Apple has acknowledged an inner-display defect affecting a small number of its new $1,999 iPhone Duo foldables after customers reported hearing a crunch while unfolding the device before cracks, lines and other display failures appeared along the crease. Apple is replacing affected phones and investigating the problem.

iFixit believes a failing hinge component may be pressing into and cracking the display rather than the panel itself being defective. Bloomberg reports: Reports of the problem first surfaced on Reddit and other social media sites. Bloomberg News has since independently verified the issue with more than half a dozen customers, who provided photos showing damage to their devices or evidence of their support conversations with Apple. Apple acknowledged the issue in a statement, saying it was "aware of an issue impacting the inner display on a small number of iPhone Duo units."

"If users experience issues with their iPhone Duo display, they should contact AppleCare for a replacement," the Cupertino, California-based company said. Most Duos aren't affected by the problem, and the units that are impacted exhibit the defect quickly, Apple said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: A Florida man who was the subject of a 2019 investigation by ProPublica was indicted last month on federal charges that he defrauded clients of his ransomware data recovery firm. According to the Justice Department, the man, Zohar Pinhasi, told customers he could recover their encrypted files without having to pay hackers, when, in reality, he paid the ransom and charged victims a hefty fee on top. The indictment mirrors the findings from ProPublica's 2019 article "The Trade Secret," which centered on Pinhasi and his scheme.

The outlet found that the ransomware victims were being harmed twice: once by the hackers, who locked their targets' files and demanded ransom, and a second time by MonsterCloud, Pinhasi's Florida-based data recovery firm, which misled its clients about not paying ransoms. "By falsely claiming to decrypt ransomware without paying off the ransomers, the defendant re-victimized his clients while extracting a hefty profit for himself," U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella said in an Oct. 7 press release. "Our Office will vigorously prosecute ransomware attackers who prey on Americans from across the world and those who cynically profit from their criminal activity." [...] Pinhasi, who went by the alias Zack Green, told ProPublica in 2019 that MonsterCloud never promised clients that their data will be recovered by any particular method. "How we do it, it's our problem," he told ProPublica. "You will get your data back. Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride." He called MonsterCloud's data recovery methods a "trade secret."

[...] Federal investigators found that, over the course of the scheme, Pinhasi allegedly charged clients more than $19 million and paid more than $8 million in ransom payments. In one example, Pinhasi made a ransom payment of about $8,200 but charged the client about $150,000. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison. [...] In 2019, Pinhasi touted MonsterCloud's ties to law enforcement as evidence of its integrity. Pistole, who also headed the Transportation Security Administration under President Barack Obama, was listed on MonsterCloud's website as the only member of its "Cyber Security Advisory Council."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ahead of the touchscreen MacBook Pro expected to debut tomorrow, Apple has refreshed its standard 14-inch MacBook Pro with the new M6 processor, promising up to 20% faster multithreaded performance, improved power efficiency, and more powerful on-device AI capabilities. The Verge reports: Announced this morning through a press release, the new 14-inch MacBook Pro features three Thunder 4 USB-C ports that all support charging and DisplayPort connectivity, a MagSafe 3 charging port, full-size HDMI, and an SDXC memory card slot accommodating photographers. Pricing for the new M6 version of the 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,999 with 16GB of memory, the same as last year's M5 model. Preorders start on October 28th and shipping is expected to begin on November 6th.

The new M6 processor is Apple's first 2nm chip with a bump to a 12-core CPU, up from 10 cores in the M5, and the company says it offers up to 1.2x faster multithreaded performance when compared to its predecessor. The M6 also features a Dual 16-core Neural Engine to handle heavy on-device AI tasks, plus an upgraded 12-core GPU with a Neural Accelerator in each core. In addition to performance improvements, Apple says its M6 processor is more power efficient.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here are all the timings – along with all the additional information you need – for the 19th Grand Prix weekend of the 2026 season from Mexico.

Joling kapte ermee en het was oorlog. Ze moesten elkaar niet, dat was al jaren zo en volgens een klaaginterview met Joling in De Telegraaf zat Joling bij de laatste Toppers in Concert zelfs tot zijn groot ongenoegen 29 minuten in eenzame opsluiting onder het podium, waarna de maat vol was. 1.400 DPG clickbait-items, een paar uit angst voor escalatie op de schop gegooide Mega Piratenfestijnen, een bijna door Jan Smit doodgereden Shownieuws-hengelbengel, wat vragen van RENZE, en een parlementaire enquête later en het is ineens allemaal EEN STORM IN EEN GLAS WATER. Volgens het wekelijkse vlog van Joling (?) is er juist geen ruzie en heeft hij met de Toppers juist prima contact maar komt er wél een nieuw album en zijn er nog een paar kaarten voor zijn afscheidsconcerten. Wie had dat gedacht!

Social

Sinds hij weg is loopt het moeizaam. Tactisch drama zonder hem. Eerlijk is eerlijk. Achter de schermen belangrijke pylon geweest.

Nieuws over gelijke kansen, maar dan wel gelijke kansen op het koppen van een raket of kamikazedrone. Steeds meer meisjes en vrouwen worden slachtoffer van oorlogsgeweld, zo lezen we bij UN Women (VN-organisatie voor gendergelijkheid en de empowerment (!) van meisjes en vrouwen). Het afgelopen jaar kwamen minstens 37 duizend burgers bij geweldsconflicten om het leven, waarvan één op de vier vrouw was. Dat betekent dus dat DRIEKWART van de oorlogsslachtoffers MAN is. Niet alle mannen, maar wel vaak een man. De uitspraak "In alle conflicten komen vrouwen en meisjes het meest in de knel" van UN Women Nederland-directrice Marije Cornelissen is dan ook wat hoog ingezet. Maar leveren de vrouwtjes dan wel een beetje aandeel bij pogingen het schieten te laten stoppen? NEE. Ook de deelnemers aan vredesonderhandelingen zijn in 95 procent van de gevallen mensen van piemel. Is het al tijd voor een fietstocht?

Scheepsbouwer Damen gaat ongeveer 225 van de 4000 arbeidsplaatsen in Nederland schrappen. Het bedrijf uit Gorinchem wil hiermee zijn organisatie "eenvoudiger en efficiënter" maken.

Juffen, meesters en kinderen van basisschool de Kruidenhoek in Rotterdam-Prins Alexander kijken met argusogen naar de boom boven hun schoolplein. Daar hangt namelijk een enorm Aziatisch hoornaarsnest. Drie dagen geleden is er al melding van gedaan, maar het nest hangt er nog steeds.

In its current form, the global transition away from fossil fuels will depend on the earth’s rare minerals. According to ClimateWorks, we’ll collectively need to mine 6.5 billion tons of cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel, and other materials before 2050 in order to keep up with energy demands. Most of these resources are found in regions already facing the greatest impacts of the climate crisis, from Chile’s Atacama Desert to Indonesia’s nickel reserves to the cobalt deposits of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

For the past six years, German photographer Tom Hegen has been traveling the globe to document the communities bearing the brunt of this transition. Through his signature aerial images, Hegen captures the landscapes and communities transformed by such extractions, which he presents in his new book, The Mineral Age.

“What particularly caught my attention was that many of these resources are concentrated in just a handful of countries, creating new geopolitical dependencies and vulnerabilities,” Hegen tells Colossal. “At the same time, their extraction often comes with significant environmental and social consequences that receive relatively little public attention.”

The Mineral Age redresses that omission through 247 photographs revealing the indelible effects of mining. We bear witness to the candy-colored evaporation ponds needed to harvest lithium in the Atacama Desert, along with an ochre-tinged nickel pit jutting up against a rainforest in Sulawesi, Indonesia. “Moving away from fossil fuels is far more complex than we might initially imagine. I firmly believe that decarbonising our economies and societies is essential to addressing climate change,” he adds. “The pressing question, however, is at what cost—and who ultimately bears that cost?”

Hegen echoes the concerns of communities around the world, including those of the Salinas Grandes in the Atacama Desert. We recently wrote about the collaborative project helmed by Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno, who’s been collaborating with Indigenous peoples in the region for decades as they protest lithium mining. Together, they’re working to preserve the ancestral homelands and the resources held underground. Revealing the impacts from the air, The Mineral Age is a converse to Saraceno’s project, which is embedded in the land itself.

“One of the most important lessons I’ve taken from this project is that no source of energy comes entirely without environmental or social consequences,” Hegen says. “Even technologies we consider clean or renewable depend on extensive industrial processes, vast amounts of raw materials, and the extraction of finite resources.”

Like Saraceno, Hegen also emphasizes that this conversation isn’t about whether we need to abandon fossil fuels—both agree we do—but rather about how we can do so without replicating the same harmful, extractive policies of our current system.

Published by Hatje Cantz, The Mineral Age is available for pre-order on Bookshop or through Kickstarter. Follow his latest projects on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Tom Hegen’s ‘The Mineral Age’ Documents the Indelible Effects of the Green Transition appeared first on Colossal.

Woon je buiten Nederland en krijg je AOW? Dan wil de Sociale Verzekeringsbank (SVB) af en toe zeker weten dat je nog leeft. Stuur je dat bewijs niet terug, dan stopt de betaling. Je krijgt pas weer geld als het formulier binnen is.

De zaak-Emile Ratelband laat zien hoe snel iemand in het buitenland onvindbaar kan worden. In de stukken bij het Kadaster staat de 77-jarige omschreven als iemand zonder "bekende woon- of verblijfplaats", schreven we in Tsjakka!-imperium stort in elkaar: deurwaarder legt beslag op panden Emile Ratelband. Volgens De Telegraaf verblijft hij nu in Vientiane, de hoofdstad van Laos. Maar wat betekent het voor een gewone AOW'er als de SVB niet weet hoe het met hem gaat?

Eén keer per jaar een brief, in je verjaardagsmaand

AOW'ers in het buitenland krijgen de brief met het levensbewijs volgens de SVB in de maand waarin zij of hun (oudere) partner jarig zijn. De brief komt per post of digitaal via de Berichtenbox van MijnOverheid, meldt NederlandWereldwijd. Heb je een partner, dan staat er voor hem of haar een eigen QR-code in de brief.

Niet iedereen krijgt zo'n brief. Met sommige landen wisselt de SVB automatisch gegevens uit. In de veelgestelde vragen van de SVB staan Aruba, Australië, België, Canada, Curaçao, Denemarken, Duitsland, Frankrijk, Italië, Polen, Spanje, Sint Maarten en het Verenigd Koninkrijk. Woon je daar, dan krijg je meestal geen formulier. Krijg je er toch een, stuur het dan altijd terug. Portugal en Thailand staan niet in dat rijtje.

Geen levensbewijs, geen AOW

Wat er gebeurt als het formulier niet terugkomt, beschreef de Nationale Ombudsman in 2024. Een gepensioneerde schilder die in Duitsland woonde (de ombudsman noemde hem Richard) merkte tijdens een vakantie in Thailand dat zijn AOW niet was gestort. Hij had geen levensbewijs ingeleverd. De SVB liet hem weten dat de AOW pas weer zou komen als het levensbewijs binnen was. Pas na een klacht bij de ombudsman spraken ze af dat hij het formulier na thuiskomst alsnog mocht opsturen.

Je AOW stopt dan niet omdat je recht verdwenen is, maar omdat de SVB niet kan vaststellen dat je nog leeft.

Zo stuur je het levensbewijs op

Sinds maart 2024 kan het ook met een app. Volgens NederlandWereldwijd heb je daarvoor nodig:

• de brief van de SVB met de QR-code;
• een smartphone of tablet met NFC-lezer en internet;
• een geldig paspoort, een ID-kaart of een Nederlands rijbewijs met NFC-chip.

Je scant de QR-code, downloadt de app Digidentity Wallet, scant je identiteitsbewijs en maakt een selfie. Lukt dat niet, dan vul je het papieren formulier in. Dat laat je ondertekenen en stempelen door een officiële instantie, en daarna stuur je het terug naar de SVB. In de eerste maand vroeg de SVB zo'n 20.000 mensen om een levensbewijs. Ongeveer 2.200 van hen stuurden het via de app.

Alleenstaand in een land zonder verdrag? Dan krijg je minder

Een alleenstaande krijgt AOW ter hoogte van 70 procent van het minimumloon, een gehuwde of samenwonende 50 procent. Per 1 juli 2026 is dat €1.662,16 bruto per maand voor een alleenstaande en €1.139,39 per persoon voor een stel. Het lagere bedrag, de gehuwdennorm, gaat altijd mee naar het buitenland, waar je ook woont. Het hogere bedrag alleen naar landen waarmee Nederland afspraken heeft over handhaving en controle, schreef de minister in 2024 in antwoord op Kamervragen.

Het gevolg: een alleenstaande AOW'er in Kaapverdië krijgt 70 procent, een alleenstaande in Ghana 50 procent. Voor Thailand is er sinds 2005 een exportverdrag, waardoor een alleenstaande daar de 70-procentnorm houdt, meldt Vertrekklaar.

In cijfers

• Ruim €520 bruto per maand scheelt de gehuwdennorm met de AOW voor alleenstaanden.
• Ongeveer 4.200 AOW'ers woonden eind 2023 in een land zonder verdrag.
• Bij 1.310 van hen, die anders recht hadden op AOW voor alleenstaanden, werd de uitkering beperkt.
• Ongeveer 2.200 mensen stuurden hun levensbewijs in de eerste maand via de app.

Check dit voordat je vertrekt

• Kijk op de site van de SVB of je nieuwe woonland een verdragsland is, zeker als je alleenstaand bent.
• Zorg dat je post aankomt of gebruik de Berichtenbox van MijnOverheid, zodat je de brief niet mist.
• Geef wijzigingen in je situatie binnen zes weken door aan de SVB. Dat is de termijn als je buiten Nederland woont.
• Houd een geldig identiteitsbewijs met NFC-chip bij de hand voor de app.
• Vergeet je pensioenfonds niet: ook dat vraagt vaak elk jaar zelf om een levensbewijs, meldt het Nederlands Migratie Instituut.
• Is je AOW al stopgezet? Neem dan zo snel mogelijk contact op met de SVB en stuur het levensbewijs alsnog op.

Hoe de zoektocht naar Ratelband zelf verliep, lees je in Het verhaal wordt steeds gekker: "Emile Ratelband verliet Thailand eind 2025 al richting Laos".

Bronnen: SVB, SVB (digitale levensbewijzen), NederlandWereldwijd, Nationale Ombudsman, Tweede Kamer (Kamervragen 2024Z02891), Vertrekklaar, Essenburgh, Thailandblog, Nederlands Migratie Instituut, SVB (wijzigingen doorgeven), Vandaag Inside via De Telegraaf, WEL

Een motie van afkeuring van de SGP over het abortusbeleid van minister Sophie Hermans (VVD) heeft dinsdag in de Tweede Kamer opvallend brede steun gekregen uit rechtse hoek. De motie werd zoals verwacht verworpen (106 stemmen tegen), maar kreeg wel steun van veertig Kamerleden.

US data annotation operation Scale AI faces five GDPR complaints in four EU countries over allegations that it unlawfully monitors European contractors. Privacy campaigner noyb alleges that Scale tracks contractors who perform data annotation work on its Outlier AI platform. Like workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform of yore, Outlier contractors label data, evaluate AI-generated responses, and perform other tasks to improve AI models. Scale counts companies including OpenAI, xAI, Anthropic, and Google, as well as the US government, among its customers. Scale AI faces allegations similar to those noyb has made against other US tech firms since the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect in 2018, namely violations of said regulation. With all that work being done digitally and remotely, Scale has extensive data collection practices to not only verify the identity of Outlier workers, but also to extensively track their activity. “Platform work seems to be fertile ground for a whole new type of workplace surveillance,” said Thomas Le Bonniec, sociology researcher at French privacy research group DIPLab, who co-authored a report earlier this month examining Outlier's data collection practices. “This would be seen as unacceptable in any other form of employment in the European Union.” Among the issues that raised the hackles of noyb's lawyers was identity verification conducted by Persona, a company that has faced scrutiny over an exposed test environment associated with its efforts to secure US government business. Researchers speculated that the system could be used to build a people tracker, but Persona rejected that interpretation and denied having active US government contracts. Separately, Persona's relationship with chat app Discord soured ahead of the platform's broader age verification rollout, with Discord saying the provider failed to meet its requirements for on-device facial age estimation. According to noyb, Persona collects biometric data to verify Outlier contractors are who they say they are, as well as gathering IP addresses, device info, geolocation data, addresses, and credit data of Outlier users. In addition to the biometric identification data, noyb accuses Scale of tracking Outlier workers by collecting system data and device activity (including activity outside of Outlier work), and transmitting that to third parties including LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, and other analytics services as often as every few seconds. Noyb warns that the information could be used to profile individuals and serve targeted advertising. “Such constant and extensive tracking while working really goes against all reasonable expectations,” noyb data protection lawyer Lisa Steinfeld Leiser said of the allegations. “Why should LinkedIn or Facebook know which tasks you're working on?” Noyb has filed complaints in France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Austria against Scale, arguing that it lacks a legal basis to install tracking software on contractors’ devices. The US company also stands accused of violating GDPR rules on data minimization, which requires that companies only collect data that’s strictly necessary for specific purposes. The complaints also assert Scale violated GDPR rights to data access after ignoring complainants’ requests to access the records of what data Scale had stored on them, as well as country-specific laws in the nations where the complaints were filed. Noyb is asking data protection authorities in those nations to conduct a full investigation and, if necessary, fine Scale for its alleged violations. ""The report’s claims are unfounded and inaccurate," Scale told us after this article was first published. "Outlier’s practices are disclosed to contributors and require their consent. We use standard tools to verify identities, prevent fraud, protect confidential project information, and ensure accurate payment." The complaint is likely to give further fuel to the digital sovereignty movement sweeping the EU, which has begun to realize in the past couple of years that it may not be in the best interest of the bloc to be entirely beholden to US tech companies, even if such a separation may be painfully difficult. ® Updated at 1730 UTC to include comment from Scale.

You wait decades for a Mac-like desktop for Linux, and then two of them come along at once. AI might be involved, but even so, it's still shiny. ZacOS 9 and Mavernix are two very new, independent, and separate projects, but there is a common thread linking them: they are both brand new efforts to bring vintage Macintosh-like desktop environments to Linux. One is explicitly built using LLMs, and we suspect it was probably involved with the other as well. "ZacOS" is just a couple of weeks old, and both to forestall what is becoming a very frequently asked question, and also to credit to its inventor Adam Lawson, the project's GitHub page acknowledges two of the more visible LLM coding assistances: both Claude and Copilot are there. In the Hacker News discussion, he acknowledged that he used LLM assistance to make the software, and even his online comments. It aims to recreate the “Platinum” appearance of MacOS 8 and 9 – as we described last month, one of the few things that Apple successfully salvaged from the Copland project to build a true multitasking successor to MacOS 7. ZacOS includes a window manager, a filer, a global menu bar, a Control Panel app, a Control Strip, desk accessories and other additional apps, and more. It can network with Macs, and integrate with the existing SheepShaver emulator to run classic Mac apps. We previously mentioned SheepShaver when looking at the remarkable MacOS9.app web-based emulator, and if you don’t remember what it looked like, that’s the easiest way to find out. The Sourceforge downloads contain a complete pre-installed Debian Linux image. On Github, there are much smaller Debian packages if you want to try installing it yourself. It's an all-new environment, based on Wayland. (Its own icons are based on Lawson's dog, Zac.) As far as we can see, ZacOS doesn't draw on any older MacOS-like code. That's slightly surprising, because this is not the first project of its kind that we have ever seen. Although ZacOS does look to be one of the more complete ones, there's quite a bit of prior art. "Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday," (as A. A. Milne put it, a century ago this month) – or at least, a few months before OpenAI launched ChatGPT – we mourned the lack of Linux desktop diversity. In that article, we linked to some projects that tried to bring a Mac-like UI to Linux. That included Ryu Kojiro’s classic-wm, which is a Mac System 6-styled window manager, and also Morgan Aldridge’s mlvwm, which aims at the later grayscale MacOS 7 and MacOS 8 look. Although it targets the modern Unix-based macOS, we also mentioned Classic Mac Finder, which aims to recreate the older Finder on the modern OS. A more modest but easier approach would start with one of the more versatile desktops out there. As we covered in our two-part workshop last month, that would be Xfce, which can already emulate the macOS desktop layout and with a few extra tweaks make a very usable alternative. We intentionally didn’t look at themes and skins, but they do exist, and one of the most thorough is what “Grassmunk” did with the Platinum9 theme for Xubuntu. Although Windows 95 itself is long obsolete, the Chicago95 theme makes Xfce look remarkably like the classic OS, and Chicago's developers still actively maintain it. Fancy something a little more recent? There is a lot of nostalgia for the Classic MacOS look and feel out there, as websites such as MacOS 9 Lives! shows. However, there’s also nostalgia for how Mac OS X used to look, as well. When we looked at how to Bring back your old Mac a year ago, we mentioned Mavericks Forever – a fan site for the last OS X version to have the “lickable” Aqua look. Mavericks is notable because it was the first release of OS X that was available completely for free, as The Register reported in 2013. It’s not easy to find today, but you can still download it. We mention this because you will need a copy if you want to try the second new vintage Apple OS remake. It’s called Mavernix, and for now, it’s only available for Arch Linux. Unlike ZacOS 9, Mavernix is built on top of existing software: its windows are drawn by the Wayfire compositor, and its panels by Quickshell. So, yes, this too is entirely Wayland-based. The main novelty in Mavernix is that it contains a tool to extract and use the images, icons, textures, wallpapers and so on from a real copy of Apple OS X, so that it can draw a Mac-like desktop using real Mac resources. To use it, you need to have a copy of OS X to hand – which is why we point out where you can get one. The license agreement prohibits running it on non-Apple hardware, but since this does not require running it at all, we don’t see any IP violations here. Mavernix is by “Pruefsumme”, who is also a YouTuber, and on their channel, they’ve uploaded a demo video of the desktop in use. We can’t deny that it does look pretty. How well it works, we can’t say, but the Gershwin desktop that we reported on last year is still in active development and may provide a deeper, richer Mac-like UI in time. Its development is also LLM-assisted, but the majority of the tools are human-written code, much of it from the GNUstep project – which started in 1991, making it older than Xfce, KDE, GNOME, and around the same age as the Linux kernel itself. ®

Individual seeks permanent injunction against Guardian and ITN to block claims, citing high risk of suicide

A “well-known individual” attempting to block two media outlets from publishing allegations about him has been accused of inappropriate and exploitative sexual activities “with a large number of girls and young women”, the high court has heard.

The individual, referred to in court as PPT, is seeking a permanent injunction against the Guardian and ITN to stop them publishing the allegations, which he denies. His legal team argued that publishing them would “highly likely lead him to commit suicide”.

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Extreme heat accelerated disappearance of Triglav glacier from mountain revered as a symbol of Slovenian identity

The final ice patch has vanished from Slovenia’s Triglav glacier, the latest Alpine casualty of Europe’s scorching summer.

The once mighty ice mass lost 93% of its surface area between 1983 and 2003, shrinking to cover less than a hectare of overheated rock, but went on to surprise researchers who feared its imminent demise, clinging on to the mountain for two more decades.

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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Short video teasing an new collab between Daft Punk and Lego, including a forthcoming Lego set based on this fan-submitted entry.