wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Researchers have discovered three separate Chinese military affiliated advanced threat groups simultaneously targeting and compromising the same Southeast Asian telcos. The attack groups concerned are Soft Cell, Naikon, and a third group, possibly Emissary Panda (also known as APT27)...

Cybereason released details of a triple-pronged attack by Chinese military-affiliated groups against cellular network providers in southeast Asia. Disturbingly, Yonatan Striem-Amit, CTO and co-founder of Cybereason, told SecurityWeek, "We discovered and have evidence that Chinese advanced groups have been using the Hafnium zero-days since at least 2017." Cellular networks are a prime target for nation states because they provide an excellent steppingstone to many other types of attack and different targets. "At this point," said Striem-Amit, "the attacks seem to be a stepping point for a major espionage campaign. We all carry a device in our pocket that knows where we are, where we have been, and who we are with...."

The surprising feature, apart from their stealthy duration, is that three groups, all associated with the Chinese government and often sharing tactics, techniques and procedures, have attacked the same targets at the same time — and have even been seen on the same endpoints simultaneously. It is consequently unclear whether the groups were separately instructed to target telcos, or whether they were being guided from a single source within the Chinese military... The one thing that is clear is that telcos are a major target for China, and that it has had knowledge of and has used serious Exchange zero-day vulnerabilities for many years.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: The U.S. Air Force joins a group of venture capital firms in making a $60 million investment in Hermeus, a Georgia-based startup that is striving to make the world's first reusable hypersonic aircraft, a press statement reveals. The new contract, awarded on July 30, sets ambitious objectives for Hermeus, to be accomplished over the next three years. These include the building of three prototypes of the company's Quarterhorse aircraft and the testing of its full-scale reusable hypersonic propulsion system. If all goes to plan, the Quarterhorse passenger aircraft will be capable of flying at a staggering Mach 5 speeds, starting at 3836 mph (6174 km/h). By comparison, NASA's new supersonic jet, the X-59, will fly at Mach 1.5 and reach top speeds of 990 mph.

As Hermeus' aircraft will eventually be able to fly five times the speed of sound, it will be capable of traveling from New York to London in only 90 minutes -- instead of seven hours it typically takes today's commercial airliners. In order to reach those speeds, Hermeus is developing a proprietary turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) engine, based on the GE J85 turbojet engine used for a variety of high-speed aircraft including Virgin Galactic's White Knight carrier aircraft and Boom Supersonic's prototype XB-1 aircraft. The first Quarterhorse prototype is set to be unmanned -- much in the same way that Virgin Galactic's first space plane missions were uncrewed, the earliest flight tests will not be piloted so as to eliminate the risk to human life and to allow the company to start its flight testing earlier. According to a 2020 report by Aviation International News, Hermeus has already built and tested a small-scale hypersonic engine prototype and it is now working on a full-scale engine demonstrator of its TBCC engine.

Jim Salter writes via Ars Technica: In March of last year, proprietary filesystem vendor Paragon Software unleashed a stream of anti-open source FUD about a Samsung-derived exFAT implementation headed into the Linux kernel. Several months later, Paragon seemed to have seen the error of its ways and began the arduous process of getting its own implementation of Microsoft's NTFS (the default filesystem for all Windows machines) into the kernel as well. Although Paragon is still clearly struggling to get its processes and practices aligned to open source-friendly ones, Linux kernel BDFL Linus Torvalds seems to have taken a personal interest in the process. After nearly a year of effort by Paragon, Torvalds continues to gently nudge both it and skeptical Linux devs in order to keep the project moving forward.

To those familiar with daily Linux use, the utility of Paragon's version of NTFS might not be immediately obvious. The Linux kernel already has one implementation of NTFS, and most distributions make it incredibly easy to install and use another FUSE-based implementation (ntfs-3g) beyond that. Both existing implementations have problems, however. The in-kernel implementation of NTFS is extremely old, poorly maintained, and should only be used read-only. As a result, most people who actually need to mount NTFS filesystems on Linux use the ntfs-3g driver instead. Ntfs-3g is in reasonably good shape -- it's much newer than the in-kernel ntfs implementation, and as Linux filesystem guru Ted Ts'o points out, it actually passes more automated filesystem tests than Paragon's own ntfs3 does.

Unfortunately, due to operating in userspace rather than in-kernel, ntfs-3g's performance is abysmal. In Ts'o's testing, Paragon's ntfs3 completed automated testing in 8,106 seconds -- but the FUSE-based ntfs-3g required a whopping 34,783 seconds. Bugs and performance aside, ongoing maintenance is a key aspect to Paragon's ntfs3 making it in-kernel. Torvalds opined that "Paragon should just make a pull request for [ntfs3]" -- but he did so after noting that the code should get OKs from current maintainers and that Paragon itself should maintain the code going forward. (Paragon developer Konstantin Komarov quickly replied that the company intended to continue maintaining the code, once accepted.) [...] For his own part, Torvalds seems determined to find a performant, modern, maintainable replacement for the ancient (2001-era) and seldom-used ntfs implementation in the kernel now. As long as Paragon remains willing to keep playing, it seems likely to get there eventually -- perhaps even in time for the 5.15 kernel.

According to a survey from Consultancy Accenture, young people born in the 90s are less likely to be getting their information about tech careers from school and teachers than social media, TV series and film. ZDNet reports: Social media ranks top for information sources about career aspirations (31%), beating out parents by a small margin (29%) and teachers by a larger margin (24%). Gen Z are more likely to learn about a future in the tech sector from TV and film (27%) than from school (19%). Accenture surveyed 1,000 UK-based 16-21-year-olds on their career aspirations and their long-term options. It found that 44% of young women said they had good digital skills, but only 40% of young men said they did. Despite this, less than a quarter of young people are confident in securing a technology job.

Shaheen Sayed, Accenture's technology lead in the UK & Ireland, said: "If the digital native generation is not turning to technology as a career option, then we have a huge pipeline problem for the technology profession. Young people know technology is completely redefining the world right now -- but their lack of confidence in securing a tech job indicates a worrying disconnect between young people, particularly girls, and a changing jobs market." Those interviewed who were interested in tech jobs said they would most likely choose jobs in AI, data analytics, and cybersecurity. Which makes sense to an extent, given that these are the top three subjects in online tech media at present.

"It's striking that young people are influenced more by digital channels than their connections at home and school when choosing their next steps," said Sayed. "Careers advice will need to meet young people where they are at and paint an engaging picture of the skills required for the economy today. Developing the next generation of tech talent requires more than having coding on the curriculum. Technology moves quickly and subjects must evolve to equip young people with the digital skills that will drive economic growth. Employers are looking for people to work with technologies, like AI, as they tackle global challenges like climate change and become more competitive."

Hackers are going after U.S. hospitals with a fresh wave of cyberattacks this week just as coronavirus cases surge around the country. From a report: Eskenazi Health, a health-care service provider that operates a 315-bed hospital, inpatient facilities, and community health centers throughout Indianapolis, was crippled by a ransomware attack that began between 3:30 and 4 a.m. Wednesday morning, a spokesperson told The Daily Beast. By 8 a.m. Eskenazi Health was turning ambulances away and diverting patients to other hospitals as a result of the ransomware incident, the spokesperson said. "A ransomware attack happened," an Eskenazi spokesperson told The Daily Beast, confirming that all of Eskenazi Health's locations -- its hospital, its inpatient facilities, and its community health centers -- are impacted. The spokesperson added that Eskenazi Health was working to contain the ransomware by shutting down some services and operations in order to try to keep the malware from spreading through its systems.

"They took all of our systems down so they wouldn't get breached," the spokesperson said, confirming email systems and electronic medical records were still down as of Thursday evening. Eskenazi Health is not alone. Sanford Health, a Sioux Falls, South Dakota-headquartered health system which includes 46 hospitals and care locations in 26 states and 10 countries, said in a statement Thursday it had been hit with a cyberattack in recent days as well. Sanford Health did not confirm whether it was the victim of ransomware, but president and CEO Bill Gassen confirmed to The Daily Beast it was working to "contain" the impact. In both the Sanford Health and Eskenazi Health cases, patient data and employee data were not affected, officials said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Edmunds, written by Cameron Rogers: BlueCruise operates on the same principle as Super Cruise. Once the vehicle is traveling on one of the 100,000 miles of qualified roadways (Ford dubs these Hands-Free Blue Zones) and certain conditions have been met, a graphic appears in the instrument panel to let you know that BlueCruise is ready for activation. Simply press the cruise control button on the steering wheel and you can take your hands off the wheel to let the vehicle drive itself. Like Super Cruise, Ford's BlueCruise system is not autonomous. As the driver, you have to be alert and prepared to take the wheel at any time. BlueCruise will not take evasive action if there is a small obstruction in the road -- a box on the freeway, for instance -- and you must be ready to perform advanced maneuvers if necessary. To that end, BlueCruise includes a head and eye position sensor to make sure you're watching the road ahead. Divert your attention for too long and the system will deactivate. And because BlueCruise relies on clearly visible lane markers, traveling on highway sections that lack them will deactivate the system. The first vehicles to receive BlueCruise functionality will be two of Ford's newest models -- the 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E and 2021 Ford F-150. In both cases, the BlueCruise hardware is tied to the Ford Co-Pilot360 Active 2.0 package.

I had the opportunity to drive both an F-150 and Mustang Mach-E with BlueCruise, and there was no functional difference in how the system behaved in each vehicle. The system itself melds several driver aids that are already present on the majority of cars today, but with a head- and eye-tracking component that makes sure you're paying attention. Once this is established -- and you're driving on a preapproved road -- a ring will appear around a graphic of the vehicle in the digital instrument panel. This lets you know that BlueCruise is ready to activate. Simply press the cruise control button and acceleration, braking and turning is handed over to BlueCruise. In this way, BlueCruise functions similarly to GM's Super Cruise. The primary difference is that GM vehicles with Super Cruise have an LED light bar integrated into the steering wheel to let you know when Super Cruise can be activated. Ford's system isn't so obvious in letting you know when it's ready. When you press the cruise control button, however, the instrument panel graphics turn blue to inform you that BlueCruise is active and you can take your hands off the wheel.

The other difference between the two competing systems is that GM's Super Cruise has one prescribed distance for the adaptive cruise control (ACC) aspect. Ford has decided to treat BlueCruise like a typical ACC system in which you can choose one of four following distances. When engaged, BlueCruise does a good job at approximating typical human driving behavior. I never had to adjust the following distance from one of the medium settings, and the system gives you a few beats to put your hands on the wheel when it needs you to resume control. I didn't experience many technical issues in either vehicle on my limited test drive, but there was one instance in which I was forced to make an emergency maneuver. A Civic driver with little concern for their personal safety accelerated to merge right in front of my F-150, and the truck didn't slow down quickly enough. This wasn't necessarily a fault of BlueCruise itself -- I have found that ACC systems in general are slow to react to vehicles merging into or out of my lane -- but it goes to show that you still need to have your wits about you at all times. "Like GM's Super Cruise, Ford's BlueCruise provides a hands-free driving experience on certain limited-access highways," writes Rogers in closing. "It certainly takes some stress out of driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and should be similarly pleasant on long-distance road trips. But these are not autonomous systems, and drivers need to be ready to take the wheel at any time to react to changing road conditions."

Rare earth magnet recycling is about so much more than sustainable data centers. From a report: The U.S. alone generates nearly 17 percent of all used hard disk drives -- the largest share globally -- and researchers have estimated that if all of these data storage devices were recycled, they could supply more than 5 percent of all rare earth magnet demand outside of China, potentially helping meet the demand of the information technology sector as well as clean energy companies. A consortium of U.S. researchers, tech companies, hardware manufacturers, and electronic waste recyclers has recently begun exploring exactly how those rare earths can be re-harvested and given a second life.

In 2019, these stakeholders published a report identifying a host of potential strategies, including wiping and re-using entire hard disk drives, removing and reusing the magnet assemblies, grinding up old hard drive magnets and using the powder to manufacture new ones, and extracting purified rare earth elements from shredded drives. Each of these strategies has its own challenges -- removing magnet assemblies by hand is labor intensive; extracting rare earths from technology can be chemical or energy intensive and produce significant waste -- and for any of them to be scaled up, there needs to be buy-in from numerous actors across global supply chains.

Making even the relatively minor supply chain adjustments needed to place used or recycled rare earth magnets inside new drives "is difficult," said Hongyue Jin, a scientist at the University of Arizona who studies rare earth recycling. "And especially when you've got to start from some small amount with a new technology." Still, some companies have begun taking the first steps. In 2018, Google, hard disk drive manufacturer Seagate, and electronics refurbisher Recontext (formerly Teleplan) conducted a small demonstration project that involved removing the magnet assemblies from six hard disk drives and placing them in new Seagate drives. This demonstration, said Kali Frost, a doctoral student in industrial sustainability at Purdue University, was the "catalyst" for the larger 2019 study in which 6,100 magnet assemblies were extracted from Seagate hard drives in a Google data center before being inserted into new hard drives in a Seagate manufacturing facility. Frost, who led the 2019 study, believes it is the largest demonstration of its kind ever done.

The results, which will be published in a forthcoming edition of the journal Resources, Conservation, and Recycling, not only showed that rare earth magnets could be harvested and reused at larger scale, but that there were significant environmental benefits to doing so: Overall, re-used magnet assemblies had a carbon footprint 86 percent lower than new ones, according to the study. Frost says that this estimate conservatively took into account the energy mix of the local power grid where the data center operated. Considering Google's near round-the-clock renewable energy usage at this particular data center, the carbon footprint of the reused magnets was even lower.

Facebook's WhatsApp messaging unit blasted Apple's plan to monitor sexually exploitative images of children on iPhones as bad for privacy, opening a new front in the battle between two of the world's biggest tech companies. From a report: "This approach introduces something very concerning into the world," Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp, said Friday. "We will not adopt it at WhatsApp." Apple a day earlier said it planned to release an update for U.S. users later this year designed to identify and report collections of sexually exploitative images of children, as part of a series of changes it is preparing for the iPhone to protect children from sexual predators.

WhatsApp's position deepens the battle between Facebook and Apple about data. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has long bemoaned what he sees as too much power Apple has over the social-media giant's business. Apple has made the protection of user information on the iPhones and some other devices a key part of its pitch to consumers and taken shots at Facebook for its data-collection practices. Tensions have intensified in recent months as Apple rolled out a new privacy feature for the iPhone that restricts Facebook's ability to collect data. Mr. Zuckerberg said Apple was using its platform to interfere with how Facebook apps work. At the heart of the latest dispute is the question of whether tech companies can insert software that identifies inappropriate or illegal content without compromising privacy. Apple claims to have found a way to do this. WhatsApp, and Apple's critics, liken this software to a surveillance system.

Google announced arguably its most serious attempt at hardware this week when it said it will be ditching Qualcomm chips and creating its own, including those used for its flagship Pixel phone. From a report: It also has been using its own chips for its growing number of data centers across the country. In January, it completed the acquisition of fitness tracking hardware company Fitbit, which had been held up in regulatory review for more than a year. One building in particular is getting a major overhaul. 20% of that building is designated for office space and 80% for manufacturing, storage, distribution, and other purposes, according to plans. The company has been planning the site since at least 2018, according to documents. "New interior space will be used for device warehouse, distribution and supporting office functions," the plans state. Plans show the space can hold up to 169 people but a Google spokesperson declined to specify how many employees it will house.

One planning document describes dressing the interior in ocean-themed items, including with art installations, murals, drift wood accents, seashell statement pieces from Etsy and a surfboard suspending on ceilings of meeting and training rooms, plans show. Meeting rooms are named after seaside areas in and around Monterey, Calif., including Cannery Row, Pacific Grove, Fisherman's Wharf and Del Monte. Other proposed modifications to the site include parking lot reconfigurations, new equipment pads, rooftop equipment enclosures, ADA upgrades, and updates to the faces of the buildings.

T-Mobile has been moving to integrate Sprint into its operations since completing its merger last April. This week the next step was detailed, with a support page on the carrier's website revealing that T-Mobile plans to shut down Sprint's 4G LTE network on June 30, 2022. An anonymous reader writes: The page, spotted by Light Reading, details a bit about why it is doing this. The company says that "retiring older network technologies" allow it "to free up resources and spectrum that will help us strengthen our entire network, move all customers to more advanced technologies and bridge the Digital Divide." Part of this process, the post continues, "involves moving Sprint's LTE spectrum to the T-Mobile network."

T-Mobile says that "most" Sprint LTE and 5G devices can work with its LTE or 5G network. It adds that those devices "will continue to operate on T-Mobile's LTE and 5G networks," so long as those Sprint users upgrade from Sprint-issued SIM cards to ones from T-Mobile. You will also need to make sure that Voice over LTE (also known as VoLTE) is enabled for voice calls.

Over the next 12 months, Microsoft is rolling out a series of updates for its OneNote apps on Windows with the intention of creating a single user experience. From a report: At the moment, there are two versions people can use: The OneNote app installed with Office and the OneNote for Windows 10 app available in the Microsoft Store. Microsoft will update the OneNote app with features currently exclusive to its counterpart pre-installed on Windows 10, though, and it will also give the program a visual refresh. Microsoft originally intended to kill the OneNote app when the one for Windows 10 became available, but it changed its plans and revived the app in 2019. It upgraded the note-taking program with a bunch of new features and bundled it with Office installs a year later. Now, the tech giant says it will update OneNote with visual elements that it'll share with other Windows apps as part of Microsoft's efforts to give Windows 11 a more seamless look. The merged OneNote application will also gain access to the latest Microsoft pen and ink features, as well as a new navigational UI layout option.

Google considered buying Epic Games as the companies sparred over Epic's Fortnite Android app, according to newly unsealed court filings. From a report: Last night, Google lifted some of its redactions in Epic's antitrust complaint against Google, which Epic amended and refiled last month. The complaint still omits many details about Google's dealings with specific companies, but the new details reflect internal Google communications about competition on the Android platform. Epic claims Google was threatened by its plans to sidestep Google's official Play Store commission by distributing Fortnite through other channels, and in an unredacted segment, it quotes an internal Google document calling Epic's plans a "contagion" threatening Google.

Here's Epic's description of the situation: "Google has gone so far as to share its monopoly profits with business partners to secure their agreement to fence out competition, has developed a series of internal projects to address the 'contagion' it perceived from efforts by Epic and others to offer consumers and developers competitive alternatives, and has even contemplated buying some or all of Epic to squelch this threat."

Taiwanese computer hardware vendor GIGABYTE has suffered a ransomware attack, and hackers are currently threatening to release more than 112 GB of business data on the dark web unless the company agrees to their ransom demands. An anonymous reader shares a report: The Taiwanese company, primarily known for its high-performance motherboards, confirmed the attack in a phone call and in a message on its (now-down) Taiwanese website. A spokesperson said the incident did not impact production systems. Only a few internal servers at its Taiwanese headquarters have been affected and have now been taken down and isolated. The company is currently in the process of investigating how the hackers breached its systems, stole files, and encrypted local copies. Local law enforcement has also been notified.

Sebastien Marineau-Mes, a software VP at Apple, talks about the company's upcoming controversial photo scanning features in an internal memo to employees: Today marks the official public unveiling of Expanded Protections for Children, and I wanted to take a moment to thank each and every one of you for all of your hard work over the last few years. We would not have reached this milestone without your tireless dedication and resiliency.

Keeping children safe is such an important mission. In true Apple fashion, pursuing this goal has required deep cross-functional commitment, spanning Engineering, GA, HI, Legal, Product Marketing and PR. What we announced today is the product of this incredible collaboration, one that delivers tools to protect children, but also maintain Apple's deep commitment to user privacy.

We've seen many positive responses today. We know some people have misunderstandings, and more than a few are worried about the implications, but we will continue to explain and detail the features so people understand what we've built. And while a lot of hard work lays ahead to deliver the features in the next few months. [...]

The Federal Communications Commission released a new set of maps Friday showing mobile service coverage and availability as reported by the major wireless providers. From a report: Billions of dollars are about to be spent on boosting broadband access for underserved Americans. The better the data that directs that spending is, the more effective the dollars will be.

The FCC says these new maps represent a step towards complying with a 2020 law that mandated better public reporting of broadband and wireless service information. The maps use a new data specification that will "improve the uniformity and consistency of broadband availability data," according to an FCC release.

Terry Rudolph, a professor of quantum physics at Imperial College London, suggests that interstellar light could actually be harnessed by space faring aliens to form an encrypted quantum internet. Motherboard reports: This may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but Rudolph says it was actually a natural extension of what he does as co-founder of PsiQuantum, a Silicon Valley-based company on a mission to build a scalable photonic quantum computer. He laid out his idea in a paper recently published on the arXiv preprint server. Rudolph said the idea for the paper on aliens communicating with quantum starlight flowed from his work on quantum computers. Unlike the quantum computers being pursued by the likes of Google or Intel that use superconducting circuits or trapped ions at incredibly cold temperatures to create qubits (the quantum equivalent of a computer bit), photonic computers use light to accomplish the same thing. While Rudolph says this kind of quantum design is unconventional, it does also have advantages over its rival -- including being able to operate at room temperature and easy integration into existing fiber optic infrastructure.

The primary way the aliens would create this kind of quantum internet is through a quantum mechanics principle called entanglement, explains Rudolph. In a nutshell, entanglement is a phenomena in which the quantum states of particles (like photons) are linked together. This is what Einstein referred to as "spooky action at a distance" and means that disturbing one particle will automatically affect its partner, even if they're miles apart. This entanglement would allow aliens -- or even humans -- to send encrypted signals between entangled partners, or nodes. Now, scale that single computer system up to a network potentially spanning the entire cosmos.

Aliens aside, Rudolph says that his paper demonstrates that building a photon-based quantum internet here on Earth might be "much easier than we expected." As for the aliens, even if they were using this kind of technology to transform waves of light into their own personal chat rooms, we'd have no way of knowing, says Rudolph. And even if we could pick out these light patterns in the sky, we still wouldn't be able to listen in. This is due to the incredibly shy nature of quantum particles -- any attempt to observe them by an outside party would alter their state and destroy the information they were carrying.

Presto Vivace shares a report from The Intercept: The Senate's $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill proposes a national test program that would allow the government to collect drivers' data in order to charge them per-mile travel fees. The new revenue would help finance the Highway Trust Fund, which currently depends mostly on fuel taxes to support roads and mass transit across the country. Under the proposal, the government would collect information about the miles that drivers travel from smartphone apps, another on-board device, automakers, insurance companies, gas stations, or other means. For now, the initiative would only be a test effort -- the government would solicit volunteers who drive commercial and passenger vehicles -- but the idea still raises concerns about the government tracking people's private data.

The bill would establish an advisory board to guide the program that would include officials representing state transportation departments and the trucking industry as well as data security and consumer privacy experts. As the four-year pilot initiative goes on, the Transportation and Treasury departments would also have to keep Congress informed of how they maintain volunteers' privacy and how the per-mile fee idea could affect low-income drivers. Still, [Sean Vitka, policy counsel at Demand Progress] said the concept could put Americans' private data at risk. "We already know the government is unable to keep data like this secure, which is another reason why the government maintaining a giant database of travel information about people in the United States is a bad idea." "If you think this is a bad idea, NOW would be a good time to let your Senators and representative know," says Slashdot reader Presto Vivace.

Scammers are abusing Instagram's protections against suicide, self-harm, and impersonation to purposefully target and ban Instagram accounts at will, with some people even advertising professionalized ban-as-a-service offerings so anyone can harass or censor others, according to screenshots, interviews, and other material reviewed by Motherboard. From the report: It appears that in some cases, the same scammers who offer ban-as-a-service also offer or are at least connected to services to restore accounts for users who were unfairly banned from Instagram, sometimes for thousands of dollars. "Me (and my friend's) currently have the best ban service on-site/in the world," one advertisement for a ban service on the underground forum OG Users reads. "We have been professionally banning since 2020 and have top-tier experience. We may not have the cheapest prices, but trust me you are getting what you are paying for."

War, the pseudonymous user offering the ban service, told Motherboard in a Telegram message that banning "is pretty much a full time job lol." They claimed to have made over five-figures from selling Instagram bans in under a month. War charges $60 per ban, according to their listing. Another banner on a different underground forum offers the service for between 5 euros and 30 euros per account, depending on the number of followers. That listing advertised bans for accounts up to 5,000 followers, but claimed that higher follower accounts are also possible to ban. The first listing said it can impact accounts with up to 99,000 followers. War said they didn't know why particular customers may use their service, but added "obviously individuals who have money to throw around." Both listings say that a target account must have a human in the profile photo. In War's case, they said they ban users by filing a fraudulent impersonation complaint to Instagram.

For banned accounts, victims generally have to provide Instagram with several pieces of information such as their name, phone number, and linked email address [...]. [P]reviously, once an account was banned, the owner could try to restore it themselves straight away. Recently, Instagram introduced a 24 hour buffer window where a user has to wait before trying to restore the account, they said. But it appears that in other cases some of the people offering restore services are connected to those banning the accounts in the first place. [S]ome victims receive a message offering account restoration immediately after being banned, and that in their own case, the two accounts that launched the ban attack and the one offering the restore service follow each other on Instagram.

In addition to new hardware announced today, Google has made a big change to its new line of Nest cameras: they no longer require a monthly subscription fee to record video. Ars Technica reports: We'll get to the new models in a minute (editor's note: no we won't because this isn't a slashvertisement; you'll have to visit the article), but the biggest news is that Google is making the cameras more useful without a monthly subscription. Previously, core camera features like recording video were locked behind a $6-$12 monthly subscription plan called "Nest Aware," but the new cameras can now record local video. You only get three hours' worth of "events" (motion detection, as opposed to 24/7 video), but it's a start. Google has also moved activity zones and some image recognition features from the cloud-based pay-per-month service to on-device processing, so they work without a subscription, too.

If you still want to pay for the "Nest Aware" subscription, it comes in two tiers. There's the $6 "Nest Aware," which gives you 30 days of "event" video history and facial recognition. The free tier can detect and alert you about people, animals, and vehicles, but the subscription adds facial recognition for "familiar faces" so Nest can tell if a loved one or stranger is at the door and alert you accordingly. The $12-per-month tier is "Nest Aware Plus," which provides 60 days of event video history and 10 days of 24/7 video history if you have a wired (not battery-powered) Google Nest Cam (the doorbell can't record continuous video). Another big added quality-of-life feature is that the cameras can now work offline. Local storage and on-device processing mean the cameras can function without the Internet; previously, the cloud was the only way they had to process and store video.

Amazon told employees Thursday that it will delay its timeline for returning to regular work in the office until early next year. GeekWire reports: The new date: Jan. 3, 2022. Previously, Amazon had expected employees to start working in the office regularly the week of Sept. 7. However, Amazon stopped short of implementing a vaccine mandate for those who do work in the office, as companies including Microsoft, Google, and Facebook have done. Amazon said it requires employees to wear masks in the office, except for those who can verify they've been fully vaccinated. Earlier this week, Google told staff that it's approved 85% of employee requests to work remotely or relocate once its offices fully re-open. "Google is one the largest companies trying a hybrid approach to returning from the pandemic," reports Bloomberg. "It will ask most of its staff to go back to work in their previous offices, but let others do their jobs elsewhere."

Shockingly, only 10,000 of Google's 145,000+ employees asked to work from home.