Iranian strikes have reportedly knocked out key AWS availability zones in Bahrain and Dubai, leaving parts of both regions effectively offline for an extended period and forcing Amazon to urge teams and customers to shift workloads elsewhere. "These two regions continue to be impaired, and services should not expect to be operating with normal levels of redundancy and resiliency," an internal Amazon communication memo reads. "We are actively working to free and reserve as much capacity as possible in the region for customers, and services should be scaled to the minimal footprint required to support customer migration." Big Technology reports: With the war now nearing its sixth week, Iran has made Amazon infrastructure in the Gulf an economic target and is now eyeing its peers. Amazon's Bahrain facilities have been hit multiple times, including a Wednesday strike that caused a fire. And its facilities in the UAE also sustained multiple hits. The IRGC is threatening multiple other U.S. tech giants, including Microsoft, Google, and Apple.

Amazons infrastructure in Bahrain and Dubai each have three 'availability zones' or clusters of compute. Both Bahrain and Dubai have a zones that are "hard down" and and "impaired but functioning," per the internal communication. "We do not have a timeline for when DXB and BAH will return to normal operations," the internal post said.

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Microsoft plans to invest $10 billion in Japan from 2026 to 2029 to expand AI infrastructure, boost local cloud capacity, train 1 million engineers and developers, and deepen cybersecurity cooperation with the Japanese government. Reuters reports: The investment includes the training of 1 million engineers and developers by 2030, Microsoft said, which was unveiled during a visit to Tokyo by Vice Chair and President Brad Smith. In a statement, the company said the plan aligns with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's goal to boost growth through advanced, strategic technologies while safeguarding national security.

Microsoft will work with domestic firms including SoftBank and Sakura Internet to expand Japan-based AI computing capacity, allowing Ecompanies and government agencies to keep sensitive data within the country while accessing Microsoft Azure services, it said. It will also deepen cooperation with Japanese authorities on sharing intelligence related to cyber threats and crime prevention.

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A Rome court ruled that several Netflix price hikes in Italy were unlawful because the company's contracts didn't adequately explain or justify future pricing changes. As a result, Netflix has been ordered to issue refunds that could total roughly 500 euros for some long-term subscribers. Ars Technica reports: The lawsuit was brought by Italian consumer advocacy group Movimento Consumatori, which alleged that the price hikes violate the Consumer Code, Italian legislation that aims to protect consumer rights. The Consumer Code says it's unlawful for a "professional to unilaterally modify the clauses of the contract, or the characteristics of the product or service to be provided, without a justified reason indicated in the contract itself," according to a Google-provided translation.

The court's April 1 ruling determined that Netflix's contracts were required to explain in advance why prices or other terms might change in the future. Because the price hikes were found to be imposed without providing customers with valid justifications, the court ruled that the new prices are invalid and ordered Netflix to refund affected subscribers. This comes despite Netflix reportedly providing a 30-day advance notice of the higher fees and allowing customers to cancel their subscriptions to avoid price hikes.

The court gave Netflix 90 days to inform millions of current and former customers via email, mail, its website, and Italian newspapers of their right to refunds or else face a penalty of 700 euros per day, Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore reported today. Per Italian law, price increases that Netflix has issued or will issue beyond April 2025 are legal. At that time, Netflix adjusted its terms to state that contract terms could one day change due to technological, security, or regulatory needs, to clarify clauses, or to provide changes to the service, Il Sole 24 Ore reported.

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Archive of Our Own (AO3) is officially dropping its "beta" label after 17 years. The Organization for Transformative Works, the nonprofit behind the fanfiction site, said the site will keep evolving with new improvements even though it's no longer technically in beta.

"As the AO3 software has been stable for a long time, the change is mostly cosmetic and does not indicate that everything is finalized or perfectly working," the organizations says. "Exiting beta doesn't mean we'll stop continuing to improve AO3 -- our volunteer coders and community contributors will still be working to add to and improve AO3 every day."

Some of the features it's introduced over the years include a tag system, offline fanworks downloads, privacy settings that let creators restrict access to their work, and new modes for multi-chapter works. As it stands, the site says it has more than 10 million registered users and 17 million fanworks.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Today at a hearing of the Colorado Senate Business, Labor, and Technology committee, lawmakers voted unanimously to move Colorado state bill SB26-090 -- titled Exempt Critical Infrastructure from Right to Repair -- out of committee and into the state senate and house for a vote. The bill modifies Colorado's Consumer Right to Repair Digital Electronic Equipment act, which was passed in 2024 and went into effect in January 2026. While the protections secured by that act are wide, the new SB26-090 bill aims to "exempt information technology equipment that is intended for use in critical infrastructure from Colorado's consumer right to repair laws."

The bill is supported by tech manufacturers like Cisco and IBM, according to lobbying disclosures. These are companies that have vested interests in manufacturing things like routers, server equipment, and computers and stand to profit if they can control who fixes their products and the tools, components, and software used to make those upgrades and repairs. They also cite cybersecurity concerns, saying that giving people access to the tools and systems they would need to repair a device could also enable bad actors to use those methods for nefarious means. (This is a common argument manufacturers make when opposing right-to-repair laws.)

[...] During the hearing, more than a dozen repair advocates spoke from organizations like Pirg, the Repair Association, and iFixit opposing the bill. YouTuber and repair advocate Louis Rossmann was there. The main problem, repair advocates say, is that the bill deliberately uses vague language to make the case for controlling who can fix their products. [...] The Colorado Labor and Technology committee advanced the bill, but it still needs to go through votes on the Colorado Senate and House floors before going into effect. Those votes may take place as early as next week. Regardless of how the bill goes in the state, it's likely that manufacturers will continue their push to alter or undo repair legislation in other states across the country. "The 'information technology' and 'critical infrastructure' thing is as cynical as you can possibly be about it," says Nathan Proctor, the leader of Pirg's US right-to-repair campaign. "It sounds scary to lawmakers, but it just means the internet."

The current wording of the bill "leaves it up to the manufacturers to determine which items they will need to provide repair tools and parts to owners and independent repairers and which ones they don't," says Danny Katz, executive director CoPIRG, the Colorado branch of the consumer advocate group Pirg. "This is a bad policy and would be a big step back for Coloradans' repair rights."

iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens said in the hearing: "There's a general principle in cybersecurity that obscurity is not security," iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens said in the hearing. "The money that's behind the scenes, that's what's driving the bill."

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Met mijn vrouw en mijn ouders bezoek ik de jaarlijkse Matthäus Passion uitvoering in Naarden. Aan het eind van de pauze meldt mijn vader zacht: „Ik kwam net oog in oog met…

Marijn de Vries

Het is de derde keer in minder dan een maand tijd dat er bij een Joodse instantie in Nederland explosies zijn. Eerder waren er incidenten bij een synagoge in Rotterdam en een Joodse school in Amsterdam.

VLISSINGEN (ANP) - In Vlissingen is een politieactie om hulp te bieden bij een persoon met "onbegrepen gedrag" vrijdagavond geëindigd met een aanhouding waarbij een schot is gelost, meldt de politie Zeeland. Tijdens de actie in de Kasteelstraat raakte een diensthond gewond.

Volgens de politie escaleerde de situatie rond de verwarde persoon, waarna het arrestatieteam werd ingezet. De verdachte is voor verzorging overgebracht naar een ziekenhuis. De politie doet onderzoek.

NIJKERK (ANP) - Bij het Israëlcentrum in het Gelderse Nijkerk heeft vrijdagavond laat een explosie plaatsgevonden. Het centrum van de organisatie Christenen voor Israël beschrijft het pand op zijn website als 'een ontmoetingsplek voor christenen met hart voor Israël'.

Volgens de politie is er niemand gewond geraakt bij de explosie in de Henri Nouwenstraat. Ook de materiële schade valt volgens een woordvoerder mee. De politie doet onderzoek naar de ontploffing en vraagt mensen die er mogelijk meer over weten zich te melden. Er zijn nog geen verdachten aangehouden.

LONDEN (ANP) - In Groot-Brittannië zijn drie mannen aangeklaagd voor brandstichting na een incident in Londen bijna twee weken geleden. Vier ambulances van de Joodse vrijwilligersorganisatie Hatzola gingen toen in de buitenwijk Golders Green in vlammen op. De 17-, 19- en 20-jarigen werden eerder deze week gearresteerd in het oosten van de stad.

De Metropolitan Police van de Britse hoofdstad meldt vrijdagavond in een verklaring dat het drietal op dit moment niet verdacht wordt van terrorisme. Gezien de omstandigheden wordt het onderzoek wel geleid door de antiterreureenheid van de politie.

De politie zei aanvankelijk dat het incident werd onderzocht als "antisemitisch haatmisdrijf", maar het hoofd van de antiterrorismebrigade van de Londense politie benadrukte vervolgens dat het nog te vroeg is om te spreken van terrorisme.

De drie moeten zaterdag voor de rechter verschijnen.

TEHERAN (ANP) - De Iraanse atoomenergieorganisatie (AEOI) vindt dat het VN-orgaan IAEA, het Internationaal Atoomenergieagentschap, zich partijdig opstelt door geen kritiek te hebben op luchtaanvallen op nucleaire installaties in Iran. "Het zwijgen van het IAEA over luchtaanvallen op complexen die vreedzame doeleinden dienen, is niet slechts nalatigheid, maar wijst duidelijk op medeplichtigheid met de daders."

Het IAEA maakt zich volgens Iran schuldig aan "een historische nalatigheid" en dat ondermijnt de geloofwaardigheid van de internationale organisatie. Iran heeft IAEA-chef Rafael Grossi hierover boze brieven geschreven. Teheran ziet Grossi en diens organisatie als een marionet van Israël en westerse mogendheden, met name de VS, Duitsland, Groot-Brittannië en Frankrijk.

Het IAEA kwam vorig jaar in juni met een resolutie waarin stond dat Iran in gebreke blijft en kort erna begon Israël met aanvallen op Iran. Volgens Teheran werd de verklaring van het IAEA als excuus gebruikt.

Ex-CISA official tells The Reg: 'this would weaken the system for managing cyber risk'

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's budget will see yet another deep cut if Congress approves President Trump's proposal to slash CISA's spending by $707 million in fiscal year 2027.…