EFF: The Utah Supreme Court is the latest stop in EFF's roving campaign to establish your Fifth Amendment right to refuse to provide your password to law enforcement. Yesterday, along with the ACLU, we filed an amicus brief in State v. Valdez, arguing that the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination prevents the police from forcing suspects to reveal the contents of their minds. That includes revealing a memorized passcode or directly entering the passcode to unlock a device.

In Valdez, the defendant was charged with kidnapping his ex-girlfriend after arranging a meeting under false pretenses. During his arrest, police found a cell phone in Valdez's pocket that they wanted to search for evidence that he set up the meeting, but Valdez refused to tell them the passcode. Unlike many other cases raising these issues, however, the police didn't bother seeking a court order to compel Valdez to reveal his passcode. Instead, during trial, the prosecution offered testimony and argument about his refusal. The defense argued that this violated the defendant's Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, which also prevents the state from commenting on his silence. The court of appeals agreed, and now the state has appealed to the Utah Supreme Court.

"Tom Voigt, a Zodiac Killer expert and author who runs ZodiacKiller.com, pulls no punches when commenting on the story picked up by FoxNews that is now being posted at various news outlets including Slashdot," writes Slashdot reader ISayWeOnlyToBePolite. Rolling Stone spoke to Voigt on Wednesday about the bombshell report and why, in his opinion, it's "bullshit." From the article: By now obviously you've seen the news about the Zodiac Killer's identification. What's your take on it? Yeah, I've got about a million people on my website right now. It's all bullshit, by the way, just to get that out of the way. This is hot garbage. I don't know why it got any coverage at all. It was basically a press release.

Are you familiar with the Case Breakers? First of all, the funny thing is, I've never heard of any of these people that are these so-called experts. I have been doing this for 25 years and I've never heard of any of them. So that there are some red flags right off the bat. And then the funny thing is, they're matching up lines on foreheads. No witness ever described lines on Zodiac's forehead. Those lines were simply added by the sketch artist to fill in the sketch. The amended sketch, which is supposed to look more like Zodiac, according to witnesses, doesn't really even have any lines. So they got rid of them. So because the witnesses were like, "We're not really happy with that sketch that we gave you a few days ago," they got changed. The lines went away. No witness ever described that.

What about their claim that Poste's name unlocks one of the Zodiac's ciphers? A lot of what they're typing and talking about is nonsense. These people, what I've seen, they don't really have any kind of a command of the basics of the Zodiac case. From what I've read, they've gotten their Zodiac information from the comments section at Facebook. They'd skip the main article and they went right to the comments and they think they know everything about this. Maybe they've saw the Fincher movie, but probably not. Or, they turned it off after the two-hour mark or so.

If you had to put your money on one suspect, who would it be? Richard Gaikowski is my best bet. If I was if I was an employer looking to hire the Zodiac, he'd probably have the most impressive resume in my eyes. But the reality is that Allen is the suspect you just can't quit. I just can't quit that "Big Al," especially now I'm going over all these old emails and tips and leads going back 25 years. And some of the stuff that was that was said to me about about how it is just mind boggling. Yeah. If he wasn't, if he wasn't the Zodiac, he might be responsible for some other murders.

slack_justyb writes: Unity has filed a patent with the USPTO for "Methods and apparatuses to improve the performance of a video game engine using an Entity Component System (ECS)."

ECS methods are something that some other open source game engines already use. One example is Bevy for Rust. Some are already commenting on the ramifications of this patent application and indicating that this could be a massive overstep by Unity to attempt to patent something already used by other lesser-known game engines.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from FedScoop: The Department of Defense has awarded a task order worth up to $979 million over a five-year period to Peraton to counter misinformation from U.S. adversaries. The contractor will provide services to U.S. Central Command and its mission partners with operational planning, implementation and assessment services. Peraton has undertaken such work for Central Command since 2016 under its counter-threat messaging support program, and according to the company, the latest contract represents a doubling of work already scheduled to be carried out under the program.

Commenting on the contract, Tom Afferton, president of Peraton's cyber missions sector, said: "Since 2016, Peraton has executed campaigns to promote regional security and stability. Our ability to provide the U.S. government with insight, expertise, and influence helps ensure the safety of Americans, our allies, and the more than 550 million people under U.S. Central Command's area of responsibility, spanning three continents and 20 nations." The award comes after Peraton earlier this month won an IT infrastructure contract from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which could be worth up to $497 million over seven years. The Virginia company will provide infrastructure-as-a-managed service for storage and computing infrastructure facilities across the U.S. and globally. Announcing the award, Peraton said it will deliver an enterprise-scale solution that integrates on-premise infrastructure with the VA's enterprise cloud architecture.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: u/SaveVideo was a Reddit video downloader bot that helped users download and save videos from Reddit. The service was used by millions of people but according to its operator has now shut down following an ultimatum from Reddit. "The gods of Reddit have decided and I am obliged to obey or risk a lawsuit," SaveVideo announced yesterday. 'SaveVideo' (which operates from the RedditSave.com domain) is a decently sized operation by any standards. SimilarWeb stats indicate that since the start of the year, RedditSave.com has attracted a steady 10 million visitors per month. But now, however, the show is over. "It has been a great pleasure to serve you all in the past few months. However, as they say, All good things must come to an end," its operator writes. "The gods of reddit have reached out to us. They do not want us to continue this service any longer."

The operator of the bot service says they have complied and as a result, the SaveVideo and RedditSave bots have been shut down. What is more surprising is that this doesn't appear to have been a simple request from Reddit but one that was supported by the threat of legal action. "The gods of reddit have decided and I am obliged to obey or risk a lawsuit," the bots' operator explains. Most Reddit users commenting on the shutdown are taking the stance that it is Reddit's admins who have threatened legal action but the announcement certainly leaves room for other scenarios too, including repeated complaints from copyright holders. [...] Reddit has no official comment at this stage but has informed TorrentFreak that it was "not responsible for whatever notice or litigation threat" received by SaveVideo. Update: SaveVideo's operator says the downloader bot is back. "Reddit has confirmed to me that the notice did not originate from them," they added. "With that being said, I have restored all the bot/website's services back to normal." We'll see how long this lasts...

An anonymous reader shares a report: Author Adam Silvera four years ago released the young adult science fiction novel "They Both Die at the End," which found success and landed a few weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. But years later in August 2020, Silvera said his publisher noticed a significant sales bump, the start of a trend that would send the book to the top of the New York Times' young adult paperback monthly bestseller list in April, where it still reigns. Silvera had no idea where the sales spike was coming from. "I kept commenting to my readers, 'Hey, don't know what's happening, but there's been a surge in sales lately, so grateful that everybody's finding the story years later,'" Silvera said. "And then that's when a reader was like, 'I'm seeing it on BookTok.' And I had no idea what they were talking about."

"BookTok" is a community of users on TikTok who post videos reviewing and recommending books, which has boomed in popularity over the past year. TikTok videos containing the hashtag #TheyBothDieAtTheEnd have collectively amassed more than 37 million views to date, many of which feature users reacting -- and often crying -- to the book's emotional ending. BookTok's impact on the book industry has been notable, helping new authors launch their careers and propelling books like Silvera's to the top of bestseller lists years after their original publication. Madeline Miller's "The Song of Achilles," E. Lockhart's "We Were Liars" and Taylor Jenkins Reid's "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" -- all of which were published before BookTok began to dominate the industry -- are among some of the other books that have found popularity on the app years after their initial release. Retailers like Barnes & Noble have taken advantage of BookTok's popularity to market titles popular on the app to customers by creating specialized shelves featuring books that have gone viral.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Microsoft said on Friday an attacker had won access to one of its customer-service agents and then used information from that to launch hacking attempts against customers. The company said it had found the compromise during its response to hacks by a team it identifies as responsible for earlier major breaches at SolarWinds and Microsoft. Microsoft said it had warned the affected customers. "A sophisticated Nation-State associated actor that Microsoft identifies as NOBELLIUM accessed Microsoft customer support tools to review information regarding your Microsoft Services subscriptions," the warning reads in part. The U.S. government has publicly attributed the earlier attacks to the Russian government, which denies involvement.

After commenting on a broader phishing campaign that it said had compromised a small number of entities, Microsoft said it had also found the breach of its own agent, who it said had limited powers. The agent could see billing contact information and what services the customers pay for, among other things. "The actor used this information in some cases to launch highly-targeted attacks as part of their broader campaign," Microsoft said. Microsoft warned affected customers to be careful about communications to their billing contacts and consider changing those usernames and email addresses, as well as barring old usernames from logging in. Microsoft said it was aware of three entities that had been compromised in the phishing campaign. It did not immediately clarify whether any had been among those whose data was viewed through the support agent, or if the agent had been tricked by the broader campaign. Microsoft did not say whether the agent was at a contractor or a direct employee.

France's competition watchdog, L'Autorite de la concurrence, has fined Google up to $268M in a case related to self-preferencing within the adtech market which the watchdog found constituted an abuse by Google of a dominant position for ad servers for website publishers and mobile apps. From a report: L'Autorite began looking into Google's adtech business following complaints from a number of French publishers. Today it said Google had requested a settlement -- and is "not disputing the facts of the case" -- with the tech giant proposing certain 'interoperability' commitments that the regulator has accepted, and which will form a binding part of the decision. The watchdog called the action a world first in probing Google's complex algorithmic ad auctions.

Commenting in a statement, L'Autorite's president, Isabelle de Silva, said: "The decision sanctioning Google has a very special meaning because it is the first decision in the world to look into complex algorithmic processes. Auctions through which online display advertising works. The investigation, carried out particularly quickly, revealed the processes by which Google, relying on its considerable dominant position on ad servers for sites and applications, was favored over its competitors on both ad servers and SSP platforms. These very serious practices penalized competition in the emerging online advertising market, and have enabled Google not only to preserve but also to increase its dominant position. This sanction and these commitments will make it possible to restore a level playing field for all players, and the ability of publishers to make the most of their advertising space."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A mansion owned by Feras Antoon, a Pornhub executive, was torched in an apparent arson last night. Police told VICE they were initially called to a property in Montreal's upper class Ahuntsic-Cartierville neighborhood at 11:30 P.M when two people were spotted trespassing on the property. Julien Levesque, a media relations officer for Montreal Police, said when authorities arrived on the scene shortly thereafter they found the multi-million dollar property ablaze. The fire was so massive that more than 80 firefighters were called in and the neighbors were forced to evacuate nearby properties. Authorities got the fire under control by 2:30 A.M. and say no one was hurt, although several neighbors had to be evacuated.

"Police officers who arrived on site were able to see that the fire began inside the residence," said Levesque. "Earlier this morning our arson squad from Montreal police took charge of the investigation. They were onsite this morning to analyze all the scene, meet some witnesses to try to understand what was the cause and the circumstances of the beginning of this fire." "Over the weekend, a fire occurred at my residence," Antoon told VICE in a statement. "The residence was under construction. I am grateful that my family and I and our neighbors are safe. Out of respect for the ongoing police investigation, I will not be commenting further." The report notes that MindGeek, Pornhub's parent company, has been under scrutiny from Canadian parliament since December, "when the access to information, privacy, and ethics committee moved to bring the company in for testimony about its 'failure to prohibit rape videos and other illegal content from its site.'"

Alphabet's Google on Friday fired scientist Margaret Mitchell, she said in a Twitter post, after weeks of being under investigation for moving thousands of files outside the company amid a battle over research freedom and diversity. From a report: Google's ethics in artificial intelligence research unit has been under scrutiny since December's dismissal of scientist Timnit Gebru, which prompted protest from thousands of Google workers. In a statement, Google said, "After conducting a review of this manager's conduct, we confirmed that there were multiple violations of our code of conduct, as well as of our security policies, which included the exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees."

VentureBeat offers more context: In an email sent to management shortly before Mitchell was placed on investigation, Mitchell called Google firing Gebru "forever after a very, very, very bad decision." Mitchell was a member of the recently formed Alphabet Workers Union. Timnit Gebru has previously suggested that union protection could be a key part of protection for AI researchers. Mitchell and Gebru worked together on the Ethical AI team in 2018, eventually creating what's believed to be one of the most diverse divisions within Google Research. Friday's move comes hours after Google told employees it had wrapped up its investigation into the ouster of prominent AI researcher Timnit Gebru. Axios reports on that: The company declined to say what the internal inquiry found, but said it is making some changes to how it handles issues around research, diversity and employee exits. Under its new policies, Google says it will: tie pay for those at the vice president level and above partly to reaching diversity and inclusion goals; streamline its process for publishing research; increase its staff related to employee retention; and enact new procedures around potentially sensitive employee exits.

"I understand we could have and should have handled this situation with more sensitivity," Google AI head Jeff Dean said in a memo on Friday, obtained by Axios, outlining the changes. "And for that, I am sorry." "I heard and acknowledge what Dr. Gebru's exit signified to female technologists, to those in the Black community and other underrepresented groups who are pursuing careers in tech, and to many who care deeply about Google's responsible use of AI. It led some to question their place here, which I regret," Google AI head Jeff Dean, wrote in an internal email on Friday. Commenting on Axios' news, Gebru said: I expected nothing more obviously. I write an email asking for things, I get fired, and then after a 3 month investigation, they say they should probably do some of the things I presumably got fired asking for, without holding anyone accountable for their actions. Editor's note: The story was updated at 22:54 GMT with Google's statement.

QAnon "was first championed by a handful of people who worked together to stir discussion of the 'Q' posts, eventually pushing the theory on to bigger platforms and gaining followers — a strategy that proved to be the key to Qanon's spread and the originators' financial gain..." reports NBC News, in an article shared by long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo .

"NBC News has found that the theory can be traced back to three people who sparked some of the first conversation about Qanon and, in doing so, attracted followers who they then asked to help fund Qanon 'research.'" In November 2017, a small-time YouTube video creator and two moderators of the 4chan website, one of the most extreme message boards on the internet, banded together and plucked out of obscurity an anonymous and cryptic post from the many conspiracy theories that populated the website's message board. Over the next several months, they would create videos, a Reddit community, a business and an entire mythology based off the 4chan posts of "Q," the pseudonym of a person claiming to be a high-ranking military officer. The theory they espoused would become Qanon, and it would eventually make its way from those message boards to national media stories and the rallies of President Donald Trump.

Now, the people behind that effort are at the center of a fractious debate among conspiracy enthusiasts, some of whom believe the three people who first popularized the Qanon theory are promoting it in order to make a living. Others suggest that these original followers actually wrote Q's mysterious posts...

Qanon was just another unremarkable part of the "anon" genre until November 2017, when two moderators of the 4chan board where Q posted predictions, who went by the usernames Pamphlet Anon [real name: Coleman Rogers] and BaruchtheScribe, reached out to Tracy Diaz, according to Diaz's blogs and YouTube videos. BaruchtheScribe, in reality a self-identified web programmer from South Africa named Paul Furber, confirmed that account to NBC News. "A bunch of us decided that the message needed to go wider so we contacted Youtubers who had been commenting on the Q drops," Furber said in an email... As Diaz tells it in a blog post detailing her role in the early days of Qanon, she banded together with the two moderators. Their goal, according to Diaz, was to build a following for Qanon — which would mean bigger followings for them as well... Diaz followed with dozens more Q-themed videos, each containing a call for viewers to donate through links to her Patreon and PayPal accounts. Diaz's YouTube channel now boasts more than 90,000 subscribers and her videos have been watched over 8 million times. More than 97,000 people follow her on Twitter.

Diaz, who emerged from bankruptcy in 2009, says in her YouTube videos that she now relies on donations from patrons funding her YouTube "research" as her sole source of income. Diaz declined to comment on this story. "Because I cover Q, I got an audience," Diaz acknowledged in a video that NBC News reviewed last week before she deleted it.

To reach a more mainstream audience (older people and "normies," who on their own would have trouble navigating the fringe message boards), Diaz said in her blog post she recommended they move to the more user-friendly Reddit. Archives listing the three as the original posters and moderators show they created a new Reddit community... Their move to Reddit was key to Qanon's eventual spread. There, they were able to tap into a larger audience of conspiracy theorists, and drive discussion with their analysis of each Q post. From there, Qanon crept to Facebook where it found a new, older audience via dozens of public and private groups...

As Qanon picked up steam, growing skepticism over the motives of Diaz, Rogers, and the other early Qanon supporters led some in the internet's conspiracy circles to turn their paranoia on the group. Recently, some Qanon followers have accused Diaz and Rogers of profiting from the movement by soliciting donations from their followers. Other pro-Trump online groups have questioned the roles that Diaz and Rogers have played in promoting Q, pointing to a series of slip-ups that they say show Rogers and Diaz may have been involved in the theory from the start.

Those accusations have led Diaz and Rogers to both deny that they are Q and say they don't know who Q is.

"PHP version 8.0 has arrived, bringing with it a major update to the 25-year-old programming language..." writes Tech Republic.

New language features include the nullsafe operator and attributes (commonly known as annotations in other languages) to add metadata to classes — and more: The JIT compiler is designed to bring performance improvements to web applications by turning code into instructions for the CPU at runtime. Meanwhile, union types is a feature that allows data of more than one type to be held by a variable. Named arguments allow developers to assign values to a function by specifying the value name, allowing optional parameters to be ignored. Alongside these, version 8.0 of PHP brings optimizations and enhancements to the language's type system, syntax, error handling and consistency....

Commenting on PHP 8.0, PHP programmer and stitcher.io developer, Brent Roose, noted that the latest version of the language may require developers to review code for any breaking changes.

New analysis has refuted the claim that dinosaurs were in decline at the time of their extinction. If an asteroid had not hit Earth 66m years ago, dinosaurs might have continued to dominate the planet, according to new research. From a report: A team from the University of Bath and the UK National History Museum has published a study to Royal Society Open Science saying that, contrary to some scientific thinking, dinosaurs were not in a state of decline prior to the mass extinction event. The team collected a set of different dinosaur family trees and used statistical modelling to assess if each of the main dinosaur groups was still able to produce new species at this time. Prior to the asteroid impact during the Late Cretaceous period, dinosaurs were globally widespread and were the dominant form of animal of most terrestrial ecosystems. "Previous studies done by others have used various methods to draw the conclusion that dinosaurs would have died out anyway, as they were in decline towards the end of the Cretaceous period," said first author of the study, Joe Bonsor. "However, we show that if you expand the dataset to include more recent dinosaur family trees and a broader set of dinosaur types, the results don't actually all point to this conclusion -- in fact, only about half of them do." Commenting on the new study, Richard Dawkins tweeted, "An impact as catastrophic as this will happen again. We don't know when. Using existing science, we could develop the technology to detect, intercept, and divert or destroy a large incoming asteroid. No other species could do it. It's our responsibility."

Ben Wood and Geoff Blaber, commenting on Google's new Pixel smartphones at research firm CCI Insight: Historically, Google has been one of the leaders in developing and implementing computational photography, mixing optics with digital sleight of hand to make imaging magic. And again, Google is promising great photography by using software smarts. The camera on the new phones has an ultrawide lens, a Night Sight feature that works in portrait mode, and a setting that lets users adjust the lighting in post-processing. The challenge for Google is that its camera capabilities are no longer unique, as all leading smartphone makers focus on camera and imaging tech to try and make their latest and greatest devices stand out.

[....] Given Google's scale, the progress of the Pixel business has been disappointing, particularly in light of the difficulties Huawei has faced. Mobile operators, retailers and consumers would benefit from a credible alternative to Apple and Samsung. On paper Google should fit the bill, but the company has consistently failed to live up to expectations. Sadly, it's hard to see how these new devices will do anything to address these shortcomings. Google's smartphone hardware strategy is in need of a reset. The company either needs to deliver differentiated flagship Android experiences or mass-market products with broad distribution. Right now, it provides neither and sits awkwardly within a vibrant ecosystem of Android players led by Samsung. Google must prove that Pixel still has a role.

"SpaceX took another step forward Thursday in developing its next-generation Starship rocket, conducting the second short flight test of a prototype in the past month," reports CNBC: Starship prototype Serial Number 6, or SN6, took off from the launchpad at SpaceX's facility in Boca Chica, Texas. It gradually rose to about 500 feet above the ground before it returned back to land, touching down on a concrete area near the launchpad. The flight test appeared to be identical to the test SpaceX conducted of prototype SN5 on Aug. 5...

The company is developing Starship with the goal of launching cargo and as many as a 100 people at a time on missions to the Moon and Mars.

SpaceX has been steadily building multiple prototypes at a time at the company's growing facility in Boca Chica. While SpaceX's fleet of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets are partially reusable, Musk's goal is to make Starship fully reusable — envisioning a rocket that is more akin to a commercial airplane, with short turnaround times between flights where the only major cost is fuel. After SpaceX in May launched a pair of NASA astronauts in its first crewed mission, Musk pivoted the company's attention, declaring that the top SpaceX priority is now development of Starship. Musk said in an email obtained by CNBC that Starship's program must accelerate "dramatically and immediately..."

He expects Starship's first flight tests to orbit won't come until 2021, saying that SpaceX is in "uncharted territory."
Commenting on the test launch of the bulky spacecraft, Elon Musk tweeted "Turns out you can make anything fly haha."

Yahoo has replaced the comments section under its articles with a survey. Now, there's a message that reads: "Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions. In order to improve our community experience, we are temporarily suspending article commenting. In the meantime, we welcome your feedback to help us enhance the experience."

Many readers who frequently comment on Yahoo News articles are quite upset. Some feel as though they're being censored and that Yahoo has made a huge mistake. "Yahoo News nuked all of their comment sections! Guess they were tired of people pushing back against their narratives," one person wrote. "Yahoo just block[ed] their comment section as well. When you read thru them it was 90% conservative veiws [sic]. Guess they can't allow that type of 'free speech,'" said another. Others were thrilled to see Yahoo finally do away with a comment section that often contained messages of hate and vitriol. "Kudos to Yahoo for finally doing something about the comment threads on their articles," one person wrote. "I support the removal of comments. Share articles as is and people can share/comment on their preferred platform," another said.

Do you agree with Yahoo's decision to temporarily disable comments?

Comcast has joined Cloudflare and NextDNS in partnering with Mozilla's Trusted Recursive Resolver program, which aims to make DNS more trusted and secure. Neowin reports: Commenting on the move, Firefox CTO Eric Rescorla, said: "Comcast has moved quickly to adopt DNS encryption technology and we're excited to have them join the TRR program. Bringing ISPs into the TRR program helps us protect user privacy online without disrupting existing user experiences. We hope this sets a precedent for further cooperation between browsers and ISPs."

With its TRR program, Mozilla said that encrypting DNS data with DoH is just the first step in securing DNS. It said that the second step requires companies handling the data to have appropriate rules in place for handling it. Mozilla believes these rules include limiting data collection and retention, ensuring transparency about any retained data, and limiting the use of the resolver to block access or modify content. Ars Technica notes that joining Mozilla's program means that Comcast agreed that it won't "retain, sell, or transfer to any third party (except as may be required by law) any personal information, IP addresses, or other user identifiers, or user query patterns from the DNS queries sent from the Firefox browser," along with other requirements.

When the change happens, it'll be automatic for users unless they've chosen a different DoH provider or disabled DoH altogether. Comcast told Ars yesterday that "Firefox users on Xfinity should automatically default to Xfinity resolvers under Mozilla's Trusted Recursive Resolver program, unless they have manually chosen a different resolver, or if DoH is disabled. The precise mechanism is still being tested and the companies plan to document it soon in an IETF [Internet Engineering Task Force] Draft."

During an internal presentation at Facebook on Wednesday, the company debuted features for Facebook Workplace, an intranet-style chat and office collaboration product similar to Slack. From a report: On Facebook Workplace, employees see a stream of content similar to a news feed, with automatically generated trending topics based on what people are posting about. One of the new tools debuted by Facebook allows administrators to remove and block certain trending topics among employees. The presentation discussed the "benefits" of "content control." And it offered one example of a topic employers might find it useful to blacklist: the word "unionize."

Facebook Workplace is currently used by major employers such as Walmart, which is notorious for its active efforts to suppress labor organizing. The application is also used by the Singapore government, Discovery Communications, Starbucks, and Campbell Soup Corporation. The suggestion that Facebook is actively building tools designed to suppress labor organizing quickly caused a stir at the Menlo Park, California-based company. Facebook employees sparked a flurry of posts denouncing the feature, with several commenting in disbelief that the company would overtly pitch "unionize" as a topic to be blacklisted.

"The Linux kernel has officially deprecated its coding style that the length of lines of code comply with 80 columns as the 'strong preferred limit'," reports Phoronix: The Linux kernel like many long-standing open-source projects has a coding style guideline that lines of code be 80 columns or less, but now that while still recommended is no longer going to be enforced. This stems from Linus Torvalds commenting on Friday that excessive linebreaks are bad and he is against ugly wrapped code that is strictly sticking to 80 characters per line. This is part of the broader trend that most are no longer using 80x25 terminals...

This deprecation involves updating the documentation on the kernel's coding style to be more sensible and updating the checkpatch.pl script that checks patches to no longer have a max line length of 80. Instead, the check patch script is using a maximum line length of 100.
Torvalds noted Friday that spreading code over multiple lines created problems for single-line utilities like grep, while longer lines "are fundamentally useful..." [H]onestly, I don't want to see patches that make the kernel reading experience worse for me and likely for the vast majority of people, based on the argument that some odd people have small terminal windows... If you or Christoph have 80 character lines, you'll get possibly ugly wrapped output. Tough. That's _your_ choice. Your hardware limitations shouldn't be a pain for the rest of us...

So no. I do not care about somebody with a 80x25 terminal window getting line wrapping. For exactly the same reason I find it completely irrelevant if somebody says that their kernel compile takes 10 hours because they are doing kernel development on a Raspberry PI with 4GB of RAM. People with restrictive hardware shouldn't make it more inconvenient for people who have better resources...

If you choose to use a 80-column terminal, you can live with the line wrapping. It's just that simple.
"Yes, staying withing 80 columns is certainly still _preferred_," notes the official commit message for this change. "But it's not the hard limit that the checkpatch warnings imply, and other concerns can most certainly dominate. Increase the default limit to 100 characters. Not because 100 characters is some hard limit either, but that's certainly a 'what are you doing' kind of value and less likely to be about the occasional slightly longer lines.'"

schwit1 shares a report from Bloomberg, commenting: "And the claim that this is about protecting 'patient privacy' is b***shit." From the report: Ming Lin, an emergency room physician in Washington state, said he was told Friday he was out of a job because he'd given an interview to a newspaper about a Facebook post detailing what he believed to be inadequate protective equipment and testing. In Chicago, a nurse was fired after emailing colleagues that she wanted to wear a more protective mask while on duty. In New York, the NYU Langone Health system has warned employees they could be terminated if they talk to the media without authorization."

Doctors are a famously independent profession, where individual medical judgment on what's best for the patient is prized over administrative dictates. That's reared its head during the Covid-19 outbreak, with many physicians, nurses and other health-care workers taking to social media to express deep concerns about the lack of protective gear or much-needed patient-care equipment like respirators. Some posts have gone viral and are being shared hundreds of thousands of times, often tagged with #GetMePPE. Privacy laws prohibit disclosing specific patient information, but they don't bar discussing general working conditions. The report notes that not all hospitals are blocking staff from talking to the press. "New York's Mount Sinai has been scheduling media interviews for nurses, physicians and trainees to help the public understand the severity of the crisis," reports Bloomberg. "The University of California San Francisco Medical Center has gotten hundreds of such calls and encouraged workers to talk to reporters."