China will launch digital IDs for internet use on July 15th, transferring online verification from private companies to government control. Users obtain digital IDs by submitting personal information including facial scans to police via an app. A pilot program launched one year ago enrolled 6 million people.

The system currently remains voluntary, though officials and state media are pushing citizens to register for "information security." Companies will see only anonymized character strings when users log in, while police retain exclusive access to personal details. The program replaces China's existing system requiring citizens to register with companies using real names before posting comments, gaming, or making purchases.

Police say they punished 47,000 people last year for spreading "rumours" online. The digital ID serves a broader government strategy to centralize data control. State planners classify data as a production factor alongside labor and capital, aiming to extract information from private companies for trading through government-operated data exchanges.

Laptop Mag, a tech publication that began in 1991 as a print magazine, is shutting down after nearly 35 years. The Verge reports: Laptop Mag has evolved many times over the years. It started as a print publication in 1991, when Bedford Communications launched the Laptop Buyers Guide and Handbook. Laptop Mag was later acquired by TechMedia Network (which is now called Purch) in 2011 and transitioned to digital-only content in 2013. Future PLC, the publisher that owns brands like PC Gamer, Tom's Guide, and TechRadar, acquired Purch -- and Laptop Mag along with it.

"We are incredibly grateful for your dedication, talent, and contributions to Laptop Mag, and we are committed to supporting you throughout this transition," [Faisal Alani, the global brand director at Laptop Mag owner Future PLC] said. Laptop Mag's shutdown follows the closure of long-running tech site AnandTech, which was also owned by Future PLC. It's not clear whether Laptop Mag's archives will be available following the shutdown.

Google will tell European Union antitrust regulators Tuesday that the bloc's Digital Markets Act is stifling innovation and harming European users and businesses. The tech giant faces charges under the DMA for allegedly favoring its own services like Google Shopping, Google Hotels, and Google Flights over competitors. Potential fines could reach 10% of Google's global annual revenue.

Google lawyer Clare Kelly will address a European Commission workshop, arguing that compliance changes have forced Europeans to pay more for travel tickets while airlines, hotels, and restaurants report losing up to 30% of direct booking traffic.

HP is developing a "PCFax" system similar to CarFax for used cars that securely collects and stores detailed device usage and health data at the firmware level to extend the life of PCs and reduce e-waste. A team of HP experts outlines the system in a recent IEEE Spectrum report: The secure telemetry protocol we've developed at HP works as follows. We gather the critical hardware and sensor data and store it in a designated area of the SSD. This area is write-locked, meaning only authorized firmware components can write to it, preventing accidental modification or tampering. That authorized firmware component we us is the Endpoint Security Controller, a dedicated piece of hardware embedded in business class HP PCs. It plays a critical role in strengthening platform-level security and works independently from the main CPU to provide foundational protection.

The endpoint security controller establishes a secure session by retaining the secret key within the controller itself. This mechanism enables read data protection on the SSD -- where telemetry and sensitive data are stored -- by preventing unauthorized access, even if the operating system is reinstalled or the system environment is otherwise altered. Then, the collected data is recorded in a timestamped file, stored within a dedicated telemetry log on the SSD. Storing these records on the SSD has the benefit of ensuring the data is persistent even if the operating system is reinstalled or some other drastic change in software environment occurs. The telemetry log employs a cyclic buffer design, automatically overwriting older entries when the log reaches full capacity. Then, the telemetry log can be accessed by authorized applications at the operating system level.

The telemetry log serves as the foundation for a comprehensive device history report. Much like a CarFax report for used cars, this report, which we call PCFax, will provide both current users and potential buyers with crucial information. The PCFax report aggregates data from multiple sources beyond just the on-device telemetry logs. It combines the secure firmware-level usage data with information from HP's factory and supply chain records, digital services platforms, customer support service records, diagnostic logs, and more. Additionally, the system can integrate data from external sources including partner sales and service records, refurbishment partner databases, third-party component manufacturers like Intel, and other original equipment manufacturers. This multi-source approach creates a complete picture of the device's entire lifecycle, from manufacturing through all subsequent ownership and service events.

China's transition to digital payments has reached the point where physical cash has nearly vanished from daily commerce, with WeChat and Alipay now handling transactions from supermarkets to public transportation across the world's second-largest economy. Many businesses no longer maintain traditional cash registers and instead scan QR codes presented by customers, while numerous taxis refuse cash payments entirely.

The widespread adoption has given tech giants Tencent and Alibaba immense power over routine financial transactions, prompting China's central bank to develop a competing digital yuan currency.

"Canada and the United States have resumed trade negotiations," reports Newsweek, "after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney agreed to rescind the country's digital services tax on U.S. technology companies." The development follows President Donald Trump's announcement on Friday that he was suspending all trade talks with Canada "effective immediately" over the tax policy... Canada's quick reversal signals the high stakes involved in maintaining trade relationships with the United States, particularly given the countries' deeply integrated economies.

Carney's office confirmed on Sunday that both leaders have agreed to restart negotiations after Canada committed to abandoning the 3 percent levy targeting major U.S. tech giants including Amazon, Google, Meta, Uber, and Airbnb. The tax was scheduled to take effect Monday and would have applied retroactively, creating an estimated $2 billion bill for American companies. The conflict escalated rapidly after Canada's Finance Department confirmed Friday that companies would still be required to make their first digital tax payments Monday, despite ongoing negotiations. The tax targeted revenue generated from Canadian users rather than corporate profits, making it particularly burdensome for technology companies operating internationally...

Canada's decision to rescind the tax came "in anticipation" of reaching a broader trade agreement, according to government officials. With negotiations resuming, both countries will likely focus on addressing broader trade issues beyond the digital services tax.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the tech news site The Register: The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) this week published guidance urging software developers to adopt memory-safe programming languages. "The importance of memory safety cannot be overstated," the inter-agency report says...

The CISA/NSA report revisits the rationale for greater memory safety and the government's calls to adopt memory-safe languages (MSLs) while also acknowledging the reality that not every agency can change horses mid-stream. "A balanced approach acknowledges that MSLs are not a panacea and that transitioning involves significant challenges, particularly for organizations with large existing codebases or mission-critical systems," the report says. "However, several benefits, such as increased reliability, reduced attack surface, and decreased long-term costs, make a strong case for MSL adoption."

The report cites how Google by 2024 managed to reduce memory safety vulnerabilities in Android to 24 percent of the total. It goes on to provide an overview of the various benefits of adopting MSLs and discusses adoption challenges. And it urges the tech industry to promote memory safety by, for example, advertising jobs that require MSL expertise.

It also cites various government projects to accelerate the transition to MSLs, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Translating All C to Rust (TRACTOR) program, which aspires to develop an automated method to translate C code to Rust. A recent effort along these lines, dubbed Omniglot, has been proposed by researchers at Princeton, UC Berkeley, and UC San Diego. It provides a safe way for unsafe libraries to communicate with Rust code through a Foreign Function Interface....

"Memory vulnerabilities pose serious risks to national security and critical infrastructure," the report concludes. "MSLs offer the most comprehensive mitigation against this pervasive and dangerous class of vulnerability."
"Adopting memory-safe languages can accelerate modern software development and enhance security by eliminating these vulnerabilities at their root," the report concludes, calling the idea "an investment in a secure software future."

"By defining memory safety roadmaps and leading the adoption of best practices, organizations can significantly improve software resilience and help ensure a safer digital landscape."

The Canadian government has ordered Chinese surveillance camera manufacturer Hikvision to cease operations in Canada over national security concerns, Industry Minister Melanie Joly said late on Friday. From a report: Hikvision, also known as Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co, has faced numerous sanctions and restrictions by Canada's neighbor, the United States, over the past five and a half years for the firm's dealings and the use of its equipment in China's Xinjiang region, where rights groups have documented abuses against the Uyghur population and other Muslim communities.

"The government has determined that Hikvision Canada's continued operations in Canada would be injurious to Canada's national security," Joly said on X, adding that the decision was taken after a multi-step review of information provided by Canada's security and intelligence community."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The Danish government is to clamp down on the creation and dissemination of AI-generated deepfakes by changing copyright law to ensure that everybody has the right to their own body, facial features and voice. The Danish government said on Thursday it would strengthen protection against digital imitations of people's identities with what it believes to be the first law of its kind in Europe. Having secured broad cross-party agreement, the department of culture plans to submit a proposal to amend the current law for consultation before the summer recess and then submit the amendment in the autumn. It defines a deepfake as a very realistic digital representation of a person, including their appearance and voice.

The Danish culture minister, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, said he hoped the bill before parliament would send an "unequivocal message" that everybody had the right to the way they looked and sounded. He told the Guardian: "In the bill we agree and are sending an unequivocal message that everybody has the right to their own body, their own voice and their own facial features, which is apparently not how the current law is protecting people against generative AI." He added: "Human beings can be run through the digital copy machine and be misused for all sorts of purposes and I'm not willing to accept that."

The changes to Danish copyright law will, once approved, theoretically give people in Denmark the right to demand that online platforms remove such content if it is shared without consent. It will also cover "realistic, digitally generated imitations" of an artist's performance without consent. Violation of the proposed rules could result in compensation for those affected. The government said the new rules would not affect parodies and satire, which would still be permitted. "Of course this is new ground we are breaking, and if the platforms are not complying with that, we are willing to take additional steps," said Engel-Schmidt.

He expressed hope that other European countries will follow suit and warned that "severe fines" will be imposed if tech platforms fail to comply.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes in an opinion piece for The Register: Microsoft, tactically admitting it has failed at talking all the Windows 10 PC users into moving to Windows 11 after all, is -- sort of, kind of -- extending Windows 10 support for another year. For most users, that means they'll need to subscribe to Microsoft 365. This, in turn, means their data and meta-information will be kept in a US-based datacenter. That isn't sitting so well with many European Union (EU) organizations and companies. It doesn't sit that well with me or a lot of other people either.

A few years back, I wrote in these very pages that Microsoft didn't want you so much to buy Windows as subscribe to its cloud services and keep your data on its servers. If you wanted a real desktop operating system, Linux would be almost your only choice. Nothing has changed since then, except that folks are getting a wee bit more concerned about their privacy now that President Donald Trump is in charge of the US. You may have noticed that he and his regime love getting their hands on other people's data.

Privacy isn't the only issue. Can you trust Microsoft to deliver on its service promises under American political pressure? Ask the EU-based International Criminal Court (ICC) which after it issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes, Trump imposed sanctions on the ICC. Soon afterward, ICC's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, was reportedly locked out of his Microsoft email accounts. Coincidence? Some think not. Microsoft denies they had anything to do with this.

Peter Ganten, chairman of the German-based Open-Source Business Alliance (OSBA), opined that these sanctions ordered by the US which he alleged had been implemented by Microsoft "must be a wake-up call for all those responsible for the secure availability of state and private IT and communication infrastructures." Microsoft chairman and general counsel, Brad Smith, had promised that it would stand behind its EU customers against political pressure. In the aftermath of the ICC reports, Smith declared Microsoft had not been "in any way [involved in] the cessation of services to the ICC." In the meantime, if you want to reach Khan, you'll find him on the privacy-first Swiss email provider, ProtonMail.

In short, besides all the other good reasons for people switching to the Linux desktop - security, Linux is now easy to use, and, thanks to Steam, you can do serious gaming on Linux - privacy has become much more critical. That's why several EU governments have decided that moving to the Linux desktop makes a lot of sense... Besides, all these governments know that switching from Windows 10 to 11 isn't cheap. While finances also play a role, and I always believe in "following the money" when it comes to such software decisions, there's no question that Europe is worried about just how trustworthy America and its companies are these days. Do you blame them? I don't. The shift to the Linux desktop is "nothing new," as Vaughan-Nichols notes. Munich launched its LiMux project back in 2004 and, despite ending it in 2017, reignited its open-source commitment by establishing a dedicated program office in 2024. In France, the gendarmerie now operates over 100,000 computers on a custom Ubuntu-based OS (GendBuntu), while the city of Lyon is transitioning to Linux and PostgreSQL.

More recently, Denmark announced it is dropping Windows and Office in favor of Linux and LibreOffice, citing digital sovereignty. The German state of Schleswig-Holstein is following suit, also moving away from Microsoft software. Meanwhile, a pan-European Linux OS (EU OS) based on Fedora Kinoite is being explored, with Linux Mint and openSUSE among the alternatives under consideration.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Canada is proceeding with its digital services tax on technology companies such as Meta despite a Group of Seven agreement that resulted in removing the Section 899 "revenge tax" proposal from U.S. President Donald Trump's tax bill. The first payment for Canada's digital tax is still due Monday, the country's Finance Department confirmed, and covers revenue retroactively to 2022. The tax is three percent of the digital services revenue a firm makes from Canadian users above $20 million in a calendar year.

Keeping the digital tax will not affect the G7 agreement, which focuses on global minimum taxes, the Finance Department said. The Section 899 provision would have targeted companies and investors from countries that the U.S. determines are unfairly taxing American companies. [...] Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne suggested to reporters last week that the digital tax may be negotiated as part of broader, ongoing U.S.-Canada trade discussions. "Obviously all of that is something that we're considering as part of broader discussions that you may have," he said.

Business groups in the country have opposed the tax since it was announced, arguing it would increase the cost of digital services and invite retaliation from the U.S. It also raised the ire of U.S. businesses and lawmakers. A group of 21 members of U.S. Congress wrote to Trump earlier this month asking him to push for the tax's removal, estimating the June 30 payment will cost U.S. companies $2 billion. Before scrapping its digital services tax, Canada wants to see an OECD deal on policies that expand a country's authority to tax profits earned within that country even if a company doesn't have a physical location there -- which is different from a global minimum tax. Earlier today, President Trump said the U.S. is immediately ending trade talks with Canada in response to the tax, calling it a "direct and blatant attack on our country."

"Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. "We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period."

Brazil's supreme court has ruled that social media platforms can be held legally responsible for their users' posts. From a report: Companies such as Facebook, TikTok and X will have to act immediately to remove material such as hate speech, incitement to violence or "anti-democratic acts," even without a prior judicial takedown order, as a result of the decision in Latin America's largest nation late on Thursday.

Apple will allow developers in the European Union to distribute iOS apps outside its App Store, the company said Thursday in a bid to avoid escalating fines from Brussels regulators. The policy change came on the deadline for Apple to comply with EU rules or face new financial penalties that can reach up to 5% of average daily worldwide revenue.

The $3 trillion iPhone maker has been negotiating with the European Commission for two months after receiving a $585 million fine for breaching the EU's Digital Markets Act. The landmark legislation targets the power of Big Tech companies and requires Apple to open its mobile ecosystem to competitors.

The second change, set to go into effect in January 2026, would replace the current "core technology fee" model -- a separate charge imposed on developers -- with a commission-based structure.

Microsoft has been hit with a lawsuit by a group of authors who claim the company used their books without permission to train its Megatron artificial intelligence model. From a report: Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, Daniel Okrent and several others alleged that Microsoft used pirated digital versions of their books to teach its AI to respond to human prompts. Their lawsuit, filed in New York federal court on Tuesday, is one of several high-stakes cases brought by authors, news outlets and other copyright holders against tech companies including Meta Platforms, Anthropic and Microsoft-backed OpenAI over alleged misuse of their material in AI training.

[...] The writers alleged in the complaint that Microsoft used a collection of nearly 200,000 pirated books to train Megatron, an algorithm that gives text responses to user prompts.

U.S. lawmakers have reintroduced the bipartisan Open App Markets Act, aiming to curb Apple and Google's control over mobile app stores by promoting competition, supporting third-party marketplaces and sideloading, and safeguarding developer rights. AppleInsider reports: The Open App Markets Act seeks to do a number of things, including:
- Protect developers' rights to tell consumers about lower prices and offer competitive pricing;
- Protect sideloading of apps;
- Promote competition by opening the market to third-party app stores, startup apps, and alternative payment systems;
- Make it possible for developers to offer new experiences that take advantage of consumer device features;
- Give consumers greater control over their devices;
- Prevent app stores from disadvantaging developers; and
- Establish safeguards to preserve consumer privacy, security, and safety.

This isn't the first time we've seen this bill, either. In 2021, Senators Blumenthal, Klobuchar, and Blackburn had attempted to put forth the original version of the Open App Markets Act.However, the initial bill never made it to the floor for an office vote. Thanks to last-minute efforts by lobbying groups and appearances from chief executives, the bill eventually stalled out.

While the two bills are largely similar, the revised version introduces several key differences. Notably, the new version includes new carve-outs aimed at protecting intellectual property and addressing potential national security concerns.There's also a new clause that would prohibit punitive actions against developers for enabling remote access to other apps. The clause addition harkens back to the debacle between Apple and most game streaming services -- though in 2024, Apple loosened its App Store guidelines to allow cloud gaming and emulation.

There are a few new platform-protective clauses added, too. For instance, it would significantly lower the burden of proof for either Apple or Google to block platform access to a third-party app.Additionally, it reinforces the fact that companies like Apple or Google will not need to provide support or refunds for third-party apps installed outside of first-party app marketplaces. The full bill can be found here.

Psylo, a new privacy-focused iOS browser by Mysk, aims to defeat digital fingerprinting by isolating each browser tab with its own IP address, unique fingerprinting defenses, and proxy-based encryption. "Psylo stands out as it is the only WebKit-based iOS browser that truly isolates tabs," Tommy Mysk told The Register. "It's not only about separate storage and cookies. Psylo goes beyond that."

"This is why we call tabs 'silos.' It applies unique anti-fingerprinting measures per silo, such as canvas randomization. This way two Psylo tabs opening the same website would appear as though they originated on two different devices to the opened website." From the report: The company claims Psylo therefore offers better privacy than a VPN because the virtual networks mask the user's IP address but generally don't alter the data used for fingerprinting. Psylo, for example, will adjust the browser's time zone and browser language to match the geolocation of each proxy, resulting in more entropy that means fingerprints created by gathering data from silos will appear to be different.

The Mysk devs' post states that some privacy-focused browsers like Brave also implement anti-fingerprinting measures like canvas randomization, but those are more effective on the desktop macOS app due to Apple's iOS restrictions. They claim that they were able to achieve better results on iOS by using a client-side JavaScript solution. Mysk designed Psylo to minimize the information available to its maker. It doesn't log personally identifiable information or browsing data that the curious could use to identify the user, the company claims, noting that it also doesn't have customer payment information, which is handled by Apple. There are no user accounts, only randomized identifiers to indicate active subscriptions. According to Tommy Mysk, the only subscriber data kept is bandwidth usage, which is necessary to prevent abuse.

"We aggregate bandwidth usage based on a randomly generated ID that is created when a subscription is made," Mysk said. "The randomly generated ID is associated with the Apple subscription transaction. Apple doesn't share the identity of users making App Store purchases with developers." Asked whether Apple could identify users, Mysk said, "Theoretically and given a court order, Apple can figure out the randomly generated ID of the user in question. If we were to hand out the data associated with the randomly generated ID, it would only be the bandwidth usage of that user in the current month, and two months in the past. Older data is automatically deleted. "We don't associate any identifiable information with the randomly generated ID. We don't store IP addresses at all in every component of our system. We don't store websites visited by our users at all." The browser is only available on iOS and iPadOS, but Mysk says an Android version could be developed if there's enough interest. It costs $9.99 per month or $99 per year in the U.S.

The City of Lyon will replace Microsoft's office suite with free office software, including OnlyOffice for office work and Linux and PostgreSQL for systems and databases. The city aims to "no longer be dependent on American software solutions and acquire true digital sovereignty," according to an official statement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: A massive data center for Meta's AI will likely lead to rate hikes for Louisiana customers, but Meta wants to keep the details under wraps. Holly Ridge is a rural community bisected by US Highway 80, gridded with farmland, with a big creek -- it is literally named Big Creek -- running through it. It is home to rice and grain mills and an elementary school and a few houses. Soon, it will also be home to Meta's massive, 4 million square foot AI data center hosting thousands of perpetually humming servers that require billions of watts of energy to power. And that energy-guzzling infrastructure will be partially paid for by Louisiana residents.

The plan is part of what Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said would be "a defining year for AI." On Threads, Zuckerberg boasted that his company was "building a 2GW+ datacenter that is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan," posting a map of Manhattan along with the data center overlaid. Zuckerberg went on to say that over the coming years, AI "will drive our core products and business, unlock historic innovation, and extend American technology leadership. Let's go build! " What Zuckerberg did not mention is that "Let's go build" refers not only to the massive data center but also three new Meta-subsidized, gas power plants and a transmission line to fuel it serviced by Entergy Louisiana, the region's energy monopoly.

Key details about Meta's investments with the data center remain vague, and Meta's contracts with Entergy are largely cloaked from public scrutiny. But what is known is the $10 billion data center has been positioned as an enormous economic boon for the area -- one that politicians bent over backward to facilitate -- and Meta said it will invest $200 million into "local roads and water infrastructure." A January report from NOLA.com said that the the state had rewritten zoning laws, promised to change a law so that it no longer had to put state property up for public bidding, and rewrote what was supposed to be a tax incentive for broadband internet meant to bridge the digital divide so that it was only an incentive for data centers, all with the goal of luring in Meta. But Entergy Louisiana's residential customers, who live in one of the poorest regions of the state, will see their utility bills increase to pay for Meta's energy infrastructure, according to Entergy's application. Entergy estimates that amount will be small and will only cover a transmission line, but advocates for energy affordability say the costs could balloon depending on whether Meta agrees to finish paying for its three gas plants 15 years from now. The short-term rate increases will be debated in a public hearing before state regulators that has not yet been scheduled. The Alliance for Affordable Energy called it a "black hole of energy use," and said "to give perspective on how much electricity the Meta project will use: Meta's energy needs are roughly 2.3x the power needs of Orleans Parish ... it's like building the power impact of a large city overnight in the middle of nowhere."

Western Digital has succeeded in having the sum it owed from a patent infringement case reduced from $553 million down to just $1 in post-trial motions, when the judge found the plaintiff's claims had shifted during the course of the litigation. From a report: The storage biz was held by a California jury to have infringed on data encryption patents owned by SPEX Technologies Inc in October, relating to several of its self-encrypting hard drive products.

WD was initially told to pay $316 million in damages, but District Judge James Selna ruled the company owed a further $237 million in interest charges earlier this year, bringing the total to more than half a billion dollars. In February, WD was given a week to file a bond or stump up the entire damages payment. Selna granted Western Digital's post-trial motion to reduce damages, writing that "SPEX's damages theory changed as certain evidence and theories became unavailable" and there was "insufficient evidence from which the Court could determine a reasonable royalty."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple customers aren't thrilled they're getting an ad from the Apple Wallet app promoting the tech giant's Original Film, "F1 the Movie." Across social media, iPhone owners are complaining that their Wallet app sent out a push notification offering a $10 discount at Fandango for anyone buying two or more tickets to the film.

The feature film, starring Brad Pitt, explores the world of Formula 1 and was shot at actual Grand Prix races. It also showcases the use of Apple technology, from the custom-made cameras made of iPhone parts used to film inside the cars, to the AirPods Max that Pitt's character, F1 driver Sonny Hayes, sleeps in. However well-received the film may be, iPhone users don't necessarily want their built-in utilities, like their digital wallet, marketing to them.