"As a response to recent coverage of software being purged from the App Store, Apple is sharing its criteria for how it chooses to remove abandoned apps," reports 9to5Mac.

Apple's announcement say it's only flagging apps for possible removal "that
Developers will also have more time to comply after being notified." (90 days instead of 30 days). And 9to5Mac adds that Apple "is also reiterating that the practice is not new but instead part of an initiative that started six years ago.

But the Verge took a different message from "Apple to developers: if we deleted your old app, it deserved it." [T]he company has responded — by issuing a press release effectively saying that nobody was downloading the apps anyways....

Apple's explanation does clear up why it, as some developers noted, seemed to apply the rules inconsistently. For example, one developer noted that Pocket God, a popular game from the iPhone's early days, hasn't been updated for seven years but is still on the App Store. Apple is basically saying it's still up because it's still popular.

From one angle, this reasoning doesn't necessarily gel with the first half of Apple's post, where it says it removes old apps to ensure "user trust in quality apps," and to improve discoverability, security and privacy, and user experience. After all — if an app is problematic because it's outdated, more downloads would make a bad app a bigger issue. Who's being harmed if there's an outdated app almost no one is downloading?

But Apple says it doesn't want the App Store cluttered up with apps that both developers and users have forgotten about. It has enough problems making it easy for users to find good apps as it is, and it's easy to imagine Apple seeing deleting old, seemingly irrelevant apps as a good solution.

As Facebook/Meta faces rising pressure in west, it is investing in digital infrastructure elsewhere. From a report: When government officials in the southern Nigerian state of Edo set about radically improving poor internet access for its population of 4 million, they didn't have to look far for help. MainOne, a company responsible for laying a vast network of fibre-optic cables across west Africa, was an obvious partner. Another, perhaps less obvious one, was Facebook. A joint agreement was signed to install fibre-optic cables running across the state's capital, Benin City. Since 2019, 400km (250 miles) of cables have been laid in Edo, about a quarter via the partnership between the two companies and the government. "Obviously, Facebook isn't really a digital infrastructure company, but they invested in these cables," said Emmanuel Magnus Eweka, who worked as a senior government official for the Edo government until last September. In recent years, as Facebook has come under rising legislative pressure in the west, the company has increased its focus on Africa, particularly in countries where the regulatory and legislative environment tends to be much looser.

The combination of weak and expensive internet coverage for most of Nigeria's fast-growing population of more than 200 million people has meant that companies hoping to tap into a potential goldmine of new users -- and their data -- have sought to invest in the business of helping those potential users get online in the first place. "To make internet data more affordable, Facebook needs to build infrastructures that are almost free," Eweka said. "In fact, I'd say Facebook actually loses in terms of making money out of those cables. But then they gain it back on the user data that they will generate, and obviously that has huge potential in a country like Nigeria."

Richard Stallman celebrated his 69th birthday last month. And Wednesday, he gave a 92-minute presentation called "The State of the Free Software Movement."

Stallman began by thanking everyone who's contributed to free software, and encouraged others who want to help to visit gnu.org/help. "The Free Software movement is universal, and morally should not exclude anyone. Because even though there are crimes that should be punished, cutting off someone from contributing to free software punishes the world. Not that person."

And then he began by noting some things that have gotten better in the free software movement, including big improvements in projects like GNU Emacs when displaying external packages. (And in addition, "GNU Health now has a hospital management facility, which should make it applicable to a lot more medical organizations so they can switch to free software. And [Skype alternative] GNU Jami got a big upgrade.")

What's getting worse? Well, the libre-booted machines that we have are getting older and scarcer. Finding a way to support something new is difficult, because Intel and AMD are both designing their hardware to subjugate people. If they were basically haters of the public, it would be hard for them to do it much worse than they're doing.

And Macintoshes are moving towards being jails, like the iMonsters. It's getting harder for users to install even their own programs to run them. And this of course should be illegal. It should be illegal to sell a computer that doesn't let users install software of their own from source code. And probably shouldn't allow the computer to stop you from installing binaries that you get from others either, even though it's true in cases like that, you're doing it at your own risk. But tying people down, strapping them into their chairs so that they can't do anything that hurts themselves -- makes things worse, not better. There are other systems where you can find ways to trust people, that don't depend on being under the power of a giant company.

We've seen problems sometimes where supported old hardware gets de-supported because somebody doesn't think it's important any more — it's so old, how could that matter? But there are reasons...why old hardware sometimes remains very important, and people who aren't thinking about this issue might not realize that...

Stallman also had some advice for students required by their schools to use non-free software like Zoom for their remote learning. "If you have to use a non-free program, there's one last thing... which is to say in each class session, 'I am bitterly ashamed of the fact that I'm using Zoom for this class.' Just that. It's a few seconds. But say it each time.... And over time, the fact that this is really important to you will sink in."

And then halfway through, Stallman began taking questions from the audience...

Read on for Slashdot's report on Stallman's remarks, or jump ahead to...

• How far should copyright law go?
• That NPM package that deleted files in Russia
• Does the free software world need more videogames?
• Stallman's upcoming manual for 'GNU C'
• Free Software's role in protecting our planet's environment

DuckDuckGo's privacy-focused browsing app is available in beta on Mac, but you'll have to join a private waitlist to gain access. From a report: Just like the mobile browsing app, DuckDuckGo on Mac uses the DuckDuckGo search engine by default, automatically blocks web trackers, and comes with the famous "Fire" button that burns up your browsing history and tabs in a single click. The browsing app also comes with a new feature that's supposed to help block those pesky cookie consent pop-ups that appear when you first open a website. DuckDuckGo says it will clear them on 50 percent of sites, while automatically selecting the option that blocks or minimizes the cookies that track you. Allison Goodman, the senior communications manager at DuckDuckGo, told The Verge that the company plans on increasing this coverage "significantly" as the beta progresses. You'll also gain access to a privacy feed that appears on DuckDuckGo's homepage.

NBC News reports: Multiple people were shot in a New York City subway station during rush hour on Tuesday, and several undetonated devices were found, officials said. At least 13 people were injured during the mayhem that unfolded at a station in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood, the FDNY said, though it was not immediately clear how many of those victims were shot. A man, possibly wearing clothes that resembled MTA attire, was spotted throwing a device in the subway station before opening fire, law enforcement sources told NBC New York. The NYPD, though, said no "active explosive devices" were immediately found at the scene. Police were looking for a man, believed to be about 5-foot-5, 180 pounds and wearing a gas mask, who shot at least five people, sources said. Live coverage: CNN.

Graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology overwhelmingly approved forming a union in a two-day vote this week by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. From a report: MIT is the latest Boston-area school where grad students have voted to join a union following pivotal federal ruling in 2016 recognizing grad students as employees with the ability to unionize. In all, 1,785 MIT graduate students voted in favor of unionization and 912 against, a figure confirmed by Jonathan Zong, a grad student organizer, and MIT. Three-fourths of graduate students voted, according to MIT. The vote seeks to join United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, or UE. MIT grad students were pushing for help with affordable housing, support for international students, dental insurance coverage, and a better emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion.

"We are grateful to the many members of our community, on all sides of the debate, who have engaged constructively and respectfully in this conversation," Melissa Nobles, the chancellor, and Ian A. Waitz, the vice chancellor, said in the message to grad students. The memo continued: "Indeed, as we wrote to you during this campaign: We agree that there are areas where MIT can improve, and we share many of the same goals as the MIT Graduate Student Union. ... With the election outcome now clear, we will continue to work alongside you to improve MIT for all of our students." MIT's Zong said being unionized will be a more democratic and formalized way of making grad students' concerns heard compared to MIT's Graduate Student Council. He described the council as more advisory to the school's administration.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Almost the entire global population (99%) breathes air that exceeds WHO air quality limits, and threatens their health. A record number of over 6000 cities in 117 countries are now monitoring air quality, but the people living in them are still breathing unhealthy levels of fine particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide, with people in low and middle-income countries suffering the highest exposures. The findings have prompted the World Health Organization to highlight the importance of curbing fossil fuel use and taking other tangible steps to reduce air pollution levels.

Released in the lead-up to World Health Day, which this year celebrates the theme Our planet, our health, the 2022 update of the World Health Organization's air quality database introduces, for the first time, ground measurements of annual mean concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a common urban pollutant and precursor of particulate matter and ozone. It also includes measurements of particulate matter with diameters equal or smaller than 10 um (PM10) or 2.5 um (PM2.5). Both groups of pollutants originate mainly from human activities related to fossil fuel combustion. The new air quality database is the most extensive yet in its coverage of air pollution exposure on the ground. Some 2,000 more cities/human settlements are now recording ground monitoring data for particulate matter, PM10 and/or PM2.5, than the last update. This marks an almost 6-fold rise in reporting since the database was launched in 2011.

Heath workers worry Russia's invasion of Ukraine "threatens to upend decades of progress against infectious diseases throughout the region," reports the New York Times, "sparking new epidemics that will be nearly impossible to control." Ukraine has alarmingly high numbers of people living with HIV and hepatitis C and dangerously low levels of vaccination against measles, polio and COVID-19. Overcrowded and unsanitary living conditions for refugees are breeding grounds for cholera and other diarrheal diseases, not to mention respiratory plagues like COVID-19, pneumonia and tuberculosis.... Ukraine and the surrounding region also make up a world epicenter of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, a form of the disease impervious to the most powerful medications. The Ukrainian health ministry in recent years had made progress in bringing these epidemics under control, including a 21% drop in new HIV infections and a 36% decline in TB diagnoses since 2010. But health officials now fear that delays in diagnosis and treatment interruptions during the war may allow these pathogens to flourish again, with consequences that ripple for years.

"Last year, we were working to differentiate between different TB mutations," Iana Terleeva, who heads tuberculosis programs for Ukraine's Ministry of Health, said in a statement. "Now instead, we are trying to differentiate between aerial shelling, raids and other military hardware." The fighting also has damaged health facilities throughout the country and spawned a refugee crisis, imperiling thousands of people with chronic conditions like diabetes and cancer who depend on continuing care....

Only about 80% of Ukrainian children were immunized against polio in 2021, and the country had detected a few polio cases even before the war began. The vaccination coverage for measles in Ukraine is likewise too low to prevent outbreaks. These are the ingredients of a public health calamity, many experts fear.

The WHO and other organizations are deploying medical teams and shipping supplies, vaccines and drugs to Ukraine and to neighboring countries. But the aid may never reach areas of active conflict.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science.org: An extinct rat that once lived on an island in the Indian Ocean may have put the kibosh on scientists' dreams of resurrecting more famous extinct animals like the woolly mammoth. The Christmas Island rat disappeared just over 100 years ago, but researchers now say even its detailed genome isn't complete enough to bring it back to life. The work "shows both how wonderfully close -- and yet -- how devastatingly far" scientists are from being able to bring back extinct species by genetically transforming a close relative in what's called "de-extinction," says Douglas McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved with the study. [...] To bring back an extinct species, scientists would first need to sequence its genome, then edit the DNA of a close living relative to match it. Next comes the challenge of making embryos with the revised genome and bringing them to term in a living surrogate mother. So far, scientists have sequenced the genomes of about 20 extinct species, including a cave bear, passenger pigeon, and several types of mammoths and moas. But no one has yet reported re-creating the extinct genome in a living relative.

In the new study, Tom Gilbert, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Copenhagen, thought it best to start small. "If we want to try something so crazy, why not start with a simple model," he reasoned. So, he, Jian-Qing Lin, a molecular biologist at Shantou University, and their colleagues, focused on the Christmas Island rat (Rattus macleari), which disappeared by 1908 from that island, located about 1200 kilometers west of Australia. This species "should be a dreamy candidate for de-extinction," McCauley says, given its close relationship with the Norway rat, a well-studied lab animal with a complete genome sequence that scientists already know how to modify.

Gilbert and Lin extracted DNA from the skins of two preserved Christmas Island rats and sequenced it many times over to get as much of the genome as possible. They achieved more than 60 times' coverage of it. Old DNA only survives in small fragments, so the team used the genome of the Norway rat as a reference to piece together as much as possible of the vanished rat's genome. Comparing the two genomes revealed almost 5% of the Christmas Island rat's genome was still missing, Lin, Gilbert, and their colleagues report today in Current Biology. The lost sequences included bits of about 2500 of the rat's estimated 34,000 genes. "I was surprised," Gilbert says. The recovered DNA included the genes for the Christmas Island rat's characteristic rounded ears, for example, but important immune system and olfaction genes were either missing or incomplete. The work "really highlights the difficulties, maybe even the ridiculousness, of [de-extinction] efforts," says Victoria Herridge, an evolutionary biologist at the Natural History Museum in London. Herridge says many of the missing genes make each species unique. It's also worth noting that the human genome differs by just 1% from those of chimps and bonobos.

Others researchers like Andrew Pask, a developmental biologist at the University of Melbourne, Parkville, says that the missing 5% of an extinct animal's genome likely won't affect how the transformed animal looks or behaves.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios, written by Erica Pandey and Mike Allen: The rising power and prominence of the nation's loudest, meanest voices obscures what most of us personally experience: Most people are sane and generous -- and too busy to tweet. It turns out, you're right. We dug into the data and found that, in fact, most Americans are friendly, donate time or money, and would help you shovel your snow. They are busy, normal and mostly silent. These aren't the people with big Twitter followings or cable-news contracts -- and they don't try to pick fights at school board meetings. So the people who get the clicks and the coverage distort our true reality.

Three stats we find reassuring:

1. 75% of people in the U.S. never tweet.
2. On an average weeknight in January, just 1% of U.S. adults watched primetime Fox News (2.2 million). 0.5% tuned into MSNBC (1.15 million).
3. Nearly three times more Americans (56%) donated to charities during the pandemic than typically give money to politicians and parties (21%). The report also highlights a Gallup 2021 poll, showing that 42% of Americans identified as independents.

NBC News reports that energy analysts "still expect most solar energy production in the near future to come from utility-scale projects, in part because of the savings that comes with massive installations."

Unfortunately, "It's those projects that are facing pushback." Local governments in states such as California, Indiana, Maine, New York and Virginia have imposed moratoriums on large-scale solar farms, as a national push for cleaner energy has collided with complaints about how the projects affect wildlife and scenic views. In one Nevada town west of Las Vegas, residents are trying to block a proposed 2,300-acre solar field. NBC News counted 57 cities, towns and counties across the country where residents have proposed solar moratoriums since the start of 2021, according to local news reports, and not every proposed ban gets local news coverage. At least 40 of those approved the measures. Other localities did so in earlier years.

That resistance is a threat to the big ambitions of the solar energy movement.
The current workaround? Solar panel installations "in unexpected places..." [Walmart] told NBC News it has more than 550 renewable energy projects, including solar and wind, implemented or under development. Several have opened recently in California, including with parking lot canopies. The company has a goal of using 100 percent renewable energy by 2035, up from 36 percent by its estimate now....

Houston has chosen the 240-acre site of a former landfill to install what the city said will be the largest infill solar project in the nation. In a neighborhood named Sunnyside, the project will generate enough electricity for 5,000 homes, according to the city. Similar projects have been built on landfills throughout New Jersey. An energy firm is building a solar project on a former coal mine on the border of Kentucky and West Virginia, while in New York state, researchers at Cornell University are testing putting solar panels in a field where sheep graze.

A city in Northern California says it has the largest floating solar farm in the U.S. at its wastewater treatment plant, and in January, a China-based energy company said it had built the world's largest floating solar array on a reservoir there. And last year, the Biden administration encouraged the development of solar projects on highway right-of-way, with a notice from the Federal Highway Administration telling field offices to work with states on ideas. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, including Webber, have said most states have more than 200 miles of interstate frontage suitable for solar development, especially near exits and rest stops.

Creative locations have a particular benefit: fewer potential neighbors who might complain.

Cogent Communications, one of the world's largest internet intercontinental backbone providers, has cut ties with Russian customers over its invasion of Ukraine. The Verge reports: In a letter to Russian customers obtained by The Washington Post, Cogent cited "economic sanctions" and "the increasingly uncertain security situation" as the motives behind its total shutdown in the country. Cogent similarly told The Verge that it "terminated its contracts" with Russian customers in compliance with the European Union's move to ban Russian state-backed media outlets.

As Doug Madory, an internet analyst at network tracking company Kentik points out... unplugging Russia from Cogent's global network will likely result in slower connectivity, but won't completely disconnect Russians from the internet... Traffic from Cogent's former customers will instead fall back on other backbone providers in the country, potentially resulting in network congestion. There isn't any indication as to whether other internet backbone providers will also suspend services in Russia.

Digital rights activists have criticized Cogent's decision to disconnect itself from Russia, arguing that it could prevent Russian civilians from accessing credible information about the invasion. "Cutting Russians off from internet access cuts them off from sources of independent news and the ability to organize anti-war protests," Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said on Twitter....

Cogent's goal is to prevent the Russian government from using the company's networks for cyberattacks and propaganda, The Post reports.
The Post argues that on a larger scale,"these moves bring Russia closer to the day when its online networks face largely inward, their global connections weakened, if not cut off entirely." "I am very afraid of this," said Mikhail Klimarev, executive director of the Internet Protection Society, which advocates for digital freedoms in Russia. "I would like to convey to people all over the world that if you turn off the Internet in Russia, then this means cutting off 140 million people from at least some truthful information. As long as the Internet exists, people can find out the truth. There will be no Internet — all people in Russia will only listen to propaganda...."

[E]ven two weeks ago, Russia's Internet was comparatively free and integrated into the larger online world, allowing civil society to organize, opposition figures to deliver their messages and ordinary Russians to gain ready access to alternative sources of news in an era when Putin was strangling his nation's free newspapers and broadcast stations.... Patrick Boehler, head of digital strategy at Radio Free Europe, said CrowdTangle data showed that independent news stories in the Russian language worldwide were getting shared many more times on social media than stories from state-run media. He said that once the Kremlin lost control of the narrative, it would have been hard to regain.

Now the last independent journalistic outposts are gone, and the Internet options are increasingly constricted through a combination of forces — all spurred by war in Ukraine but coming from both within and outside Russia.... Government censors also blocked access to the BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Deutsche Welle, as well as major Ukrainian websites. The BBC, CNN and other international news organizations said they were suspending reporting in Russia because of a new law that could result in 15 years of prison for publishing what government officials deem false news on the war.
Meanwhile, Politico reminds us that even Oracle has shut down its Russian cloud service operations. Laura Manley, the executive director of Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, said Russia is creating a perfect situation to control its narrative and limit outside coverage of its Ukrainian invasion by Western social media sources. "You have the lack of eyewitness information because you have critical infrastructure being shut off," she said. "So it's sort of a worst case scenario in terms of getting real-time accurate information."

Qualcomm is using Mobile World Congress to show off some new technology that should improve 5G connectivity and wireless audio. From a report:The Snapdragon X70 5G modem-RF system attempts to improve your phone's 5G connection with the help of an AI processor. This helps it maximize 5G signal for better coverage -- particularly important for mmWave signals, which are short-range compared to the broader coverage of low and mid-band frequencies. Qualcomm says this improvement is limited to situations like stadiums and city blocks, and that it doesn't address one of mmWave's key weaknesses: the signal's inability to travel from outdoors to indoors. But where there's no mmWave signal, the new AI processor should boost sub-6GHz coverage and speeds, too. The new audio features, wrapped up in a platform called Snapdragon Sound, include a feature teased last year: wireless earbud support for 16-bit "CD-quality" lossless audio over Bluetooth.

Sea ice around Antarctica has reached a record low in four decades of observations, a new analysis of satellite images shows. From a report: As of Tuesday, ice covered 750,000 square miles around the Antarctic coast, below the previous record low of 815,000 square miles in early March 2017, according to the analysis by the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. "It's really unprecedented," said Marilyn N. Raphael, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies Antarctic sea ice. Warmer ocean temperatures may have played a role, she said, "but there are other factors that we will be working on finding out in the next months." Antarctic sea ice extent is highly variable from year to year, but overall has increased very slightly, on average, since the late 1970s, when satellite observations began. By contrast, sea ice extent in the Arctic, which is warming about three times as fast as other regions, has decreased by more than 10 percent a decade over the same period.

The two regions are very different. The Arctic Ocean covers high latitudes, including the North Pole itself, and is hemmed in by land masses. In the Southern Hemisphere, Antarctica covers the pole. The Southern Ocean, which surrounds the continent, begins at much lower latitudes and is open to the north. While rapid warming in the Arctic is largely responsible for the shrinking of sea ice there, the effect of climate change on Antarctic sea ice is far less clear. Edward Blanchard-Wrigglesworth, a climate scientist at the University of Washington, said that many scientists expect that global warming will eventually lead to declines in Antarctic sea ice. But right now, he said, "it's really hard to connect the two, especially in terms of single events like this one." Instead, a complex group of factors is at play when it come to Antarctic sea ice. Large-scale atmospheric patterns, often occurring far from the continent, as well as local ocean currents and winds can all increase or reduce sea-ice coverage.

Russia President Vladimir V. Putin declared the start of a "special military operation" in Ukraine on Thursday, after months of speculation about Russia's intentions as it massed tens of thousands of troops on Ukraine's border. The New York Times: Addressing his nation in a televised speech broadcast just before 6 a.m. Thursday, Mr. Putin said his goal was to "demilitarize" but not occupy the country. Minutes later, large explosions were visible near Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, and blasts were reported in Kyiv, the capital, and other parts of the country. Ukraine's Interior Ministry said that Russian troops had landed in Odessa and were crossing the border. "The invasion has begun," the ministry said in a statement.

Ukraine's foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said on Twitter that Mr. Putin had "started a full-scale war against Ukraine" and had begun shelling civilian cities. "This is a war of aggression," he wrote on Twitter. "Ukraine will defend itself and win. The world must act and stop Putin. It is time to act -- immediately." Evoking the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mr. Putin cast his action as a long-overdue strike against an American-led world order that he described as an "empire of lies." Even as he spoke, the United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting imploring him not to invade. In bellicose language, Putin also issued what appeared to be a warning to other countries: "Anyone who tries to interfere with us, or even more so, to create threats for our country and our people, must know that Russia's response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences as you have never before experienced in your history. We are ready for any turn of events." More coverage: NBC News, The Guardian and The Moscow Times.

New submitter Klaxton shares an excerpt from a new report released today by the International Energy Agency (IEA): Global methane emissions from the energy sector are about 70% greater than the amount national governments have officially reported, according to new IEA analysis released today, underlining the urgent need for enhanced monitoring efforts and stronger policy action to drive down emissions of the potent greenhouse gas. Methane is responsible for around 30% of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution, and quick and sustained emission reductions are key to limiting near-term warming and improving air quality. Methane dissipates faster than carbon dioxide (CO2) but is a much more powerful greenhouse gas during its short lifespan, meaning that cutting methane emissions would have a rapid effect on limiting global warming.

The energy sector accounts for around 40% of methane emissions from human activity, and this year's expanded edition of the IEA's Global Methane Tracker includes country-by-country emissions from coal mines and bioenergy for the first time, in addition to continued detailed coverage of oil and natural gas operations. Methane emissions from the energy sector grew by just under 5% last year. This did not bring them back to their 2019 levels and slightly lagged the rise in overall energy use, indicating that some efforts to limit emissions may already be paying off. "At today's elevated natural gas prices, nearly all of the methane emissions from oil and gas operations worldwide could be avoided at no net cost," said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. "The International Energy Agency has been a longstanding champion of stronger action to cut methane emissions. A vital part of those efforts is transparency on the size and location of the emissions, which is why the massive underreporting revealed by our Global Methane Tracker is so alarming."

If all methane leaks from fossil fuel operations in 2021 had been captured and sold, then natural gas markets would have been supplied with an additional 180 billion cubic meters of natural gas. That is equivalent to all the gas used in Europe's power sector and more than enough to ease today's market tightness. The intensity of methane emissions from fossil fuel operations range widely from country to country: the best performing countries and companies are over 100 times better than the worst. Global methane emissions from oil and gas operations would fall by more than 90% if all producing countries matched Norway's emissions intensity, the lowest worldwide.

AT&T's planned shutdown of its 3G network Tuesday has sparked fears that home security systems, medical alert monitors and a range of other devices will stop working. From a report: Carriers have previously retired networks, but this transition is proving more complicated because the pandemic hindered companies that rely on 3G services from making upgrades. Plus, there are just more devices to manage. AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon are all planning to shut down their 3G networks this year to support new 5G services. AT&T, which first announced plans to sunset its 3G network in 2019, says less than 1% of its mobile data traffic runs on that network. The company has offered customers free and discounted 4G LTE phones to help them upgrade, totaling about 2 million replacements. What to watch: AT&T says phone coverage will not be affected, but it's not just phones that use the company's 3G network.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Markets Insider: Wall Street institutions' growing connections to crypto markets could threaten financial stability and cause a credit crunch-style financial crisis, global regulators have warned. The Financial Stability Board said (PDF) "ongoing vigilance" of institutional investors such as big banks and hedge funds is needed as they deepen their involvement in the $1.9 trillion crypto market. "If the current trajectory of growth in scale and interconnectedness of crypto-assets to these institutions were to continue, this could have implications for global financial stability," the FSB said in a report published Wednesday.

The FSB was concerned the volatility in cryptocurrency markets -- even though crypto makes up just a fraction of global assets -- could feed through as digital and traditional finance become more interconnected. "If financial institutions continue to become more involved in crypto-asset markets, this could affect their balance sheets and liquidity in unexpected ways," it said. The regulator compared the risk from a crypto event to the credit crunch that sparked the 2008 financial crisis. "As in the case of the US subprime mortgage crisis, a small amount of known exposure does not necessarily mean a small amount of risk, particularly if there exists a lack of transparency and insufficient regulatory coverage," it said.

It noted that "systemically important" banks and other financial firms are increasingly keen to play a role in and gain exposure to crypto assets. Systemically important institutions are ones which, if they failed, could set off a financial crisis. The overall value of the cryptocurrency market grew 3.5 times in 2021 to $2.6 trillion as institutional interest soared, the FSB noted. Its worth has fallen in the early months of 2022 as prices slumped.

A new mobile data network -- accompanied by the quinfecta of a website, Medium post, white paper, dedicated subreddit and Discord channel -- quietly launched late Tuesday evening in San Francisco, promising a new way to exchange data anonymously and at high speeds without relying on legacy carriers, and at a cheaper price. From a report: The peer-to-peer open source wireless network called Pollen Mobile will incentivize its users with cryptocurrency to run their own mini cell towers and build out the network's coverage in the Bay Area where the service is initially launching. Anthony Levandowski's autonomous vehicle technology startup Pronto AI is launching the project. Levandowski, a polarizing, early pioneer in the autonomous vehicle industry, was pardoned last year by former President Donald Trump after being sentenced to 18 months in prison on one count of stealing trade secrets. Why is an autonomous vehicle startup creating a decentralized telecom incentivized by cryptocurrency? The catalyst of Pollen Mobile stemmed from Pronto's need for reliable, affordable mobile connectivity for its autonomous vehicles, Levandowski, who is still CEO of Pronto, told TechCrunch in a text message conversation. Pronto has been using Pollen internally for its AVs for months. "The reason why is simple, we needed reliable, affordable mobile connectivity for our AVs and we couldn't find it," he wrote. "So we built our own and realized it could be something others want." He added later: "Necessity is the mother of invention." Further reading: Anthony Levandowski Closes His Church of AI.

The first rule of Fight Club in China? Don't mention the original ending. The second rule of Fight Club in China? Change it so the police win. From a report: China has some of the world's most restrictive censorship rules with authorities only approving a handful of foreign films for release each year -- sometimes with major cuts. Among the latest movies to undergo such treatment is David Fincher's 1999 cult classic "Fight Club" starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. Film fans in China noticed over the weekend that a version of the movie newly available on streaming platform Tencent Video was given a makeover that transforms the anarchist, anti-capitalist message that made the film a global hit.

In the closing scenes of the original, Norton's character The Narrator, kills off his imaginary alter ego Tyler Durden -- played by Pitt -- and then watches multiple buildings explode, suggesting his character's plan to bring down modern civilisation is underway. But the new version in China has a very different take. The Narrator still proceeds with killing off Durden, but the exploding building scene is replaced with a black screen and a coda: "The police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding". It then adds that Tyler -- a figment of The Narrator's imagination -- was sent to a "lunatic asylum" for psychological treatment and was later discharged. The new ending in which the state triumphs sparked head scratching and outrage among many Chinese viewers -- many of whom would likely have seen pirated versions of the unadulterated version film.
UPDATE (2/6/2022): After a widespread outcry and coverage around the globe, Fight Club's original ending has been restored for streamers in China.