A number of Israeli government websites went down on Monday in what may be the largest-ever cyberattack carried out against the country. Haaretz reports: The Israeli cyber authority confirmed the attack was a DDos (Digital-denial of service) attack that had blocked access to government websites, and that all websites were back online. The websites of the interior, health, justice and welfare ministries had been taken offline, as was that of the Prime Minister's Office. A defense establishment source claims that this was the largest-ever cyberattack carried out against Israel. They believe that a state actor or large organization is carried out the attack, but cannot yet determine who is behind it. The defense establishment and the National Cyber Directorate have declared a state of emergency in order to study the extent of the damage, while checking strategic Israeli websites and government infrastructure, such as Israel's electric and water companies, to see whether they were also attacked.

Microsoft has begun testing promotions for some of its other products in the File Explorer app on devices running its latest Windows 11 Insider build. From a report: The new Windows 11 "feature" was discovered by a Windows user and Insider MVP who shared a screenshot of an advertisement notification displayed above the listing of folders and files to the File Explorer, the Windows default file manager. As shown in the screenshot, Microsoft will use such ads to promote other Microsoft products, for instance, about how to "write with confidence across documents, email, and the web with advanced writing suggestions from Microsoft Editor. As you can imagine, the reaction to this was adverse, to say the least, with some saying that "File Explorer one of the worst places to show ads," while others added that this is the way to go if Microsoft wants "people ditching Explorer for something else."

Russia followed through on its threat to block Meta-owned Instagram on Monday, cutting off access to tens of millions of users in the country. From a report: Instagram is popular in Russia. It's Meta's second most popular app there, according to data from Sensor Tower, behind ubiquitous messaging service WhatsApp. The app has been installed 166 million times across the Russian App Store and Google Play since 2014, making it three times as popular as Facebook. After Russian censor Roskomnadzor announced that the government would restrict access to the app following a 48-hour "transition period," Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri condemned Russia's actions, which will affect 80 million people in the country.

Facebook parent Meta Platforms clarified on Sunday that it is against the company's user rules to share a post that "calls for the death of a head of state" -- likely a reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin. From a report: Last week, Facebook temporarily relaxed its policies so that Ukrainian users could post threats of violence against the Russian military, which invaded its neighbor in late February. The change led to some public confusion as to what was allowed, and what was not, on Facebook and Instagram. Meta's President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg posted a statement Friday saying the move is aimed at protecting Ukrainian rights and doesn't signal tolerance for "discrimination, harassment or violence towards Russians." On Sunday, he tried to further explain the company's stance to employees in an internal post. "We are now narrowing the focus to make it explicitly clear in the guidance that it is never to be interpreted as condoning violence against Russians in general," Clegg wrote in the internal post, which was reviewed by Bloomberg.

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Platforms is among the most vocal proponents of the future of the metaverse, but one gaming industry veteran is particularly skeptical about its vision. From a report: Like the cloud five years ago and even the internet of 20 years past, every business is now trying to latch onto the metaverse, said former Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime. Instead of Facebook's parent, the digital future will be driven by smaller companies that are really innovating, while companies like Epic Games are doing "really compelling" things, he said. "Facebook itself is not an innovative company," Fils-Aime told Emily Chang at the South by Southwest event in Austin, Texas, on Saturday. "They have either acquired interesting things like Oculus and Instagram, or they've been a fast follower of people's ideas. I don't think their current definition will be successful."

The Verge reports: Ford will soon start selling and shipping some Ford Explorers without the chips that power rear air conditioning and heating controls, according to a report from Automotive News. The automaker will instead ship the missing semiconductors to dealers within one year, which they will then install in customers' vehicles after purchase.

Ford spokesperson Said Deep told The Verge that heating and air condition will still be controllable from the front seats, and that customers who choose to purchase a vehicle without the rear controls will receive a price reduction. According to Deep, Ford is doing this as a way to bring new Explorers to customers faster, and that the change is only temporary.

The automaker originally had plans to ship partially-built, undrivable vehicles to dealers last year, but now, the unchipped vehicles will be both driveable and sellable. As pointed out by Automotive News, Ford's decision comes as an attempt to move the partially-built vehicles crowding its factory lots. Last month, hundreds of new Ford Broncos were spotted sitting idly in the snow-covered lots near Ford's Michigan Assembly Plant, all of which await chip-related installations....

Other automakers have also had to make sacrifices due to the chip shortage, with GM dropping wireless charging, HD radios, and a fuel management module that made some pickup trucks operate more efficiently.

"We're here to mourn the passing of YouTube Vanced," writes the site Android Police: If you weren't too fond of the official YouTube app, there were many alternatives at your disposal. One of them was YouTube Vanced — a modded version of the original app that added features like ad blocking, background playback, and many more without charging users like YouTube's Premium tier. We even put it on our list of the best indie apps you can get. It further gained popularity by bringing back dislike counts in videos just as Google removed them from their service...

The folks behind the project announced Sunday in the app's official Telegram channel and on the Vanced Twitter account that it will be discontinued. No clear reason was given as to why it was killed off, so we can only speculate — but it's likely due to Google's legal department taking notice of Vanced...

Vanced was never the only alternative YouTube app. Others include open-source NewPipe, which is more lightweight than the official app. But YouTube Vanced had a huge user base, and we'll miss it. It won't be updated anymore, but you can still get the last version. Do it quickly, though — the download links will soon be gone.

Slashdot reader quonset shares this report from Reuters: Instagram users in Russia have been notified that the service will cease as of midnight on Sunday after its owner Meta Platforms said last week it would allow social media users in Ukraine to post messages such as "Death to the Russian invaders". An email message from the state communications regulator told users to move their photos and videos from Instagram before it was shut down, and encouraged them to switch to Russia's own "competitive internet platforms".

Meta, which also owns Facebook, said Friday that the temporary change in its hate speech policy applied only to Ukraine, in the wake of Russia's Feb. 24 invasion. The company said it would be wrong to prevent Ukrainians from "expressing their resistance and fury at the invading military forces"....

The message to Instagram users from the state media regulator, Roskomnadzor, described the decision to allow calls for violence against Russians as a breach of international law. "We need to ensure the psychological health of citizens, especially children and adolescents, to protect them from harassment and insults online," it said, explaining the decision to close down the platform.
"The tears were flowing Sunday among Russia's airbrushed Instagram influencers, who begged their followers in farewell posts to join them on alternative social media platforms..." reports the Washington Post: On the platform, emotions ran high Sunday among Russians who were about to lose thousands of dollars they received to promote various products, as well as access to millions of followers amassed over the years. "I'm writing this post now and crying," Olga Buzova, a Russian reality television star, wrote, saying she hoped "it's all not true and we will remain here...."

The ban on Instagram is the latest example of how Russia's citizens are being isolated from the rest of the world as a result of Moscow's war against Ukraine. Since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion on Feb. 24, his government has also pulled the plug on Russia's opposition-oriented radio and television networks, part of a broader effort to squelch domestic dissent in response to the war. Thousands of Russians have been arrested for attempting to protest the invasion.... But perhaps no move is more isolating than removing Russians from social media platforms that connect them directly to other users around the world. Instagram counted nearly 60 million users in Russia in 2021, according to the market data firm Statista, about 40 percent of the country's population. The platform is also a huge revenue source for its users, who rake in cash from sponsors by posting promotional content.
"We know that over 80 percent of people in Russia on Instagram follow an account from outside of Russia," Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a video, according to the Post's article.

It adds that "It is unclear how many Russians will continue to be able to access Instagram using Virtual Private Networks, or VPNs."

Reuters reports: Ukraine's defense ministry on Saturday began using Clearview AI's facial recognition technology, the company's chief executive told Reuters, after the U.S. startup offered to uncover Russian assailants, combat misinformation and identify the dead. Ukraine is receiving free access to Clearview AI's powerful search engine for faces, letting authorities potentially vet people of interest at checkpoints, among other uses, added Lee Wolosky, an adviser to Clearview and former diplomat under U.S. presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

The plans started forming after Russia invaded Ukraine and Clearview Chief Executive Hoan Ton-That sent a letter to Kyiv offering assistance, according to a copy seen by Reuters. Clearview said it had not offered the technology to Russia, which calls its actions in Ukraine a "special operation...."

The Clearview founder said his startup had more than 2 billion images from the Russian social media service VKontakte at its disposal, out of a database of over 10 billion photos total. That database can help Ukraine identify the dead more easily than trying to match fingerprints and works even if there is facial damage, Ton-That wrote.... Ton-That's letter also said Clearview's technology could be used to reunite refugees separated from their families, identify Russian operatives and help the government debunk false social media posts related to the war.

The exact purpose for which Ukraine's defense ministry is using the technology is unclear, Ton-That said. Other parts of Ukraine's government are expected to deploy Clearview in the coming days, he and Wolosky said.

The Washington Post shares a story that hasn't been previously disclosed. "Russian agents came to the home of Google's top executive in Moscow to deliver a frightening ultimatum last September: take down an app that had drawn the ire of Russian President Vladimir Putin within 24 hours or be taken to prison." Google quickly moved the woman to a hotel where she checked in under an assumed name and might be protected by the presence of other guests and hotel security, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The same agents — believed by company officials to be from Russia's FSB, a successor to the KGB intelligence service — then showed up at her room to tell her the clock was still ticking.

Within hours, an app designed to help Russians register protest votes against Putin could no longer be downloaded from Google or Apple, whose main representative in Moscow faced a similarly harrowing sequence....

The unnerving encounters, which have not previously been disclosed, were part of a broader campaign that Putin intensified last year to erode sources of internal opposition — moves now helping him maintain his hold on power amid a global backlash over the invasion of Ukraine. In a single year, Putin had his political nemesis Alexei Navalny imprisoned after a poisoning attempt failed to kill him; pushed independent news outlets to the brink of extinction; orchestrated a Kremlin-controlled takeover of Russia's Facebook equivalent; and issued "liquidation" orders against human rights organizations.

Amid this internal offensive, Putin also moved to bring foreign technology companies to heel. Moscow deployed new devices that let it degrade or even block Russians' access to Facebook and Twitter, imposed fines totaling $120 million on firms accused of defying Kremlin censors, and ordered 13 of the world's largest technology companies to keep employees in Russia and thus exposed to potential arrest or other punishment for their employers' actions — a measure that U.S. executives refer to as the "hostage law."

On their own, these moves were seen as disparate signs of Russia' descent into authoritarianism. But they also laid the groundwork for the Soviet-style suppression of free expression now underway in Russia, much as the months-long military buildup set the stage for the invasion of Ukraine.
The article also notes "preliminary evidence that the suppression strategy is working. "Polls, whose reliability is always uncertain in Russia, show that a majority of Russians support the war. In interviews with Western journalists that have gone viral online, Russians who rely on state-controlled media have consistently echoed Kremlin falsehoods about eradicating alleged Nazism in Ukraine while seeming to be genuinely oblivious to the war's carnage."

The article also notes how Apple is responding to Ukraine's crisis — but also includes this anecdote: Apple has similarly kept employees in Russia and taken other steps to placate the Kremlin. The company last year began configuring iPhones sold in Russia to promote Kremlin-backed social media companies, enabling users to activate them with a single click. It is an accommodation Apple has rarely made elsewhere and advances Putin's goal of migrating Russian people to platforms controlled by the government, according to Russia analysts.

"People around the world are using a new website to circumvent the Kremlin's propaganda machine by sending individual messages about the war in Ukraine to random people in Russia," reports the Wall Street Journal.

"The website was developed by a group of Polish programmers who obtained some 20 million cellphone numbers and close to 140 million email addresses owned by Russian individuals and companies."

A Tuesday report from the Daily Dot: Created by the hacking group known as Squad303, the tool, hosted at the domain 1920.in, loads a pre-written statement into a user's native SMS app that attempts to inform Russians about the ongoing conflict.

"Dear Russians, your media is being censored. The Kremlin is lying," the statement reads. "Find out the truth about Ukraine on the free internet and in the Telegram app. Time to overthrow dictator Putin!"

In a statement to the Daily Dot, a member of Squad303 described the effort as a "non-violent communication project" aimed at bypassing Russia's crackdown on independent news sources.

The domain name for the tool refers to Poland's surprise victory against Russian forces in 1920.

"We know that people wanted to get engaged to help Ukrainians. We wanted to deliver them a tool to start a dialog with Russians," the group said.... Squad303 claims that its tool has already been used to send out more than 6.3 million text messages, although the Daily Dot was unable to confirm the number.

On the VRChat platform, there's a fake law-enforcement agency called The Loli Police Department, reports Input magazine.

Though it began as a joke, after four years its Discord channel now has 11,000 members, and "The tightly run community allows members to experience a fantasy version of police life and prides itself on being a source of chaotic good in the strange world of virtual reality." Members move through the ranks — from cadet on up — based on their activity level, which is tracked via the group's Discord. Everything is carefully orchestrated to mimic IRL police.... Karet, a 29-year-old game developer and LPD captain from Texas, says that the hard work of volunteers allows users to roleplay police activities in a realistic environment. "We have some of our own worlds — like the hospital for our medical division, where we can pretend someone is getting treatment, or the jail where we put criminals," says Karet, who designed the LPD station and jail.

One of Karet's favorite things to do is mess with users at random. "Lots of people in VRChat like to sit in front of mirrors," he says. "I will go up to the mirror and do a 'mirror inspection.' Then I say it's an illegal mirror and start looking for someone to blame and arrest. They just don't know how to handle that," he laughs. There are other ways to get people into trouble, too. "I can pull out a bag of weed and make it look like it came out of someone's pocket," Karet says. "They always say it's not theirs."

Being a VRChat police officer comes with its share of challenges. Members are aware that their form of roleplay — which frames spot checks and fake drug busts as harmless fun — doesn't sit well with some members of the community....

Despite the power dynamics at play, LPD members are not moderators of the VR world and ultimately can't make much in the way of real change. "One of our new officers came to me upset because they stepped in when they saw harassment, but then they got the brunt of the attack from the harasser," says Karet. "I commended him, but it's not what we do. We're just trying to have fun. So usually when we encounter something like that, we just leave the world." Thankfully, Karet says, the LPD can help their community somewhat. "We encourage LPD officers to help out new users. It's easy to spot them, so we often go and give them a hand, show them how things work," he says. The LPD used to run events for this purpose, but they were recently brought to a halt. "The events are on hiatus because it became a bit cult-y. Everyone was trying to recruit people into the LPD."

Slashdot reader nickwinlund77 quotes the New York Times (also quoted here): DuckDuckGo has little control over its search results because they are provided by Microsoft's Bing, which announced that it would follow the European Union's order to restrict access to the Russian state news agencies RT and Sputnik. But the criticism from the far right was directed at DuckDuckGo. The conservative website Breitbart said DuckDuckGo was "adopting the censorship policies" of Big Tech. In social media channels devoted to conspiracy theories, users vowed to switch to alternatives like the Russian search engine Yandex....

In a statement, Kamyl Bazbaz, the vice president of communications for DuckDuckGo, said that the affected sites were engaged in "active disinformation campaigns," meaning they were similar to other low-quality websites already penalized by search algorithms. "This isn't censorship, it's just search rankings," he said....

The company also announced this month that it would pause its relationship with Yandex, the Russian search engine, which was providing certain links for results in Russia and Turkey.

Slashdot reader katydid77 shares a report from the supercomputing site The Next Platform: If you need any proof that it doesn't take the most advanced chip manufacturing processes to create an exascale-class supercomputer, you need look no further than the Sunway "OceanLight" system housed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, China. Some of the architectural details of the OceanLight supercomputer came to our attention as part of a paper published by Alibaba Group, Tsinghua University, DAMO Academy, Zhejiang Lab, and Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, which is running a pretrained machine learning model called BaGuaLu, across more than 37 million cores and 14.5 trillion parameters (presumably with FP32 single precision), and has the capability to scale to 174 trillion parameters (and approaching what is called "brain-scale" where the number of parameters starts approaching the number of synapses in the human brain)....

Add it all up, and the 105 cabinet system tested on the BaGuaLu training model, with its 107,250 SW26010-Pro processors, had a peak theoretical performance of 1.51 exaflops. We like base 2 numbers and think that the OceanLight system probably scales to 160 cabinets, which would be 163,840 nodes and just under 2.3 exaflops of peak FP64 and FP32 performance. If it is only 120 cabinets (also a base 2 number), OceanLight will come in at 1.72 exaflops peak. But these rack scales are, once again, just hunches. If the 160 cabinet scale is the maximum for OceanLight, then China could best the performance of the 1.5 exaflops "Frontier" supercomputer being tuned up at Oak Ridge National Laboratories today and also extend beyond the peak theoretical performance of the 2 exaflops "Aurora" supercomputer coming to Argonne National Laboratory later this year — and maybe even further than the "El Capitan" supercomputer going into Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2023 and expected to be around 2.2 exaflops to 2.3 exaflops according to the scuttlebutt.

We would love to see the thermals and costs of OceanLight. The SW26010-Pro chip could burn very hot, to be sure, and run up the electric bill for power and cooling, but if SMIC [China's largest foundry] can get good yield on 14 nanometer processes, the chip could be a lot less expensive to make than, say, a massive GPU accelerator from Nvidia, AMD, or Intel. (It's hard to say.) Regardless, having indigenous parts matters more than power efficiency for China right now, and into its future, and we said as much last summer when contemplating China's long road to IT independence. Imagine what China can do with a shrink to 7 nanometer processes when SMIC delivers them — apparently not even using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light — many years hence....

The bottom line is that the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (known as NRCPC), working with SMIC, has had an exascale machine in the field for a year already. (There are two, in fact.) Can the United States say that right now? No it can't.

From CNN: India said on Friday it had accidentally fired a missile into Pakistan this week because of a "technical malfunction" during routine maintenance, giving its version of events after Pakistan summoned India's envoy to protest.

Military experts have in the past warned of the risk of accidents or miscalculations by the nuclear-armed neighbors, which have fought three wars and engaged in numerous smaller armed clashes, usually over the disputed territory of Kashmir... Tensions have eased in recent months, and the incident — which may have been the first of its kind — immediately raised questions about safety mechanisms.

"On 9 March 2022, in the course of a routine maintenance, a technical malfunction led to the accidental firing of a missile," the Indian Ministry of Defence said in a three-paragraph statement. "It is learnt that the missile landed in an area of Pakistan. While the incident is deeply regrettable, it is also a matter of relief that there has been no loss of life due to the accident." The ministry said the government had "taken a serious view and ordered a high-level Court of Enquiry."

Pakistani officials said the missile was unarmed and had crashed near the country's eastern city of Mian Channu, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) from the capital, Islamabad.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader ami.one for sharing the news...

Ukraine's two leading suppliers of neon, which produce about half the world's supply of the key ingredient for making chips, have halted their operations as Moscow has sharpened its attack on the country, threatening to raise prices and aggravate the semiconductor shortage. CNN Business reports: Some 45%-54% of the world's semiconductor grade neon, critical for the lasers used to make chips, comes from two Ukrainian companies, Ingas and Cryoin, according to Reuters calculations based on figures from the companies and market research firm Techcet. Global neon consumption for chip production reached about 540 metric tons last year, Techcet estimates. Both firms have shuttered their operations, according to company representatives contacted by Reuters, as Russian troops have escalated their attacks on cities throughout Ukraine, killing civilians and destroying key infrastructure. The stoppage casts a cloud over the worldwide output of chips, already in short supply after the coronavirus pandemic drove up demand for cell phones, laptops and later cars, forcing some firms to scale back production.

Landmark legislation that will drastically curtail tech companies' ability to stop employees from talking about mistreatment is headed to the governor's desk in Washington state. GeekWire reports: Last week, Washington legislators approved House Bill 1795 -- also called the Silenced No More Act -- in major victory for activists who have fought to limit non-disclosures and non-disparagement agreements. The legislation, introduced by Rep. Liz Berry (D-Seattle), makes it illegal for companies to ban employees from discussing "illegal acts of discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wage and hour violations, and sexual assault."

"This bill is about empowering workers," said Berry in a statement last week. "It is about giving workers a voice. Despite the progress we've made in recent years, too many workers are still forced to sign NDAs and settlement agreements that silence them. This bill will allow all survivors of inappropriate or illegal workplace misconduct to share their experiences if they choose to do so." NDAs have long been common practice at many large tech companies, and often state that employees will have to repay severance money or face other financial ramifications if they violate the agreement.

Washington state will be the second state to ban these types of gag orders; California passed its own Silenced No More Act last year. There, the legislation passed despite vocal opposition from trade groups, which argued that employees could end up getting hurt if companies decide to limit severance payments, or to forgo them altogether.

According to the latest updates from CNN, Ukraine's defense ministry claims Russia is planning to carry out "some sort of terrorist attack at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant" and blame Ukraine. The plant is currently without power and under Russian control. From the report: The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence claimed on its Facebook page Friday that "the available intelligence says Putin has ordered that his troops to prepare a terror attack at Chernobyl for which the Russian invaders will try to blame Ukraine." The directorate also repeated that the plant "remains completely disconnected from the monitoring systems run by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)."

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence also alleged Friday that Russian forces had denied a Ukrainian repair team access to Chernobyl. It claimed without offering evidence that "Belarusian specialists" went there posing as nuclear power experts and that Russian saboteurs were arriving to set up a terror attack. The ministry claimed that "without receiving the desired result from the ground military operation and direct talks, Putin is ready to resort to nuclear blackmail of the international community."

The IAEA said last week that it had not been able to re-establish communication with systems installed to monitor nuclear material and activities at either the Chernobyl or Zaporizhzhia plants following the loss of remote data transmissions from those systems. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said Thursday that the situation at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, occupied by the Russian forces, was degrading as the IAEA was losing "a significant amount of information" on safeguarding monitoring systems. However, he said he was "quite encouraged [...] on one important thing, is that Ukraine and Russian Federation want to work with us, they agree to work with us." "Both Russia and Ukraine have repeatedly claimed without substantiation that the other side is planning to provoke an incident involving nuclear, chemical or biological agents," notes CNN.

On Wednesday, Russian's foreign ministry claimed that the U.S. operates a biowarfare lab in Ukraine, "an accusation that has been repeatedly denied by Washington and Kyiv," reports Reuters.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) will begin testing bidirectional charging in California with new pilot programs announced this week at General Motors and Ford. ["This will enable power to flow from a charged EV into a customer's home, automatically coordinating between the EV, home and PG&E's electric supply," explains InsideEVs.] [...] General Motors might be late to the EV pickup party, but on Wednesday, it was first to announce that it is working with PG&E on vehicle-to-home technology. This summer, the two companies will begin lab tests with different GM EVs before starting to test vehicle-to-home connections at some customer homes. The two companies say they plan to open up to a larger customer trial by the end of this year.

On Thursday, Ford and PG&E revealed similar plans at the CERAWeek conference in Houston. Few details have been made public so far, though we know that unlike in the GM pilot, PG&E will not be able to remotely operate the vehicle-to-home feature on demand. And unfortunately, neither the Ford Mustang Mach-E nor the e-Transit will be capable of bidirectional charging; it will just be the F-150 Lightning.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. regulators on Thursday issued final rules eliminating the need for automated vehicle manufacturers to equip fully autonomous vehicles with manual driving controls to meet crash standards. Automakers and tech companies have faced significant hurdles to deploying automated driving system (ADS) vehicles without human controls because of safety standards written decades ago that assume people are in control. The rules revise (PDF) regulations that assume vehicles "will always have a driver's seat, a steering wheel and accompanying steering column, or just one front outboard passenger seating position."

"For vehicles designed to be solely operated by an ADS, manually operated driving controls are logically unnecessary," the agency said. The new rules, which were first proposed in March 2020, emphasize automated vehicles must provide the same levels of occupant protection as human-driven vehicles. NHTSA's rule says children should not occupy what is traditionally known as the "driver's" position, given that the driver's seating position has not been designed to protect children in a crash, but if a child is in that seat, the car will not immediately be required to cease motion. NHTSA said existing regulations do not currently bar deploying automated vehicles as long as they have manual driving controls, and as it continues to consider changing other safety standards, manufacturers may still need to petition NHTSA for an exemption to sell their ADS-equipped vehicles.