fidzu : geek

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to make it effectively impossible for people to buy what many call burner phones -- a phone not explicitly linked to your identity at the point of purchase -- which would impact privacy-conscious people, to domestic abuse survivors, to journalists, and many more. The FCC plans to do this by legally forcing the country's telecoms to store a wealth of personal information about essentially all phone customers, including a government issued identification number and their physical address, alarming privacy advocates and civil rights activists who compare the measures to those from authoritarian countries where it can be difficult to buy a mobile phone plan without giving up your identity. The proposed change would drastically shake up how people obtain phone plans in the U.S., and have all sorts of privacy and cybersecurity knock-on effects. The FCC is proposing the data collection partly as a way to combat scammers, with telecoms being required to collect other information on business and foreign customers like the intended use case of their bulk phone plan purchase and their IP address. But the changes would mean telecoms collect data on all new and renewing customers, and the FCC provides a long list of other things that the collected data could help authorities with. In a synopsis of the proposed changes, the FCC writes, "Specifically, we seek comment on requiring originating providers to, at a minimum, obtain and retain the name, physical address, government issued identification number, and an alternate telephone number of any new and renewing customer before granting access to its services." The goal of collecting this data, the FCC writes, is to deter some scammers from getting onto a telecom network in the first place, and so "enforcers will be better able to identify the scammers when they do." The FCC compares the changes to the sort of data collected by banks to prevent money laundering. One section stresses that the newly collected data would help "law enforcement to more easily identify callers that use the network to perpetuate crimes by ensuring that voice providers have accurate and complete customer information." It goes on to ask if the data would help identify people buying and selling illicit goods; the investigation of "fraud, espionage, or influence operations that undermine national security", and "address abuse in text messaging networks." "Criminals continue to leverage the anonymity provided by phone calls and texts to defraud Americans and exploit communications networks to further other crimes," one section reads. "For decades, civil libertarians have looked overseas at authoritarian countries where the government requires people to register to get a mobile phone to ensure they can be tracked. We never thought that would happen here," Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project told 404 Media in an email. "But make no mistake: with this rulemaking, the government is contemplating taking away people's ability to get a burner phone, which will hurt low-income people, domestic violence victims, and anyone else who cares about their privacy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

10 Jun 2026 3:30am GMT

The Pentagon has added Alibaba, BYD, Baidu, Unitree, and other Chinese companies to its list of firms it says support China's military, barring them from U.S. defense contracts. The companies and China's embassy deny the allegations. The Associated Press reports: Created in 2021 by a congressional mandate, the list (PDF) seeks to identify Chinese companies that the Pentagon considers to have links to the Chinese military -- not only those directly controlled by the Chinese military and security forces but also those contributing to the country's defense industrial base. When updating the list last year, the Pentagon said the Chinese military sought to acquire advanced technologies and expertise developed by Chinese companies, universities and research programs that "appear to be civilian entities." The Chinese Embassy on Monday accused the U.S. of "overstretching the concept of national security and making discriminatory lists to go after Chinese companies." It said Chinese companies observe the laws and regulations of the countries where they do business. "The U.S. should stop its wrong practice and create a fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies," the embassy said in a statement. [...] The Chinese Embassy on Monday accused the U.S. of "overstretching the concept of national security and making discriminatory lists to go after Chinese companies." It said Chinese companies observe the laws and regulations of the countries where they do business. "The U.S. should stop its wrong practice and create a fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies," the embassy said in a statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

09 Jun 2026 11:00pm GMT

The European Commission has ordered Meta to temporarily restore free WhatsApp Business API access for rival AI chatbots while it investigates whether Meta's ban on third-party assistants abuses its dominant position. Meta says it will appeal, calling the move "regulatory overreach" that would let major AI companies use a paid WhatsApp product for free. The BBC reports: The EU said it began its investigation, in December 2025, after Meta banned third-party general-purpose AI assistants from the WhatsApp for Business API. It said that appeared to be an abuse of Meta's dominant position in European markets. So, as an interim measure as its investigation continues, it has given Meta five working days to re-instate access for third-party general-purpose AI assistants to the WhatsApp for Business API under the same terms and conditions that were in place previously. "In rapidly evolving markets, competition can be lost long before a final decision is adopted," said Teresa Ribera, the Commission's executive vice-president for clean, just and competitive transition. "This is why these interim measures will remain in place for the duration of the investigation." She added the decision "preserved choice for citizens across Europe on the AI assistants they want to use with WhatsApp, without that decision being made for them." The Commission said if Meta failed to comply with its interim decision it could be fined up to 10% up of its total turnover. "The European Commission has decided that OpenAI and some of the largest companies in the world can use the paid-for WhatsApp Business product for free," it said in a statement. "This is regulatory overreach subsidized by the many European companies that pay. We will appeal."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

09 Jun 2026 10:00pm GMT

Starlink, SpaceX's top moneymaker, also raised service prices by $5 to $10.

09 Jun 2026 9:05pm GMT

A separate zero-day also disclosed by Nightmare Eclipse appears to be patched as well.

09 Jun 2026 8:56pm GMT

A new logo means new merch! I'm launching brand new merch today, all featuring the brand new OSNews logo. We've got the classic T-shirt with the new OSNews logo, in sandy white and terrain grey. They're made from sustainably-grown and processed cotton, come in a variety of sizes, and ship worldwide. The crowdpleaser is also making its triumphant return: the OSNews coffee mug, now also with the new logo and a green-on-white two-tone design. It holds coffee and tea, of course, but feel free to use it for whatever you want. Grow a plant in it! A newcomer is the OSNews Mousepad - a basic, no-nonsense, no-frills mousepad that does exactly what it's supposed to do, in a classic square(ish) formfactor. It makes for a great companion to any (retro) setup, but feels particularly at home with BeOS and OS/2. One merch item remains from our previous collection: the ever-popular Gemini shirt and longsleeve, with a retro ASCII-art OSNews logo in bright green on deep black. It's like staring at a real classic CRT. On your chest. Don't sit too close. As always, every price is set so that for every item sold, roughly €8 goes to OSNews. I will add the proceeds to our fundraiser tracker, so this is yet another way to support us, together with Ko-Fi donations, SEPA direct bank transfers, and Patreon.

09 Jun 2026 8:40pm GMT

Cities are dynamic, not static grids, and urbanization is a "spiky," cyclical, and asynchronous process.

09 Jun 2026 8:35pm GMT

In today's climate, I needed this: GentleOS, an operating system targeting both 386 (GentleOS/32) and even processors as old as the 80186 (GentleOS/16), with a lovely retro graphical user interface, usable on bare metal, and, of course, open source. Its goal is to provide a simple platform for tinkering with retro hardware and running graphical interactive apps on bare metal. At minimum, it only requires an i386 CPU, 4MB of RAM, and a VGA display capable of 640x480x16 mode. By design it's entirely monolithic, mostly configured at compile time, and only supports standard PC devices: VGA/SVGA, keyboard, PS/2 mouse, serial mouse, PC speaker. The only future plans are bugfixes, optimizations, and adding more apps. GentleOS/32 has a pure 16-bit spin-off called GentleOS/16, which targets devices as old as 80186. ↫ GentleOS GitHub page While it can be run on real hardware, you can also run it in Qemu to make it easier to test and play around with. It looks great, and the stated goal of just focusing on maintenance and possibly additional applications is music to my heart. With everything that's going on in technology today, this is an ice-cold glass of tonic in a scorching, data center-infested desert.

08 Jun 2026 9:26pm GMT

Apple's developer conference started today, and as is tradition, this means it also announced coming updates to its operating systems lineup. macOS is probably one of the two major ones OSNews readers are interested in, so let's start there: Much like Mac OS X Snow Leopard in 2009, Apple said it focused on improving macOS's performance and dozens of underlying technologies this year. macOS Golden Gate has some Liquid Glass design changes. For example, apps now have a unified toolbar at the top, and the sidebar now expands to the edge of the window. A new slider on macOS 27 lets you customize the opacity of Liquid Glass. ↫ Joe Rossignol at MacRumors Effectively, a ton of "Liquid Glass" features touted only a year ago are being changed and fixed, which should make using Liquid Glass less of a frustrating affair. Of course, there's a whole slew of new "AI" stuff built entirely on top of Google's Gemini, but luckily for us Europeans, we won't be getting those features because EU privacy and consumer protection regulations are too strict. Apple, one of the world's most valuable companies, seemingly cannot create "AI" features that comply with some basic consumer protection legislation. As for the other major platform, that's iOS of course. At WWDC 2026 in Cupertino, Apple announced iOS 27, the next mobile operating system for compatible iPhones. The update focuses on tweaking and improving last year's iOS 26, particularly in areas like app launch time, Liquid Glass design, and more. It does not offer a lot of major new features or upgrades, as Apple focused on polishing the experience. However, there are some new upgrades, such as reworked parental controls, new Siri AI, better search, and performance improvements. ↫ Taras Buria at Neowin These new versions, as well as those of Apple's other operating systems, will be available later this year.

08 Jun 2026 7:54pm GMT

Good morning from JetBrains Berlin office!

01 Jun 2026 12:00am GMT

Just trying to answer one simple question: What if the terminal was 3D?

11 May 2026 12:00am GMT

Break the pattern today or the loop will repeat tomorrow.

18 Apr 2026 12:00am GMT