ForgottenFlux

Microsoft clearly isn’t bothered that it’s automatically starting up Edge on people’s PC and then trying to trick them into importing their Chrome data. That’s not too surprising though since Microsoft has been pulling tricks like this for more than four years now.

Microsoft’s behavior here makes many people distrust Edge, Windows 11, and even the company’s AI efforts.

• Hyundai is slowly backing away from the all-screen approach to interior design.
• Hyundai Design North America Vice President Ha Hak-soo said that people "get stressed, annoyed and steamed when they want to control something in a pinch but are unable to do so."

The team behind menstrual health and period tracking app Clue has said it will not disclose users' data to American authorities, following Donald Trump's reelection.

The message comes in response to concerns that during Trump's second presidency, abortion bans that followed the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022 will worsen and states will attempt to increase menstrual surveillance in order to further restrict access to terminations.

• A new patch is being quietly pushed to Windows 10 (and 11) PCs
• It’ll force upgrades in certain circumstances to keep the PC in support
• This update will mean more nag prompts coming to your PC

404 Media, along with Haaretz, Notus, and Krebs On Security recently reported on a company that captures smartphone location data from a variety of sources and collates that data into an easy-to-use tool to track devices’ (and, by proxy, individuals’) locations. The dangers that this tool presents are especially grave for those traveling to or from out-of-state reproductive health clinics, places of worship, and the border.

The tool, called Locate X, is run by a company called Babel Street. Locate X is designed for law enforcement, but an investigator working with Atlas Privacy, a data removal service, was able to gain access to Locate X by simply asserting that they planned to work with law enforcement in the future.

With an incoming administration adversarial to those most at risk from location tracking using tools like Locate X, the time is ripe to bolster our digital defenses. Now more than ever, attorneys general in states hostile to reproductive choice will be emboldened to use every tool at their disposal to incriminate those exerting their bodily autonomy. Locate X is a powerful tool they can use to do this. So here are some timely tips to help protect your location privacy.

A DNA-testing firm appears to have ceased trading - without telling its customers what has happened to the highly sensitive data they shared with it.

Atlas Biomed, which has offices in London, offered to provide insights into people's genetic make up as well as their predisposition to certain illnesses.

However, users are no longer able to access their personalised reports online and the company has not responded to the BBC's requests for comment.

Customers of the firm describe the situation as "very alarming" and say they want answers about what has happened to their "most personal information".

The apparent disappearance of Atlas Biomed is a mystery - but it appears to have links with Russia.

Prof Carissa Veliz - author of Privacy is Power - points out that DNA is arguably the most valuable personal data you have. It is uniquely yours, you can’t change it, and it reveals your – and by extension, your family’s - biological strengths and weaknesses.

Biometric data is given special protection under the UK’s version of GDPR, the data protection law.

"When you give your data to a company you are completely at their mercy and you have to be able to trust them," Prof Veliz said.

"We shouldn’t have to wait until something happens."

Firefox stands for the web of open standards: it's good that the browser exists. However, it is slipping into insignificance.

A healthy browser ecosystem needs diversity so that one day one company cannot dictate to everyone how they should use the internet. We've been through this before, and it didn't go well. On that note: Happy birthday, Firefox, may you have many more birthdays!

After its website was crippled for nearly a month by a cyberattack, the Internet Archive announced on Monday that it had restored one of its most valuable services—the Save Page Now feature that allows users to add copies of webpages to the organization’s digital library.

In a social media post, the Internet Archive said web pages that users had attempted to save since October 9 are beginning to be archived now, although it did not provide an estimate for when the process would be completed. So, if you were worried that all of that election coverage was in danger of disappearing, the Archive says it’s handling the backlog. And if you stopped archiving because it was down, get back to work.

The organization had been operating its collection in read-only mode since October 21 as it steadily worked to restore services.

Founded in 1996, the Internet Archive is a nonprofit based in San Francisco that provides access to historic web pages, digitized books, and a variety of other media that it has uploaded through its partnerships with hundreds of physical libraries and other partners.

Its unparalleled collection currently contains 835 billion web pages, 44 million books and texts, 15 million audio recordings, 10.6 million videos, 4.8 million images, and 1 million software programs.

Bitwarden isn't going proprietary after all. The company has changed its license terms once again – but this time, it has switched the license of its software development kit from its own homegrown one to version three of the GPL instead.

The move comes just weeks after we reported that it wasn't strictly FOSS any more. At the time, the company claimed that this was just a mistake in how it packaged up its software, saying on Twitter:

It seems like a packaging bug was misunderstood as something more, and the team plans to resolve it. Bitwarden remains committed to the open source licensing model in place for years, along with retaining a fully featured free version for individual users.

Now it's followed through on this. A GitHub commit entitled "Improve licensing language" changes the licensing on the company's SDK from its own license to the unmodified GPL3.

Previously, if you removed the internal SDK, it was no longer possible to build the publicly available source code without errors. Now the publicly available SDK is GPL3 and you can get and build the whole thing.

The October 2024 edition of Linux Mint’s Monthly News brings exciting updates, including a significant announcement about collaboration with Framework Laptops, having potential to advance Mint’s compatibility with hardware designed with flexibility, repairability, and sustainability in mind.

For those unfamiliar, unlike most traditional laptops, which are often difficult or impossible to repair or upgrade, Framework laptops are built to be user-friendly, making it easy to replace or upgrade components. This modular approach extends the laptop’s lifespan and promotes sustainability by reducing e-waste.

Signups opened this week for Loops, a short-form looping video app from the creator of Instagram alternative Pixelfed, reports TechCrunch.

Signups opened this week for Loops, a short-form looping video app from the creator of Instagram alternative Pixelfed, reports TechCrunch.