John Lister

A former Facebook employee says the company deliberately drained the batteries of users as an experiment. George Hayward made the claims in a lawsuit that he has now withdrawn. Hayward says he was fired for refusing to work on the experiments. He ... originally sued the company, but has now withdrawn the case because of a rule that says he must go to arbitration. The lawsuit said the possibility of completely draining a battery and making phones inoperable put users at risk. This was especially the case "in circumstances where they need to communicate with others, including but not limited to ... (view more)

The FBI says it disrupted a major ransomware network that had already taken around $100 million in payments. It says its work to infiltrate the Hive group saved a potential $130 million in future demands. The group is said to have compromised ... networks run by hospitals and schools among other organizations. The $100 million compares with an estimated annual total of $886 million payments in the US across all ransomware attacks. (Source: nbcnews.com ) Scammers Pay Royalties Hive is one of the more notorious "ransomware-as-a-service" groups. Its business model means individual attackers will use ... (view more)

The next version of Android may make it much harder to install and run apps from third party sources. The change will mainly affect older apps that haven't been updated in some time. Unlike with Apple's iPhones, Android handsets aren't restricted to ... apps from the official App Store. Users may either use other app stores (other than the Google Play Store), or download and manually install apps from the web in a process known as "sideloading." Doing this doesn't require any "hacking" of the device, though users do have to change the phone's settings and confirm they understand the ... (view more)

Facebook's oversight board says it should rethink its rules on topless images. Tech experts believe the current rules can't be effectively enforced with automated moderation anyway. The ruling comes from the independent body that looks into cases ... where people believe Facebook has wrongly moderated content. The idea is to concentrate on cases where Facebook's rules may need clarifying. In this situation, the board looked at two connected cases. Both involved posts on Instagram, which is owned by the same company as Facebook. The two services share content rules set by parent company Meta. The ... (view more)

The Supreme Court has asked the government for advice over two cases involving social media. The court is reviewing challenges to laws that could effectively ban moderation on sites. The state laws in Florida and Texas both limit the ability of ... social media companies to moderate some content, though they would work in different ways. The Florida law covers online platforms with more than 100 million users. It says companies must publish their moderation rules and apply them consistently to all users. It also says companies cannot ban any user who is an active political candidate for a future ... (view more)

The makers of an artificial intelligence tool for "creating" art are being sued by a photo licensing company. The case could set a precedent for how copyright law works with modern technology. The case involves Stability AI, the company behind a ... "deep learning, text-to-image model." It's designed mainly to create images based on a text description provided by the user. As well as being a neat trick in itself, the idea of the model is to develop computer learning. That means that rather than humans providing a set of rules to follow, the computer model figures out rules itself. Imagery is a ... (view more)

A Microsoft Defender update has caused havoc by removing desktop, Start Menu and Taskbar shortcuts. Some users even say entire programs have disappeared. The closest thing to good news is that, although it affects both Windows 10 and 11, the problem ... only appears to affect Windows enterprise versions, rather than home users. That's because the problem is with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, a version of the security tool designed for networked computers. For most affected users, the problem is "limited" to the various shortcuts disappearing. Some have also reported that using the Windows key ... (view more)

Some "smart" home products could become unsupported in just two years according to a consumer group. That could mean premium features stop working and may even create security risks. The details come from "Which?," a British organization very ... similar to Consumer Reports in the US. It explored a big potential problem with smart tech: that the support for such features is often guaranteed for much less time than the expected useful lifespan of the product itself. The group researched smart features, meaning devices were linked to the Internet or a local network and allowing extra ... (view more)

Microsoft is to start charging extra for some features in its videoconferencing tool, Microsoft Teams. The move suggests it's further targeting a business audience rather than concentrating on the consumer market. At the moment Microsoft Teams is ... free to use, either as part of the Office 365 suite (included in the subscription cost) or a free standalone tool. Microsoft is now launching Teams Premium, which will carry an extra fee. Microsoft has hinted that will be $10 a month but has yet to confirm that. (Source: theregister.com ) Features to be Removed from "Standard" Microsoft ... (view more)

Facebook's oversight board says the site was wrong to delete a post protesting against the government in Iran. It's another example of the difficulties of moderating content online. The ruling came from an independent body that reviews a selection ... of decisions made by Facebook moderators. In a very loose sense, the body works a little like the Supreme Court in that it looks at specific cases but its rulings set wider precedents. In this case, a user had made a post which included the phrase "marg bar Khameni." Literally translates, that means "death to Khameni" and refers to Iran's Supreme ... (view more)