Nobody likes auto-playing video or sites that keep scrolling away infinitely when you're just trying to reach the bottom of the page. But you probably don't hate either "feature" as much as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who introduced a bill today to ban these and other "exploitative" practices.

Hawley's bill also seeks to ban social media gamification, including "badges and other awards linked to engagement with the platform," such as the emoji rewards Snapchat users earn for Snapstreaks.

The planting is part of a national “green legacy” initiative to grow 4bn trees in the country this summer by encouraging every citizen to plant at least 40 seedlings. Public offices have reportedly been shut down in order for civil servants to take part.

Ethiopia’s minister of innovation and technology, Dr Getahun Mekuria, tweeted estimates of the number of trees planted throughout the day. By early evening on Monday, he put the number at 353m.

The encryption debate was back in the news this week as Attorney General William Barr railed against “warrant-proof” encryption that he argued protects criminals and terrorists, continuing the same arguments that have been made for almost 30 years.

In Facebook’s vision, the actual end-to-end encryption client itself such as WhatsApp will include embedded content moderation and blacklist filtering algorithms.

The company even noted that when it detects violations it will need to quietly stream a copy of the formerly encrypted content back to its central servers to analyze further, even if the user objects, acting as true wiretapping service.

There's a debate over free speech taking place after Microsoft-owned GitHub "restricted" the account of a developer based in the Crimea region of Ukraine, who used the service to host his website and gaming software.

Kashkin says GitHub advised him this week that it had restricted his account, pointing to its page about US trade controls, which lists Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria as countries facing US sanctions.

As GitHub notes on its page about US trade controls, US sanctions apply to its online hosting service, GitHub.com, but its paid-for on-premise software -- aimed at enterprise users -- may be an option for users in those circumstances.

In AT&T executives heads, the 2015, $67 billion acquisition of DirecTV and the 2018 $86 billion acquisition of Time Warner were supposed to be the cornerstones of the company's efforts to dominate video and online video advertising. Instead, the megadeals made AT&T possibly one of the most heavily indebted companies in the world.

The company's latest earnings report indicates that AT&T not only lost another 778,000 "traditional" video subscribers last quarter (satellite TV, IPTV), but it lost another 168,000 subscribers at its DirecTV Now streaming service -- due to "higher prices and less promotional activity".

Fast Ring subscribers are the first to get new features and updates. Slow Ring subscribers get those features before they're public but not until after the Fast Ring folks have had a while to flush out the worst of the bugs.

If Microsoft continues in the vein that it has begun with 20H1 and 19H2, the Fast Ring will get longer periods of time to test the biggest and potentially more problematic major feature upgrades, and the Slow Ring will get the first crack at—and more time to test—the smaller incremental updates aimed at fixing long-term problems in performance and stability.

That's the conclusion we have come to after it was revealed that Google has been offering people a Fin (that's $5 to you) to use your features in the training for its forthcoming face unlock feature.

ZDNet reports that the company is sending out street teams to gather face data from public places, in exchange for a $5 gift card, valid at either Amazon or Starbucks.

“This blackout is the result of negligent mis-operation of the power grid,” said José Aguilar, a Venezuelan energy and risk consultant based in the US. “These will keep happening and it will get worse before it gets better.”

Other analysts express similar incredulity. “It’s hard to believe that it was an electromagnetic attack, when you’ve seen years of theft and corruption in the energy sector,” said Geoff Ramsey, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America. “This blackout shows government doesn’t have the tools to return to normalcy.”

Hackers have breached SyTech, a contractor for FSB, Russia's national intelligence service, from where they stole information about internal projects the company was working on behalf of the agency -- including one for deanonymizing Tor traffic.

Researchers identified 25 malicious servers, 18 of which were located in Russia, and running Tor version 0.2.2.37, the same one detailed in the leaked files.

Nothing has unleashed the imagination of the world more nor united humanity better than watching Commander Neil Armstrong take that first step onto the previously untouched lunar surface.

Today, on the golden anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, NASA looks back with heartfelt gratitude for the Apollo generation’s trailblazing courage as we — the Artemis generation — prepare to take humanity’s next giant leap to Mars.