New Nintendo patents suggest there might be more to Switch 2 Joy-Cons than we initially thought.

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The Japanese conglomerate SoftBank would invest up to $40 billion in the maker of the chatbot ChatGPT.

In its limited wisdom, the deeply unpopular UK government has decided to break privacy for the entire world, slamming Apple with a top secret order that demands blanket access to personal data. Apple must create a back door to enable surveillance,according to The Washington Post. Its a deeply dangerous, unaccountable, draconian demand that threatens privacy, free expression, commerce, and willultimately make no one safe.What makes this even more insidious is the secrecy around the application of the law. Not only is Apple unable to either confirm or deny that it has been told to create this back door, but the UK Home Office will not do so either. Making this worse, while Apple can appeal the demand, it can only do so in a secret court and must deliver the demanded access even before that appeal is heard.In other words, the government is demanding access to everybodys encrypted iCloud backups, you dont get told the government is doing it, theres no right of appeal against it and, one more thing it applies internationally. This would effectively give UK spies access toevery iCloud backup that exists globally.Apple might suspend some UK servicesIt is thought that Apple could withdraw some of its services from the UK market as a result, as itwarned it might when the law was first articulated in 2023. At that time, it called the measure a serious, direct threat to security and privacy. It also warned that the global nature of the regulation meant the company could not obey, even if it wanted to, because doing so would force the firm to break other rules, such as those surrounding data privacy.End-to-end encryption is a critical capability that protects the privacy of journalists, human rights activists, and diplomats. It also helps everyday citizens defend themselves from surveillance, identity theft, fraud, and data breaches,the company said.Even if Apple does withdraw some of its services from the UK, thatmay not be enough.Thats because the law demands global access, which means UK security agencies can, with few safeguards, demand access to data from anyone. The Post mentionedAdvanced Data Protectionon iCloud as one service Apple might stop offering to the market, but the regulation seems to imply that if you are a US citizen, the UK (for some insane reason) can still demand access to your encrypted iCloud data.Sheer and utter follyI cant articulate strongly enough how insanely foolish this is; even the FBIagrees encryption is a good thing.As Ive argued forever, and as state-sponsored surveillance attacks such as those by the NSO Group should prove, there really isno such thing as a secure back door. Once any such opening exists, it will proliferate. Apple will be forced to share these keys with governments on a global basis, including less trustworthy or unstable regimes, or those willing to support privatized surveillance-as-a-service firms.That means it is only a matter of time before all your information becomes an open book to rogue governments, state-sponsored attackers, criminals, and anyone else with a desire toprofit from your digital data.Thats a threat to you, to free speech and democracy, and also amassive attackagainst the privacy and security essential to maintaindigital commerce. Far from making people safer, the UK demand threatens everyone. More to the point, if the deep state is smashing down iClouds doors, it will be smashing down digital doorways everywhere. Breaking encryption for one breaks encryption for all, warnsPrivacy International.Draconian, unprecedented, unaccountable, dangerousNeedless to say, those who understand the importance of privacy, encryption, and the internet, are furious at the UK governments demand.Rebecca Vincent, the interim director of privacy and civil liberties campaign groupBig Brother Watch, said:We are extremely troubled by reports that the UK government has ordered Apple to create a backdoor that would effectively break encryption for millions of users an unprecedented attack on privacy rights that has no place in any democracy.Big Brother Watch has been ringing alarm bells about the possibility of precisely this scenario since the adoption of the Investigatory Powers Bill in 2016. We all want the government to be able to effectively tackle crime and terrorism, but breaking encryption will not make us safer. Instead, it will erode the fundamental rights and civil liberties of the entire population and it will not stop with Apple.We urge the UK government to immediately rescind this draconian order and cease attempts to employ mass surveillance in lieu of the targeted powers already at their disposal.In doing this, the government [is] attempting to undermine the security of millions of users, which would expose them to higher risks of cybercrime, said James Baker, platform power program Manager at Open Rights Group. They are failing in their primary duty to protect British citizens. The government want[s] to be able to access anything and everything, anywhere, any time. Their ambition to undermine basic security is frightening, unaccountable and would make everyone less safe. WhatsApp and other services will be next in their sights.They seek to do this in secret, with minimal accountability, and potentially global impacts, he said. It is straightforward bullying.Index on Censorship warned:Our message to the UK government: please dont trade in our privacy under the misguided belief itll tackle crime. Encryption is essential to privacy and the right to privacy and free expression go hand-in-hand. They should be protected not eroded.There are plenty of other, better ways to catch those involved in criminal activity than this, wrote Jemima Steinfeld, CEO of Index on Censorship. All this will do is make the average person in the UK much less safe online and give a green light to autocratic states to follow-suit.This must be opposedIm horrified and appalled at the move. I consider it a shameful threat to all forms of digital civil liberty and warn that it will create far more harm than it will resolve. Ultimately, privacy is a human right, not a feature, and the removal of such rights should at least be a matter of public and democratic debate, which it has not been. As it stands, this UK overreach should be opposed not only by civil rights advocates, but by anyone else who uses or provides online services of any kind, and certainly by any nation that does protect privacy among its citizens.The UK must think again or become a digital pariah on the world stage.You can follow me on social media! Join me onBlueSky, LinkedIn,Mastodon, andMeWe.

Over the past three weeks, the new US presidential administration has taken down thousands of government web pages related to public health, environmental justice, and scientific research. The mass takedowns stem from the new administrations push to remove government information related to diversity and gender ideology, as well as scrutiny of various government agencies practices.USAIDs website is down. So are sites related to it, like childreninadversity.gov, as well as thousands of pages from the Census Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Office of Justice Programs.Weve never seen anything like this, says David Kaye, professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and the former UN Special Rapporteur for freedom of opinion and expression. I dont think any of us know exactly what is happening. What we can see is government websites coming down, databases of essential public interest. The entirety of the USAID website.But as government web pages go dark, a collection of organizations are trying to archive as much data and information as possible before its gone for good. The hope is to keep a record of what has been lost for scientists and historians to be able to use in the future.Data archiving is generally considered to be nonpartisan, but the recent actions of the administration have spurred some in the preservation community to stand up.I consider the actions of the current administration an assault on the entire scientific enterprise, says Margaret Hedstrom, professor emerita of information at the University of Michigan.Various organizations are trying to scrounge up as much data as possible. One of the largest projects is the End of Term Web Archive, a nonpartisan coalition of many organizations that aims to make a copy of all government data at the end of each presidential term. The EoT Archive allows individuals to nominate specific websites or data sets for preservation.All we can do is collect what has been published and archive it and make sure its publicly accessible for the future, says James Jacobs, US government information librarian at Stanford University, who is one of the people running the EoT Archive.Other organizations are taking a specific angle on data collection. For example, the Open Environmental Data Project (OEDP) is trying to capture data related to climate science and environmental justice. Were trying to track whats getting taken down, says Katie Hoeberling, director of policy initiatives at OEDP. I cant say with certainty exactly how much of what used to be up is still up, but were seeing, especially in the last couple weeks, an accelerating rate of data getting taken down.In addition to tracking whats happening, OEDP is actively backing up relevant data. It actually began this process in November, to capture the data at the end of former president Bidens term. But efforts have ramped up in the last couple weeks. Things were a lot calmer prior to the inauguration, says Cathy Richards, a technologist at OEDP. It was the second day of the new administration that the first platform went down. At that moment, everyone realized, Oh, nowe have to keep doing this, and we have to keep working our way down this list of data sets.This kind of work is crucial because the US government holds invaluable international and national data relating to climate. These are irreplaceable repositories of important climate information, says Lauren Kurtz, executive director of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. So fiddling with them or deleting them means the irreplaceable loss of critical information. Its really quite tragic.Like the OEDP, the Catalyst Cooperative is trying to make sure data related to climate and energy is stored and accessible for researchers. Both are part of the Public Environmental Data Partners, a collective of organizations dedicated to preserving federal environmental data. We have tried to identify data sets that we know our communities make use of to make decisions about what electricity we should procure or to make decisions about resiliency in our infrastructure planning, says Christina Gosnell, cofounder and president of Catalyst.Archiving can be a difficult task; there is no one easy way to store all the US governments data. Various federal agencies and departments handle data preservation and archiving in a myriad of ways, says Gosnell. Theres also no one who has a complete list of all the government websites in existence.This hodgepodge of data means that in addition to using web crawlers, which are tools used to capture snapshots of websites and data, archivists often have to manually scrape data as well. Additionally, sometimes a data set will be behind a login address or captcha to prevent scraper tools from pulling the data. Web scrapers also sometimes miss key features on a site. For example, sites will often have plenty of links to other pieces of information that arent captured in a scrape. Or the scrape may just not work because of something to do with a websites structure. Therefore, having a person in the loop double-checking the scrapers work or capturing data manually is often the only way to ensure that the information is properly collected.And there are questions about whether scraping the data will really be enough. Restoring websites and complex data sets is often not a simple process. It becomes extraordinarily difficult and costly to attempt to rescue and salvage the data, says Hedstrom. It is like draining a body of blood and expecting the body to continue to function. The repairs and attempts to recover are sometimes insurmountable where we need continuous readings of data.All of this data archiving work is a temporary Band-Aid, says Gosnell. If data sets are removed and are no longer updated, our archived data will become increasingly stale and thus ineffective at informing decisions over time.These effects may be long-lasting. You wont see the impact of that until 10 years from now, when you notice that theres a gap of four years of data, says Jacobs.Many digital archivists stress the importance of understanding our past. We can all think about our own family photos that have been passed down to us and how important those different documents are, says Trevor Owens, chief research officer at the American Institute of Physics and former director of digital services at the Library of Congress. That chain of connection to the past is really important.Its our library; its our history, says Richards. This data is funded by taxpayers, so we definitely dont want all that knowledge to be lost when we can keep it, store it, potentially do something with it and continue to learn from it.

A former engineer who was sued by Apple for leaking details about Apple Vision Pro, the Journal app, and more may have been forced to issue a public apology after the case was dismissed.Gavel in a courtroom.Andrew Aude, once an iOS software engineer at Apple, was accused of repeatedly sharing internal company secrets with journalists. And now he's apologized for the leaks, perhaps being forced to do so by the terms of the settlement.In a statement posted on X, he called his leaks a "profound and expensive mistake," saying they cost him his career and the professional relationships he spent years building. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Amazon has shaved $100 off Apple's iPad Air 6 with the M2 chip thanks to an instant discount stacked with an on-page coupon.Save triple digits on Apple's iPad Air.Amazon's weekend deal on the current iPad Air has dropped the price to $499.99 when you pick up the 128GB 11-inch Wi-Fi model in the Space Gray colorway. You can also grab the larger 13-inch iPad Air for $689, a $110 discount off MSRP.Buy from $499.99 Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

A modular student housing project at the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo will help students who have been displaced by the recent Los Angeles Firesis about to begin. The project is the product of a new partnership between FullStack Modular and the California State University system, which promotes it as being the "largest modular [student housing] project in the US." It will also become the first large-scale modular construction in the CSU system.Manufacturing for the project will begin in late winter 2025, yielding nine suite-style buildings with a total of 4,200 new beds. California is currently facing a student housing crisis affecting more than 400,000 students statewide.Image courtesy FullStack Modular Image courtesy FullStack Modular Image courtesy FullStack Modular

Konami has released new screenshots for its upcoming remake Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. The screenshots, which you can check out below, show off quite a few bits of the game, including the new UI for changing camouflage, and even gives us a look at what the Shagohod will look like.More interestingly, however, is one of the screenshots giving us a glimpse at the Snake vs Monkeys mode. Originally a fun optional game mode in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the fact that the Snake vs Monkeys mode would be appearing in the remake was unveiled in a recently leaked trailer.Aside from showcasing high-definition Ape Escape monkeys, the screenshot also gives us a look at the banana-print camouflage that players can unlock for use in the main game.A recently-leaked trailer revealed that Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater would be coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on August 28. The trailer also gave us a look at various parts of the game, including Cobra Unit bosses like The Fear, The End, The Pain and The Fury.Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is a remake of PS2 stealth-action title Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Along with new visuals, the remake will also provide a host of new quality of life features, including a modern control style and a third-person over-the-shoulder camera.While Konami itself is yet to confirm the release date, there are also rumours that the company is working on bringing the title to the Nintendo Switch 2.