueLicensing has changed so dramatically from being a defense of ‘we didn’t do it’ to a defense of ‘the market should never have existed,'” he said.

Microsoft’s contention is not without precedent. The Tom Kabinet judgment drew a line between the secondary market for software programs and e-books. Reselling a software program isn’t a problem, while reselling something like an e-book is. Microsoft’s argument for its software appears to be similar.

The tech giant is facing other actions before the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal. Alexander Wolfson has brought a similar claim against Microsoft, potentially worth billions, regarding the purchase of certain licenses for specific products. Dr Maria Luisa Stasi has brought another regarding the cost of running Microsoft software on platforms like AWS and GCP compared to Azure.

Source: Microsoft software reselling dispute heads back to UK court • The Register

So if Microsoft wins, it means you don’t actually own a copy of the software you paid for.

Yes, Google Meet Is Down

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If you’re trying to use Google Meet and failing, it’s not your fault. Google is reportedly investigating the outage, and DownDetector has seen tens of thousands or reports about Google Meet not working properly since around 1:25 p.m. ET.

“We are experiencing an issue with Google Meet beginning at Monday, 2025-09-08 10:25 PDT,” Google reported on its Workspace updates page.

“Our engineering team continues to investigate the issue. We will provide an update by Monday, 2025-09-08 11:30 PDT with current details,” the tech giant explained.

There is no reportedly workaround, at least according to the company.

[…]

Source: Yes, Google Meet Is Down

ASML invests €1.3B to become the largest shareholder in Nvidia-backed Mistral AI

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Mistral AI, the Paris-based startup rapidly establishing itself as Europe’s leading AI company, has secured a €1.3 billion investment from Dutch semiconductor equipment maker ASML in its ongoing Series C funding round. This round, totalling approximately €1.7 billion, values Mistral at around €14 billion, with ASML emerging as the largest shareholder in the company.

With Google and Amazon funnelling billions into their AI ventures, this move places ASML as a critical player in the global semiconductor industry. Other investors in Mistral include Nvidia, Microsoft, Andreessen Horowitz, and General Catalyst. Mistral’s revenue has surged from €10 million in 2023 to €60 million by 2025, fueled by enterprise adoption and strategic partnerships.

[…]

Source: ASML invests €1.3B to become the largest shareholder in Nvidia-backed Mistral AI — TFN

Smartphone Sensors Unlocked: Turn Your Phone Into A Physics Lab

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These days, most of us have a smartphone. They are so commonplace that we rarely stop to consider how amazing they truly are. The open-source project Phyphox has provided easy access to your phone’s sensors for over a decade. We featured it years ago, and the Phyphox team continues to update this versatile application.

Phyphox is designed to use your phone as a sensor for physics experiments, offering a list of prebuilt experiments created by others that you can try yourself. But that’s not all—this app provides access to the many sensors built into your phone. Unlike many applications that access these sensors, Phyphox is open-source, with all its code available on its GitHub page.

The available sensors depend on your smartphone, but you can typically access readings from accelerometers, GPS, gyroscopes, magnetometers, barometers, microphones, cameras, and more. The app includes clever prebuilt experiments, like measuring an elevator’s speed using your phone’s barometer or determining a color’s HSV value with the camera. Beyond phone sensors, the Phyphox team has added support for Arduino BLE devices, enabling you to collect and graph telemetry from your Arduino projects in a centralized hub.

Thanks [Alfius] for sharing this versatile application that unlocks a myriad of uses for your phone’s sensors. You can use a phone for so many things. Really.

 

Source: Smartphone Sensors Unlocked: Turn Your Phone Into A Physics Lab | Hackaday

Russian Drones Repeatedly Crossing into NATO’s Eastern Flank. No reaction from NATO.

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Repeated drone incursions into Polish airspace show that Russia and Belarus are testing NATO and EU defenses. These incidents are not isolated but part of a wider hybrid warfare strategy that combines military pressure, information operations, and electronic warfare. The challenge for the Alliance is how to respond effectively without escalating into open conflict.

In recent nights, Polish airspace has been violated twice by unmanned aerial vehicles. Small, cheap, and difficult to detect, drones are ideal tools for hybrid warfare. Moscow and Minsk use them not to strike directly but to probe reactions, overload defense systems, and accustom societies to constant pressure. Each new violation risks becoming „the new normal” on NATO’s eastern border.

These incursions are not random. They are often synchronized with Russian missile barrages against Ukraine, creating a double layer of military and psychological impact. By observing how quickly Poland and NATO allies respond, and how coherent the communication between government and armed forces is, Moscow draws conclusions about the Alliance’s readiness. If the reaction is slow or chaotic, the pressure seems to work. If NATO fighters, such as Dutch F-35s currently stationed in Poland, are deployed, the costs of escalation for Russia increase.

The technical challenge is formidable. Small, low-flying drones evade traditional radars and are too cheap to be countered with expensive missiles like Patriot or CAMM-ER. A saturation scenario—dozens of drones attacking simultaneously—could overload command systems and force difficult prioritization between protecting critical infrastructure and intercepting minor threats. This is why layered defense, from Pilica+ and Piorun to Patriot, must be complemented with cheaper effectors such as programmable ammunition for AG-35 cannons and expanded radar coverage in the east.

[…]

Source: Russian Drones Challenge NATO’s Eastern Flank

Anything that crosses over the border should be intercepted, warned via radio and then shot down. The only language Putin understands is force, as he has shown with his opportunistic invasions time and again.

Critical, make-me-super-user SAP S/4HANA bug being exploited

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A critical code-injection bug in SAP S/4HANA that allows low-privileged attackers to take over your SAP system is being actively exploited, according to security researchers.

SAP issued a patch for the 9.9-rated flaw in August. It is tracked as CVE-2025-42957, and it affects both private cloud and on-premises versions.

According to SecurityBridge Threat Research Labs, which originally spotted and disclosed the vulnerability to SAP,  the team “verified actual abuse of this vulnerability.” It doesn’t appear to be widespread (yet), but the consequences of this flaw are especially severe.

“For example, SecurityBridge’s team demonstrated in a lab environment how an attacker could create a new SAP superuser account (with SAP_ALL privileges) and directly manipulate critical business data,” the researchers said in a Thursday write-up alongside a video demo of the exploit.

It’s low-complexity to exploit. The bug enables a user to inject arbitrary ABAP code into the system, thus bypassing authorization checks and essentially creating a backdoor that allows full system compromise, data theft, and operational disruption. In other words: it’s effectively game over.

[…]

Source: Critical, make-me-super-user SAP S/4HANA bug being exploited • The Register

Europe must reach for the bazooka‚ or be humiliated

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Last week, Donald Trump issued a stark warning: European states that enforce EU law against American tech giants risk trade tariffs. This is not a negotiation tactic. It is an assertion of power‚ a demand that Europe surrender its legal order to foreign influence.

This is not a negotiation. It is a test.

Europe possesses a “trade bazooka” designed for this precise scenario. The Anti-Coercion Instrument is designed to respond to the kind of threats and actions that Trump now alludes to. To delay its use is to invite further encroachments. 

But the current crisis is not merely economic, nor is it confined to tariffs and subsidies. It is a confrontation over the very foundations of democratic governance: the rule of law, the capacity of nations to govern themselves without foreign interference, and the protection of our children in the digital age.   

The U.S. understands that power is not only measured in military might or economic output, but also in control over information and infrastructure and the conditions under which democracy can survive. By threatening sanctions for upholding European law, Washington is testing whether Europe will tolerate coercion in the name of the alliance.

We should now know the risk of inaction. A decade ago, the General Data Protection Regulation was enacted to put power over data back into the hands of citizens. But Ireland, as a jurisdiction of choice for multinationals, became a conduit for regulatory evasion. And the European Commission turned a blind eye.

Over the same period, our fragmented single market and the Commission’s narrow view of competition enforcement handed our digital market to foreign firms. The result is that we became dependent on foreign technology firms, most of them American, which are now accustomed to operating with impunity. They shape our public discourse and influence our elections.   

Consequently, authoritarianism has risen again in our midst. Proxies who serve foreign interests before their own are algorithmically pushed into people’s feeds by giant American and Chinese social media companies. Those same algorithms push self-harm and suicide onto our children’s feeds. And yet we hesitate. 

If we do not stand by our laws then we will not merely lose a trade dispute. We will lose the authority to govern ourselves. We will signal that democratic sovereignty can be traded for security promises that may not be kept. We will expose ourselves to unrelenting assault by algorithms directed to impose home-grown authoritarians upon our people.  

President von der Leyen committed to keeping inviolate Europe’s rules on digital media and market power in an interview in April. She must now go further and actively protect those rules. Speaking last week, Chancellor Merz said Europe will not allow itself to be pressured. Those words must be backed up by action.  

But the signs are not good. Take the Commission’s competition case against Google, in which the EU executive has not only backed down from its plan to break up Google’s ad business by instead issuing a mere fine, it has even dropped the fine for fear of offending Trump. The case concerns market violations that have been proven against Google in a U.S. court. Such timidity undermines the hope of a level playing field in the relationship with our American partners.

We are not blind to the risks of confrontation with Donald Trump. But if we do not stand by our laws and use the Anti-Coercion instrument to defend them, then we will not merely lose a trade dispute. We will lose the authority to govern ourselves.  

Source: Europe must reach for the bazooka‚ or be humiliated – Euractiv

Did Apple do an Anthropic? Faces lawsuit over alleged use of pirated books for AI training

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Two authors have filed a lawsuit against Apple, accusing the company of infringing on their copyright by using their books to train its artificial intelligence model without their consent. The plaintiffs, Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson, claimed that Apple used a dataset of pirated copyrighted books that include their works for AI training. They said in their complaint that Applebot, the company’s scraper, can “reach ‘shadow libraries'” made up of unlicensed copyrighted books, including (on information) their own. The lawsuit is currently seeking class action status, due to the sheer number of books and authors found in shadow libraries.

The main plaintiffs for the lawsuit are Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson, both of whom have multiple books under their names. They said that Apple, one of the biggest companies in the world, did not attempt to pay them for “their contributions to [the] potentially lucrative venture.”

[…]

Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude chatbot, recently agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class action piracy complaint also brought by authors. Similar to this case, the writers also accused the company of taking pirated books from online libraries to train its AI technology. The 500,000 authors involved in the case will reportedly get $3,000 per work.

Source: Apple faces lawsuit over alleged use of pirated books for AI training