>Clearly, Google is serious about trying to oust ad blockers from its browser, or at least those extensions with fuller (V2) levels of functionality. One of the crucial twists with V3 is that it prevents the use of remotely hosted code – as a security measure – but this also means ad blockers can’t update their filter lists without going through Google’s review process. What does that mean? Way slower updates for said filters, which hampers the ability of the ad-blocking extension to keep up with the necessary changes to stay effective. > >(This isn’t just about browsers, either, as the war on advert dodgers extends to YouTube, too, as we’ve seen in recent months). > >At any rate, Google is playing with fire here somewhat – or Firefox, perhaps we should say – as this may be the shove some folks need to get them considering another of the best web browsers out there aside from Chrome. Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has vowed to maintain support for V2 extensions, while introducing support for V3 alongside to give folks a choice (now there’s a radical idea).

>Depending on where you're based, you'll find PayPal's new data-sharing option under a different name. Remember, you may not see this at all if you're based in a country that doesn't allow it. > >If you're in the US, you should head to your profile Settings and tap on Data & privacy. Under Manage shared info, click on Personalized shopping. You should see the option enabled by default. Toggle off the button at the right to opt-out. > >If you are in the UK like me, you'll see something different after you head to your profile Settings and tap on Data & privacy. > >Under Manage your privacy settings, here you'll see an Interest-based marketing tab – click on it. At this point, two options will appear: Interest-based marketing on PayPal and Internet-based marketing on your accounts. You have to tap on each of these and toggle off the button at the right to opt-out. These instructions can also apply if you're based in the EU.

>Depending on where you're based, you'll find PayPal's new data-sharing option under a different name. Remember, you may not see this at all if you're based in a country that doesn't allow it. > >If you're in the US, you should head to your profile Settings and tap on Data & privacy. Under Manage shared info, click on Personalized shopping. You should see the option enabled by default. Toggle off the button at the right to opt-out. > >If you are in the UK like me, you'll see something different after you head to your profile Settings and tap on Data & privacy. > >Under Manage your privacy settings, here you'll see an Interest-based marketing tab – click on it. At this point, two options will appear: Interest-based marketing on PayPal and Internet-based marketing on your accounts. You have to tap on each of these and toggle off the button at the right to opt-out. These instructions can also apply if you're based in the EU.

>The Thunderbird for Android beta is out and we’re asking our community to help us test it. Beta testing helps us find critical bugs and rough edges that we can polish in the next few weeks. The more people who test the beta and ensure everything in the testing checklist works correctly, the better!

>Anyone can be a beta tester! Whether you’re an experienced beta tester or you’ve never tested a beta image before, we want to make it easy for you. We are grateful for your time and energy, so we aim to make testing quick, efficient, and hopefully fun!!

>The release plan is as follows, and we hope to stick to this timeline unless we encounter any major hurdles: > >- September 30 – First beta for Thunderbird for Android >- Third week of October – first release candidate >- Fourth week of October – Thunderbird for Android release

>The Thunderbird for Android beta is out and we’re asking our community to help us test it. Beta testing helps us find critical bugs and rough edges that we can polish in the next few weeks. The more people who test the beta and ensure everything in the testing checklist works correctly, the better!

>Anyone can be a beta tester! Whether you’re an experienced beta tester or you’ve never tested a beta image before, we want to make it easy for you. We are grateful for your time and energy, so we aim to make testing quick, efficient, and hopefully fun!!

>The release plan is as follows, and we hope to stick to this timeline unless we encounter any major hurdles: > >- September 30 – First beta for Thunderbird for Android >- Third week of October – first release candidate >- Fourth week of October – Thunderbird for Android release

Archive link: https://archive.ph/PgtUk

>The Arch Linux team has announced on its public mailing list that it will be entering into a direct collaboration with Valve.

>As primary Arch Linux developer Levente Polyak discloses in the announcement post, "Valve is generously providing backing for two critical projects that will have a huge impact on our distribution: a build service infrastructure and a secure signing enclave. By supporting work on a freelance basis for these topics, Valve enables us to work on them without being limited solely by the free time of our volunteers." > >Polyak continues, "This opportunity allows us to address some of the biggest outstanding challenges we have been facing for a while. The collaboration will speed up the progress that would otherwise take much longer for us to achieve, and will ultimately unblock us from finally pursuing some of our planned endeavors [...] We believe this collaboration will greatly benefit Arch Linux, and are looking forward to share further development on the mailing list as work progresses." > >These quotes go to show how bigger corporations like Valve can still be a helpful, desirable influence in the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) community. While the rules of FOSS dictate that Valve was under no obligation whatsoever to give back to the community in any way, it's had a great track record so far through Proton and is now directly funding the continued development of Arch Linux, which forms the foundation of its own SteamOS 3 operating system. It's true that volunteers in FOSS make that part of the tech world go round, but it's always nice when these projects can actually afford to pay people to get the work that needs to be done for the rest of our enjoyment.

>A new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report confirms what EFF has been warning about for years: tech giants are widely harvesting and sharing your personal information to fuel their online behavioral advertising businesses. This four-year investigation into the data practices of nine social media and video platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, and X (formally Twitter), demonstrates how commercial surveillance leaves consumers with little control over their privacy. While not every investigated company committed the same privacy violations, the conclusion is clear: companies prioritized profits over privacy. > >While EFF has long warned about these practices, the FTC’s investigation offers detailed evidence of how widespread and invasive commercial surveillance has become. Here are key takeaways from the report

>Anyone who has been surfing the web for a while is probably used to clicking through a CAPTCHA grid of street images, identifying everyday objects to prove that they're a human and not an automated bot. Now, though, new research claims that locally run bots using specially trained image-recognition models can match human-level performance in this style of CAPTCHA, achieving a 100 percent success rate despite being decidedly not human. > >ETH Zurich PhD student Andreas Plesner and his colleagues' new research, available as a pre-print paper, focuses on Google's ReCAPTCHA v2, which challenges users to identify which street images in a grid contain items like bicycles, crosswalks, mountains, stairs, or traffic lights. Google began phasing that system out years ago in favor of an "invisible" reCAPTCHA v3 that analyzes user interactions rather than offering an explicit challenge. > >Despite this, the older reCAPTCHA v2 is still used by millions of websites. And even sites that use the updated reCAPTCHA v3 will sometimes use reCAPTCHA v2 as a fallback when the updated system gives a user a low "human" confidence rating.

>Tails will be incorporated “into the Tor Project’s structure,” which will allow for “easier collaboration, better sustainability, reduced overhead, and expanded training and outreach programs to counter a larger number of digital threats,” according to a blog post published today by the Tor Project

>The move embodies how ads are a growing and virtually inescapable part of the TV-viewing experience—even when you're not watching anything.

>As you might have expected, LG didn’t make a big, splashy announcement to consumers or LG TV owners about this new ad format. Instead, and ostensibly strategically, the September 5 announcement was made to advertisers. LG appears to know that screensaver ads aren't a feature that excites users. Still, it and many other TV makers are happy to shove ads into the software of already-purchased devices.

>LG TV owners may have already spotted the ads or learned about them via FlatpanelsHD, which today reported seeing a full-screen ad on the screensaver for LG's latest flagship TV, the G4. “The ad appeared before the conventional screensaver kicks in," per the website, “and was localized to the region the TV was set to.”

>LG has put these ads on by default, according to FlatpanelsHD, but you can disable them in the TVs' settings. Still, the introduction of ads during a screensaver, shown during a pause in TV viewing that some TVs use as an opportunity to show art or personal photos that amplify the space, illustrates the high priority that ad dollars and tracking have among today’s TVs—even new top-of-the-line ones.

>The addition of screensaver ads that users can disable may sound like a comparatively smaller disruption as far as TV operating system (OS) ads go. But the incorporation of new ad formats into TV OSes' various nooks and crannies is a slippery slope. Some TV brands are even centered more on ads than selling hardware. Unfortunately, it’s up to OS operators and TV OEMs to decide where the line is, including for already-purchased TVs. User and advertiser interests don’t always align, making TV streaming platforms without third-party ads, such as Apple TV, increasingly scarce gems.

>Some of the world’s largest companies have been accused of undermining democracy across the world by financially backing far-right political movements, funding and exacerbating the climate crisis, and violating trade union rights and human rights in a report published on Monday by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). > >Amazon, Tesla, Meta, ExxonMobil, Blackstone, Vanguard and Glencore are the corporations included in the report. The companies’ lobbying arms are attempting to shape global policy at the United Nations Summit of the Future in New York City on 22 and 23 September.

>Some of the world’s largest companies have been accused of undermining democracy across the world by financially backing far-right political movements, funding and exacerbating the climate crisis, and violating trade union rights and human rights in a report published on Monday by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). > >Amazon, Tesla, Meta, ExxonMobil, Blackstone, Vanguard and Glencore are the corporations included in the report. The companies’ lobbying arms are attempting to shape global policy at the United Nations Summit of the Future in New York City on 22 and 23 September.

>YouTube Premium users across the globe are facing significant price hikes as Google increases subscription costs in over a dozen countries. This follows earlier price jumps in various regions, including the United States last summer. The latest increases vary by region, with some countries experiencing hikes between 30% to 50%. For instance, in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy, the Family plan will rise from €18 to €26 starting November, while the individual plan will increase by €2 to €14. > >Countries affected by these changes include Ireland, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, UAE, Switzerland, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Colombia, Thailand, Singapore, Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic, and Denmark. Although most Reddit reports are from European users, the price hikes also impact the Middle East, Colombia, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. YouTube had already raised its subscription prices in India by 15–20% in late August.

>Despite US dominance in so many different areas of technology, we're sadly somewhat of a backwater when it comes to car headlamps. It's been this way for many decades, a result of restrictive federal vehicle regulations that get updated rarely. The latest lights to try to work their way through red tape and onto the road are active-matrix LED lamps, which can shape their beams to avoid blinding oncoming drivers. > >From the 1960s, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards allowed for only sealed high- and low-beam headlamps, and as a result, automakers like Mercedes-Benz would sell cars with less capable lighting in North America than it offered to European customers. > >A decade ago, this was still the case. In 2014, Audi tried unsuccessfully to bring its new laser high-beam technology to US roads. Developed in the racing crucible that is the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the laser lights illuminate much farther down the road than the high beams of the time, but in this case, the lighting tech had to satisfy both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Food and Drug Administration, which has regulatory oversight for any laser products. > >The good news is that by 2019, laser high beams were finally an available option on US roads, albeit once the power got turned down to reduce their range. > >NHTSA's opposition to advanced lighting tech is not entirely misplaced. Obviously, being able to see far down the road at night is a good thing for a driver. On the other hand, being dazzled or blinded by the bright headlights of an approaching driver is categorically not a good thing. Nor is losing your night vision to the glare of a car (it's always a pickup) behind you with too-bright lights that fill your mirrors. > >This is where active-matrix LED high beams come in, which use clusters of controllable LED pixels. Think of it like a more advanced version of the "auto high beam" function found on many newer cars, which uses a car's forward-looking sensors to know when to dim the lights and when to leave the high beams on. > >Here, sensor data is used much more granularly. Instead of turning off the entire high beam, the car only turns off individual pixels, so the roadway is still illuminated, but a car a few hundred feet up the road won't be. > >Rather than design entirely new headlight clusters for the US, most OEMs' solution was to offer the hardware here but disable the beam-shaping function—easy to do when it's just software. But in 2022, NHTSA relented—nine years after Toyota first asked the regulator to reconsider its stance.

>But while the harms to publishers and advertisers have been outlined at length, there's been less talk about the seemingly major consequences for consumers perhaps harmed by the alleged monopoly. Those harms include higher costs of goods, less privacy, and increasingly lower-quality ads that frequently bombard their screens with products nobody wants. > >By overcharging by as much as 5 or 10 percent for online ads, Google allegedly placed a "Google tax" on the price of "everyday goods we buy," Tech Oversight's Sacha Haworth explained during a press briefing Thursday, where experts closely monitoring the trial shared insights. > >"When it comes to lowering costs on families," Haworth said, "Google has overcharged advertisers and publishers by nearly $2 billion. That's just over the last four years. That has inflated the price of ads, it's increased the cost of doing business, and, of course, these costs get passed down to us when we buy things online." > >But while it's unclear if destroying Google's alleged monopoly would pass on any savings to consumers, Elise Phillips, policy counsel focused on competition and privacy for Public Knowledge, outlined other benefits in the event of a DOJ win. > >She suggested that Google's conduct has diminished innovation, which has "negatively" affected "the quality diversity and even relevancy of the advertisements that consumers tend to see." > >Were Google's ad tech to be broken up and behavioral remedies sought, more competition might mean that consumers have more control over how their personal data is used in targeted advertising, Phillips suggested, and ultimately, lead to a future where everyone gets fed higher-quality ads. > >That could happen if, instead of Google's ad model dominating the Internet, less invasive ad targeting models could become more widely adopted, experts suggested. That could enhance privacy and make online ads less terrible after The New York Times declared a "junk ad epidemic" last year. > >The thinking goes that if small businesses and publishers benefited from potentially reduced costs, increased revenues, and more options, consumers might start seeing a wider, higher-quality range of ads online, experts suggested. > >Better ad models "are already out there," Open Markets Institute policy analyst Karina Montoya said, such as "conceptual advertising" that uses signals that, unlike Google's targeting, don't rely on "gigantic, massive data sets that collect every single thing that we do in all of our devices and that don't ask for our consent."

>Four more large Internet service providers told the US Supreme Court this week that ISPs shouldn't be forced to aggressively police copyright infringement on broadband networks.

>While the ISPs worry about financial liability from lawsuits filed by major record labels and other copyright holders, they also argue that mass terminations of Internet users accused of piracy "would harm innocent people by depriving households, schools, hospitals, and businesses of Internet access." The legal question presented by the case "is exceptionally important to the future of the Internet," they wrote in a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Monday.

>The Verge reports that YouTube is rolling out advertisements that show up when you pause videos, continuing experiments that the company started a year ago. A YouTube representative confirmed that the practice will now become commonplace “as we’ve seen both strong advertiser and strong viewer response.”

>The representative said that advertising on paused videos is designed to create a “less interruptive” experience. But as The Verge notes, that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to see a drop in the increasing load of obnoxious and often unskippable advertising on YouTube. And since I’m seeing more and more creators pack their videos with sponsorships, I somehow doubt that the people making YouTube’s content are going to get a bigger slice of the advertising pie.

>“We estimate we can sell up to 80 percent of an individual’s visual field before inducing seizures,” said the fictional CEO (of a company that bears more than a passing resemblance to Google) in Ready Player One.

>Apropos of nothing, it’s possible to block every single ad on YouTube — even the sponsorships that are baked into the videos themselves — on both desktop and mobile.