An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: While TikTok operates in the United States under new ownership, Apple has deployed technical restrictions to block iOS users in the United States from downloading other apps made by the video platform's Chinese parent organization ByteDance. ByteDance owns a vast array of different apps spanning social media, entertainment, artificial intelligence, and other sectors. The leading one is Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, which has over 1 billion monthly active users. While most of those users reside in China, iPhone owners around the world have traditionally been able to download these apps from anywhere without using a VPN, as long as they have a valid App Store account registered in China.

That's not true anymore. Starting in late January, iPhone users in the U.S. with Chinese App Store accounts began reporting that they were encountering new obstacles when they tried to download apps developed by ByteDance. WIRED has confirmed that even with a valid Chinese App Store account, downloading or updating a ByteDance-owned Chinese app is blocked on Apple devices located in the United States. Instead, a pop-up window appears that says, "This app is unavailable in the country or region you're in." The restriction appears to apply only to ByteDance-owned apps and not those developed by other Chinese companies.

The timing and technical specifics suggest the restriction is related to the deal TikTok agreed to in January to divest Chinese ownership of its U.S. operations. The agreement was the result of the so-called TikTok ban law passed by Congress in 2024, which also barred companies like Apple and Google from distributing other apps majority-owned by ByteDance. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act states that no company can "distribute, maintain, or update" any app majority-controlled by ByteDance "within the land or maritime borders of the United States."

The law was primarily aimed at TikTok, which has more than 100 million users in the U.S. and had been the subject of years of debate in Washington over whether its Chinese ownership posed a national security risk. But ByteDance also has dozens of other apps that at some point were also removed from Apple's and Google's app stores in the U.S.. Now it seems like the scope of impact has reached even more apps that are not technically designed for U.S. audiences, such as Douyin, the AI chatbot Doubao, and the fiction reading platform Fanqie Novel.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a blog post on Thursday, System76 CEO Carl Richell criticized new state laws in California, Colorado, and New York that would require operating systems to verify users' ages and expose that information to apps, arguing the rules are easy for kids to bypass and ultimately undermine privacy and freedom more than they protect minors.

"System76's position is interesting given that they sell Linux-loaded desktops, workstations and laptops plus being an operating system vendor with their in-house Pop!_OS distribution and COSMIC desktop environment," adds Phoronix's Michael Larabel, noting that they're also based out of Colorado. Here's an excerpt from the post: "A parent that creates a non-admin account on a computer, sets the age for a child account they create, and hands the computer over is in no different state. The child can install a virtual machine, create an account on the virtual machine and set the age to 18 or over. It's a similar technique to installing a VPN to get around the Great Firewall of China (just consider that for a moment). Or the child can simply re-install the OS and not tell their parents. ... In the case of Colorado's and California's bills, effectiveness is lost. In the case of New York's bill, liberty is lost. In the case of centralized platforms, potential is lost. ... The challenges we face are neither technical nor legal. The only solution is to educate our children about life with digital abundance. Throwing them into the deep end when they're 16 or 18 is too late. It's a wonderful and weird world. Yes, there are dark corners. There always will be. We have to teach our children what to do when they encounter them and we have to trust them." "We are accustomed to adding operating system features to comply with laws," writes Richell, in closing. "Accessibility features for ADA, and power efficiency settings for Energy Star regulations are two examples. We are a part of this world and we believe in the rule of law. We still hope these laws will be recognized for the folly they are and removed from the books or found unconstitutional."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

darwinmac writes: Mozilla is working on a huge redesign for its Firefox browser, codenamed "Nova," which will bring pastel gradients, a refreshed new tab page, floating "island" UI elements, and more. "From the mockups, it appears Mozilla took some inspiration from Googles Material You (or at least, the dynamic color extraction part of it) because the browser color accent appears influenced by the wallpaper setting," reports Neowin. "Choosing a mint-green desktop background automatically shifts the top navigation bars to match that exact shade."

Mozilla has a habit of redesigning Firefox every few years. Before "Nova," there was the "Proton" redesign in 2021, the "Photon" redesign in 2017, and the "Australis" redesign in 2014. Nova is still in early development, so it might take a year or two before it appears in an official stable Firefox release. Neowin adds: "Not every redesign project ends well for Mozilla, though. You might remember 2012's Firefox Metro, an ambitious attempt to build a custom browser for Windows 8s touch-first interface. The team built it to operate both as a traditional desktop application and as a touch-optimized Metro app. The whole thing was scrapped in 2014 after two years in development due to a dismally low user adoption rate (a preview version of the software had been released a year earlier on the Aurora channel)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NEW YORK (WASHINGTON) - De directeur van het National Symphony Orchestra, het orkest dat voornamelijk optreedt in het John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, heeft haar ontslag ingediend. Dat meldt The New York Times.

Het John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts kampt met teruglopende bezoekersaantallen, annuleringen van artiesten en het vertrek van zijn operagezelschap na de poging van president Donald Trump om zijn stempel op het centrum te drukken. Trump installeerde zichzelf als voorzitter en hernoemde het tot Trump-Kennedy Center.

In een interview laat de directeur, Jean Davidson, weten dat ze vertrekt uit frustratie over de onrust die het centrum heeft overspoeld. "Het is geen geheim dat dit een heel moeilijk jaar is geweest", aldus Davidson.

HEERENVEEN (ANP) - Jenning de Boo spreekt van het mooiste schaatsweekend uit zijn carrière, al werd het WK sprint op een donderdag en vrijdag gehouden. De 22-jarige Groninger klopte zijn rivaal Jordan Stolz en veroverde de wereldtitel sprint in Thialf. "Ik ben heel goed in één keer pieken, maar moest hier vier keer goed zijn. Dat het me gewoon lukt, had ik niet gedacht", aldus De Boo.

De sprinter moest op de Spelen van Milaan op de 500 en 1000 meter genoegen nemen met zilver achter Stolz. "Ik was na de Spelen supergebrand en hongerig. Ik wilde hem heel graag verslaan, zo zei ik net ook tegen hem. Het is jammer dat het niet gelukt is op de Spelen, maar ik kijk daar op geen enkele manier negatief op terug."

De Boo was trots op zijn prestatie van dit WK. "Ik wist dat hij te verslaan was en op de Spelen zat ik heel dichtbij. Ik heb mezelf verbaasd, maar hij verbaasde me ook een beetje. Dat ik op de laatste 1000 meter met een voorsprong van 1,8 seconde zou starten, dat had ik me begin dit seizoen niet kunnen voorstellen."

PARIJS (ANP) - Slechts negen olietankers, vracht- en containerschepen zijn sinds maandag door de Straat van Hormuz gevaren. Dat heeft het Franse persbureau AFP becijferd op basis van gegevens van MarineTraffic, een website waarmee de locaties van schepen te volgen zijn.

Door de ligging van de zeestraat naast Iran durven grote scheepvaartconcerns het al dagen niet aan om door de Straat van Hormuz te varen. Dat heeft grote economische implicaties. Bijna 20 procent van de ruwe olie en ongeveer 20 procent van het vloeibaar gemaakte aardgas (lng) in de wereld wordt normaal gesproken via de Straat van Hormuz vervoerd.

Maar nu er oorlog woedt in het gebied liggen in de Perzische Golf en ook buiten de zeestraat tal van schepen te wachten. De olie- en gasprijzen zijn daarom flink gestegen.

AFP telde overigens alleen schepen die ten minste één signaal aan beide zijden van de Straat van Hormuz uitzonden. Anders kon het persbureau niet zien of ze echt door de straat waren gevaren.

WASHINGTON (ANP) - Een experiment waarbij doelbewust een sonde crashte op een ruimterots heeft een groter effect gehad dan tot nu toe bekend was. Niet alleen de rots zelf werd uit zijn baan geslagen, maar de koers van een rots waar hij omheen draait blijkt nu ook te zijn veranderd.

De Verenigde Staten lieten in 2022 een vaartuig met een snelheid van 6 kilometer per seconde inslaan op Dimorphos. Die rots draait als een maantje rond de grotere steen Didymos, op miljoenen kilometers afstand van de aarde. Zij vormen geen enkel gevaar voor de mensheid, maar de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA wilde weten of zo'n moedwillige inslag redding kan brengen als een vernietigende rots ooit op onze planeet afraast.

En dat lijkt zo te zijn. De baan van beide objecten is veranderd. De koerswijziging is heel klein, maar "een kleine verandering in de beweging van een asteroïde kan na verloop van tijd het verschil betekenen tussen het raken of missen van onze planeet", concludeert de NASA vrijdag.

Mr Mikage (ミスター御影） posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Manager knows his quadruple-chasers have a target on their back in their FA Cup fifth round trip to Mansfield

Mikel Arteta knows the score. There is a reason why Arsenal’s trip to Mansfield Town on Saturday is the tie of the FA Cup fifth round, why it has been selected by TNT Sports for a 12.15pm kick-off. It has all the ingredients and everybody – Arsenal fans aside – is looking for an upset. Arteta was asked whether he was clear on that point. “Yes,” the Arsenal manager replied.

It has always been this way when a top club visits a minnow and, to repeat, the plotlines are certainly there for this one. Mansfield are 16th in League One, too close to the relegation line for the comfort of the manager, Nigel Clough. The Stags have gone nine league matches without a win.

Continue reading...

• Ireland 27-17 Wales

• Wales give Ireland a fright before hosts hang on

Never in the Five and Six Nations history between Ireland and Wales have the scales been so lopsided as they prepared to play in Dublin. When referee Karl Dickson wrapped it up on a beautiful spring night those scales had shifted. Not quite enough to give Wales a win they would have celebrated like a Championship, but enough to leave their hosts as shaken as they were stirred.

You couldn’t claim Ireland didn’t deserve to win given their dominance and efficiency in that last quarter of the field, but it was a battle that will force Andy Farrell to revisit the quality of Ireland’s attack.

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This time around, Liverpool made no mistake at Molineux. They remain on the road to Wembley, and thanks to two players signed in 2017, two time-honoured club legends with now uncertain futures. Andy Robertson and Mohamed Salah scored the goals that took the game away from Wolves to soothe the pain of Tuesday’s Premier League defeat. Curtis Jones’s strike completed a Friday night of far greater comfort, as Wolves crashed back to the reality of nine remaining Premier League matches before the drop comes. Their goal from Hwang Hee-chan, a substitute, came far too late.

While Arne Slot had expressed disappointment at the Premier League’s entertainment levels, a verdict hostage to fortune three days previously, his starting selection suggested an FA Cup exit could not be countenanced. Winning the trophy will not offer total job security but losing twice at the Premier League’s bottom club in the space of a few days might well have been a felling blow.

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• Loud applause greets volunteers carrying Ukraine flag

• Iran’s solitary athlete unable to safely leave his country

The Russian flag was flown at an international sporting event for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine on Friday night, an act met largely by silence, as the Winter Paralympic Games got under way with a high-end opening ceremony in Verona.

Dance, music and visual art combined in a beguiling hour-long performance, celebrating the Paralympic movement and stressing the importance of physical access for people with disabilities, all in a Roman amphitheatre made accessible just for the event. But the eyes of the crowd and a global audience were on the parade of athletes passing into the Arena di Verona.

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Exclusive: MoD-contracted workers assisting Ukrainians in a way ‘no other nation has been willing to do’, says minister

In an unmarked and undisclosed location in western Ukraine, British and Ukrainian engineers work side by side to fix damaged military hardware, crawling under the chassis of artillery systems and pulling apart the insides of British-donated howitzers.

Until now, the existence of this facility, along with three other similar sites inside Ukraine, has been kept quiet, buried in neutral language to avoid drawing too much attention to the sites, given the sensitivities of all military-linked work inside Ukraine.

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This is a very weird story about how squid stayed on the menu of Byzantine monks by falling between the cracks of dietary rules.

At Constantinople’s Monastery of Stoudios, the kitchen didn’t answer to appetite.

It answered to the “typikon”: a manual for ensuring that nothing unexpected happened at mealtimes. Meat: forbidden. Dairy: forbidden. Eggs: forbidden. Fish: feast-day only. Oil: regulated. But squid?

Squid had eight arms, no bones, and a gift for changing color. Nobody had bothered writing a regulation for that. This wasn’t a loophole born of legal creativity but an oversight rooted in taxonomic confusion. Medieval monks, confronted with a creature that was neither fish nor fowl, gave up and let it pass.

In a kitchen governed by prohibitions, the safest ingredient was the one that caused the least disturbance. Squid entered not with applause, but with a shrug.

Bonus stuffed squid recipe at the end.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Blog moderation policy.

In Heerenveen pakte Jenning de Boo voor het eerst goud op het WK sprint. Enkele weken geleden haalde hij De Boo nog dubbel zilver op Olympische Spelen. Na afloop zei hij over zijn rivaal: ‘Ik denk dat ik hem kan verslaan’.

Universal strike zone, Dillon Marsh

Can’t stop, won’t stop. On the heels of the refreshed Rolodex from earlier in the week, I’ve pushed another “Just Enough Social” feature to the site: members bios & profile pics. Here’s what that looks like:

Members can find a link to their profile by 1) clicking on your name in the menu in the upper righthand corner of the site (or under the hamburger menu on mobile); 2) clicking on the “edit profile” link by your name at the bottom of any post with active comments; or 3) clicking on your name or profile pic in any comment thread. You can change your username, provide a short bio (300 character limit, up to 2 URLs), and upload a profile pic (jpg, png, webp). Check the community guidelines for more advice/info.

The idea with this feature is to provide a lightweight way for KDO members to get to know who they’re conversing with in the comments without having to share that information with the entire internet (in the form of a full-blown social media profile). As a member, you’re in control of what you share in your bio and selecting a profile pic. So here’s how it works right now (i.e. who can see what and where):

• Your member profile pic & display name are fully public…they’re shown next to comments you’ve made on the site (which are also fully public). Profile pics are optional. Display names can be changed from your full name used in your Memberful account — you don’t even need to use your real name (again, see the the community guidelines for more info on this).
• Your bio can only be viewed by other members with active memberships. As a member, you can view another member’s bio by hovering over their name or profile pic in a comment thread or in the comment lists on your profile page. Bios are not public on the internet.
• Your profile page can only be viewed by you. Other members cannot see the posts or comments you’ve faved or the list of comments you’ve made. They also cannot see your email address, your real name (only your display name), membership level, the date you joined, whether you’ll renew, or your member renewal date.
• Inactive members can modify their bios & profile pics, see their own profile pages (with faves & comments), but can’t see other members’ bios.

This level of detail about something that’s existed on the internet since the dawn of time (message board profiles, essentially) might seem tedious, but I’m being clear and straightforward about how this works because I want people to feel comfortable connecting with each other here as much or little as each person wants. Many of you will probably share things like your personal website, job, hobbies, or social media accounts in your bios. Put your Signal handle or email address in there if you want. Gregarious types: put your phone number in your profile if you feel comfortable with that (not recommending that tbh). Or you can be super private or deliberately vague — on KDO, no one knows you’re a dog. Ditto for the profile pic: anything from your headshot to a pet photo of your pet to a Mark Rothko abstract goes — totally up to you.

The comments, the Rolodex, and now member profiles all operate under the same principle: Just Enough Social. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are too overwhelming and stand-alone blogs (like KDO circa 2 years ago) don’t offer much in the way of community. I’m vectoring toward the lightweight Baby Bear option of getting readers talking with each other in the easiest possible way & exploring the larger web community that KDO is a part of. There’s more work to do, but I’m happy with the direction it’s going.

One last thing before I go. I hope this goes without saying with this fine crew but I will say it anyway: if you are going to reach out to someone using the info in their KDO profile/bio, do not be a dick. Someone putting their website address or email in their bio is not an invitation for inappropriate behavior or taking a disagreement outside the bounds of the community guidelines. Enough said about that, I hope.

Ok, I’ll let you go freshen up your profile if you’d like. Lemme know if you have any feedback, questions, concerns, or even attaboys.

Tags: kottke.org