Author: easyfilo

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Starting on March 29, Google is changing its infamous “Web & App Activity” controls for paid users of Google Workspace. That feature is now being split up into two settings, one still called “Web & App Activity” and another called “Search history.” The big news is that Google is taking advantage of this settings split to re-enable some tracking features, even if users have previously opted out.

Google has started emailing Workspace administrators about the change (thanks, Hacker News), and a support page gives some details about what’s going on. Both the email and support page are incredibly confusing—even Google’s own employees have a hard time parsing Google’s privacy controls—but we’ll try to shed some light on the situation.

The support page begins, “Starting March 29, 2022, the Web & App Activity Admin console setting is going away.” “Web & App Activity” is one of the two main Google privacy settings (along with “Location History”) that saves everything you do on your Google account. You might remember these settings from several lawsuits about how confusing and poorly labeled they were. Leaving these settings on means that features like autocomplete work better, but it also means that Google gets to keep all your activity.

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In a tech world still hindered by component shortages, choices have to be made. And in the world of laptops, it seems that choice is Windows-based devices over those running Chrome OS.

IDC on Monday released early data from its latest Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. It pointed to a sharp 63.6 percent decline in Chromebook shipments, which the IDC defines as “shipments to distribution channels or end users, in Q4 2021 (4.8 million shipments) compared to Q4 2020 with (13.1 million shipments).”

In addition to market saturation, supply issues also hurt Chromebook shipments, as the industry still struggles with a deficit of PC components, from CPUs to integrated circuits for Wi-Fi modules and power management.

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A whistleblower has accused Pegasus spyware-maker NSO Group of offering “bags of cash” to security company Mobileum in exchange for access to cellular networks in 2017. According to reports yesterday by The Guardian and The Washington Post, former Mobileum VP Gary Miller made his allegations in a complaint to the US Department of Justice and in an interview with news organizations that are part of the “Pegasus Project” consortium.

Miller alleged that during the Mobileum/NSO Group meeting, “a member of his own company’s leadership at Mobileum asked what NSO believed the ‘business model’ was of working with Mobileum, since Mobileum did not sell access to the global signalling networks as a product,” The Guardian wrote. “According to Miller, and a written disclosure he later made to federal authorities, the response allegedly made by [NSO co-founder Omri] Lavie was ‘we drop bags of cash at your office.'”

NSO Group, an Israeli company that was recently blacklisted by the US government, was allegedly seeking access to the SS7 network. Mobileum’s various security products include an SS7 firewall, and the company’s website warns that “modestly priced access to the SS7 network is now available to hackers on a modest budget.”

Enlarge / The Space Launch System main engines are seen in High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 10, 2022. (credit: NASA)

NASA officials on Wednesday said the agency would conduct an initial rollout of the massive Space Launch System rocket sometime in March, a multi-week delay attributed to “close-out” tasks that must be completed on the vehicle.

Until this week, NASA had been publicly targeting a February 15 rollout date, when a mobile tower would ferry the SLS rocket from the Vehicle Assembly Building to its launch site at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Tom Whitmeyer, deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development at NASA Headquarters, said the agency is now targeting “mid-March” for the rollout, but he did not want to set a specific date.

Whitmeyer and other officials on a teleconference with reporters said they wanted to let the teams of NASA employees and contractors in Florida complete their work meticulously rather than being rushed.

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The European Union says it wants to “prevent greenwashing” among investors, but a new proposal may end up encouraging the behavior it wants to banish.

The European Commission put forward a plan today that defines what counts as a “sustainable investment,” something that’s all but required to manage a transition to clean energy. But to the chagrin of several EU countries, environmental groups, and asset managers, the proposal would allow both natural gas and nuclear to qualify as “contributing substantially to climate change mitigation.”

The split-the-baby approach came about because some countries, including Germany and Poland, lobbied for the inclusion of natural gas, while others, notably France, lobbied for nuclear power. Germany, which is in the process of shuttering its nuclear power plants, remains heavily dependent on coal and has been boosting its use of natural gas to “transition” away from coal. France, on the other hand, uses relatively little natural gas and gets nearly all of its electricity from nuclear power plants.