Antarctica Is Unraveling

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A new paper in the journal Nature catalogs how several “abrupt changes,” like the precipitous loss of sea ice over the last decade, are unfolding in Antarctica and its surrounding waters, reinforcing one another and threatening to send the continent past the point of no return—and flood coastal cities everywhere as the sea rises several feet.

[…]

Scientists define abrupt change as a bit of the environment changing much faster than expected. In Antarctica these can occur on a range of time scales, from days or weeks for an ice shelf collapse to centuries and beyond for the ice sheets. Unfortunately, these abrupt changes can self-perpetuate and become unstoppable as humans continue to warm the planet.

[…]

A major driver of Antarctica’s cascading crises is the loss of floating sea ice, which forms during winter. In 2014, it hit a peak extent (at least since satellite observations began in 1978) around Antarctica of 20.11 million square kilometers, or 7.76 million square miles. But since then, the coverage of sea ice has fallen not just precipitously but almost unbelievably, contracting by 75 miles closer to the coast. During winters, when sea ice reaches its maximum coverage, it has declined 4.4 times faster around Antarctica than it has in the Arctic in the last decade.

Put another way: The loss of winter sea ice in Antarctica over just the past decade is similar to what the Arctic has lost over the last 46 years.

[…]

While scientists need to collect more data to determine if this is the beginning of a fundamental shift in Antarctica, the signals so far are ominous. “We’re starting to see the pieces of the picture begin to emerge that we very well might be in this new state of dramatic loss of Antarctic sea ice,” said Zachary M. Labe, a climate scientist who studies the region at the research group Climate Central, which wasn’t involved in the new paper.

This extraordinary decline is kicking off a climatic feedback loop. The Arctic is warming around four times faster than the rest of the planet in large part because its reflectivity is changing. Sea ice is white and bright, so it bounces the sun’s energy back into space to cool the region. But when it disappears, it exposes darker ocean waters, which absorb that energy. So less reflectivity begets more warming, and more warming melts more sea ice, which begets more warming, and on and on. “We now expect that that same process is going to become a factor in the Southern Hemisphere, because we’ve lost this equivalent amount of sea ice,” Abram said.

Bigger and irreversible consequences

Around Antarctica, however, the consequences could be even bigger and more complex than in the Arctic and might even be irreversible. Models predict that if the global climate were to stabilize, so too would Arctic sea ice. “We don’t see that same behavior in Antarctica,” Abram said. “When you stabilize the climate and let these climate model simulations run for hundreds of years, Antarctic sea ice still continues to decline because the Southern Ocean is continuing to take up extra heat from the atmosphere.”

This could spell major trouble for the continent’s enormous cap of ice. That consists of two main parts: the ice sheets, which rest on land, and the ice shelves, which extend from the sheets and float on the sea. The problem isn’t so much about the sun beating down on the sheets, but increasingly warm water lapping at the bottom of the shelves. And the more the surrounding sea ice disappears, the more those waters are warming. Additionally, sea ice acts as a sort of shield, absorbing wave energy that would normally pound these edges of the ice shelves, breaking them apart.

So sea ice supports the ice shelves, which support the ice sheets on land. “When we melt ice shelves, they have a buttressing effect on the ice sheets behind them, so we get an enhanced flow of ice sheets into the ocean,” said Matthew England, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales and coauthor of the paper. One of these, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, could collapse if global temperatures reach 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, raising sea levels by more than three meters, or about 10 feet. And it could still partially collapse before that.

As ice shelves melt, they’re also borking a critical ocean system known as the Antarctic Overturning Circulation. When sea ice forms, it rejects salt, creating salty, extra cold seawater that’s denser and therefore sinks to the seafloor, creating circulation. But as ice shelves melt, they dilute the cold salty water, slowing the circulation and bringing more warm water in contact with ice shelves and sea ice. “This amplifying feedback that we’re talking about now is across systems,” England said. “It’s from the ocean back to the ice, and then back into the ocean again, that can trigger a runaway change where we do see the overturning potentially collapse altogether.”

When this circulation brings deeper waters back to the surface, it transports critical nutrients for phytoplankton—tiny photosynthetic organisms that absorb carbon and expel oxygen. Not only are these organisms responsible for sequestering half of the carbon from photosynthesis worldwide, but they also make up the base of the food web, feeding small animals known as zooplankton, which in turn feed bigger organisms like fishes and crustaceans. Sea ice is also a critical habitat for phytoplankton, so they stand to lose both their home and their nutrients.

A chronic sickness for the far south

Emperor penguins, too, establish their breeding colonies on stable sea ice, where their chicks grow up and develop the waterproof feathers they need to glide through the ocean. “That ice is being lost before the emperor penguins have been able to fledge, and when that happens, you have a complete breeding failure for the colony in that season,” Abram said. “We’re seeing those catastrophic breeding failure events happening right around the Antarctic continent.”

[…]

Source: Antarctica Is Unraveling

FBI cyber cop: Salt Typhoon pwned ‘nearly every American’

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China’s Salt Typhoon cyberspies hoovered up information belonging to millions of people in the United States over the course of the years-long intrusion into telecommunications networks, according to a top FBI cyber official.

“There’s a good chance this espionage campaign has stolen information from nearly every American,” Michael Machtinger, deputy assistant director for the FBI’s cyber division, told The Register.

[…]

The Beijing-backed spying campaign began at least in 2019 but wasn’t uncovered by US authorities until last fall. On Wednesday, US law enforcement and intelligence agencies along with those from 12 other countries warned the ongoing espionage activity expanded far beyond nine American telcos and government networks. According to Machtinger, at least 80 countries were hit by the digital intrusions.

Around 200 American organizations were compromised by the espionage activity, Machtinger said, including the previously disclosed telecommunications firms such as Verizon and AT&T.

Yesterday’s joint security alert also pointed the allies’ collective finger at three China-based entities affiliated with Salt Typhoon: Sichuan Juxinhe Network Technology, Beijing Huanyu Tianqiong Information Technology, and Sichuan Zhixin Ruijie Network Technology. These companies, and likely others, provide cyber products and services to China’s Ministry of State Security and People’s Liberation Army, the governments said.

[…]

This indiscriminate targeting, as the FBI and White House security officials have previously noted, allowed Beijing’s snoops to geo-locate millions of mobile phone users, monitor their internet traffic, and, in some cases, record their phone calls. Victims reportedly included President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

Machtinger declined to confirm whether Trump and Vance were among those surveilled, but did say that victims included more than 100 current and former presidential administration officials.

[…]

Source: FBI cyber cop: Salt Typhoon pwned ‘nearly every American’ • The Register

It’s quite telling that you only have to breach 200 organisations to gain information on 350 million Americans.

Collapse of critical Atlantic current is no longer low-likelihood, study finds

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The collapse of a critical Atlantic current can no longer be considered a low-likelihood event, a study has concluded, making deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions even more urgent to avoid the catastrophic impact.

The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is a major part of the global climate system. It brings sun-warmed tropical water to Europe and the Arctic, where it cools and sinks to form a deep return current. The Amoc was already known to be at its weakest in 1,600 years as a result of the climate crisis.

Climate models recently indicated that a collapse before 2100 was unlikely but the new analysis examined models that were run for longer, to 2300 and 2500. These show the tipping point that makes an Amoc shutdown inevitable is likely to be passed within a few decades, but that the collapse itself may not happen until 50 to 100 years later.

The research found that if carbon emissions continued to rise, 70% of the model runs led to collapse, while an intermediate level of emissions resulted in collapse in 37% of the models. Even in the case of low future emissions, an Amoc shutdown happened in 25% of the models.

Scientists have warned previously that Amoc collapse must be avoided “at all costs”. It would shift the tropical rainfall belt on which many millions of people rely to grow their food, plunge western Europe into extreme cold winters and summer droughts, and add 50cm to already rising sea levels.

The new results are “quite shocking, because I used to say that the chance of Amoc collapsing as a result of global warming was less than 10%”, said Prof Stefan Rahmstorf, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who was part of the study team. “Now even in a low-emission scenario, sticking to the Paris agreement, it looks like it may be more like 25%.

“These numbers are not very certain, but we are talking about a matter of risk assessment where even a 10% chance of an Amoc collapse would be far too high. We found that the tipping point where the shutdown becomes inevitable is probably in the next 10 to 20 years or so. That is quite a shocking finding as well and why we have to act really fast in cutting down emissions.”

Scientists spotted warning signs of a tipping point in 2021 and know that the Amoc has collapsed in the Earth’s past. “Observations in the deep [far North Atlantic] already show a downward trend over the past five to 10 years, consistent with the models’ projections,” said Prof Sybren Drijfhout, at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, who was also part of the team.

“Even in some intermediate and low-emission scenarios, the Amoc slows drastically by 2100 and completely shuts off thereafter. That shows the shutdown risk is more serious than many people realise.”

The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, analysed the standard models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The scientists were particularly concerned to find that in many models the tipping point is reached in the next decade or two, after which the shutdown of the Amoc becomes inevitable owing to a self-amplifying feedback.

[…]

Source: Collapse of critical Atlantic current is no longer low-likelihood, study finds | Oceans | The Guardian

Apple pulls torrenting app from a third-party store (one that it should not be able to control!) in the EU

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As first reported by TorrentFreak, Apple is preventing downloads of the iTorrent app on iPhones in the EU. Developer Daniil “XITRIX” Vinogradov’s app was a popular BitTorrent client available from AltStore PAL, which is among the most popular third-party iOS app stores overseas. The company revoked the app developer’s ability to distribute apps on such third-party marketplaces. While Apple has historically banned torrent clients from iOS devices in the United States, the EU’s Digital Markets Act that went into effect last year requires Apple to allow apps from third-party stores to be installed by users.

According to TorrentFreak‘s reporting, the motivation behind the revocation of XITRIX’s alternative distribution rights is not yet certain. The publisher spoke directly with TorrentFreak and said that Apple never reached out to him about the matter. “I still have no idea if it was my fault or Apple’s, and their responses make no sense,” Vinogradov told TorrentFreak. Apple has responded to Vinogradov with a generic message about app store issues.

Shane Gill, the co-founder of AltStore PAL, told TorrentFreak that the company’s request for information from Apple has not resulted in it explaining its justification for the takedown. “I can confirm that we are in communication with Apple about this issue. We’ve told them what’s going wrong, and they said they’re looking into it, but we haven’t gotten any further information as of yet,” said Gill.

Source: Apple pulls torrenting app from a third-party store in the EU

New self-assembling material could be the key to recyclable EV batteries

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Today’s electric vehicle boom is tomorrow’s mountain of electronic waste. And while myriad efforts are underway to improve battery recycling, many EV batteries still end up in landfills.

A research team from MIT wants to help change that with a new kind of self-assembling battery material that quickly breaks apart when submerged in a simple organic liquid. In a new paper published in Nature Chemistry, the researchers showed the material can work as the electrolyte in a functioning, solid-state battery cell and then revert back to its original molecular components in minutes.

The approach offers an alternative to shredding the battery into a mixed, hard-to-recycle mass. Instead, because the electrolyte serves as the battery’s connecting layer, when the new material returns to its original molecular form, the entire battery disassembles to accelerate the recycling process.

[…]

To simplify the recycling process, the researchers decided to make a more sustainable electrolyte. For that, they turned to a class of molecules that self-assemble in water, named aramid amphiphiles (AAs), whose chemical structures and stability mimic that of Kevlar. The researchers further designed the AAs to contain polyethylene glycol (PEG), which can conduct lithium ions, on one end of each molecule. When the molecules are exposed to water, they spontaneously form nanoribbons with ion-conducting PEG surfaces and bases that imitate the robustness of Kevlar through tight hydrogen bonding. The result is a mechanically stable nanoribbon structure that conducts ions across its surface.

“The material is composed of two parts,” Cho explains. “The first part is this flexible chain that gives us a nest, or host, for lithium ions to jump around. The second part is this strong organic material component that is used in the Kevlar, which is a bulletproof material. Those make the whole structure stable.”

When added to water, the nanoribbons self-assemble to form millions of nanoribbons that can be hot-pressed into a solid-state material.

“Within five minutes of being added to water, the solution becomes gel-like, indicating there are so many nanofibers formed in the liquid that they start to entangle each other,” Cho says. “What’s exciting is we can make this material at scale because of the self-assembly behavior.”

The team tested the material’s strength and toughness, finding it could endure the stresses associated with making and running the battery. They also constructed a solid-state battery cell that used lithium iron phosphate for the cathode and lithium titanium oxide as the anode, both common materials in today’s batteries. The nanoribbons moved lithium ions successfully between the electrodes, but a side-effect known as polarization limited the movement of lithium ions into the battery’s electrodes during fast bouts of charging and discharging, hampering its performance compared to today’s gold-standard commercial batteries.

“The lithium ions moved along the nanofiber all right, but getting the lithium ion from the nanofibers to the metal oxide seems to be the most sluggish point of the process,” Cho says.

When they immersed the battery cell into organic solvents, the material immediately dissolved, with each part of the battery falling away for easier recycling. Cho compared the materials’ reaction to cotton candy being submerged in water.

“The electrolyte holds the two battery electrodes together and provides the lithium-ion pathways,” Cho says. “So, when you want to recycle the battery, the entire electrolyte layer can fall off naturally and you can recycle the electrodes separately.”

Validating a new approach

Cho says the material is a proof of concept that demonstrates the recycle-first approach.

[…]

Cho also sees a lot of room for optimizing the material’s performance with further experiments.

Now, the researchers are exploring ways to integrate these kinds of materials into existing battery designs as well as implementing the ideas into new battery chemistries.

[…]

Source: New self-assembling material could be the key to recyclable EV batteries | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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

Better than greenwashing, sustainability reporting boosts financials

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As environmental responsibility and social ethics become increasingly important, a question might arise in the boardroom: does the company’s sustainability efforts materially affect the financial information on which investors rely?

Research in the International Journal of Business and Emerging Markets sets about answering that question. It does so by examining data from European firms over the course of a decade and providing that voluntary disclosure and strong performance in metrics improve the value relevance of .

The researchers focused on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria.

[…]

Ultimately, the research found, firms voluntarily reporting ESG information tended to present financial statements more aligned with market perceptions of their value.

Moreover, firms with higher ESG performance scores, indicating better sustainability practices, demonstrate even stronger correlations between their financial disclosures and market value. This suggests that sustainability efforts are not merely reputational or regulatory compliance exercises but contribute meaningfully to the transparency of financial reporting.

[…]

More information: Kyriakos Christofi et al, The impact of sustainability disclosure on financial statement value relevance: evidence from Europe, International Journal of Business and Emerging Markets (2025). DOI: 10.1504/IJBEM.2025.147883

Source: Better than greenwashing, sustainability reporting boosts financials

Rats walk again after spinal cord repair with 3D printing

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[…] a groundbreaking process that combines 3D printing, stem cell biology, and lab-grown tissues for spinal cord injury recovery.

[…]

A major challenge is the death of nerve cells and the inability for nerve fibers to regrow across the injury site. This new research tackles this problem head-on.

The method involves creating a unique 3D-printed framework for lab-grown organs, called an organoid scaffold, with microscopic channels. These channels are then populated with regionally specific spinal neural progenitor cells (sNPCs), which are cells derived from human adult stem cells that have the capacity to divide and differentiate into specific types of mature cells.

“We use the 3D printed channels of the scaffold to direct the growth of the stem cells, which ensures the new nerve fibers grow in the desired way,

[…]

In their study, the researchers transplanted these scaffolds into rats with spinal cords that were completely severed. The cells successfully differentiated into neurons and extended their nerve fibers in both directions — rostral (toward the head) and caudal (toward the tail) — to form new connections with the host’s existing nerve circuits.

The new nerve cells integrated seamlessly into the host spinal cord tissue over time, leading to significant functional recovery in the rats.

[…]

Source: Rats walk again after breakthrough spinal cord repair with 3D printing | ScienceDaily

Scientists discover a new magnet that bends light

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Researchers have uncovered the magnetic properties and underlying mechanisms of a novel magnet using advanced optical techniques. Their study focused on an organic crystal believed to be a promising candidate for an “altermagnet”- a recently proposed third class of magnetic materials. Unlike conventional ferromagnets and antiferromagnets, altermagnets exhibit unique magnetic behavior.

Details of their breakthrough were published recently in the journal Physical Review Research.

“Unlike typical magnets that attract each other, altermagnets do not exhibit net magnetization, yet they can still influence the polarization of reflected light,” points out Satoshi Iguchi, associate professor at Tohoku University’s Institute for Materials Research. “This makes them difficult to study using conventional optical techniques.”

To overcome this, Iguchi and his colleagues applied a newly derived general formula for light reflection to the organic crystal, successfully clarifying its magnetic properties and origin.

[…]

The team’s newly derived general formula for light reflection was based on Maxwell’s equations and is applicable to a wide range of materials, including those with low crystal symmetry, such as the organic compound studied here.

This new theoretical framework also allowed the team to develop a precise optical measurement method and apply it to the organic crystal κ-(BEDT-TTF)2Cu[N(CN)2]Cl. They successfully measured the magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE) and extracted the off-diagonal optical conductivity spectrum, which provides detailed information about the material’s magnetic and electronic properties.

The results revealed three key features in the spectrum: (1) edge peaks indicating spin band splitting, (2) a real component associated with crystal distortion and piezomagnetic effects, and (3) an imaginary component linked to rotational currents. These findings not only confirm the altermagnetic nature of the material but also demonstrate the power of the newly developed optical method.

“This research opens the door to exploring magnetism in a broader class of materials, including organic compounds, and lays the groundwork for future development of high-performance magnetic devices based on lightweight, flexible materials,” adds Iguchi.

Source: Scientists discover a strange new magnet that bends light like magic | ScienceDaily

State Dept. Guts Human Rights Reporting, Removing Anything The Administration Doesn’t Think Violates Human Rights

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[…] go ahead and read a few of the reports generated by Marco Rubio/Donald Trump’s State Department and compare them to literally any of those published before Trump’s second term began.

[…]

But if you really want to see how this administration is rewriting its world view to serve its own ends, you need to click through and see the depressingly long list of human rights violations and international crimes the Trump administration no longer desires to treat as violations or criminal acts.

This is only part of it and it’s already more than enough:

Everything highlighted and struck-through is something the State Department will not be investigating or reporting on as long as the GOP is still in power.

Starting from the top, here’s only a partial list of what the Trump administration will be deliberately turning a blind eye to for at least the next three years:

  • Prison conditions
  • Due process rights
  • Property seizures and/or restitution
  • Libel and slander laws
  • “National security (used as a pretext for punishing critics)”
  • Freedom of peaceful assembly
  • Abuse of refugees and asylum seekers
  • Access to basic services for asylum seekers
  • Abuses or irregularities in recent elections
  • Participation of women or members of marginalized people in elections
  • “Section 4: Corruption in government”
  • Retribution against human rights defenders
  • Rape and domestic violence
  • Gender-based violence
  • Child abuse or neglect
  • Sexual exploitation of children
  • Institutionalization of people with disabilities
  • Everything under the heading: “Lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex persons”

That’s not even the entire list, but it’s indicative enough of what this administration thinks should be treated as acceptable behavior by the government, government officials, and anyone in the general population deserving enough of having their crimes against others (and humanity in general) ignored by the people in power.

This sort of thing would be considered breathtakingly horrendous anywhere in the world. That it’s happening in the nation that many considered to be the “Leader of the Free World” is absolutely sickening.

Source: State Dept. Guts Human Rights Reporting, Removing Anything The Administration Doesn’t Think Violates Human Rights | Techdirt

Google wants to verify all developers’ identities, including those not on the play store in massive data grab

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  • Google will soon verify the identities of developers who distribute Android apps outside the Play Store.
  • Developers must submit their information to a new Android Developer Console, increasing their accountability for their apps.
  • Rolling out in phases from September 2026, these new verification requirements are aimed at protecting users from malware by making it harder for malicious developers to remain anonymous.

 

Most Android users acquire apps from the Google Play Store, but a small number of users download apps from outside of it, a process known as sideloading. There are some nifty tools that aren’t available on the Play Store because their developers don’t want to deal with Google’s approval or verification requirements. This is understandable for hobbyist developers who simply want to share something cool or useful without the burden of shedding their anonymity or committing to user support.

[…]

Today, Google announced it is introducing a new “developer verification requirement” for all apps installed on Android devices, regardless of source. The company wants to verify the identity of all developers who distribute apps on Android, even if those apps aren’t on the Play Store. According to Google, this adds a “crucial layer of accountability to the ecosystem” and is designed to “protect users from malware and financial fraud.” Only users with “certified” Android devices — meaning those that ship with the Play Store, Play Services, and other Google Mobile Services (GMS) apps — will block apps from unverified developers from being installed.

Google says it will only verify the identity of developers, not check the contents of their apps or their origin. However, it’s worth noting that Google Play Protect, the malware scanning service integrated into the Play Store, already scans all installed apps regardless of where they came from. Thus, the new requirement doesn’t prevent malicious apps from reaching users, but it does make it harder for their developers to remain anonymous. Google likens this new requirement to ID checks at the airport, which verify the identity of travelers but not whether they’re carrying anything dangerous.

[…]

Source: Google wants to make sideloading Android apps safer by verifying developers’ identities – Android Authority

So the new requirement doesn’t make things any safer, but gives Google a whole load of new personal data for no good reason other than that they want it. I guess it’s becoming more and more time to de-Google.

Farmers Insurance data breach impacts 1.1M people after Salesforce attack

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U.S. insurance giant Farmers Insurance has disclosed a data breach impacting 1.1 million customers, with BleepingComputer learning that the data was stolen in the widespread Salesforce attacks.

Farmers Insurance is a U.S.-based insurer that provides auto, home, life, and business insurance products. It operates through a network of agents and subsidiaries, serving more than 10 million households nationwide.

The company disclosed the data breach in an advisory on its website, saying that its database at a third-party vendor was breached on May 29, 2025.

“On May 30, 2025, one of Farmers’ third-party vendors alerted Farmers to suspicious activity involving an unauthorized actor accessing one of the vendor’s databases containing Farmers customer information (the “Incident”),” reads the data breach notification on its website.

[…]

The company says that its investigation determined that customers’ names, addresses, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, and/or last four digits of Social Security numbers were stolen during the breach.

Farmers began sending data breach notifications to impacted individuals on August 22, with a sample notification [1, 2] shared with the Maine Attorney General’s Office, stating that a combined total of 1,111,386 customers were impacted.

[…]

Source: Farmers Insurance data breach impacts 1.1M people after Salesforce attack

Trump admin strips ocean and air pollution monitoring from next-gen weather satellites

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is narrowing the capabilities and reducing the number of next-generation weather and climate satellites it plans to build and launch in the coming decades, two people familiar with the plans told CNN.

This move — which comes as hurricane season ramps up with Erin lashing the East Coast — fits a pattern in which the Trump administration is seeking to not only slash climate pollution rules, but also reduce the information collected about the pollution in the first place. Critics of the plan also say it’s a short-sighted attempt to save money at the expense of understanding the oceans and atmosphere better.

Two planned instruments, one that would measure air quality, including pollution and wildfire smoke, and another that would observe ocean conditions in unprecedented detail, are no longer part of the project, the sources said.

“This administration has taken a very narrow view of weather,” one NOAA official told CNN, noting the jettisoned satellite instruments could have led to better enforcement and regulations on air pollution by more precisely measuring it.

[…]

Having fewer satellites in the sky means less redundancy and raises the risk of critical data outages, the NOAA official stated. “It’s gambling with the continuity of an operational system that we’ve relied on since the early 70s,” they said.

The satellite series is meant to be the successor to the GOES satellites, which provide a wealth of data for weather forecasting, with the first launch set for 2032 and service lasting through 2055.

[…]

Source: Trump admin strips ocean and air pollution monitoring from next-gen weather satellites | CNN

4chan will refuse to pay daily UK fines, its lawyer tells BBC

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A lawyer representing the online message board 4chan says it won’t pay a proposed fine by the UK’s media regulator as it enforces the Online Safety Act.

According to Preston Byrne, managing partner of law firm Byrne & Storm, Ofcom has provisionally decided to impose a £20,000 fine “with daily penalties thereafter” for as long as the site fails to comply with its request.

“Ofcom’s notices create no legal obligations in the United States,” he told the BBC, adding he believed the regulator’s investigation was part of an “illegal campaign of harassment” against US tech firms.

Ofcom has declined to comment while its investigation continues.

“4chan has broken no laws in the United States – my client will not pay any penalty,” Mr Byrne said.

[…]

In a statement posted on X, law firms Byrne & Storm and Coleman Law said 4chan was a US company incorporated in the US, and therefore protected against the UK law.

“American businesses do not surrender their First Amendment rights because a foreign bureaucrat sends them an email,” they wrote.

“Under settled principles of US law, American courts will not enforce foreign penal fines or censorship codes.

“If necessary, we will seek appropriate relief in US federal court to confirm these principles.”

[…]

Ofcom has previously said the Online Safety Act only requires services to take action to protect users based in the UK.

[…]

If 4chan does successfully fight the fine in the US courts, Ofcom may have other options.

“Enforcing against an offshore provider is tricky,” Emma Drake, partner of online safety and privacy at law firm Bird and Bird, told the BBC.

“Ofcom can instead ask a court to order other services to disrupt a provider’s UK business, such as requiring a service’s removal from search results or blocking of UK payments.

“If Ofcom doesn’t think this will be enough to prevent significant harm, it can even ask that ISPs be ordered to block UK access.”

Source: 4chan will refuse to pay daily UK fines, its lawyer tells BBC

Welcome to the world of censorship.

YouTube’s Sneaky AI ‘Experiment’ changing your videos without you knowing

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Something strange has been happening on YouTube over the past few weeks. After being uploaded, some videos have been subtly augmented, their appearance changing without their creators doing anything. Viewers have noticed “extra punchy shadows,” “weirdly sharp edges,” and a smoothed-out look to footage that makes it look “like plastic.” Many people have come to the same conclusion: YouTube is using AI to tweak videos on its platform, without creators’ knowledge.

[…]

When I asked Google, YouTube’s parent company, about what’s happening to these videos, the spokesperson Allison Toh wrote, “We’re running an experiment on select YouTube Shorts that uses image enhancement technology to sharpen content. These enhancements are not done with generative AI.” But this is a tricky statement: “Generative AI” has no strict technical definition, and “image enhancement technology” could be anything. I asked for more detail about which technologies are being employed, and to what end. Toh said YouTube is “using traditional machine learning to unblur, denoise, and improve clarity in videos,” she told me. (It’s unknown whether the modified videos are being shown to all users or just some; tech companies will sometimes run limited tests of new features.)

[…]

Source: YouTube’s Sneaky AI ‘Experiment’

Study finds sea-level projections from the 1990s were spot on

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Global sea-level change has now been measured by satellites for more than 30 years, and a comparison with climate projections from the mid-1990s shows that they were remarkably accurate, according to two Tulane University researchers whose findings appear in Earth’s Future, an open-access journal published by the American Geophysical Union.

“The ultimate test of climate projections is to compare them with what has played out since they were made, but this requires patience. It takes decades of observations,” said lead author Torbjörn Törnqvist, Vokes Geology Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

“We were quite amazed how good those early projections were, especially when you think about how crude the models were back then, compared to what is available now,” Törnqvist said. “For anyone who questions the role of humans in changing our climate, here is some of the best proof that we have understood for decades what is really happening, and that we can make credible projections.”

[…]

“Sea level doesn’t rise uniformly – it varies widely,” he said. “Our recent study of this regional variability and the processes behind it relies heavily on data from NASA’s satellite missions and NOAA’s ocean monitoring programs. Continuing these efforts is more important than ever, and essential for informed decision-making to benefit the people living along the coast.”

A new era of monitoring global sea-level change took off when satellites were launched in the early 1990s to measure the height of the ocean surface. This showed that the rate of global sea-level rise since that time has averaged about one eighth of an inch per year. Only more recently, it became possible to detect that the rate of global sea-level rise is accelerating.

When NASA researchers demonstrated in October 2024 that the rate has doubled during this 30-year period, the time was right to compare this finding with projections that were made during the mid-1990s, independent of the satellite measurements.

In 1996, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published an assessment report soon after the satellite-based sea-level measurements had started. It projected that the most likely amount of global sea-level rise over the next 30 years would be almost 8 centimeters (3 inches), remarkably close to the 9 centimeters that has occurred. But it also underestimated the role of melting ice sheets by more than 2 centimeters (about 1 inch).

[…]

Source: Study finds sea-level projections from the 1990s were spot on | Tulane University News

Paper: Evaluating IPCC Projections of Global Sea-Level Change From the Pre-Satellite Era

A universal rhythm guides how we speak: Global analysis reveals 1.6-second ‘intonation units’

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Have you ever noticed that a natural conversation flows like a dance—pauses, emphases, and turns arriving just in time? A new study has discovered that this isn’t just intuition; there is a biological rhythm embedded in our speech.

The work is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to the study, led by Dr. Maya Inbar, alongside Professors Eitan Grossman and Ayelet N. Landau, human speech across the world pulses to the beat of what are called units, short prosodic phrases that occur at a consistent rate of one every 1.6 seconds.

The research analyzed over 650 recordings in 48 languages spanning every continent and 27 . Using a novel algorithm, the team was able to automatically identify intonation units in spontaneous speech, revealing that regardless of the language spoken, from English and Russian to in remote regions, people naturally break their speech into these rhythmic chunks.

“These findings suggest that the way we pace our speech isn’t just a cultural artifact, it’s deeply rooted in and biology,” says Dr. Inbar. “We also show that the rhythm of intonation units is unrelated to faster rhythms in speech, such as the rhythm of syllables, and thus likely serves a different cognitive role.”

Why does this matter? intonation units play a critical role in helping listeners follow conversations, take turns speaking, and absorb information. They also offer children crucial cues for learning language. Most intriguingly, the low-frequency rhythm they follow mirrors patterns in linked to memory, attention, and volitional action, illuminating the profound connection between how we speak and how we think.

“This study not only strengthens the idea that intonation units are a universal feature of language,” explains Prof. Grossman, from the Department of Linguistics at Hebrew University, “but also shows that the truly universal properties of languages are not independent of our physiology and cognition.”

[…]

Source: A universal rhythm guides how we speak: Global analysis reveals 1.6-second ‘intonation units’

Uni of Melbourne used Wi-Fi location data to ID protestors

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Australia’s University of Melbourne last year used Wi-Fi location data to identify student protestors.

The University used Wi-Fi to identify students who participated in July 2024 sit-in protest. As described in a report [PDF] into the matter by the state of Victoria’s Office of the Information Commissioner, the University directed protestors to leave the building they occupied and warned those who remained could be suspended, disciplined, or reported to police.

The report says 22 chose to remain, and that the University used CCTV and WiFi location data to identify them.

The Information Commissioner found that use of CCTV to identify protestors did not breach privacy, but felt using Wi-Fi location data did because the University’s policies lacked detail.

“Given that individuals would not have been aware of why their Wi-Fi location data was collected and how it may be used, they could not exercise an informed choice as to whether to use the Wi-Fi network during the sit-in, and be aware of the possible consequences for doing so,” the report found.

As the investigation into use of location data unfolded, the University changed its policies regarding use of location data. The Office of the Information Commissioner therefore decided not to issue a formal compliance notice, and will monitor the University to ensure it complies with its undertakings.

Source: Australian uni used Wi-Fi location data to ID protestors • The Register

Privacy‑Preserving Age Verification Falls Apart On Contact With Reality

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[…] Identity‑proofing creates a privacy bottleneck. Somewhere, an identity provider must verify you. Even if it later mints an unlinkable token, that provider is the weak link—and in regulated systems it will not be allowed to “just delete” your information. As Bellovin puts it:

Regulation implies the ability for governments to audit the regulated entities’ behavior. That in turn implies that logs must be kept. It is likely that such logs would include user names, addresses, ages, and forms of credentials presented.

Then there’s the issue of fraud and duplication of credentials. Accepting multiple credential types increases coverage and increases abuse; people can and do hold multiple valid IDs:

The fact that multiple forms of ID are acceptable… exacerbates the fraud issue…This makes it impossible to prevent a single person from obtaining multiple primary credentials, including ones for use by underage individuals.

Cost and access will absolutely chill speech. Identity providers are expensive. If users pay, you’ve built a wealth test for lawful speech. If sites pay, the costs roll downhill (fees, ads, data‑for‑access) and coverage narrows to the cheapest providers who may also be more susceptible to breaches:

Operating an IDP is likely to be expensive… If web sites shoulder the cost, they will have to recover it from their users. That would imply higher access charges, more ads (with their own privacy challenges), or both.

Sharing credentials drives mission creep, which will create dangers with the technology. If a token proves only “over 18,” people will share it (parents to kids, friends to friends). To deter that, providers tie tokens to identities/devices or bundle more attributes—making them more linkable and more revocable:

If the only use of the primary credential is obtaining age-verifying subcredentials, this isn’t much of a deterrent—many people simply won’t care…That, however, creates pressure for mission creep… , including opening bank accounts, employment verification, and vaccination certificates; however, this is also a major point of social control, since it is possible to revoke a primary credential and with it all derived subcredentials.

The end result, then is you’re not just attacking privacy again, but you’re creating a tool for authoritarian pressure:

Those who are disfavored by authoritarian governments may lose access not just to pornography, but to social media and all of these other services.

He also grounds it in lived reality, with a case study that shows who gets locked out first:

Consider a hypothetical person “Chris”, a non-driving senior citizen living with an adult child in a rural area of the U.S… Apart from the expense— quite possibly non-trivial for a poor family—Chris must persuade their child to then drive them 80 kilometers or more to a motor vehicles office…

There is also the social aspect. Imagine the embarrassment to all of an older parent having to explain to their child that they wish to view pornography.

None of this is an attack on the math. It’s a reminder that deployment reality ruins the cryptographic ideal. There’s more in the paper, but you get the idea

[…]

Source: Privacy‑Preserving Age Verification Falls Apart On Contact With Reality | Techdirt