AnActOfCreation

• A global Microsoft Windows outage, caused by a CrowdStrike software update, has disrupted airlines, banking services, and 911 lines, leading to grounded flights and long queues.
• The issue resulted in many systems experiencing the “Blue Screen of Death” (BSOD), affecting major carriers and airports worldwide, and also impacted the London Stock Exchange and Australian banking systems.
• CrowdStrike has identified and isolated the defect, deploying a fix, but recovery is expected to be slow due to the need for manual intervention on affected devices.

• Facebook does not use Git due to scale issues with their large monorepo, instead opting for Mercurial.
• Mercurial may be a better option for large monorepos, but Git has made improvements to support them better.
• Despite some drawbacks, Git usage remains dominant with 93.87% share, due to familiarity, additional tools, and industry trends.

• Home routing and encryption technologies are making lawful interception harder for Europol
• PET-enabled home routing allows for secure communication, hindering law enforcement's ability to intercept and monitor communications
• Europol suggests solutions such as disabling PET technologies and implementing cross-border interception standards to address the issue.

• One Redditor tested Google's Find My Device network against Apple's Find My Network by shipping an AirTag and a Pebblebee tracker to a different state and tracking the package through the respective apps.
• The Pebblebee Tracker struggled to provide location updates, while Apple's AirTag consistently updated throughout the journey.
• Google's Find My Device network is still nascent and opt-in, limiting its effectiveness compared to Apple's Find My Network. Google is reportedly working on improving its network's speed and reliability.

• Four volunteers emerge from NASA Mars replica after 378-day isolation experiment, facing challenges of Red Planet living.
• Experiment observed how humans would fare on Mars, including growing own food, communication delays, and stressors.
• NASA plans two more CHAPEA missions to test human response to conditions of living on Mars, potential astronaut missions in 2030s.

• Proton Docs is a privacy-focused alternative to Google Docs and Microsoft Word, offering similar features and layout.
• Launched within Proton Drive, it is part of Proton's suite of work tools aiming to compete with Microsoft Office and Google Workspace.
• Proton Docs prioritizes security, encrypting all data in real time and promising not to sell user data, appealing to privacy-conscious users.

• The developer of the 'node-ip' project made the GitHub repository read-only after disputing the severity of a reported vulnerability (CVE-2023-42282).
• The vulnerability involved incorrect identification of private IP addresses in non-standard formats, but the developer argued it had a dubious security impact.
• The situation highlights ongoing issues with unverified CVE reports causing unnecessary panic and frustration for open-source project maintainers.

• Time removed its paywall in June 2023, resulting in a rise in advertising revenue but a loss of digital subscribers, with traffic remaining relatively flat.
• The decision was influenced by broader industry trends and the publisher's focus on working with advertisers and leveraging its brand equity in other ventures.
• Time aims to achieve profitability by expanding its direct advertising and sponsorship business, growing its global events slate, and exploring new ventures like connected television.

• Firefox 127 has introduced privacy tweaks that are causing user dissatisfaction, particularly due to changes like the separation of normal and private windows on the taskbar and the closing of private tabs when the main instance closes on iOS.
• Despite user complaints, the update includes new privacy and security enhancements such as upgrading subresources from HTTP to HTTPS and masking CPU architecture to reduce fingerprinting.
• Mozilla plans to address user feedback by reintroducing the "browser.privateWindowSeparation.enabled" preference as an opt-in and adding more intuitive privacy settings in future updates.

• Proton, known for its secure email and productivity services, is transitioning to a nonprofit foundation model, ensuring it remains mission-focused without reliance on external subsidies.
• The Proton Foundation, now the primary shareholder, is located in Switzerland, which mandates that foundations act according to their established purpose, bolstering Proton's commitment to privacy.
• Proton has expanded its offerings to include cloud storage, password management, calendars, and VPN services, all designed with end-to-end encryption and hosted in Switzerland, enhancing its privacy-first approach.

We believe that if we want to bring about large-scale change, Proton can’t be billionaire-subsidized (like Signal), Google-subsidized (like Mozilla), government-subsidized (like Tor), donation-subsidized (like Wikipedia), or even speculation-subsidized (like the plethora of crypto “foundations”)," Proton CEO Andy Yen wrote in a blog post announcing the transition. "Instead, Proton must have a profitable and healthy business at its core."

• The New York Times suffered a breach of its GitHub repositories in January 2024, leading to the theft and leak of sensitive personal information of freelancers.
• Attackers accessed the repos using exposed credentials, but the breach did not impact the newspaper's internal systems or operations.
• The stolen data, amounting to 273GB, was leaked on 4chan and included various personal details of contributors as well as information related to assignments and source code, including the viral Wordle game.