According to TechCrunch, unnamed hackers reportedly breached the spyware firm WebDetetive, deleting device information to protect surveillance victims and denying spyware users new data. Engadget reports: Users of the spyware won't get any new data from their targets. "Because #fuckstalkerware," the hackers wrote in a note obtained by TechCrunch. The WebDetetive breach compromised more than 76,000 devices belonging to customers of the stalkerware, and more than 1.5 gigabytes of data freed from app's servers, according to the hackers.

While TechCrunch did not independently confirm the deletion of victim's data from the WebDetetive server, a cache of data shared by the hackers provided a look at what they were able to accomplish. TechCrunch also worked with a nonprofit that logs exposed datasets, DDoSecrets, to verify and analyze the information. Hackers obtained information on customers like IP addresses and devices that they targeted.

According to a report from Technews Taiwan, ASUS has shut down its Zenfone division responsible for making some of the best compact Android flagships on the market. The reason is due to "internal restructuring." Employees in the Zenfone division are being moved over to the ROG Phone team and other parts of the business. Android Authority reports: The report further asserts that the Zenfone 10 will be the last phone in the Zenfone series. Since the team no longer exists, there is unlikely to be a successor to this phone. The report follows other incidents around Zenfone. Earlier in the month, ASUS stopped allowing bootloader unlocks for Zenfone owners. The company maintained that they are not stopping the possibility of unlocking, just that the tool is currently unavailable.

A few weeks ago, community members also spotted that ASUS had removed older Zenfone firmwares from its website. Community moderators responded that ASUS no longer provides previous firmware versions or downgrade packages to ensure users remain on up-to-date firmware. Both of these incidents do not directly point to the shutdown of the Zenfone division. But they add the value of hindsight to the report, and we can't help but wonder if the writing was on the wall all this time.

"Hundreds of monster hunters equipped with drones and infrared cameras have gathered in the Scottish Highlands with a singular goal," reports the Washington Post: "to be the ones to finally find the Loch Ness monster." But it won't be easy. On Saturday, the rain was lashing and the skies were gray, hampering visibility in the search for the folkloric creature, affectionately known as Nessie. The mythical monster, which legend says lives in a freshwater lake in Scotland, has eluded capture, or any definitive proof of existence, since its first recorded sighting in the 6th century.

But trying to find Nessie is an age-old tradition, and the volunteer hunters who showed up Saturday are dedicated — and better equipped than those who came before. The search for the monster, organized over two days by the local Loch Ness Center in Inverness, is the biggest in a half-century, and certainly the most high-tech. Some people drove hours to be here, while others flew in from overseas... The Loch Ness Center launched the event — which it called "The Quest" — in partnership with Loch Ness Exploration, a research group that studies the lake and other unexplained phenomena. It put out a call for volunteer hunters "fascinated by the legendary tales of Nessie" and with "a passion for unraveling mysteries and exploring the extraordinary."

The center was later forced to close online registrations for volunteers "due to an overwhelming surge in demand," according to the website...

Some hunters with drones are equipping them with infrared cameras to seek out heat spots in the lake — as well as sending them underwater. They've also come armed with a hydrophone to pick up acoustic signals 60 feet below the loch's surface — although nobody really knows what the monster would sound like. Other participants can join several surface-watch locations staged by organizers or cruise the 23-mile-long lake by boat. They have been asked to document everything they see — from surface movements to weather changes — and are getting lessons on how to capture potential sightings on their phones.
The BBC notes that "Almost 300 have signed up to monitor a live stream from the search, which is taking place on Saturday and Sunday."

NPR has some audio excerpts of past witnesses who said the've seen the monster — and some of the current crop of monster hunters. (While Wikipedia has its own detailed debunking of the famous Loch News monster "Surgeon's Photo".) But the Washington Post sums up the whole story with this two-word quote from a woman who'd traveled from France for a Loch Ness vacation.

"I believe."

"The green energy revolution still faces a huge obstacle: a lack of long-term, cost-efficient renewable storage," writes the Washington Post.

But then they check in on a Finnish start-up running the world's first commercial-scale sand battery, which uses solar panels and wind turbines to heat sand-filled vats (up to 1,000 degrees) to back up district heating networks: The sand can hold onto the power for weeks or months at a time — a clear advantage over the lithium ion battery, the giant of today's battery market, which usually can hold energy for only a number of hours.

Unlike fossil fuels, which can be easily transported and stored, solar and wind supplies fluctuate. Most of the renewable power that isn't used immediately is lost. The solution is storage innovation, many industry experts agree. In addition to their limited capacity, lithium ion batteries, which are used to power everything from mobile phones to laptops to electric vehicles, tend to fade with every recharge and are highly flammable, resulting in a growing number of deadly fires across the world. The extraction of cobalt, the lucrative raw material used in lithium ion batteries, also relies on child labor. U.N. agencies have estimated that 40,000 boys and girls work in the industry, with few safety measures and paltry compensation. These serious environmental and human rights challenges pose a problem for the electric vehicle industry, which requires a huge supply of critical minerals.

So investors are now pouring money into even bigger battery ventures. More than $900 million has been invested in clean storage technologies since 2021, up from $360 million the year before, according to the Long Duration Energy Storage Council, an organization launched after that year's U.N. climate conference to oversee the world's decarbonization. The group predicts that by 2040, large-scale, renewable energy storage investments could reach $3 trillion. That includes efforts to turn natural materials into batteries. Once-obscure start-ups, experimenting with once-humble commodities, are suddenly receiving millions in government and private funding. There's the multi-megawatt CO2 battery in Sardinia, a rock-based storage system in Tuscany, and a Swiss company that's moving massive bricks along a 230-foot tall building to store and generate renewable energy. One Danish battery start-up, which stores energy from molten salt, is sketching out plans to deploy power plants in decommissioned coal mines across three continents...

But in order to succeed, natural batteries will need to provide the same kind of steady power as fossil fuels, at scale. Whether that can be achieved remains to be seen, say energy experts. And the industry may be subject to the same pitfalls that loom over the renewables energy sector at large: Projects will need to be constructed from scratch, and they might only be adopted in developed countries that can afford such experimentation. Lovschall-Jensen, the CEO of a Danish molten salt-based storage start-up called Hyme, says the challenge will be maintaining the same standards to which the modern world has become accustomed: receiving power, on demand, with the flip of a switch.

He believes that natural batteries, though still in their infancy, can serve that goal.

An anonymous reader shares a report: For years, cops and other government authorities all over the world have been using phone hacking technology provided by Cellebrite to unlock phones and obtain the data within. And the company has been keen on keeping the use of its technology "hush hush." As part of the deal with government agencies, Cellebrite asks users to keep its tech -- and the fact that they used it -- secret, TechCrunch has learned. This request concerns legal experts who argue that powerful technology like the one Cellebrite builds and sells, and how it gets used by law enforcement agencies, ought to be public and scrutinized.

In a leaked training video for law enforcement customers that was obtained by TechCrunch, a senior Cellebrite employee tells customers that "ultimately, you've extracted the data, it's the data that solves the crime, how you got in, let's try to keep that as hush hush as possible." "We don't really want any techniques to leak in court through disclosure practices, or you know, ultimately in testimony, when you are sitting in the stand, producing all this evidence and discussing how you got into the phone," the employee, who we are not naming, says in the video.

To one-up Valve's Steam Deck, Lenovo's handheld gaming device, the "Legion Go," will have "Switch-style detachable controllers," reports Ars Technica" The Legion Go wouldn't be the very first portable PC gaming device with removable controllers; the crowd-funded OneXplayer sported a similar design last year, for instance. But few other PC-based portables have similarly mimicked the Switch Joy-cons in their ability to slide smoothly off from the main screen of the system for detached play.

Combined with a nice, wide kickstand shown in the leaked images, you should be able to give your arms a rest by setting the bulky-looking Legion Go's screen on a tabletop. The slide-off controls also mean you don't need to purchase and/or drag out a separate controller when docking the device to a TV or monitor (which we assume will be a main use case of the device's two USB-C ports). And completely detachable controls for each hand means you can keep your hands as far apart as you want while you hold each "half-controller" separately (one of our favorite unique use cases on the Switch)... The Legion Go also reportedly sports an 8-inch diagonal screen, which is 1 inch larger than Valve's and ROG's devices.

The Legion Go leaks come just months after Lenovo abandoned its button- and cooler-packed Legion line of Android-based gaming phones as part of what it said was a "gaming portfolio consolidation." The Windows 11-based Legion Go — which Windows Central says will be based on AMD's Phoenix processors — should have the high-end PC gaming support that the Legion phones lacked, as well as a more market-proven form factor.
Windows Report believes Lenovo "is preparing to launch an entire gaming ecosystem alongside the Legion Go."

"Among the accessories is a new pair of Legion AR glasses specifically tweaked for gaming." Based on the images we have, the glasses should be small enough to wear through long gaming sessions, with only one USB cable connecting them to any device (most likely for power, which means no standalone battery). The Legion AR Glasess could also feature a high refresh rate and other gaming-specific features, as the Legion branding implies they're made specifically for that...

America's teens hate Android phones, according to a new article from the Wall Street Journal: Melissa Jones, a former teacher in Lebanon, Ind., observes that, among students, it's considered most important to own a new, up-to-date phone. And judging by the copious TikTok content that pits users of the two operating systems against each other — with Android most frequently the butt of the joke — many teens associate Androids with older technology, and older people, no matter how new the phone actually is.

"You're telling me in 2023, you still have a 'Droid?" says 20-year-old online creator Abdoul Chamberlain during a video posted in April. "You gotta be at least 50 years old." The video goes on to say that only parents have Androids, and despite the persistent claims from Android users that features like the cameras or battery life are better on the Android than the iPhone, Chamberlain refuses to get one. Other videos more somberly describe the experience of showing up to high school with an Android phone and being called "broke" or "medieval" by the poster's peers. Still more describe the feeling of being the lone Android user in a group chat of iPhone owners, shamed by texts which, when rendered in Apple's proprietary iMessage platform, appear in a revelatory bright green rather than the cool blue of messages sent between Apple devices.

Apple holds 57% of the phones market versus Android's 42% in the U.S., according to web traffic analysis site Statcounter. The data skews worse for Android when narrowed down to teenagers. According to a survey of 7,100 American teens last year conducted by investment bank Piper Sandler, 87% of teens currently have an iPhone, and 87% plan on sticking with the brand for their next phone.

But the stigma regarding Android phones is mostly an American phenomenon, at least to the degree to which it affects purchase habits. Worldwide, per the same Statcounter report, Androids represent the significant majority of all smartphones, holding a 71% share of sales compared with Apple's 28%.
Two years ago someone asked Reddit's "Ask Teens" forum, do teenagers really hate Android phones? But the responses were a lot more balanced.

"No," replied one (presumably teenaged) Reddit user. "Apple fanboys are just obnoxious, probably because they're knowingly getting scammed."

Some iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro owners have complaints reminiscent of the bad old days of "batterygate," reporting that with less than a year of service on the clock, their phones are already reporting more battery degradation than expected. From a report: Sam Kohl of AppleTrack tweeted in July that his iPhone 14 Pro had already dropped to a maximum capacity of 90 percent, a much faster dropoff than previous iPhones he'd owned, and the thread shows many other people with the same experience. Kohl followed up with a video posted yesterday about the issue, saying it makes it hard for him to recommend the phone, especially considering how much it costs with a price of $999.

Officially, Apple says iPhone batteries should "retain up to 80 percent of its original capacity at 500 complete charge cycles." The iPhone 15 series is expected to launch soon, and recent rumors have claimed those devices will see a battery size increase of 10 - 18 percent compared to current devices. He's not the only one seeing these kinds of numbers. Verge alum and Wall Street Journal senior tech columnist Joanna Stern wrote in her newsletter just this week that her iPhone 14 Pro is showing 88 percent battery capacity. Around The Verge, reports are mixed, with two 14 Pros down to 93 and 91 percent and another at 97 percent. In previous years, most haven't seen a drop in reported capacity until two years of use, at least.

"Owners of some older iPhone models are expected to receive about $65 each," reports SiliconValley.com, "after a judge cleared the way for payments in a class-action lawsuit accusing Apple of secretly throttling phone performance." The Cupertino cell phone giant agreed in 2020 to pay up to $500 million to resolve a lawsuit alleging it had perpetrated "one of the largest consumer frauds in history" by surreptitiously slowing the performance of certain iPhone models to address problems with batteries and processors...

According to the lawsuit, filed in 2018, reports of unexplained iPhone shutdowns began to surface in 2015 and increased in the fall of 2016. Consumers complained their phones were shutting off even though the batteries showed a charge of more than 30%, the lawsuit claimed. The lawsuit claimed the shutdowns resulted from a mismatch between phones' hardware, including batteries and processing chips, and the ever-increasing demands of constantly updating operating systems. Apple tried to fix the problem with a software update, but the update merely throttled device performance to cut the number of shutdowns, the lawsuit claimed... In a 2019 court filing in the case, Apple argued that lithium-ion batteries become less effective with time, repeated charging, extreme temperatures and general use. Updating software, Apple asserted in the filing, entails trade-offs. "Providing more features also introduces complexity and can reduce speed, and increasing features or speed may adversely impact hardware lifespan," the company said.

Consumer grief over the shutdowns and alleged throttling also led to a 2020 lawsuit against Apple by the State of California and Alameda and Los Angeles counties. Apple, admitting to no wrongdoing, settled the case for $113 million.
About 3 million claims were received, the article notes, and two iPhone owners who'd objected to the settlement lost their appeal this week, "removing the final obstacle to the deal..."

"The phones at issue in the case were iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, and SE devices running operating systems iOS 10.2.1 or later before Dec. 21, 2017, and iPhone 7 and 7 Plus phones running iOS 11.2 or later before that date."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Imagine being able to sit behind a hacker and observe them take control of a computer and play around with it. That's pretty much what two security researchers did thanks to a large network of computers set up as a honeypot for hackers. The researchers deployed several Windows servers deliberately exposed on the internet, set up with Remote Desktop Protocol, or RDP, meaning that hackers could remotely control the compromised servers as if they were regular users, being able to type and click around. Thanks to these honeypots, the researchers were able to record 190 million events and 100 hours of video footage of hackers taking control of the servers and performing a series of actions on them, including reconnaissance, installing malware that mines cryptocurrencies, using Android emulators to conduct click fraud, brute-forcing passwords for other computers, hiding the hackers' identities by using the honeypot as a starting point for another attack, and even watching porn. The researchers said a hacker successfully logging into its honeypot can generate "tens of events" alone.

The "Rangers," according to the two, carefully explored the hacked computers, doing reconnaissance, sometimes changing passwords, and mostly leaving it at that. "Our hypothesis is that they are evaluating the system they compromised so that another profile of attacker can come back later," the researchers wrote in a blog post published on Wednesday to accompany their talk. The "Barbarians" use the compromised honeypot computers to try and bruteforce into other computers using known lists of hacked usernames and passwords, sometimes using tools such as Masscan, a legitimate tool that allows users to port-scan the whole internet, according to the researchers. The "Wizards" use the honeypot as a platform to connect to other computers in an attempt to hide their trails and the actual origin of their attacks. According to what Bergeron and Bilodeau wrote in their blog post, defensive teams can gather threat intelligence on these hackers, and "reach deeper into compromised infrastructure."

According to Bergeron and Bilodeau, the "Thieves" have the clear goal of monetizing their access to these honeypots. They may do that by installing crypto miners, programs to perform click fraud or generate fake traffic to websites they control, and selling access to the honeypot itself to other hackers. Finally, the "Bards" are hackers with very little or almost no skills. These hackers used the honeypots to use Google to search for malware, and even watch porn. These hackers sometimes used cell phones instead of desktop or laptop computers to connect to the honeypots. Bergeron and Bilodeau said they believe this type of hacker sometimes uses the compromised computers to download porn, something that may be banned or censored in their country of origin. In one case, a hacker "was downloading the porn and sending it to himself via Telegram. So basically circumventing a country-level ban on porn," Bilodeau told TechCrunch. "What I think [the hacker] does with this then is download it in an internet cafe, using Telegram, and then he can put it on USB keys, and he can sell it." These types of honeypots could be useful for law enforcement or cybersecurity defensive teams. "Law enforcement could lawfully intercept the RDP environments used by ransomware groups and collect intelligence in recorded sessions for use in investigations," the researchers wrote in the blog post. "Blue teams for their part can consume the [Indicators of Compromise] and roll out their own traps in order to further protect their organization, as this will give them extensive documentation of opportunistic attackers' tradecraft."

Moreover, if hackers start to suspect that the servers they compromise may be honeypots, they will have to change strategies and decide whether the risks of being caught are worth it, "leading to a slow down which will ultimately benefit everyone," according to the researchers.

Saudi Arabia has announced its plans to standardise charging ports for all electronic devices to USB-C connectors. From a report: The decision will be put into effect from January 1, 2025 (for all except portable computers or laptops). It was announced by the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization and the Communications, Space and Technology Commission. The standardisation is set to happen in two stages. The first stage (from January 1, 2025) will cover mobile phones and other electronic devices such as headphones, keyboards, speakers, routers, etc. The second stage, (from April 1, 2026) will apply to laptops and portable computers. According to the authorities, the decision has been taken to improve user experience and reduce costs.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Rex Heuermann, the meticulous architectural consultant who the authorities say murdered three women and buried them on a Long Island beach more than a decade ago, may have been among the last of the dying breed of American serial killers. Even as serial killers came to inhabit a central place in the nation's imagination -- inspiring hit movies, television shows, books, podcasts and more -- their actual number was dwindling dramatically. There were once hundreds at large, and a spike in the 1970s and '80s terrified the country. Now only a handful at most are known to be active, researchers say. The techniques that led to the arrest of Mr. Heuermann, who has pleaded not guilty to the crimes, help explain the waning of serial killing, which the F.B.I. defines as the same person killing two or more victims in separate events at different times.

It is harder to hide. Rapid advances in investigative technology, video and other digital surveillance tools, as well as the ability to analyze mountains of information, quickly allow the authorities to find killers who before would have gone undetected. At the same time, Americans have adopted more cautious habits in their everyday lives -- hitchhiking, for example, is less common, and children are driven to and from school. That reduces easy targets. And, some theorize, those bent on killing now opt for spectacular mass murders. "The 'perfect crime' concept is more of a concept than it ever has been before," said Adam Scott Wandt, an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. More than a decade ago, prosecutors said, Mr. Heuermann tried to cover his digital tracks by communicating with victims using so-called burner phones, prepaid units purchased anonymously for temporary use. But thanks to exponential progress in technology since 2010, investigators were able not only to chart Mr. Heuermann's decade-old movements; they could also monitor exactly what he was searching online in recent months. They saw that he was using an anonymous account for internet queries like "Why could law enforcement not trace the calls made by the long island serial killer," prosecutors said. He had also been visiting massage parlors and contacting women working as escorts, they said.

The ubiquity of technology has made it harder to get away with murder, Mr. Wandt said. The amount of data people create in their daily lives is more than many can conceptualize, he said. Just by walking outside, people are now tracked by ever-present cameras, from Amazon's Ring units outside homes to surveillance at banks and retail stores, he said. Every use of a phone or computer creates streams of data that are collected directly on devices or immortalized on servers, he said. A concerted effort by the federal government to ensure that even the smallest police departments can use technology to their benefit has also helped give investigators an upper hand, Mr. Wandt said. In 1987, there were 198 known active serial killers -- people connected to at least two murders -- and 404 known victims across the United States, according to a report published three years ago by researchers who run Radford University and Florida Gulf Coast University's Serial Killer Database. By 2018, there were only 12 known serial killers and 44 victims, according to the report. "The big question is: Are they going underground and finding other techniques?â said Terence Leary, an associate professor in the psychology department at Florida Gulf Coast University and the team leader for the database.

He said that some serial murderers have killed for discrete periods before taking prolonged breaks: "Maybe they decided to give it up. Who knows?"

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Poland-based spyware LetMeSpy is no longer operational and said it will shut down after a June data breach wiped out its servers, including its huge trove of data stolen from thousands of victims' phones. In a notice on its website in both English and Polish, LetMeSpy confirmed the "permanent shutdown" of the spyware service and that it would cease operations by the end of August. The notice said LetMeSpy is blocking users from logging in or signing up with new accounts. A separate notice on LetMeSpy's former login page, which no longer functions, confirmed earlier reports that the hacker who breached the spyware operation also deleted the data on its servers. "The breach consisted of unauthorized access to the LetMeSpy website's database, downloading and at the same time deleting data from the website by the author of the attack," the notice reads. LetMeSpy's app no longer functions, a network traffic analysis by TechCrunch shows, and the spyware maker's website no longer provides the spyware app for download.

LetMeSpy was an Android phone monitoring app that was purposefully designed to stay hidden on a victim's phone home screen, making the app difficult to detect and remove. When planted on a person's phone -- often by someone with knowledge of their phone passcode -- apps like LetMeSpy continually steal that person's messages, call logs and real-time location data. A copy of the database was obtained by nonprofit transparency collective DDoSecrets, which indexes leaked datasets in the public interest, and shared with TechCrunch for analysis. The data showed that LetMeSpy, until recently, had been used to steal data from more than 13,000 compromised Android devices worldwide, though LetMeSpy's website claimed prior to the breach that it controlled more than 236,000 devices. The database also contained information that shows the spyware was developed by a Krakow-based tech company called Radeal, whose chief executive Rafal Lidwin did not respond to a request for comment.

The Nokia 130 and 150 are two new updated feature phones from Nokia that ship "with the form of an earlier generation of tech but the software of the current time," reports Gizmodo. From the report: The Nokia 150 is arguably the more worthy of the two; it comes in three colors and features a 2.4-inch QVGA display, a 1,450 mAh removable battery with up to a month of standby time, and a headphone jack for listening to music like we're still pirating it from the internet (though you can also tune in to the built-in FM radio, a feature you'd have to download an app to replicate on an iPhone). The rear-facing 0.3-MP VGA camera is as mediocre as it sounds; it's similar to the camera specs on an LG-made candybar phone I was carting around in 2008. You can save all your data on a MicroSD card and charge the phone with micro USB.

The Nokia 130 has the same size screen and removable battery, but it doesn't have a camera, which makes sense if you were looking at one of these as a secondary device. You probably already have a smartphone that takes satisfying photos. The Nokia 130 and 150 are rated IP52, making them resistant to dust and water but not entirely waterproof. And they both have physical buttons, including a full 12-key number pad, plus navigational buttons to get around the operating system, called Series 30+ or S30+. Nokia developed the software specifically for these entry-level devices, and it made sure to include a revamped Snake game. Nokia swears there are "hours of fun in store," which seems like marketing rehashed from its '90s glory days.

The Nokia 130 and 150 are primarily available abroad. Note that these two models have been around since 2016 and that this latest release is a part of the phone's upgrade cycle. The company, acquired by Finnish conglomerate HMD Mobile, has yet to reveal pricing. But previous generations started at under $50 after converting currencies. It's quite a deal compared to what you'd get with an aging, low-cost Android phone.

An anonymous reader writes: Today, the US Treasury Department announced that taxpayers will have the choice to go paperless for all Internal Revenue Service (IRS) correspondence in the upcoming 2024 filing season. By 2025, the IRS plans to achieve paperless processing for all tax returns, still accepting paper documents but immediately digitizing them, to "cut processing times in half" and "expedite refunds by several weeks," the Treasury Department said. "The IRS receives about 76 million paper tax returns and forms and 125 million pieces of correspondence, notice responses, and non-tax forms each year, and its limited capability to accept these forms digitally or digitize paper it receives has prevented the IRS from delivering the world-class service taxpayers deserve," the Treasury Department said.

By accelerating paperless processing, the IRS expects to simplify how Americans access their taxpayer data and save millions historically spent on storing more than a billion documents. Digitization can also help eliminate errors, the Treasury Department said, which can "result from manually inputting data from paper returns." And it will help taxpayers more quickly get answers to questions, as IRS customer service employees "do not currently have easy access to the information from paper returns." Starting in 2024, they will. Next filing season, taxpayers will have the option to e-file 20 additional tax forms among the most commonly submitted when amending returns, including forms used to submit information on things like identity theft or proof of eligibility for "key credits and deductions that help low-income households."

"Taxpayers who want to submit paper returns and correspondence can continue to do so," the Treasury Department said, but "all paper will be converted into digital form as soon as it arrives at the IRS." In 2024, the IRS estimates that "more than 94 percent of individual taxpayers will no longer ever need to send mail to the IRS." Once taxpayers arrive at the 2025 filing season, they'll have the option to e-file "an additional 150 of the most used non-tax forms," the Treasury Department said, which "will be available in digital, mobile-friendly formats that make them easy for taxpayers to complete and submit." The IRS prioritized mobile-friendly formats because the agency estimates that "15 percent of Americans rely solely on mobile phones for their Internet access." "When combined with an improved data platform, digitization and data extraction will enable data scientists to implement advanced analytics and pattern recognition methods to pursue cases that can help address the tax gap, including wealthy individuals and large corporations using complex structures to evade taxes they owe," the Treasury Department added.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: China's cyberspace regulator said on Wednesday children under the age of 18 should be limited to a maximum of two hours a day on their smartphones, sending shares in tech companies tumbling. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said it wanted providers of smart devices to introduce so-called minor mode programs that would bar users under 18 from accessing the internet on mobile devices from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Providers would also have to set time limits under the proposed reforms, the CAC said. Users aged 16 to 18 would be allowed two hours a day, children aged eight to 16 would get one hour while children under eight would be allowed just eight minutes. But the CAC said service providers should allow parents to opt out of the time limits for their youngsters. Xia Hailong, a lawyer at the Shanghai Shenlun law firm, said it'll take "a lot of effort and additional costs" for internet companies to implement these new regulatory requirements. "And the risk of non-compliance will also be very high. So I believe that many internet companies may consider directly prohibiting minors from using their services."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: When Google announced that trackers would be able to tie in to its 3 billion-device Bluetooth tracking network at its Google I/O 2023 conference, it also said that it would make it easier for people to avoid being tracked by trackers they don't know about, like Apple AirTags. Now Android users will soon get these "Unknown Tracker Alerts." Based on the joint specification developed by Google and Apple, and incorporating feedback from tracker-makers like Tile and Chipolo, the alerts currently work only with AirTags, but Google says it will work with tag manufacturers to expand its coverage.

For now, if an AirTag you don't own "is separated from its owner and determined to be traveling with you," a notification will tell you this and that "the owner of the tracker can see its location." Tapping the notification brings up a map tracing back to where it was first seen traveling with you. Google notes that this location data "is always encrypted and never shared with Google." Further into the prompts, you can make the tracker play a sound, "without the owner of the tracker knowing," Google says. If you bring the tracker to the back of your phone (presumably within NFC range), some trackers may provide their serial number and information about their owner, "like the last four digits of their phone number." Google indicates it will also link to information about how to physically disable a tracker. Finally, Google is offering a manual scan feature, if you're suspicious that your Android phone isn't catching a tracker or want to see what's nearby. The alerts are rolling out through a Google Play services update to devices on Android 6.0 and above over the coming weeks. Google is working to finish the joint tracking specification "by the end of this year."

The company added: "At this time, we've made the decision to hold the rollout of the Find My Device network until Apple has implemented protections for iOS."

OpenSignal blog: While eSIM adoption in the mobile market has been arriving for some time, Apple's move to make eSIM the only option for iPhone 14 range in the U.S. is propelling the worldwide shift towards eSIM technology. Opensignal's latest analysis reveals a significant surge in the proportion of users switching their operator among those who use an eSIM across seven examined markets -- Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, the U.K. and the U.S.

The switch from physical to embedded SIM cards threatens to alter how consumers switch operators and encourages operators to adopt new tactics to retain and acquire users, for example operators can offer network trials from within an app that provisions an eSIM immediately. eSIM also means the risks to operators of dual SIM devices that have long been common in many international markets are arriving in operator-controlled markets too, such as the U.S. and South Korea. Even on smartphones sold by operators, eSIM support is usually present in addition to a physical SIM, making them dual-SIM devices.

Google added eSIM-support to the Pixel range in 2017, Samsung added eSIM support to 2019's Galaxy S20 flagship. While Apple first added eSIM to their phones in 2018 with the iPhone Xs, it switched to selling exclusively eSIM models in the U.S. with the iPhone 14 range in late 2022. South Korea is also a special case -- eSIM support for domestic customers only began in mid-2022, before this point it was only available to international travelers. Notably, Samsung responded by introducing eSIM to a selection of its flagship devices in the home market, which had not been previously available there.

What's old is hot again, and flip phones are so very hot right now. From a report: These phones are a far cry from the phone that you mastered T9 texting on in college. Today's flip phones are garden-variety 2023 smartphones that happen to fold in half -- plus a screen on the front cover. They've been making a kind of comeback over the past few years, but until now, they've existed in the shadows of their bigger, pricier fold-style counterparts. That's understandable, considering that their small cover screens haven't been good for much more than checking the weather and pressing pause on a podcast. But that's all changing this year: in a round of updates from Motorola, Oppo, and very likely Samsung next, cover screens are getting much larger and way more useful. And that's a big deal.

Samsung will likely announce its fifth-generation Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5 this week at Unpacked, which has become its annual summer foldable-fest. They'll be thinner and lighter than last year's models -- that's what TM Roh told us, anyway -- and will both likely use new hinges that fold totally flat. The Z Flip 5 is heavily rumored to come with a much bigger cover screen than previous generations. The Z Fold 5? Well, rumors point to a very boring update, frankly. [...] The previous generation of flip-style phones felt like a regular phone with a smartwatch on the front -- good for checking quick information but not a lot more. The new flippable cover screens sit in a more comfortable place between a smartwatch and a full-size phone. They're big enough to provide a lot more information at a glance than a watch, but you can't comfortably do everything you'd do on a normal phone screen. As a result, you get a little bit of your attention back that you would have spent mindlessly scrolling Instagram when all you wanted to do was check the weather.

Gizmodo reports: Thousands of top Russian officials and state employees have reportedly been banned from using iPhones and other Apple products over concerns they could serve as surreptitious spying tools for Western intelligence agencies...

Russia's trade minister, according to a Financial Times report, said the new ban will take effect Monday, July 17. The move affects a variety of Apple products from iPhones, iPads, and laptops, and builds off of similar restrictions already put in place by the digital development ministry and state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec. Kremlin officials also advised staff working on Vladimir Putin's 2024 presidential re-election campaign against using a variety of US-developed smartphones over similar espionage conveners earlier this year...

Russian intelligence officials last month accused the US National Security Agency of hacking into thousands of Russian-owned iPhones and targeting the phones of foreign diplomats based in Russia... To be clear, Russian officials still haven't provided any clear evidence proving the alleged US conspiracy. Apple has also publicly denied the claims and recently told the Times it "has never worked with any government to build a backdoor into any Apple product, and never will."
The Financial Times got a skeptical response to that from Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia's Security Council and one of the country's fiercest hardliners. "When a big tech compan...â.âclaims it does not co-operate with the intelligence community — either it lies shamelessly or it is about to [go bust]."

Thanks to Slashdot reader dovthelachma for sharing the news.