An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple has discontinued its original HomePod after four years. It says that it will continue to produce and focus on the HomePod mini, introduced last year. The larger HomePod offered a beefier sound space but the mini has been very well received and clearly accomplishes many of the duties that the larger version was tasked with. The sound is super solid (especially for the size) and it offers access to Siri, Apple's assistant feature.

"Adobe doesn't want third-parties to pirate its software, so the company regularly sends out DMCA notices to remove infringing copies," reports TorrentFreak. In a recent tweet, F-Secure researcher Mikko Hypponen mentioned that the software company removed one of his tweets that linked to an old copy of Acrobat Reader for MS-DOS, which came out more than 27-years ago, shortly after the PDF was invented. From the report: The security researcher posted the tweet five years ago and at the time there were no issues. The message was copied a few weeks ago by his own Twitter bot, which reposts all his original tweets five years later. "They sent a DMCA notice to my bot (@mikko__2016) when it posted that tweet on the tweet's 5th anniversary. The original tweet is fine," Hypponen notes. While the original tweet is still up, the reposted message was swiftly removed by Twitter. Not just that, the bot's account was locked as well, which is standard practice nowadays.

Looking more closely at the takedown notice, we see that it was sent by the "brand protection analyst" at Incopro, which is one of Adobe's anti-piracy partners. It doesn't provide any further details on the reasons for taking it down, other than an alleged copyright infringement. Things get even more curious when we look at the full DMCA notice, posted by the Lumen database. This shows that the tweet was listed among other links, which all point to "infringing' copies of more recent software. Intriguingly, the notice also reveals that Hypponen's original tweet was targeted as well, albeit indirectly. The takedown notice lists t.co/tbAT0CH25o, which still points to the 2016 tweet today, so Twitter decided not to take action there.

We wonder if the DMCA notice is intentional at all. Over the years we have seen many bizarre takedown claims, which are often the result of automated filters. That may be a plausible explanation here as well. In that case, it shows that DMCA takedown process is far from perfect. However, if Adobe seriously has a problem with the fact that a 27-year-old copy of Acrobat Reader is being shared on an external site, it's more effective to target the site where it's hosted. Not the person who links to it in a tweet.

Telegram is riding high, adding tens of million of users this year. Now the bill is coming due. WSJ: The messaging service and social-media platform owes creditors roughly $700 million by the end of April, according to people briefed on the company's plans and loan documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. At the same time, Telegram Group must cover rising equipment and bandwidth expenses because of its rapid growth, despite going years without attempting to generate revenue. Telegram is one of the few significant social-media challengers to Facebook on a trajectory toward one billion users active each month by the end of 2022, up from roughly 550 million today. But first Pavel Durov, the Dubai-based Russian emigre who owns Telegram, needs to figure out how to convert his app's momentum into a self-sustaining business. [...] To pay the bills, Mr. Durov is issuing investors $1 billion to $1.5 billion of company debt, with the promise of discounted equity if the company eventually goes public, the people briefed on the plans said. He has also announced plans to start selling ads in public Telegram channels as soon as later this year, as well as offering other premium services for businesses and users.

Firefox's "Compact density" option, which reduces the size of the user interface, is set to disappear when Mozilla rolls out its Proton visual redesign for the browser later this year. PCMag reports: A bug was posted on Mozilla's bug tracking system entitled "Remove compact mode inside Density menu of customize palette." The reasons given for its removal include the fact it's "currently fairly hard to discover" and "we assume gets low engagement." The development team wants to "make sure that we design defaults that suit most users and we'll be retiring the compact mode for this reason." The Bugzilla thread highlights a desire for compact density to be retained as an option, but it doesn't seem likely to survive right now.

When Proton arrives, the Normal and Touch density options are expected to remain, with Touch increasing the size of the user interface to make it more finger-friendly. Meanwhile, the development team is optimizing the Normal density for displays that use 768 pixels for height, while most displays now use a higher resolution than that. Hopefully this doesn't mean the UI will be larger than it is now by default.

A lapsed domain registration tied to WeLeakInfo, a wildly popular service that sold access to more than 12 billion usernames and passwords from thousands of hacked websites, "let someone plunder and publish account data on 24,000 customers who paid to access the service with a credit card," reports Krebs on Security. This comes after the service was seized a little over a year ago by the FBI and law enforcement partners overseas. From the report: In a post on the database leaking forum Raidforums, a regular contributor using the handle "pompompurin" said he stole the WeLeakInfo payment logs and other data after noticing the domain wli[.]design was no longer listed as registered. "Long story short: FBI let one of weleakinfo's domains expire that they used for the emails/payments," pompompurin wrote. "I registered that domain, & was able to [password] reset the stripe.com account & get all the Data. [It's] only from people that used stripe.com to checkout. If you used paypal or [bitcoin] ur all good."

Cyber threat intelligence firm Flashpoint obtained a copy of the data leaked by pompompurin, and said it includes partial credit card data, email addresses, full names, IP addresses, browser user agent string data, physical addresses, phone numbers, and amount paid. One forum member commented that they found their own payment data in the logs.

Thelasko shares a report from NPR: A member of the World Health Organization investigative team says wildlife farms in southern China are the most likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic. China shut down those wildlife farms in February 2020, says Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist with EcoHealth Alliance and part of the WHO delegation that travelled to China earlier this year. During that trip, Daszak says, the WHO team found new evidence that these wildlife farms were supplying vendors at the Huanan market in Wuhan with animals.

Daszak told NPR that the government response was a strong signal that the Chinese government thought those farms were the most probable pathway for a coronavirus in bats southern China to reach humans in Wuhan. Those wildlife farms, including ones in the Yunnan region, are a part of a unique project that the Chinese government has been promoting for 20 years now. "They take exotic animals, like civets, porcupines, pangolins, raccoon dogs and bamboo rats, and they breed them in captivity," says Daszak. The agency is expected to release the team's investigative findings in the next two weeks. In the meantime, Daszak gave NPR a highlight of what they figured out. "China promoted the farming of wildlife as a way to alleviate rural populations out of poverty," Daszak says. The farms helped the government meet ambitious goals of closing the rural-urban divide, as NPR reported last year. "It was very successful," Daszak says. "In 2016, they had 14 million people employed in wildlife farms, and it was a $70 billion industry." Then on February 24, 2020, right when the outbreak in Wuhan was winding down, the Chinese government "put out a declaration saying that they were going to stop the farming of wildlife for food," says Daszak.

The farms were then shut down. "They sent out instructions to the farmers about how to safely dispose of the animals -- to bury, kill or burn them -- in a way that didn't spread disease." Daszak thinks the government did this because these farms could be where the coronavirus jumped from a bat into another animal and then into people. During WHO's mission to China, NPR reports that "Daszak said the team found new evidence that these farms were supplying vendors at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, where an early outbreak of COVID occurred."

Elon Musk is getting in on the NFT gold rush by selling a new electronic music track he's apparently produced as an NFT. The Verge reports: Yes, you've heard that right -- it's a song about non-fungible tokens, which Musk appears to have minted (or plans to mint) on the blockchain. Musk did not include a link to the NFT, so it's not clear if it's already live or if Musk plans to initiate the sale at a later date. It's also not clear on which platform Musk intends to sell the NFT.

We also don't know if the song has a name, but we have some clues. The looping video attached to the song Musk posted to Twitter on Monday displays the words "Vanity Trophy" orbiting around a golden orb affixed to the top of a literal trophy reading "HODL," short for the phase "hold on for dear life." [...] At various points in the short video, the words along the trophy shift from "computers" to "never sell" while a female vocalist sings lyrics over top like "NFT for your vanity" and "computers never sleep." Did I mention that the trophy also has little gold dogs, or "doges" if you will, rotating around it, too? The techno song drop is appropriate considering Musk named himself the "technoking" of Tesla in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. Meanwhile, chief financial officer Zach Kirkhorn's new position is "Master of Coin."

Both Elon and Zach "will also maintain their respective positions as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer," the filing concludes.

Tinder and Match have announced a new partnership with Garbo, a non-profit, female-founded background check platform. In theory, it should allow Tinder (and Match Group's other sites) to ping Garbo's database and proactively show users when it finds something they might want to be aware of. Engadget reports: If you're not familiar with Garbo, it was founded by Kathryn Kosmides, a "survivor of gender-based violence" who wanted to make it easier to find information about people you may connect with online. Garbo's platform aggregates numerous data sources to provide details on an individual, including "arrests, convictions, restraining orders, harassment, and other violent crimes." The organization's site says that often times, you don't even need a last time to find some details on an individual -- a first name and phone number will work.

As part of the deal, Garbo's platform will be available to people using Match Group apps, starting with Tinder later this year. [...] Garbo cites making ridesharing services safer as another core initiative for the non-profit in addition to working with dating services, so it wouldn't surprise us to see a similar partnership appear between Garbo and companies like Uber or Lyft -- but for now, it's starting with Tinder.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard, written by Joseph Cox: I didn't expect it to be that quick. While I was on a Google Hangouts call with a colleague, the hacker sent me screenshots of my Bumble and Postmates accounts, which he had broken into. Then he showed he had received texts that were meant for me that he had intercepted. Later he took over my WhatsApp account, too, and texted a friend pretending to be me. Looking down at my phone, there was no sign it had been hacked. I still had reception; the phone said I was still connected to the T-Mobile network. Nothing was unusual there. But the hacker had swiftly, stealthily, and largely effortlessly redirected my text messages to themselves. And all for just $16.

I hadn't been SIM swapped, where hackers trick or bribe telecom employees to port a target's phone number to their own SIM card. Instead, the hacker used a service by a company called Sakari, which helps businesses do SMS marketing and mass messaging, to reroute my messages to him. This overlooked attack vector shows not only how unregulated commercial SMS tools are but also how there are gaping holes in our telecommunications infrastructure, with a hacker sometimes just having to pinky swear they have the consent of the target. "I used a prepaid card to buy their $16 per month plan and then after that was done it let me steal numbers just by filling out LOA info with fake info," said Lucky225, the pseudonymous hacker who carried out the attack, referring to a Letter of Authorization, a document saying that the signer has authority to switch telephone numbers.

In a statement to Motherboard, Senator Ron Wyden said: "Itâ(TM)s not hard to see the enormous threat to safety and security this kind of attack poses. The FCC must use its authority to force phone companies to secure their networks from hackers. Former Chairman Paiâ(TM)s approach of industry self-regulation clearly failed."

Too many young people around the world are excluded from accessing the web, and getting them online should be a priority for the post-Covid era, Tim Berners-Lee has said. From a report: In a letter published to mark the 32nd birthday of the web, its founder says the opportunity "to reimagine our world and create something better" in the aftermath of Covid-19 must be channelled to getting internet access to the third of people aged between 15 and 24 who are offline. "The influence of young people is felt across their communities and online networks," Berners-Lee writes. "But today we're seeing just a fraction of what's possible. Because while we talk about a generation of 'digital natives,' far too many young people remain excluded and unable to use the web to share their talents and ideas.

"A third of young people have no internet access at all. Many more lack the data, devices and reliable connection they need to make the most of the web. In fact, only the top third of under-25s have a home internet connection, according to Unicef, leaving 2.2 billion young people without the stable access they need to learn online, which has helped so many others continue their education during the pandemic." Even though young people are more likely than the typical global citizen to have internet access -- roughly half the world is online, but the figure rises to 70% of people aged between 15 and 25 -- Berners-Lee argues that aiming to connect every young person in the world to the web would reap dividends. He also says doing so would be relatively cheap compared with the cost of many government programmes launched over the last 12 months. He estimates that an investment of $428bn over the next decade would provide everyone with a quality broadband connection.

Amazon is expanding an existing program that gamifies warehouse work to encourage its fulfillment center employees to improve their efficiency and compete against others for digital rewards like virtual pets, according to a new report from The Information. From a report: The program is called FC Games, and it includes as many as six arcade-style mini-games that can be played only by completing warehouse tasks in the workplace. It's been known since at least 2019 that Amazon uses gamification in the form of workstation games to try to incentivize employees to improve productivity, but The Information reports that Amazon is now expanding those methods to warehouses in at least 20 states throughout the country.

Many of the games tend to be simple virtual representations of how fast the worker is completing a task. One, called MissionRacer, moves a car around a track while a picking employee sorts products into appropriate boxes, as reported by The Washington Post at the time. "Employees have told us they enjoy having the option to join in these workstation games, and we're excited to be taking their feedback and expanding the program to even more buildings throughout our network," Kent Hollenbeck, an Amazon spokesperson, tells The Information. "Even with this expansion, the program remains completely optional for employees; they can switch in or out of different games depending on their preference, can play anonymously, or not play at all -- the choice is theirs."

Germany on Monday halted use of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, the Health Ministry announced in a statement, with Italy, France and Spain following suit later in the day. Several other EU countries have stopped use of the vaccine because of the possibility of blood clots. From a report: The Health Ministry announced that use of the vaccine was "suspended as a precaution" on the basis of advice from the national health regulator, the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI). According to the Health Ministry, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) will decide "whether and how the new information will affect the authorization of the vaccine" pending an investigation. "After new reports of thrombroses of the cerebral veins in connection with the vaccination in Germany and Europe, the PEI considers further investigations to be necessary," the Health Ministry announced. German Health Minister Jens Spahn said "the decision is a professional, not political one," following advice from the PEI. Spahn said the risk of blood clots from the AstraZeneca jab is low, but could not be ruled out. "The most important thing for confidence is transparency," Spahn said during a briefing.

MojoKid writes: AMD announced new additions to its EPYC server processor lineup today, codenamed Milan. The company's EPYC 7003 series brings with it significantly improved IPC and per-core performance, better multi-core scaling, and more flexible memory configuration options, in a package that's socket compatible with its previous-gen CPUs. Like the current AMD Ryzen 5000 series desktop processors, new EPYC 7003 CPUs leverage AMD's new Zen 3 microarchitecture. Unlike its desktop parts, however, EPYC 7003 server processors use much larger packaging and feature up to CPU nine chiplets (up to eight 7nm CPU dies and a 12nm IO die), with up to 64 physical cores and 128 threads per socket. As things stand today, Intel doesn't currently have any Xeon processors that can match AMD in terms of single-socket core density. As such, AMD's EPYC 7003 series should consistently offer better performance in many workloads. Pricing for these new big iron processors ranges from $913 or the 16-core 7313P, and up to $7,890 for the powerful EPYC 7763, which AMD is calling "the world's highest-performing server processor." Though nearly $8K is not cheap, AMD appears to be continuing its aggressive price strategy with the EPYC 7003 series, relative to Intel's Xeon Scalable processors. The company also announced a who's who of data center and cloud service OEMs supporting the new platform, including AWS, Azure, Dell Technologies, HPE, Cisco, Google Cloud, Oracle and others.