Meta has quietly pulled the plug on encrypted Instagram DMs, meaning private messages on one of the world’s biggest social networks are no longer especially private. The change took effect today, according to a revised Meta post first published in 2022. In a statement to The Register, Meta said the feature saw limited adoption and pointed users toward WhatsApp instead. "Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we're removing this option from Instagram in the coming months," the spokesperson said. "Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp." It’s quite the reversal for a corporation that spent years telling everyone that encryption was the future of online communications, even as governments pushed back against the company’s wider rollout plans. Much of that pressure centered on child protection. Campaigners and agencies, including the NSPCC UK’s National Crime Agency, argued wider encryption would make it harder to detect grooming, child abuse material, and other criminal activity taking place over private messaging services. Privacy advocates, however, say Meta has just blown a hole in one of the few genuinely private corners of the platform. The Center for Democracy & Technology said it had urged Meta to reverse the decision, alongside members of the Global Encryption Coalition Steering Committee. “Without default encryption, millions of Instagram users are left exposed to surveillance, interception, and misuse of their private communications,” the group said. “These risks fall hardest on people who rely on secure messaging for their safety, including journalists, human rights defenders, and survivors of abuse.” Swiss privacy outfit Proton also questioned what exactly happens to existing chats once encryption disappears. Because properly implemented E2EE prevents platforms from reading message contents, the company noted that Meta has not clarified whether previously encrypted conversations will remain inaccessible, get deleted, or become readable. “For Instagram, dropping E2EE is just an example of how little regard Meta has for the privacy and safety of its community,” Proton said in a blog post. Meta has become increasingly aggressive about monetizing and analyzing user interactions. Last year, the company confirmed that interactions with Meta AI tools, including those inside private conversations, could be used for ad targeting. The company has not publicly said whether ordinary Instagram messages could eventually feed into similar systems now that encryption is gone. ®

The veteran editor Vi turns 50 this year, and what better way to celebrate than to write a version in BASIC? The code was created by Lee Tusman, who likes to be a little out of step with the latest IT industry fads. Not strictly a professional programmer, Tusman, whose background is in art, began looking at BASIC in 2025. Specifically, Yabasic, an open source BASIC interpreter for Unix and Windows. "For a modern BASIC, it's quite fun to use," Tusman wrote. "I made my own cyber-hoss racing game, a command line game inspired by the UFO50 and Flash game Quibble Race. I also tinkered with the internals of the text version of The Oregon Trail, and built a clone, a simple version of Dope Wars economic simulation game." All of which brought Tusman to code up a version of the veteran text editor Vi, using BASIC because… well… it was there. "I've been using Neovim (and before that, Vim) for years and years. I've never made a text editor before. But I decided it could be fun to try to implement my own." Inspired by tools such as Offpunk, a text-based browser, "I thought I could likely build an ULTRA simple editor with a minimum of Vim commands. How hard could it be?" In this instance, not too hard at all. It only took a few hundred lines of Yabasic code to get a minimal blank page working before Tusman began adding simple commands. Before long, the editor had reached the point where it was possible to open a file, start a new one, and save. "This was satisfying as I was now able to open the actual code for my vi.bas program and poke around and edit it." There's no wrapping in Tusman's editor – 80 characters is the limit – but fire up the code from the GitHub repository, and a reasonable simulacrum of the venerable editor, along with a lot of its sometimes esoteric shortcuts, runs up. The Register asked Tusman why he chose Vi. "I chose Vi because I already use it, and of course, once you're addicted to it, it's hard to want to use any other style of editor." So what's missing? "Many things! But I'm purposefully not trying to rebuild a complete Vim. I just wanted something usable with as much functionality as I could build in as short and straightforward a program as I could write. Notably, most of it is 'if this key is pressed, do this.'" As for future development, "I don't know how much I'd add," Tusman said. "I've only been using the program a week or so, but haven't found much I completely miss from Neovim. I'm speculating here, but maybe I'd optionally add back in line numbers, and I haven't found a way to prevent errors when the screen gets resized that works cross-platform." In his post, Tusman notes that while the code won't win any prizes for its beauty, it is functional and can be tinkered with. It's also in the public domain, and so could be forked if there's a function that a BASIC wrangler can't do without. A look at the source certainly brought back some memories for this hack, who cut his teeth on TI BASIC in the very early 1980s and hasn't gone near the language since uninstalling Visual BASIC 6 decades ago. "It's not only the best Vi clone I've found written in a BASIC implementation," Tusman wrote. "I think it's the only one!" ®

The long-suffering saga has been kept alive this decade by TV alone – but even that will perish if the new movie fails to extend its universe

Star Wars has always been big on prophecy. Yoda peers into the future like Nostradamus with messed-up syntax, the Emperor cackles that everything is proceeding exactly as he has foreseen, Darth Vader breathes doom through the front grille of his shiny death helmet. And yet not even the most omniscient of Jedi could have predicted that the franchise responsible for practically inventing the modern Hollywood blockbuster would end up as a TV-centric operation with only occasional forays on to the big screen. Which is why it comes as a genuine shock to realise that, ahead of the release of new movie The Mandalorian and Grogu later this month, it has been more than six years since Star Wars last hit the multiplex.

Then again, perhaps the real humdinger is that it hasn’t been longer. The most recent Disney Star Wars film, JJ Abrams’ The Rise of Skywalker, did not so much conclude the long-running space saga as destroy several decades of perfectly serviceable mythology and ruin all sense of congruence with previous films. It was frantic, weirdly apologetic (about previous instalment The Last Jedi) and overstuffed with dodgy fan service. It was essentially a $590m act of narrative panic.

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DEN BOSCH (ANP) - Peter Gillis gaat in hoger beroep tegen de gevangenisstraf en de boete die hij donderdag kreeg opgelegd wegens belastingontduiking. Dat laat zijn advocaat vrijdag aan het ANP weten. De rechtbank in Den Bosch veroordeelde de realityster, bekend van de tv-serie Massa is Kassa, tot een celstraf van anderhalf jaar, waarvan zes maanden voorwaardelijk. Ook moeten de ondernemingen van Gillis boetes van in totaal ruim 1,3 miljoen euro betalen.

Gillis had volgens de rechters te laat aangifte van vennootschapsbelasting gedaan voor onder meer de Oostappen Groep in de jaren 2020 en 2021. Zijn advocaat toonde zich "teleurgesteld" en zei het vonnis te bestuderen, maar gaf al aan dat hoger beroep "in de rede" lag.

Vorig jaar kreeg Gillis ook al twaalf maanden cel opgelegd, waarvan zes voorwaardelijk, voor belastingfraude tussen 2014 en 2019. Tegen die uitspraak ging hij in hoger beroep. Donderdag kreeg Gillis ook te horen dat hij een taakstraf van zestig uur moet uitvoeren, vanwege mishandeling van zijn ex-partner Nicol Kremers. Het is nog niet bekend of Gillis ook in die zaak in beroep gaat.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Asielminister Bart van den Brink wil de regels voor grenscontroles versoepelen. De Koninklijke Marechaussee gaat na september niet meer aan de grens controleren als het aan de CDA-minister ligt, maar gaat gebruikmaken van mobiele controles.

Volgens Van den Brink is dit een effectievere manier van controleren. "De marechaussee analyseert waar het best gecontroleerd kan worden en voertuigen worden uitgezocht op basis van inlichtingen en een risicoprofiel."

De huidige manier van controleren, aan de grens, wordt verlengd tot eind september. Die periode wil de CDA-minister gebruiken om de mobiele controles op te zetten. De controles aan Nederlandse en Duitse kant kregen veel kritiek van burgers en ondernemers in grensregio's.

De Nederlandse controles leidden van december 2024 tot en met afgelopen maart tot 270 aanhoudingen, bijvoorbeeld vanwege mensensmokkel of documentfraude. In diezelfde periode is aan zeshonderd vreemdelingen de toegang tot Nederland geweigerd.

VLAARDINGEN (ANP) - Kunstmestproducent Yara heeft last van een protestactie van Extinction Rebellion bij zijn locatie in Vlaardingen. Demonstranten hebben daar de toegangsweg naar de fabriekspoort geblokkeerd. Hierdoor wordt de aan- en afvoer gehinderd, laat het bedrijf weten.

"Het terrein wordt versperd door de groep XR. De demonstratie verloopt vreedzaam", meldt een woordvoerster van Yara. Volgens het bedrijf zijn er zo'n tien demonstranten aanwezig.

"Yara ondervindt hinder van de blokkade van de toegangsweg naar de locatie in Vlaardingen. Hierdoor kunnen momenteel geen grondstoffen worden aangevoerd en kunnen er geen meststoffen worden afgevoerd. De productie van meststoffen op de locatie wordt op dit moment niet belemmerd en kan doorgaan."

De actiegroep Stop Big Agro, onderdeel van Extinction Rebellion (XR) Landbouw, wil dat Yara "de fundamentele schade van haar verdienmodel erkent en stopt met greenwashing". Het bedrijf wil niet inhoudelijk op de punten van de actievoerders ingaan.

BUNNIK (ANP) - De caravan is in Nederland aan een comeback bezig, stellen brancheorganisaties BOVAG en Kampeer en Caravan Industrie (KCI) na nieuwe cijfers over de verkopen. In maart en april werden bijna een vijfde meer caravans geregistreerd dan in dezelfde maanden vorig jaar. Met name bij jonge gezinnen is de caravan in trek, stelt de branche.

De afgelopen twee maanden werden 2152 nieuwe caravans verkocht, 18 procent meer dan in maart en april 2025. Dat is opvallend, want in de rest van Europa neemt de caravanverkoop volgens de brancheorganisaties juist af, ten gunste van campers.

Steeds meer jonge gezinnen in Nederland kiezen voor een caravan, ziet Marjolijn Wegkamp, voorzitter van BOVAG Caravan- en Camperbedrijven. "Zij zien de caravan als een ideale manier om met kinderen vakantie te vieren."

Met name sinds de coronaperiode is de caravan weer "helemaal terug op de radar van jonge gezinnen", denkt ook voorzitter Roel Reineman van KCI.

Wist u dat wij mensen voor meer dan 99,99 procent uit leegte bestaan? Ga maar na: we zijn allemaal, stuk voor stuk, opgebouwd uit atomen.