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Microsoft has announced plans for what it is calling the Windows Update orchestration platform, essentially a big push to make Windows Update the central hub for pretty much all software updates, not just the operating system itself. The idea, outlined in a blog post, is to stop the mess of every app having its own updater, its own schedule, and its own annoying notifications. This ambition is bold, especially since Windows Update already has its issues, like the infamous 0x80070643 error many saw with WinRE updates, last March, when an update caused USB printers to print gibberish, or even when an update mistakenly uninstalled Copilot for some. That last one was probably more of a feature for some. The company says this new system is "built on the Windows Update stack". It will allow app developers to plug their updates into this central manager using new APIs and PowerShell commands. App developers or those managing updates will need to register their software with the new orchestrator. As part of that, they will point the system to an executable that can scan for their app's new updates. Then, they use APIs to tell the orchestrator about any available updates, including details like the update's name, version, what kind of package it is, if a restart is needed, and any deadlines for managed devices. If an app is not a neat MSIX or APPX package, say a regular Win32 app, developers can also provide executables to handle the download and installation, and even offer scripts to close and reopen apps that might block the update. Once all that information is handed over, the orchestrator is meant to intelligently schedule the downloads and installations, and flash those familiar Windows Update notifications when input is needed. The app then has to report back if the update succeeded or failed, so the system can try again if necessary. The potential upsides sound good on paper: smarter scheduling that considers whether you are actually using your PC, and a single place for update history in Settings. For developers, this means they might not have to build and maintain their own update systems. For now, this is in private preview, so it is still early days, and Microsoft says that if you want to join, you'll need to reach out to [email protected]. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Microsoft has introduced a new update orchestration platform built on the existing Windows Update infrastructure, which aims to unify the updating system for all apps, drivers, and system components on Windows systems. The company explained that developers and IT product teams can onboard their updates to this new orchestration platform via Windows Runtime (WinRT) APIs or PowerShell commands after joining the private preview by contacting [email protected]. After registering as an update provider, the orchestrator will regularly run an update scan tool supplied during the registration process to discover pending updates. The orchestrator then queues downloads and updates at optimal times to minimize CPU and bandwidth spikes while also considering user activity, power status, and network conditions. Under this new update model, it will also handle restart requirements, notification deadlines, and rescheduling of failed operations without requiring developers to build a custom scheduling or logging solution. "Updates across the Windows ecosystem can feel like a fragmented experience. To solve this, we're building a vision for a unified, intelligent update orchestration platform capable of supporting any update (apps, drivers, etc.) to be orchestrated alongside Windows updates," Microsoft said. "Built on the Windows Update stack, the orchestration platform aims to provide developers and product teams building apps and management tools with an API for onboarding their update(s) that supports the needs of their installers." Currently in private preview Microsoft's new update orchestration platform is now in private preview for developers or anyone who builds apps or management tools for updates, and it supports applications packaged as MSIX, APPX, or traditional Win32 installers. Onboarding offers several key benefits, including a consistent notification experience through native Windows Update dialogs and centralized app update history in the Settings app together with official Windows updates. "Built on the Windows Update stack, the orchestration platform aims to provide developers and product teams building apps and management tools with an API for onboarding their update(s) that supports the needs of their installers," Microsoft added. "The orchestrator will coordinate across all onboarded products that are updated on Windows 11, in addition to Windows Update, to provide IT admins and users with a consistent management plane and experience, respectively." This new initiative adds to Redmond's Winget Windows package manager and Microsoft Store, as well as third-party package managers like Chocolatey and Scoop, which can also be used to install, manage, and update applications on Windows systems. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Stardock released Fences® 6 today – a major update to its popular Windows desktop organization software with over 20 million downloads. Fences is the easiest way to organize your desktop workflow by neatly organizing apps, files, and icons on the desktop. Fences 6 introduces tabs, a feature that allows you to place multiple fence groups together in a tabbed experience for a modern layout. And with the ability to dynamically add, remove, and apply color to a tab, Fences 6 continues to raise the bar as the best desktop organizational tool for Windows. Fences 6 personalization options and selection tool Also new in Fences 6 is the ability to apply a color tint (here is a partial tint example) to all the icons on your desktop. This simple but innovative feature allows you to apply a color expression for all your desktop icons to create a stylistic and distraction-free layout or to help any individual Fence stand out. And combined with many of the quality-of-life updates like improved navigation for Folder Portals™, Fences 6 is another significant step forward for functionality and personalization. Fences is used by thousands of businesses, from healthcare to law offices and finance organizations. To help these businesses deploy organized dashboards of desktop icons, Fences 6 for Business adds advanced tooling to create templated deployments with multiple configurations ready out of the box. And with Stardock also offering customized deployment configurations with each enterprise rollout, Fences 6 is the most configurable, deployable, and scalable version of Fences ever. Fences 6 tabs and full icon tint with docked fence groups Top New Features in Fences 6: Tabs let you stack a fence on-top of each other for a modern workflow. Icon tint allows you to apply a color expression to all of your desktop icons to personalize your desktop and reduce distractions. A new color picker tool makes it easy to pick the perfect color a Fence group or icon tint color. Folder Portal navigation has been overhauled to provide a more natural workflow. Full Arm support means that Fences 6 is ready for the newest generation of devices powered by ARM CPUs. And many quality-of-life improvements like the ability to apply color to a tab for easy recognition, updates to quick hide, and a lot more. "Fences 6 is our biggest leap forward for the productivity tool," said Brad Sams, General Manager of Stardock Software. "Fences is widely recognized as the best way to organize your desktop and with the new features in Fences 6, it is now the best tool for managing not only your desktop but every desktop within your organization.” The Fences 6 is available today, starting at $9.99 and is also included in the award-winning Object Desktop package. Object Desktop includes programs such as Start11, Groupy, SoundPackager, DeskScapes and Multiplicity. Disclaimer: Neowin's relationship to Stardock Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Mozilla has recently released Firefox 139, bringing with it custom wallpapers, link previews, and more, which you can read about on Neowin. Alongside the release of Firefox 139, we also got the release of Firefox 140 Beta with some accompanying release notes. One of the big features in this release is the ability to add custom search engines. New features can be pretty subjective for users in terms of how much of an impact they have on the user’s experience. If you like using a smaller search engine, like Ecosia, then one major update you’ll like in Firefox 140 Beta is the ability to add custom search engines. To add a custom search engine in this release, right-click a search field of a supported website and select Add Search Engine. Alternatively, you can go to Settings > Search > Add (below the search shortcuts table) to manually enter a search URL. Another new item in this release is the ability to remove the Firefox Extensions button from your toolbar. When you hide the button, you can access the extensions panel again at any time from the Firefox menu by clicking the Extensions menu item. Some less notable changes, but present in the release notes nonetheless are improvements to vertical tabs allowing you to keep more pinned tabs in view by dragging the divider to resize your pinned tabs section. There is also now a “Select All” option for bookmarks in Firefox for Android. Finally, for users concerned about the resources being taken up by tabs, Firefox 140 Beta gives you the option to unload tabs by right-clicking on a tab and selecting “Unload Tab”. If any heavy tabs are slowing your computer down, you can use this feature to get your speed back. If you want to try out Firefox 140 Beta now, just head over to this page on the Firefox website. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Telegram's founder, Pavel Durov, announced a new partnership with Elon Musk, which aims to bring Grok AI to the messenger later this summer. In his post, Durov said that the one-year partnership will get "the best AI technology on the market" to over one billion Telegram users. A promo video attached to the post also revealed what features Grok will bring to Telegram. The service will be integrated into the search bar, allowing you to ask Grok about something without switching apps. Customers will also get a dedicated chat with Grok with a threaded experience to keep different topics and conversations separate. Smart Text Editing with Grok will let you generate and rewrite text, summarize long messages, entire chats, and documents, get insights about links, and more. Also, Grok AI will be able to moderate group chats, run business chats, and fact-check posts in channels. Of course, no modern AI goes without generative "creativity," so Grok in Telegram will be able to generate static and animated stickers and avatars. Durov revealed that his partnership with xAI will secure $300 million in cash and equity. The two companies will also equally split revenue from xAI subscriptions sold within Telegram. Pavel Durov and Telegram are known for pedaling online privacy, but details about the privacy aspect of the Telegram-xAI partnership are currently unknown. When a user asked whether Telegram plans to send data to xAI for training, Durov responded, "No, this has not been discussed." In another post, Durov announced that Telegram Premium now has over 15 million paid subscribers, and this number doubled in just one year. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Judge expected to take months to weigh Meta monopoly trial verdict. After weeks of arguments in the Federal Trade Commission's monopoly trial, Meta is done defending its decade-plus-old acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp—at least for now. The seven-week trial ended Tuesday, with the FTC urging Judge James Boasberg to rule that a breakup is necessary to end Meta's alleged monopoly in the "personal social networking services" market, where Meta currently faces sparse competition among other apps connecting friends and family. As alleged by the FTC, Meta's internal emails laid bare that Meta's motive in acquiring both Instagram and WhatsApp was to pay whatever it took to snuff out dominant rivals threatening to lure users away from Facebook—Mark Zuckerberg's jewel. Talking to Bloomberg, Meta has maintained that the FTC's case is weak, seeking to undo deals that the FTC approved long ago while ignoring the competition Meta faces from rivals in the broader social media market, like TikTok. But Meta's attempt to shut down the case mid-trial was rebuffed by Boasberg, who has signaled he will take months to weigh his decision. In a statement, Meta's spokesperson told Ars that Meta spent six weeks defending its deals while the FTC showed "that no deal is ever truly final." Meta appears "confident" that the case will end in a win, Sruthi Thatchenkery, an assistant professor of strategy at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management, told Bloomberg, noting that it's "very hard to unwind a merger." "The only thing the FTC showed was the dynamic, hyper-competitive nature of the past, present, and future of the technology industry," Meta's spokesperson said. Boasberg is not expected to hold closing arguments, The New York Times reported. Instead, Meta and the FTC will file follow-up briefings over the summer, after which Boasberg has said he will work "expeditiously" to arrive at a ruling on whether Meta's purchases violated antitrust law. His ruling could come before the end of the year, Bloomberg reported. It's unclear which way Boasberg is leaning or if he would even require a breakup in the event of an FTC win. Bloomberg noted that the judge "will have some latitude to come up with his own solution," perhaps finding "that only one of the deals was illegal" and requiring "only a sale of that service." The FTC has also recommended requiring Meta to make its platforms interoperable with other platforms, which experts told Ars would spur competition by giving users an easy way to port their entire social network to a rival app if Meta's apps become too degraded. Experts note that there's also a chance the FTC and Meta reach a settlement before the verdict comes, although the FTC supposedly previously rejected Meta's $1 billion settlement bid, The Wall Street Journal reported. The FTC has said a breakup spinning off both apps is necessary, with a senior official last week telling press that the Meta case seemingly hits at the very heart of antitrust law, the NYT reported. "This case presents a very important legal principle, which is that a firm that is a monopolist cannot acquire its most threatening competitors," the FTC official said. "Antitrust law requires competition on the merits, even in digital markets, and it’s competition on the merits that drives innovation and ultimately helps consumers." Although the FTC has not commented on the trial ending, a spokesperson previously alleged that Meta's entire defense came from "primarily its own self-interested executives and paid experts." Whichever side wins, the other side is expected to quickly appeal, and if the FTC wins, the trial will continue as Boasberg evaluates potential remedies. Meta—which the NYT described as putting its future in Boasberg's hands—will likely defend its deals to the end, as "Instagram is now Meta's biggest money maker in the US," accounting for more than 50 percent of its ad revenue in 2025, The Guardian reported. "Meta is a proud American success story, and we look forward to continuing to innovate and serve the people and businesses who love our services," Meta's spokesperson said. Experts aren’t so sure Meta has clinched it Boasberg has said that the key question he must answer is whether the FTC's market definition is too narrow. Arguing against the market definition, Meta has said that connecting friends and family isn't even Meta apps' "core use" anymore, as an evolving competitive social media landscape has forced Meta to turn its newsfeeds into discovery engines to rival TikTok. Justin Teresi, an antitrust analyst, told Bloomberg that because the FTC failed to show that users primarily come to Meta apps to connect with friends and family, it may have strengthened Meta's case. Rebecca Allensworth, a Vanderbilt law professor and antitrust expert, told Bloomberg that the "FTC’s narrowly defined market was always the weakest part of its case," but the government "has done a nice job of minimizing that weakness" by showing that apps that don't connect friends and family aren't adequate substitutes for Meta's apps. "This was evident when Meta saw spikes in usage on holidays," Allensworth suggested, which is perhaps "a sign people were turning to its products to connect with loved ones." Teresi thinks Meta has a 60 percent shot at winning the trial, although he criticized Meta's seeming defense that any company competing for online ad dollars competes with Meta. That argument may have broadened the market definition too much, he suggested. "If you’re saying that the relevant market here is competing for advertising dollars, then you could throw anything in there," Teresi said. "You could throw TV in there, you could throw print in there if you wanted to, and there’s really no end to that concept." Allensworth was less confident in Meta's chances, telling Bloomberg, "I really actually think this could go either way." Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

A few months ago, users were reporting that their AMD CPUs were failing to boot. This was happening primarily on ASRock AM5 motherboards, and now the company says it has identified the problem. YouTube channel Tech Yes City claims that ASRock's investigation discovered that the issue is related to AMD's Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO). This feature is an automatic overclocking feature for Ryzen CPUs, which uses an algorithm to dynamically adjust the power limits, voltages, clock speeds. Specifically, it appears to be an amperage problem that affects the Electric Design Current (EDC) and Thermal Design Current (TDC) on ASRock motherboards. ASRock representatives stated that the motherboards were configured too aggressively to handle the PBO for Ryzen 9000 CPUs. It would result in EDC and TDC being set at a higher range for early CPU samples, which ended up in the processors dying prematurely, especially on mid-range and high-end motherboards. ASRock says that the PBO issues have been fixed in the latest BIOS update that it has released. The company has also clarified that its budget motherboards should not be affected by the issue. But ASRock users were not impressed by this announcement, and have called out the company for trying to shift the blame. Questions are also being raised about the fix, and whether it actually solves the problem. AMD has not released a statement about this. Meanwhile, More than Moore's Dr. Ian Cutress says that an engineer told him that certain versions of Ryzen Master will put the CPU in PBO mode automatically when the app is installed. But, it won't tell you that the mode is enabled. This cannot be blocked via the BIOS, and the only workaround is to open the app, enable the feature and disable it manually. Tom's Hardware reports that ASRock had initially dismissed the motherboard failure reports as misinformation, and even denied that the problems were due to memory incompatibilities, and that it should release a public advisory to alert users about the BIOS update and protect potential failures. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

The U.S. Solicitor General has urged the Supreme Court to accept Cox Communications' petition in a landmark piracy liability lawsuit. The USSG argues that ISPs are not necessarily liable for pirating subscribers and warns that the current precedent may lead to disconnections for many innocent subscribers. At the same time, the USSG urged the court to deny a petition from the opposing music companies, which seeks to expand the current liability verdict. In 2019, Internet provider Cox Communications lost its legal battle against a group of dozens of record labels, including Sony and Universal. Following a two-week trial, a Virginia jury held Cox liable for its pirating subscribers. The ISP failed to disconnect repeat infringers and was ordered to pay $1 billion in damages. This case is one of many. Other ISPs have been accused of being similarly lax in their stance against alleged piracy. Rightsholders believe that ISPs are motivated by profit, while ISPs typically argue that they shouldn’t be held liable for the alleged wrongdoing of subscribers. Landmark Piracy Battle Cox challenged the verdict through several routes and last August filed a petition at the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to hear the case. The Internet provider stressed that the current verdict ‘jeopardizes’ internet access for all Americans. Around the same time, the music companies filed their own petition, hoping to strengthen the verdict at the Supreme Court. Specifically, the record labels argued that the ISP should also be held liable for vicarious copyright infringement. Both petitions essentially boil down to questions on liability. Are ISPs liable for copyright infringement if they don’t disconnect subscribers accused of copyright infringement? And can ISPs be held liable for infringing subscribers, even if they don’t directly profit from their activities? Last November, the Supreme Court suggested that it is indeed interested in the questions. Before deciding, however, the U.S. Solicitor General was invited to share the Government’s view on the matter. The Solicitor General is a high-ranking official in the U.S. Department of Justice who serves as the federal government’s primary lawyer before the Supreme Court. Needless to say, their input weighs strongly for the Supreme Court’s decision whether to accept these petitions or not. U.S. Backs Cox’s Petition Yesterday, the Solicitor General submitted its amicus brief in this matter, clearly siding with the Internet provider. The Solicitor General argues that the Fourth Circuit’s decision, which held Cox liable for contributory infringement, “departs from this Court’s contributory-infringement precedents” and is in “substantial tension” with the Supreme Court’s recent analysis of secondary liability in Twitter v. Taamneh. “The Taamneh Court’s reasoning reinforces the conclusion that imposing liability on Cox for copyright infringement committed by its users, based on Cox’s failure to terminate service to IP addresses associated with infringement, is incompatible with traditional common-law limitations on secondary liability,” the brief reads. The U.S. also cites the Sony and Grokster cases, which make clear that contributory liability for copyright infringement requires more than knowing about pirating activity. Instead, it requires “culpable intent” to cause copyright infringement. “If Cox had explicitly or implicitly marketed its service as being particularly useful for infringers, or if it had encouraged subscribers to use Cox’s internet service to infringe, liability might be appropriate,” the Solicitor General writes. According to the view of the U.S. Government, an ISP is not automatically liable for copyright infringement if it fails to terminate subscribers after receiving copyright infringement notices. This is a strong statement that targets the central issue in many similar lawsuits in U.S. courts. Not Liable Innocent Subscribers at Risk The amicus brief goes on to state that the current verdict of the Court of Appeals can have broad implications for ISPs and their subscribers. Cox previously argued that, based on this precedent, ISPs find themselves ‘forced’ to terminate subscribers who may have done little wrong. The U.S. Solicitor General acknowledges this potential threat. If copyright infringement notices from third parties can trigger liability, Internet providers may take more drastic action to avoid legal trouble. “Given the breadth of that liability, the decision below might encourage providers to avoid substantial monetary liability by terminating subscribers after receiving a single notice of alleged infringement,” the Solicitor General writes. “Losing internet access is a serious consequence, as the internet has become an essential feature of modern life. And because a single internet connection might be used by an entire family—or, in the case of coffee shops, hospitals, universities, and the like, by hundreds of downstream users— the decision below could cause numerous non-infringing users to lose their internet access.” No Willful Infringement Aside from the liability question, the brief also criticizes the Fourth Circuit’s finding of “willfulness” against Cox, which led to the enhanced statutory damages. The Solicitor General argues that the jury instruction was “erroneous” because it allowed a finding of willfulness based on the notion that Cox knew its subscribers’ actions were unlawful, even though Cox believed its own response was lawful. The Solicitor General notes that “willfulness” generally requires knowledge or reckless disregard that the defendant’s own conduct was unlawful. Simply knowing about third-party infringements should not be sufficient. This broad interpretation would essentially undermine the Copyright Act’s two-tiered damages scheme, which reserves higher damages for willful copyright infringement than for non-willful infringement. Music Companies’ Writ Should be Denied While the U.S. supports Cox’s petition, it has asked the Supreme Court to deny a related writ from the opposing music labels, who argue that Cox should also be held liable for vicarious copyright infringement. Defendants can be held vicariously liable if they had the right and ability to control the infringing activities and a direct financial interest in those activities. According to the Solicitor General, the lower court correctly concluded that is not the case here. “There was no evidence that Cox would be forced to collect a lower fee if the users of its internet service ceased to infringe; that subscribers were drawn to Cox’s internet service because of the ability to engage in copyright infringement using that service; or that Cox had used the opportunity for customers to infringe to lend credibility to the service it offered,” the brief notes. All in all, it’s clear that the U.S. Solicitor General, and thus the U.S. Department of Justice, supports Cox’s attempt to overturn the piracy liability verdict. While the Supreme Court has yet to formally decide whether it will take on the case, the brief suggests the chance is now significantly higher. Conclusion While Cox will be pleased to see the supportive brief, there are no guarantees that the Supreme Court will agree with the U.S. Solicitor General, should it ultimately decide to take on the case. — A copy of the U.S. Solicitor General’s Amicus Curiae brief for the United States is available here (pdf). Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

After months of unprecedented site-blocking controversy, LaLiga informs TorrentFreak that piracy decreased by 40% at weekends and as much as 60% for a hotly-anticipated matchup. Yet interestingly, LaLiga's view of the nationwide overblocking crisis sits in stark contrast to reports published elsewhere. Primarily, there's no hard evidence that a crisis even exists; total formal complaints received by LaLiga in its dedicated inbox: zero. When rightsholders, broadcasters, and ISPs have a shared interest in the success of a multi-billion euro broadcasting rights deal, there’s no dispute over the need for a blocking order. With formalities out of the way, who argues against asking the court for anything less than the full measures the judge is prepared to authorize? When Telefonica spent billions acquiring broadcasting rights from LaLiga, the companies received full backing from ISPs/TV providers to protect their collective revenues. According to LaLiga’s reading of the piracy blocking order subsequently obtained from the court, it authorizes the applicants to take whatever blocking actions are necessary to prevent access in Spain to around 130 pirate sites. That many of the sites used Cloudflare IP addresses, each shared among hundreds or thousands of sites with no connection to piracy, came as no surprise to the applicants. Unlike blocking orders obtained outside Spain where similar issues are dealt with differently, LaLiga began instructing ISPs to block Cloudflare IP addresses used by pirate sites listed in the order. Outlawed By Some Courts, Unprecedented Blocking Ensued Some estimates claim that over two million innocent sites were affected by blocking but whatever the true number, the decision to block Cloudflare at scale was unprecedented. LaLiga’s claim, that the injunction authorizes blocking of Cloudflare IP addresses, seems to be confirmed by the text of the order. It’s only when attempting to reconcile LaLiga’s intellectual property rights with the general and indeed fundamental rights of third parties does the situation become unfathomable. So we asked LaLiga about something else instead. Since everyone seems to be on the same page concerning the blocking of shared IP addresses, we put it to LaLiga that when compared to site-blocking measures that aim to avoid collateral damage (most blocking worldwide), knowingly ‘overblocking’ must introduce new risks. Did LaLiga conduct a risk assessment before it started to block Cloudflare in February? “At LALIGA we are fully aware that any blocking measure —even when legally justified— requires a cautious and proportional approach,” the league responded. “That is precisely why we do not act indiscriminately, and why all our blocking actions are backed by judicial resolutions that assess the proportionality and potential impact before being authorized. It’s relevant to highlight that these blockings are requested and implemented once there are clear proofs of piracy signals and content.” The Importance of Definitions LaLiga’s position as stated here appears to stand on its definition of proportional, indiscriminate, and its grounds for blocking. It seems safe to assume that the IP addresses it reports are indeed being used by pirate sites offering its content illegally. Grounds for blocking don’t get any better than that. If we place a tight definition on the word indiscriminate, it’s reasonable to assume that the IP addresses identified by LaLiga are obtained scientifically rather than randomly pulled out of hat. So with indiscriminate set the side for a moment, we have ourselves a question. Herein lies an even bigger problem, directly linked to the biggest question of all. Does TV Subscription Data Reveal Any Positive Effects of Blocking? Establishing whether blocking has a positive effect on sales often prompts charts showing fewer people visiting blocked sites. Data cited by CEO Javier Tebas indicates that blocking suppressed piracy on a grand scale. “Weekend piracy has decreased by 40%. That doesn’t mean everyone has already switched to paid channels, but… how do we know this? Barcelona-Inter semifinal in Spain: 1,200,000 viewers and a certain amount of data usage. El Clásico, four days later, had a much larger audience—two million—and resulted in 60% less piracy in consumption. In other words, it made a difference: more viewers were seen, much less illegal consumption as a result of the blocks we’re implementing,” he explains. If this is an accurate picture, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that such large percentages are likely to have some impact on Spanish football’s bottom line. The immediate problem concerns the type of blocking used to achieve these results and whether similar authority would be granted again. That leads to another complication. No Evidence to Show Overblocking Back in March when Cloudflare and RootedCON separately attended court hoping to end LaLiga’s ability to block, neither was successful, in part due to evidential failures. In short, information presented to the court was deemed insufficient since it failed to show “specific, quantifiable damage to third parties.” It’s a theme that still interests LaLiga. “LALIGA has implemented a dedicated mailbox for complaints related to the blocking measures. This mechanism allows any third party who believes they’ve been unintentionally affected by a blocking action to contact us directly, provide technical evidence, and request a review,” Laliga says. “To date, we have not received any formal complaints through this channel nor received any formal complaint through other legal channels, which reinforces our position that the system is working as intended: focused, precise, and without collateral impact on legitimate services.” At Soccerex Amsterdam last weekend, Javier Tebas said that while LaLiga’s critics describe the court order as “useless” and “make a lot of noise,” it’s an example of what can be done. [The order is] dynamic and should be implemented country by country. It’s very important that rights holders, UEFA, and national leagues become more united and more convinced that this is the way forward.” The controversial order is available here (pdf, Spanish) Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Over 9,000 ASUS routers are compromised by a novel botnet dubbed "AyySSHush" that was also observed targeting SOHO routers from Cisco, D-Link, and Linksys. The campaign was discovered by GreyNoise security researchers in mid-March 2025, who reports that it carries the hallmarks of a nation-state threat actor, though no concrete attributions were made. The threat monitoring firm reports that the attacks combine brute-forcing login credentials, bypassing authentication, and exploiting older vulnerabilities to compromise ASUS routers, including the RT-AC3100, RT-AC3200, and RT-AX55 models. Observed brute-forcing attempts Source: GreyNoise Specifically, the attackers exploit an old command injection flaw tracked as CVE-2023-39780 to add their own SSH public key and enable the SSH daemon to listen on the non-standard TCP port 53282. This modifications allow the threat actors to retain backdoor access to the device even between reboots and firmware updates. "Because this key is added using the official ASUS features, this config change is persisted across firmware upgrades," explains another related report by GreyNoise. "If you've been exploited previously, upgrading your firmware will NOT remove the SSH backdoor." The attack is particularly stealthy, involving no malware, while the attackers also turn off logging and Trend Micro's AiProtection to evade detection. Characteristically, GreyNoise reports logging just 30 malicious requests associated with this campaign over the past three months, though 9,000 ASUS routers have been infected. Malicious requests targeting ASUS routers Source: GreyNoise Still, three of those requests were enough to trigger GreyNoise's AI-powered analysis tool that flagged them for human inspection. The campaign likely overlaps with the activity Sekoia tracks as "Vicious Trap," disclosed last week, though the French cybersecurity firm reported that threat actors leveraged CVE-2021-32030 to breach ASUS routers. In the campaign seen by Sekoia, the threat actors were observed targeting SOHO routers, SSL VPNs, DVRs, and BMC controllers from D-Link, Linksys, QNAP, and Araknis Networks. The exact operational goal of AyySSHush remains unclear, as there are no signs of distributed denial of service (DDoS) or using the devices to proxy malicious traffic through the ASUS routers. However, in the router breaches observed by Sekoia, a malicious script was downloaded and executed to redirect network traffic from the compromised system to third-party devices controlled by the attacker. Currently, it appears the campaign quietly builds a network of backdoored routers to create the groundwork for a future botnet. Protect your ASUS routers ASUS has released security updates that address CVE-2023-39780 for the impacted routers, though the exact time of availability varies per model. Users are recommended to upgrade their firmware as soon as possible and look for suspicious files and the addition of the attacker's SSH key (IoCs here) on the 'authorized_keys' file. Also, GreyNoise lists four IP addresses associated with this activity, which should be added to a block list. 101.99.91[.]151 101.99.94[.]173 79.141.163[.]179 111.90.146[.]237 If a compromise is suspected, a factory reset is recommended to clean the router beyond doubt and then reconfigure it from scratch using a strong password. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

20 years of observations have given us more knowledge about the icy giant. Uranus, the seventh planet in the Solar System, located between Saturn and Neptune, has long been a mystery. But by analyzing observations made by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope over a 20-year period, a research team from the University of Arizona and other institutions has provided new insights into the composition and dynamics of the planet’s atmosphere. Information about Uranus is limited. What we know is that the planet is composed mainly of water and ammonia ice, its diameter is about 51,000 kilometers, about four times that of the Earth, and its mass is about 15 times greater than Earth’s. Uranus also has 13 rings and 28 satellites. In January 1986, NASA’s Voyager 2 space probe successfully completed what has been, to date, the only exploration of the planet, conducting a flyby as part of its mission to study the outer planets of the Solar System. This image of Uranus was taken by NASA’s Voyager 2 space probe in January 1986. Credit: NASA/JPL But thanks to this new research, we now know a little more about this icy giant. According to the research, which assessed Hubble images taken between 2002 and 2022, the main components of Uranus’ atmosphere are hydrogen and helium, with a small amount of methane and very small amounts of water and ammonia. Uranus appears pale blue-green because methane absorbs the red component of sunlight. This image of Uranus, taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, shows nine of the planet’s 28 satellites and its rings. Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STSCI The research has also shed light on the planet’s seasons. Unlike all of the other planets in the Solar System, Uranus’ axis of rotation is almost parallel to its orbital plane. For this reason, Uranus is said to be orbiting in an “overturned” position, as shown in the picture below. It is hypothesized that this may be due to a collision with an Earth-sized object in the past. Uranus orbiting the Sun. It can be seen that Uranus’ axis of rotation is almost parallel to its orbital plane. Credit: NASA/ESA/J. Feild (STSCI) The planet’s orbital period is about 84 years, which means that, for a specific point on the surface, the period when the sun shines (some of spring, summer, and some of fall) lasts about 42 years, and the period when the sun does not shine (some of fall, winter, and some of spring) lasts for about 42 years as well. In this study, the research team spent 20 years observing the seasons. Over that period, the research team watched as the south polar region darkened going into winter and the north polar region brightened as summer approached. By observing the planet at four different points in time, years apart, they could see how the gradual shifting of the seasons affected the planet. The top row shows how the planet appeared when viewing it with just visible light. These images of Uranus were taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope using its Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). Credit: NASA/ESA/Erich Karkoschka (LPL) The second row from the top is a pseudo-color image based on visible-light and near-infrared observations. Green indicates less methane in the atmosphere than blue, and red indicates the absence of methane. The lower levels of atmospheric methane at the poles (which, remember, are on the planet’s sides rather than its top and bottom) indicate that there is little seasonal variation in methane levels. In the left-most image on this row, the green-colored south pole is moving into darkness. In the other three images, the green, lower-methane region of the north pole can be seen coming into view. (The fourth row shows the same lack of methane variation, but without coloration.) But what about the third row? This shows estimates of aerosol abundance, using visible light and infrared images that haven’t been colored. The light areas are cloudy with high aerosol abundance, and the dark areas are clear with low aerosol abundance. What is noteworthy in these images is that there is seasonal variation. The arctic region was clear at the beginning of spring (in 2002), but became cloudy as summer progressed (2012 through 2022). Conversely, the antarctic region appears to have cleared as fall progressed into winter. The team hypothesizes that these seasonal changes are evidence that sunlight changes levels of aerosol mist on the planet. Although the results of this study cover a long 20-year period, this still only reflects one period of seasonal change in Uranus’ atmosphere. The research team will continue to observe Uranus as the polar regions move into new seasons to gather more data. This story originally appeared on WIRED Japan and has been translated from Japanese. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

SpaceX's ninth Starship survived launch, but engineers now have more problems to overcome. SpaceX made some progress on another test flight of the world's most powerful rocket Tuesday, finally overcoming technical problems that plagued the program's two previous launches. But minutes into the mission, SpaceX's Starship lost control as it cruised through space, then tumbled back into the atmosphere somewhere over the Indian Ocean nearly an hour after taking off from Starbase, Texas, the company's privately owned spaceport near the US-Mexico border. SpaceX's next-generation rocket is designed to eventually ferry cargo and private and government crews between the Earth, the Moon, and Mars. The rocket is complex and gargantuan, wider and longer than a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, and after nearly two years of steady progress since its first test flight in 2023, this has been a year of setbacks for Starship. During the rocket's two previous test flights—each using an upgraded "Block 2" Starship design—problems in the ship's propulsion system led to leaks during launch, eventually triggering an early shutdown of the rocket's main engines. On both flights, the vehicle spun out of control and broke apart, spreading debris over an area near the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. The good news is that that didn't happen on Tuesday. The ship's main engines fired for their full duration, putting the vehicle on its expected trajectory toward a splashdown in the Indian Ocean. For a short time, it appeared the ship was on track for a successful flight. "Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over last flight! Also, no significant loss of heat shield tiles during ascent," wrote Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, on X. The bad news is that Tuesday's test flight revealed more problems, preventing SpaceX from achieving the most important goals Musk outlined going into the launch. "Leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and reentry phase," Musk posted on X. "Lot of good data to review." With the loss of tank pressure, the rocket started slowly spinning as it coasted through the blackness of space more than 100 miles above the Earth. This loss of control spelled another premature end to a Starship test flight. Most notable among the flight's unmet objectives was SpaceX's desire to study the performance of the ship's heat shield, which includes improved heat-absorbing tiles to better withstand the scorching temperatures of reentry back into the atmosphere. "The most important thing is data on how to improve the tile design, so it's basically data during the high heating, reentry phase in order to improve the tiles for the next iteration," Musk told Ars Technica before Tuesday's flight. "So we've got like a dozen or more tile experiments. We're trying different coatings on tiles. We're trying different fabrication techniques, different attachment techniques. We're varying the gap filler for the tiles." Engineers are hungry for data on the changes to the heat shield, which can't be fully tested on the ground. SpaceX officials hope the new tiles will be more robust than the ones flown on the first-generation, or Block 1, version of Starship, allowing future ships to land and quickly launch again, without the need for time-consuming inspections, refurbishment, and in some cases, tile replacements. This is a core tenet of SpaceX's plans for Starship, which include delivering astronauts to the surface of the Moon, proliferating low-Earth orbit with refueling tankers, and eventually helping establish a settlement on Mars, all of which are predicated on rapid reusability of Starship and its Super Heavy booster. Last year, SpaceX successfully landed three Starships in the Indian Ocean after they survived hellish reentries, but they came down with damaged heat shields. After an early end to Tuesday's test flight, SpaceX's heat shield engineers will have to wait a while longer to satiate their appetites. And the longer they have to wait, the longer the wait for other important Starship developmental tests, such as a full orbital flight, in-space refueling, and recovery and reuse of the ship itself, replicating what SpaceX has now accomplished with the Super Heavy booster. Failing forward or falling short? The ninth flight of Starship began with a booming departure from SpaceX's Starbase launch site at 6:35 pm CDT (7:35 pm EDT; 23:35 UTC) on Tuesday. After a brief hold to resolve last-minute technical glitches, SpaceX resumed the countdown clock to tick away the final seconds before liftoff. A gush of water poured over the deck of the launch pad just before 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines ignited on the rocket's massive Super Heavy first-stage booster. Once all 33 engines lit, the enormous stainless steel rocket—towering more than 400 feet (123 meters)—began to climb away from Starbase. SpaceX's Starship rocket, flying with a reused first-stage booster for the first time, climbs away from Starbase, Texas. Credit: SpaceX Heading east, the Super Heavy booster produced more than twice the power of NASA's Saturn V rocket, an icon of the Apollo Moon program, as it soared over the Gulf of Mexico. After two-and-a-half minutes, the Raptor engines switched off and the Super Heavy booster separated from Starship's upper stage. Six Raptor engines fired on the ship to continue pushing it into space. As the booster started maneuvering for an attempt to target an intact splashdown in the sea, the ship burned its engines for more than six minutes, reaching a top speed of 16,462 mph (26,493 kilometers per hour), right in line with preflight predictions. A member of SpaceX's launch team declared "nominal orbit insertion" a little more than nine minutes into the flight, indicating the rocket reached its planned trajectory, just shy of the velocity required to enter a stable orbit around the Earth. The flight profile was supposed to take Starship halfway around the world, with the mission culminating in a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia. But a few minutes after engine shutdown, the ship started to diverge from SpaceX's flight plan. First, SpaceX aborted an attempt to release eight simulated Starlink Internet satellites in the first test of the Starship's payload deployer. The cargo bay door would not fully open, and engineers called off the demonstration, according to Dan Huot, a member of SpaceX's communications team who hosted the company's live launch broadcast Tuesday. That alone would not have been a big deal. However, a few minutes later, Huot made a more troubling announcement. "We are in a little bit of a spin," he said. "We did spring a leak in some of the fuel tank systems inside of Starship, which a lot of those are used for attitude control. So, at this point, we’ve essentially lost our attitude control with Starship." This eliminated any chance for a controlled reentry and an opportunity to thoroughly scrutinize the performance of Starship's heat shield. The spin also prevented a brief restart of one of the ship's Raptor engines in space. "Not looking great for a lot of our on-orbit objectives for today," Huot said. SpaceX continued streaming live video from Starship as it soared over the Atlantic Ocean and Africa. Then, a blanket of superheated plasma enveloped the vehicle as it plunged into the atmosphere. Still in a slow tumble, the ship started shedding scorched chunks of its skin before the screen went black. SpaceX lost contact with the vehicle around 46 minutes into the flight. The ship likely broke apart over the Indian Ocean, dropping debris into a remote swath of sea within its expected flight corridor. Victories where you find them Although the flight did not end as well as SpaceX officials hoped, the company made some tangible progress Tuesday. Most importantly, it broke the streak of back-to-back launch failures on Starship's two most recent test flights in January and March. SpaceX's investigation earlier this year into a January 16 launch failure concluded that vibrations likely triggered fuel leaks and fires in the ship's engine compartment, causing an early shutdown of the rocket's engines. Engineers said the vibrations were likely in resonance with the vehicle's natural frequency, intensifying the shaking beyond the levels SpaceX predicted. Engineers made fixes and launched the next Starship test flight on March 6, but it again encountered trouble midway through the ship's main engine burn. SpaceX said earlier this month that the inquiry into the March 6 failure found its most probable root cause was a hardware failure in one of the upper stage's center engines, resulting in "inadvertent propellant mixing and ignition." In its official statement, the company was silent on the nature of the hardware failure but said engines for future test flights will receive additional preload on key joints, a new nitrogen purge system, and improvements to the propellant drain system. A new generation of Raptor engines, known as Raptor 3, should begin flying around the end of this year with additional improvements to address the failure mechanism, SpaceX said. Another bright spot in Tuesday's test flight was that it marked the first time SpaceX reused a Super Heavy booster from a prior launch. The booster used Tuesday previously launched on Starship's seventh test flight in January before it was caught back at the launch pad and refurbished for another space shot. Booster 14 comes in for the catch after flying to the edge of space on January 16. SpaceX flew this booster again Tuesday but did not attempt a catch. Credit: SpaceX After releasing the Starship upper stage to continue its journey into space, the Super Heavy booster flipped around to fly tail-first and reignited 13 of its engines to begin boosting itself back toward the South Texas coast. On this test flight, SpaceX aimed the booster for a hard splashdown in the ocean just offshore from Starbase, rather than a mid-air catch back at the launch pad, which SpaceX accomplished on three of its four most recent test flights. SpaceX made the change for a few reasons. First, engineers programmed the booster to fly at a higher angle of attack during its descent, increasing the amount of atmospheric drag on the vehicle compared to past flights. This change should reduce propellant usage on the booster's landing burn, which occurs just before the rocket is caught by the launch pad's mechanical arms, or "chopsticks," on a recovery flight. During the landing burn itself, engineers wanted to demonstrate the booster's ability to respond to an engine failure on descent by using just two of the rocket's 33 engines for the end of the burn, rather than the usual three. Instead, the rocket appeared to explode around the beginning of the landing burn before it could complete the final landing maneuver. Before the explosion at the end of its flight, the booster appeared to fly as designed. Data displayed on SpaceX's live broadcast of the launch showed all 33 of the rocket's engines fired normally during its initial ascent from Texas, a reassuring sign for the reliability of the Super Heavy booster. SpaceX kicked off the year with the ambition to launch as many as 25 Starship test flights in 2025, a goal that now seems to be unattainable. However, an X post by Musk on Tuesday night suggested a faster cadence of launches in the coming months. He said the next three Starships could launch at intervals of about once every three to four weeks. After that, SpaceX is expected to transition to a third-generation, or Block 3, Starship design with more changes. It wasn't immediately clear how long it might take SpaceX to correct whatever problems caused Tuesday's test flight woes. The Starship vehicle for the next flight is already built and completed cryogenic prooftesting on April 27. For the last few ships, SpaceX has completed this cryogenic testing milestone around one-and-a-half to three months prior to launch. A spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration said the agency is "actively working" with SpaceX in the aftermath of Tuesday's test flight but did not say if the FAA will require SpaceX to conduct a formal mishap investigation. Shana Diez, director of Starship engineering at SpaceX, chimed in with her own post on X. Based on preliminary data from Tuesday's flight, she is optimistic the next test flight will fly soon. She said engineers still need to examine data to confirm none of the problems from Starship's previous flight recurred on this launch but added that "all evidence points to a new failure mode" on Tuesday's test flight. SpaceX will also study what caused the Super Heavy booster to explode on descent before moving forward with another booster catch attempt at Starbase, she said. "Feeling both relieved and a bit disappointed," Diez wrote. "Could have gone better today but also could have gone much worse." Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend