Federal investigators have ordered Google to provide information on all viewers of select YouTube videos, according to multiple court orders obtained by Forbes. Privacy experts from multiple civil rights groups told Forbes they think the orders are unconstitutional because they threaten to turn innocent YouTube viewers into criminal suspects. ↫ Thomas Brewster at Forbes United States law enforcement has been asking Google who watches certain YouTube videos, covering as many as 30,000 people per video. They wanted names, addresses, telephone numbers and user activity for all Google accounts who had watched a video within a certain week’s timeframe, and the IP addresses of everyone who watched the video without a Google account. That’s an absolute crapton of data, all because they suspected one person of a money-laundering scheme. And this is just one example. Forbes could not determine if Google complied with the requests, but it does highlight the dangers of having so much data on one place.

So looking back, it is obvious that neither Atari or Commodore would really be able to succeed in the long-term, although perhaps one of them could have become the 3rd “also-ran”. For a while, Atari really thought they could be that third choice and some of their late-model computers have some impressive innovations. With that preamble over with, let’s talk about the last Atari computer: the Falcon030. ↫ Paul Lefebvre In my mind, Atari is a game and console company, not a computer company – I don’t have any sale figures, but I feel like the Atari general computers weren’t quite as popular in The Netherlands as they were in some other places.

Android 15 adds “UI elements to ensure a consistent user experience across the satellite connectivity landscape.” A system-level “Auto-connected to satellite” notification conveys how “You can send and receive messages without a mobile or Wi-Fi network” with a shortcut to “Open Messages” or get more information. Meanwhile, note the status bar icon at the right. Speaking of Google Messages, “Android 15 provides support for SMS/ MMS applications as well as preloaded RCS applications to use satellite connectivity for sending and receiving messages.” Other apps will also be able to “detect when a device is connected to a satellite, giving them more awareness of why full network services may be unavailable.” ↫ Abner Li at 9To5Google 9To5Google also has a list of all the new features in this Developer Preview with copious amounts of screenshots.

The nonprofit organization that supports the Firefox web browser said today it is winding down its new partnership with Onerep, an identity protection service recently bundled with Firefox that offers to remove users from hundreds of people-search sites. The move comes just days after a report by KrebsOnSecurity forced Onerep’s CEO to admit that he has founded dozens of people-search networks over the years. On March 14, KrebsOnSecurity published a story showing that Onerep’s Belarusian CEO and founder Dimitiri Shelest launched dozens of people-search services since 2010, including a still-active data broker called Nuwber that sells background reports on people. Onerep and Shelest did not respond to requests for comment on that story. ↫ Brian Krebs It’s good that Mozilla has immediately responded properly to this discovery, but it does make one wonder – how did this happen in the first place? It seems like a service provider like this would be thoroughly vetted, especially considering Mozilla’s stated mission and types of users. My worries about Firefox’ future are no secret, and this gaffe certainly doesn’t help reduce my worries. It’s clear something went horribly wrong here, and my hope is that it’s a random fluke, and not a sign of more structural problems in Mozilla’s vetting process for potential partners.

Switch emulator Suyu—a fork of the Nintendo-targeted and now-defunct emulation project Yuzu—has been taken down from GitLab following a DMCA request Thursday. But the emulation project’s open source files remain available on a self-hosted git repo on the Suyu website, and recent compiled binaries remain available on an extant GitLab repo. While the DMCA takedown request has not yet appeared on GitLab’s public repository of such requests, a GitLab spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that the project was taken down after the site received notice “from a representative of the rightsholder.” GitLab has not specified who made the request or how they represented themselves; a representative for Nintendo was not immediately available to respond to a request for comment. ↫ Kyle Orland at Ars Technica Self-hosting the code repository and binaries is probably the only way the Switch emulator can continue to reasonably exist. The issue with Switch emulation seems to be that the device is current, popular, and still makes endless amounts of money for Nintendo; it’s very different from SNES or Mega Drive emulation, to name a few examples. While I personally don’t think that should make Switch emulation off-limits or any less valid than emulating older systems, I can see how it would draw the ire of Nintendo more readily.

In a 2024 Game Developers Conference session titled “Windows on Snapdragon, a Platform Ready for your PC Games,” Qualcomm engineer Issam Khalil drove home that the unannounced laptops will use emulation to run x86/64 games at close to full speed. Those laptops may be coming fast. Qualcomm has confirmed it will launch Snapdragon X Elite systems this summer, and unannounced consumer versions of the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 are expected in May with those chips, sources told The Verge. ↫ Sean Hollister at The Verge I’m genuinely curious to see if they can fulfill this promise. I really want widespread availability of ARM laptops. My hope is that we end up with a more standardised ARM landscape, making it easier for operating systems to support these new machines.

What if the kind of laptop you’re looking for just isn’t available from any of the major or even minor manufacturers? You know exactly what you want out of a laptop, and while quite a few fulfill many of your requirements, the requirement that matters most just isn’t being made. It’s not a case of “too expensive” or “too cheap” – simply nobody will sell it to you. From HP, Dell, Apple, down to smaller and local OEMs, none of them can serve your particular set of needs. For me, that particular requirement, that particular need is that of the laptop with an 8″ to 10″ screen size. Even the most portable laptops sold by well-known brands today stop at 13″, often even 14″, with nowhere to go but up. I currently have a 13.3″ laptop – an otherwise excellent XPS 13 9370 with a gorgeous 4K display – but as much as I love it, it’s just too big and heavy for me. I want something smaller, no bigger than roughly 10″. Why? Well, I use my laptop in exactly two locations: on the couch in one of our two living rooms, or in bed (okay that’s technically three locations). That’s it. I work from home on my workstation, I play games on my gaming PC, so I don’t need big performance on the road, nor do I need a big portable display to make working on the go bearable. On top of all this, I have two small kids running around the house, so a laptop that is easier to quickly close and put out of harm’s way is very welcome. And considering the most intensive workload it’ll ever have to contend with is playing YouTube video, I don’t need the latest Core i7 or Apple M3 either. Why not a tablet, then? First and foremost, I want to use a desktop operating system, not Android or iOS, since writing OSNews posts or doing a quick translation for my job are not fun experiences on mobile operating systems. On top of that, a tablet with a keyboard accessory often makes use of a kickstand and flappy keyboard, which are cumbersome to use on the couch, in bed, or on your lap. The exception here would be the iPad with a Magic Keyboard, but that’s an incredibly expensive affair and an Apple product, so obviously a no-go. Luckily, while the kind of small laptop I’m looking for is not available from one of the major OEMs, there are a small number of specialised OEMs that do focus on making small laptops. Roughly, the devices they make fall into one of three pricing categories. First, there’s the high-end – these usually start at around €800 or so and get well over €1000, and have a decent set of specs, often focused on gaming by opting for AMD APUs. A major player in this market is GPD, who’ve been offering products in this segment for years, and are actually a decently well-known brand at this point, even being featured on major YouTube channels like Linus Tech Tips. Then there’s the very low end, a market segment drowning in the exact same 7″ laptop priced at €250 or so, sold under a variety of brand names, sporting the same low-end Celeron chip and rather crappy display. It’s also quite thick, made out of cheap plastic, and every review I’ve seen of these are not particularly positive. Unless you know what you’re getting into, do not buy these. They’re e-waste trash. In recent times, however, a middle segment has slowly started to take shape, coming in price points in between the low and high end, with reasonable specifications and build quality, without going overboard. This was exactly what I was looking for. Aside from price and specifications, mini-laptops also come in a variety of different input layouts. Being smaller than other laptops, some compromises will have to be made, and it’s this particular aspect that will most likely play a major role in which models appeal to you. The gaming-focused mini laptops will often come with dual joysticks and face buttons, while other models will come with a more traditional keyboard and trackpad, and the smallest laptops in this category ditch the trackpad in favour of a little sensor pad in the top-right of the keyboard, or a ThinkPad-style nipple. Having kept and eye on this market for years now, I knew exactly what I was looking for: I wanted a traditional keyboard and touchpad layout, with medium specifications, a capable display, and all-metal construction, for no more than roughly €400-500. Clearly, the time to strike was now, as the small, budget-oriented OEM Chuwi had just updated its 10″ mini laptop with Intel’s latest low-power processor, the N100. The Chuwi Minibook X (2023), as it’s called, has an all-aluminium construction, and comes with quite decent specifications, and I managed to snag a new model through their eBay store for a mere €320 (I asked them for a discount down from €400 , and they gave it; I did not mention who I was or that I run OSNews). It has the aforementioned Alder Lake Intel N100 – released earlier this year, it’s an Intel 7 processor with 4 cores and 4 threads (so no hyperthreading) with a maximum turbo frequency of 3.4 Ghz, with a TDP of just 6 W. It’s not going to compare well to the various Core i3/i5/i7 processors, of course, but considering the type of device, it makes perfect sense to opt for something like the N100. Furthermore, this device is packing 12 GB of LPDDR5 RAM running at 4800 Mhz, and my model comes with a 512 GB SSD. The display is a 10.3″ panel with a native resolution of 1920×1200, with a refresh rate of only 50Hz (although some people managed to reach 60Hz and even 90Hz), and support for touch. Ports-wise, it has two USB-C ports (one marked as compatible with charging – I haven’t dared

GNOME 46 has been released, and its packs a ton of new features and improvements. One of the headline improvements is the new global search feature. Files comes with a new global search feature in GNOME 46. The feature is simple: activate it by clicking the new search button, or by using the Ctrl+Shift+F shortcut, then enter your query to search all your configured search locations. Global search is a great way to jump directly into search, without having to think about where the items you want are located. The new feature also leverages GNOME’s existing file search capabilities, including the ability to search the contents of files, and filter by file type and modification date. ↫ GNOME 46 release notes GNOME 46 also brings experimental support for variable refresh rate in Mutter, GNOME’s window manager, the Files application has seen a lot of work to drastically improve performance, the Settings application has been reworked, OneDrive support has been added to online accounts, and much more. Remote login has also been greatly improved. GNOME’s remote desktop experience has been significantly enhanced for version 46, with the introduction of a new dedicated remote login option. This allows remotely connecting to a GNOME system which is not already in use. Connecting in this way means that the system’s display can be configured from the remote side, resulting in a better experience for the remote user. GNOME 46 will make it to your distribution of choice over the coming weeks and months.

A global theme on the KDE third party store had an issue where it executed a script that removed user’s data. It wasn’t intended as malicious, but a mistake in some shell parsing. It was promptly identified and removed, but not before doing some damage to that user. This has started a lot of discourse around the concept of the store, security and upstream KDE. With the main question how can a theme have access to do this? ↫ David Edmundson That ‘some damage’ was personal data loss, which is quite something to happen after installing a theme. KDE kind of shot itself in the foot here by having something called ‘global themes’, which is a combination of themes for various elements of the desktop, like the application style, icon theme, cursor theme, colour scheme, and so on, but also things like panel layout and even widgets, applets, and other things that can run code. Some of these global themes use shell scripts to implement the more advanced aspects of their themes, and all these things combined means that global themes installed through KDE’s own built-in theme installer can cause some serious damage. The problem is getting some attention now, and I hope they can find a way to make this process more transparent for end users, so people know what they’re getting themselves into. I’m not advocating for dumbing all this stuff down – this isn’t iOS or whatever – but better communication, perhaps clearer labels and warnings are definitely needed.

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You know those modal screens that interrupt your groove when you are surfing? There are no laws forcing websites to use them. They use them because they choose to. ↫ Bite code! Cookie banners are not only not required, they’re not even needed, and most implementations you encounter today are illegal anyway. You can use session cookies and anonymous stats cookies without needing any user approval. Companies like to use these cookie banners because they want to make you mad at the law, not at them for tracking you up the wazzoo, and people who actually do know better trot out the cookie banners to enrage you at the government instead of at the corporations exploiting you. EU law only states that if a website wants to track you, they have to let you know. That’s it. Seems very reasonable to anyone who isn’t a corporatist.

Bad news from BSD land – the oldest vendor of BSD systems is changing direction away from FreeBSD and toward Linux. NAS vendor iXsystems has been busy this year, but apart from some statements in online user communities, it hasn’t been talking about the big news. Back in 2022, we covered TrueNAS CORE 13, the new release of its FreeBSD-based turnkey OS for NAS servers, and in that article we mentioned its new product, the Debian-based TrueNAS SCALE, aimed at providing storage for Kubernetes users. Now it seems the company is betting its future on that Linux-based product, meaning the end is in sight for the FreeBSD offering. ↫ Liam Proven at The Register Very sad to read, as more monoculture is not exactly great, but at the same time, from a corporate perspective, it’s also not entirely unexpected to focus on the server operating system with by far the widest industry support. I hope the fork mentioned in the article gains some steam, because having competition in this space is crucially important.

For more than 15 years, Google Safe Browsing has been protecting users from phishing, malware, unwanted software and more, by identifying and warning users about potentially abusive sites on more than 5 billion devices around the world. As attackers grow more sophisticated, we’ve seen the need for protections that can adapt as quickly as the threats they defend against. That’s why we’re excited to announce a new version of Safe Browsing that will provide real-time, privacy-preserving URL protection for people using the Standard protection mode of Safe Browsing in Chrome. ↫ Jasika Bawa, Xinghui Lu, Jonathan Li, and Alex Wozniak on the Google blog Reading through the description of how this new feature works, it does indeed seem to respect one’s privacy, but there could be so many devils in so many details here that you’d really need to be a specialist in these matters to truly gauge if Google isn’t getting its hands on the URLs you visit through this feature. But even if all that is true, it doesn’t really matter because Google has tons of other ways to collect more than enough data on you to build an exact profile of you are, and what advertisements will work well no you. Any time Google goes out of its way to announce it’s not collecting some type of data – like here, the URLs you type into the Chrome URL bar – it’s not because they care so much about your privacy, but because they simply don’t need this data to begin with.

While Ladybird does an okay job with well-formed web content, I thought it would be useful to throw some security research tools at it and see what kind of issues it might reveal. So today we’ll be using “Domato”, a DOM fuzzer from Google Project Zero, to stress test Ladybird and fix some issues found along the way. The way this works is that Domato generates randomized web pages with lots of mostly-valid but strange HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I then load these pages into a debug build of Ladybird and observe what happens. ↫ Andreas Kling I have high hopes for Ladybird.