A major industrial conglomerate has resorted to buying washing machines and tearing out the semiconductors inside for use in its own chip modules, according to the CEO of a company central to the chipmaking supply chain. From a report: ASML's Chief Executive Officer Peter Wennink remarked on the situation, without naming the conglomerate, during his company's earnings call Wednesday. The beleaguered firm relayed its struggle to him only the prior week, he said, signalling that chip shortages are going to persist for the foreseeable future, at least for some sectors. "The demand we are currently seeing comes from so many places in the industry," Wennink said, pointing to the wider adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) applications. "It's so widespread. We have significantly underestimated the width of the demand. That, I don't think, is going to go away." Even major chip equipment makers including US-based Lam Research are struggling to get enough components to fulfil orders, potentially making it more difficult for semiconductor fabs to significantly increase their capacity in the near term.

YouTube, the Google-owned video streaming platform, has removed the account of John Lee Ka-chiu, the policeman-turned-politician who is poised to take over as Hong Kong's next leader. From a report: All content on Lee's YouTube page has been removed. In its place is a message that reads: "This account has been terminated for violating Google's Terms of Service." Lee's campaign office said on Wednesday that it had been informed by Google that the removal of the account was in accordance with the company's compliance with U.S. sanctions. "We find this very regrettable and completely unreasonable, but we think they can't stop us from spreading our candidate's message -- our campaign's message -- to the public," said Tam Yiu-chung, head of Lee's campaign office.

Lee is one of a dozen officials who were sanctioned by the U.S. in 2020 and had been deemed responsible for the implementation of the Beijing-imposed National Security Law in July that year. Lee is now the only candidate in next month's small circle election for Chief Executive. The election, which is not open to the public and instead involves just 1,500 carefully-selected voters, will go ahead on May 8. Lee's five-year term of office will begin from July 1, 2022. "Google complies with applicable U.S. sanctions laws and enforces related policies under its Terms of Service. After review and consistent with these policies, we terminated the Johnlee2022 YouTube channel," told the South China Morning Post.

Delta Chief Executive Ed Bastian has revealed in an interview that the airline held talks with SpaceX and conducted "exploratory tests" of Starlink's internet technology for its planes. Engadget: According to The Wall Street Journal, Bastian declined to divulge specifics about the test, but SpaceX exec Jonathan Hofeller talked about the company's discussion with several airlines back in mid-2021. Hofeller said back then that the company was developing a product for aviation and that it's already done some demonstrations for interested parties. SpaceX chief Elon Musk tweeted in the same period last year that Starlink antennae for planes would have to be certified for each aircraft type first. He added that the company is focusing on dishes for 737 and A320 planes, because they serve the most number of people. Hofeller reiterated SpaceX's quest to put Starlink on planes at the Satellite 2022 conference last month, saying that the company believes "[c]onnectivity on airplanes is something [that's] ripe for an overhaul." He said SpaceX is developing a service that would allow every single passenger on a plane to stream content like they're able to do in their homes.

Employees at an Apple store in Atlanta filed a petition on Wednesday to hold a union election. If successful, the workers could form the first union at an Apple retail store in the United States. From a report: The move continues a recent trend of service-sector unionization in which unions have won elections at Starbucks, Amazon and REI locations. The workers are hoping to join the Communications Workers of America, which represents workers at companies like AT&T Mobility and Verizon, and has made a concerted push into the tech sector in recent years. The union says that about 100 workers at the store -- at Cumberland Mall, in northwest Atlanta -- are eligible to vote, including salespeople and repair technicians, and that over 70 percent of them have signed authorization cards indicating their support. In a statement, the union said Apple, like other tech employers, had effectively created a tiered work force that denied retail workers the pay, benefits and respect that workers earned at its corporate offices.

Amazon's main European retail business reported 1.16 billion euros ($1.26 billion) of losses in 2021, which allowed the company to pay no income tax and receive 1 billion euros in tax credits, corporate filings seen by Bloomberg show. From the report: The Luxembourg-based business recorded sales of 51.3 billion euros last year, up 17% from 43.8 billion euros in 2020. The unit, called Amazon EU Sarl, includes revenue generated by its e-commerce activities in the U.K, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden and the Netherlands. Amazon has been a target of European regulators over its tax arrangements. The Seattle-based company won an appeal on a 250 million-euro ($280 million) tax bill imposed after regulators said agreements with Luxembourg dating back to 2003 amounted to illegal state aid. Last year, the European Commission appealed in the European Court of Justice.

While smartphones are having fun with the trend, PCs with foldable screens have yet to become mainstream, partially because there's only one option readily available. But with HP expected to enter the scene, it's possible 'foldable OLED' could become more common laptop lingo. From a report: Lenovo made the bold first step into foldable laptops with its 13.3-inch ThinkPad X1 Fold. According to South Korean electronics website TheElec, HP's take on foldable OLED will be bigger, with a 17-inch panel from LG Display that measures 11 inches when folded up. HP hasn't publicly announced or commented on the rumored PC, but a couple of details make the machine seem at least somewhat plausible. For one, LG Display confirmed work on a 17-inch foldable OLED laptop design in January. Most recently, TheElec on Monday reported that South Korean company SK IE Technology will make transparent polyimide films to cover the bendy 4K OLED panels. The publication also claimed that LG Display currently has plans to make up to "around 10,000" foldable OLED panels for HP, starting in Q3.

European Union lawmakers have taken a step closer to agreeing rules to standardize how a range of mobile gadgetry is charged. From a report: Today MEPs in the European Parliament's internal market and consumer protection (IMCO) committee adopted their position on a Commission proposal announced last fall, ahead of a full vote by the parliament next month to confirm how it will negotiate with Member State governments on the detail of the legislation. The Council adopted its position on the common charger proposal back in January. The IMCO committee voted 43:2 in favor of a negotiation position that will push to standardize charger ports for a range of mobile devices on USB Type-C, including smartphones, tablets, handheld games consoles, e-readers, digital cameras, electronic toys and more -- with MEPs voting to expand the original proposal to cover laptops, among other additional products.

Sony is building a program to let advertisers buy ads in PlayStation games. From a report: It's doing testing with adtech partners to place in-game ads, similar to an initiative by rival Microsoft. The program is expected to launch before the end of the year. Sony is working on a plan to put ads inside PlayStation games, sources said, similar to a move by Microsoft to run ads in Xbox. Three people who are involved in the plans said Sony is doing testing with adtech partners to help game developers create in-game ads through a software developer program. The idea is to encourage developers to keep building free-to-play games, which have soared in the pandemic, by giving them a way to monetize them, they said. PlayStation's current ad inventory is limited to in-menu ads like game publishers promoting their own titles in the console's store, the sources said. PlayStation also serves ads on streaming video to people who stream via their consoles through apps like Hulu .

A ban on booze has led to parched throats and dry toast. From a report: The love-it-or-loathe-it spread, invented in Britain at the start of the 20th century, is an extract of yeast. It is most commonly eaten spread thinly on buttered toast, but it can also be used to add a rich, vegan-friendly umami flavour to soups, stews and sauces. In South Africa Marmite is indeed thinly spread. Shoppers first noted shortages at the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, when South Africa banned alcohol sales in an attempt to free up beds in hospitals that would otherwise be filled with tipsy drivers or drunken brawlers. The ban had an unexpected consequence. With beer sales on ice, South Africa's main breweries sharply reduced their production. With much less lager fermenting in their vats, they were also producing far less brewer's yeast, the beery by-product that is the main ingredient of Marmite.

Through the course of the pandemic, South Africa imposed four separate alcohol bans, each one of which dealt a blow to Marmite production. Nine months since the lifting of the last prohibition, production ought to have recovered, allowing shops to refill their shelves. Yet it has not. When your correspondent recently walked the aisles of 15 grocery stores in Johannesburg, 12 had no Marmite at all. In the three remaining shops a total of just seven jars could be found, of which three appear to have escaped purchase by hiding behind jars of Bovril, a beef-based cousin of Marmite. The branch manager of a large store in eastern Johannesburg says that deliveries still dribble in but fly off the shelves in an instant. That the shortage continues is because of another hiccup in the supply chain. Pioneer Foods, the local manufacturer of Marmite, reportedly said that its production has been slowed by a shortage of sodium carbonate, which is used in the manufacturing process. Muckraking by the Daily Maverick, a local paper better known for exposing political scandals than for scrutinising sandwiches, found that intermittent cuts in the water supply were also affecting the country's only Marmite factory.

Netflix shares lost over a third of their value on Wednesday after the company reported its first drop in subscribers in a decade, leaving Wall Street questioning its growth in the face of fierce competition and post-pandemic viewer fatigue. From a report: The streaming pioneer's shares fell 37% to $220.40 and were headed for their worst day in nearly 18 years if the losses hold. More than a dozen analysts rushed to temper their views on a stock that has been a red-hot market performer in the past few years. "Netflix is a poster child for what happens to growth companies when they lose their growth," said Kim Forrest, chief investment officer at Bokeh Capital Partners in Pittsburgh. Elon Musk weighed in on Netflix's subscriber loss by responding to a Slashdot tweet, saying "the woke mind virus" is making the streaming platform "unwatchable." He added, "Can they please just make sci-fi/fantasy at least *mostly* about sci-fi/fantasy?"

FaceTime users are getting bombarded with group calls from numbers they've never seen before, often as many as 20 times in short succession during late hours of the night. From a report: Griefers behind the pranks call as many as 31 numbers at a time. When a person receiving one of the calls hangs up, a different number will immediately call back. FaceTime doesn't have the ability to accept only FaceTime calls coming from people in the user's address book. It also requires that all numbers in a group call must be manually blocked for the call to be stopped. "I got my first facetime spam starting 4 days ago," one user reported to an Apple support forum earlier this month. "It has been non-stop, over 300 numbers blocked so far. My 3 year old daughter has been accidentally answering them and going on video without a t-shirt on." The high volume of callbacks appears to be the result of other people receiving the call dialing everyone back when the initial call fails shortly after answering. As more and more people receive follow-on calls, they too begin making callbacks. Apple provides surprisingly few ways for users to stop the nuisance calls. As noted earlier, users can block numbers, but this requires manually blocking each individual person on the group call. That's not an effective solution for people receiving dozens of group calls, often to a different group of people in a short period of time, often in the wee hours.

The smart home company Insteon has vanished. The entire company seems to have abruptly shut down just before the weekend, breaking users' cloud-dependent smart-home setups without warning. From a report: Users say the service has been down for three days now despite the company status page saying, "All Services Online." The company forums are down, and no one is replying to users on social media. As Internet of Things reporter Stacey Higginbotham points out, high-ranking Insteon executives, including CEO Rob Lilleness, have scrubbed the company from their LinkedIn accounts. In the time it took to write this article, Lilleness also removed his name and picture from his LinkedIn profile. It seems like that is the most communication longtime Insteon customers are going to get.

Insteon is (or, more likely, "was") a smart home company that produced a variety of Internet-connected lights, thermostats, plugs, sensors, and of course, the Insteon Hub. At the core of the company was Insteon's proprietary networking protocol, which was a competitor to more popular and licensable alternatives like Z-Wave and Zigbee. Insteon's "unique and patented dual-mesh technology" used both a 900 MHz wireless protocol and powerline networking, which the company said created a more reliable network than wireless alone. The Insteon Hub would bridge all your gear to the Internet and enable use of the Insteon app.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Netflix said inflation, the war in Ukraine and fierce competition contributed to a loss of subscribers for the first time in more than a decade and predicted more contraction ahead, marking an abrupt shift in fortune for a streaming company that thrived during the pandemic. Netflix's 26% tumble after the bell on Tuesday erased about $40 billion of its stock market value. Since it warned in January of weak subscriber growth, the company has lost nearly half of its value. The lagging subscriber growth prompted Netflix for the first time to say it might offer lower-priced version of the service with advertising. [...] In addition to advertising-supported plans, the company is also looking to generate additional revenue from customers who share their account with friends or family outside their home.

Brave announced a new feature for its browser on Tuesday: De-AMP, which automatically jumps past any page rendered with Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages framework and instead takes users straight to the original website. The Verge reports: "Where possible, De-AMP will rewrite links and URLs to prevent users from visiting AMP pages altogether," Brave said in a blog post. "And in cases where that is not possible, Brave will watch as pages are being fetched and redirect users away from AMP pages before the page is even rendered, preventing AMP / Google code from being loaded and executed." Brave framed De-AMP as a privacy feature and didn't mince words about its stance toward Google's version of the web. "In practice, AMP is harmful to users and to the Web at large," Brave's blog post said, before explaining that AMP gives Google even more knowledge of users' browsing habits, confuses users, and can often be slower than normal web pages. And it warned that the next version of AMP -- so far just called AMP 2.0 -- will be even worse.

Brave's stance is a particularly strong one, but the tide has turned hard against AMP over the last couple of years. Google originally created the framework in order to simplify and speed up mobile websites, and AMP is now managed by a group of open-source contributors. It was controversial from the very beginning and smelled to some like Google trying to exert even more control over the web. Over time, more companies and users grew concerned about that control and chafed at the idea that Google would prioritize AMP pages in search results. Plus, the rest of the internet eventually figured out how to make good mobile sites, which made AMP -- and similar projects like Facebook Instant Articles -- less important.

Shallow liquid water may be present on Jupiter's moon Europa, data based on the Greenland ice sheet suggests. The Independent reports: Europa is a prime candidate for life in the Solar System, and its deep saltwater ocean has captivated scientists for decades. The giant planet's moon has been visited by the Voyager and Galileo spacecrafts, and data collected on these missions, together with modeling, indicates the potential presence of a liquid water ocean beneath a 20-30km thick ice shell. While the thickness of the icy shell makes sampling it a daunting prospect, increasing evidence reveals the ice shell may be less of a barrier and more of a dynamic system -- and potentially good enough to support life in its own right.

Observations that captured the formation of a double ridge feature in Greenland suggest the ice shell of Europa may have an abundance of water pockets beneath similar features that are common on the surface. Study senior author Dustin Schroeder, an associate professor of geophysics at Stanford University's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth), said: "Because it's closer to the surface, where you get interesting chemicals from space, other moons and the volcanoes of Io, there's a possibility that life has a shot if there are pockets of water in the shell. If the mechanism we see in Greenland is how these things happen on Europa, it suggests there's water everywhere."

Double ridges on Europa appear as dramatic gashes across the moon's icy surface, with crests reaching nearly 1,000 feet. Study author Riley Culberg, a PhD student in electrical engineering at Stanford, said: "In Greenland, this double ridge formed in a place where water from surface lakes and streams frequently drains into the near-surface and refreezes. One way that similar shallow water pockets could form on Europa might be through water from the subsurface ocean being forced up into the ice shell through fractures -- and that would suggest there could be a reasonable amount of exchange happening inside of the ice shell." The researchers describe their findings in the journal Nature Communications.