Month: March 2022

Russian players will soon not be able to join in scenes like this. (credit: PG/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)

Pokemon Go developer Niantic has become the latest company to answer Ukraine’s call to cut off Russia by stopping downloads of its games in the country. But Niantic is also going further than some of its peers, saying that “gameplay will also be suspended [in Russia and Belarus] shortly.”

“We stand with the global community in hoping for peace and a rapid resolution to the violence and suffering in Ukraine,” Niantic said in a tweeted announcement late Thursday night.

Niantic joins major game publishers—including Take-Two, Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard, Epic Games, and CD Projekt Red—as well as all major game console makers in preventing new players from obtaining their games and products in Russia during the ongoing invasion. But those other game companies have largely stopped short of suspending access for Russian customers that previously purchased games before the sanctions started.

Enlarge / Smoke rises from a Russian tank destroyed by Ukrainian forces in the Luhansk region on February 26, 2022. (Photo by Anatolii Stepanov / AFP via Getty Images) (credit: Anatolii Stepanov / AFP)

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grinds on, Meta is temporarily changing its policies to allow users on Facebook and Instagram to post calls for violence against—and even the deaths of—Russian soldiers and political figures, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

“As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as ‘death to Russian invaders,’” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said on Twitter. “We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians.”

The temporary policy exception was recently sent to Facebook and Instagram moderators, and emails detailing the change were revealed by Reuters. The exceptions mark the social media company’s latest attempt to adapt to the shifting geopolitical situation.

Enlarge / The File Explorer is finally getting some tabs. (credit: Rafael Rivera)

Microsoft is testing a tabbed interface for the Windows 11 File Explorer, according to screenshots from developer Rafael Rivera. You can’t access the feature without changing hidden settings in the latest Insider Preview build for the Dev channel, but XDA Developers has published a guide on enabling the interface. The process involves downloading ViveTool, a utility that has been used to dig up other present-but-hidden features in Windows preview builds.

Microsoft briefly tested File Explorer tabs in Windows 10 but never ended up including the feature in the publicly released version of the OS. We’d expect the tabbed File Explorer interface to be formally introduced and enabled in a future Windows 11 Insider build, as we saw in the redesigned Task Manager and a few other UI changes that have been discovered before they were announced.

Insiders have gotten other less-hidden Windows features in their builds this week, including tweaks to the Android Subsystem for Windows that improve scrolling performance and a few other features. A Microsoft Family app made for managing parental controls will be included in all installs of Windows 11 Home. The print queue has been given a Windows 11-style makeover, yet another example of how deep Microsoft is beginning to dig into the OS to make it feel more unified and consistent. And the web-based Clipchamp video editor has been added to default Windows 11 installs (though its best features, including higher-than-480p video exporting, are still gated behind an expensive subscription).

Enlarge / A health care worker carries test tubes while on duty in the bacteriological laboratory at the Lviv Regional Laboratory Centre of the State Sanitary and Epidemiological Service, Lviv, western Ukraine. (credit: Getty | Future Publishing)

The World Health Organization has advised officials in Ukraine to destroy any high-risk pathogens housed in public health laboratories in order to prevent their release amid the Russian onslaught, according to a report by Reuters.

The agency said that it has worked with Ukrainian officials for years to promote security practices at its laboratories to prevent “accidental or deliberate release of pathogens.” As part of that longstanding work, “WHO has strongly recommended to the Ministry of Health in Ukraine and other responsible bodies to destroy high-threat pathogens to prevent any potential spills,” the agency said in an email to Reuters. The WHO did not clarify when it made that recommendation or if it was carried out.

The news follows Senate testimony on Tuesday by Victoria Nuland, US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, who said that the US is “quite concerned” that Russian troops will seek out Ukraine’s biological research laboratories to seize control of any potentially dangerous samples.

Enlarge / If you’re going to charge your car at home, why not also use it as a storage battery when it’s just parked there? (credit: Monty Rakusen/Getty Images)

Disaster preparedness is becoming a bit more mainstream as the effects of climate change and the fallibility of human institutions become more clear. The auto industry has followed this trend, with more than one automaker pointing to the fact that an electric vehicle is essentially a giant backup battery that could power your home for a few days in the event of an emergency.

Now, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) will begin testing bidirectional charging in California with new pilot programs announced this week at General Motors and Ford.

Bidirectional charging got its first big boost after the 2011 Tōhoku-Oki earthquake, and in 2017, Nissan told Ars that several thousand EV-to-grid installations had already been completed in Japan. But at the time, the company had no immediate plans to enable the function here in the US. Since then, Nissan has conducted other vehicle-to-grid experiments, such as powering a convenience store.