TikTok is facing a legal challenge from former children's commissioner for England Anne Longfield over how it collects and uses children's data. The BBC reports: The claim is being filed on behalf of millions of children in the UK and EU who have used the hugely popular video-sharing app. If successful, the children affected could each be owed thousands of pounds. TikTok said the case was without merit and it would fight it.

Lawyers will allege that TikTok takes children's personal information, including phone numbers, videos, exact location and biometric data, without sufficient warning, transparency or the necessary consent required by law, and without children or parents knowing what is being done with that information. The claim is being launched on behalf of all children who have used TikTok since 25 May 2018, regardless of whether they have an account or their privacy settings. Children not wishing to be represented can opt out. "TikTok is a hugely popular social media platform that has helped children keep in touch with their friends during an incredibly difficult year," says Ms. Longfield. "However, behind the fun songs, dance challenges and lip-sync trends lies something far more sinister."

She alleges the firm is "a data collection service that is thinly veiled as a social network" which has "deliberately and successfully deceived parents." She added that those parents have a "right to know" what private information is being collected via TikTok's "shadowy data collection practices."

In response, TikTok said: "Privacy and safety are top priorities for TikTok and we have robust policies, processes and technologies in place to help protect all users, and our teenage users in particular. We believe the claims lack merit and intend to vigorously defend the action."

According to the United Kingdom's Security Service, known as MI5, hostile states are creating fake LinkedIn profiles to trick users into spilling secrets. The BBC reports: At least 10,000 UK nationals have been approached by fake profiles linked to hostile states, on the professional social network LinkedIn, over the past five years, according to MI5. "Malicious profiles" are being used on "an industrial scale," the security agency's chief, Ken McCallum, said. A campaign has been launched to educate government workers about the threat. The effort -- Think Before You Link -- warns foreign spies are targeting those with access to sensitive information. One concern is the victims' colleagues, in turn, become more willing to accept follow-up requests - because it looks as if they share a mutual acquaintance.

MI5 did not specifically name LinkedIn but BBC News has learned the Microsoft-owned service is indeed the platform involved. The 10,000-plus figure includes staff in virtually every government departments as well as key industries, who might be offered speaking or business and travel opportunities that could lead to attempts to recruit them to provide confidential information. And it is thought a large number of those approached engaged initially with the profiles that contacted them online.

Facebook wants you to believe that the scraping of 533 million people's personal data from its platform, and the dumping of that data online by nefarious people, is something to be "normalised." The Register: A blundering Facebook public relations operative managed to send a journalist a copy of an internal document detailing the social network's strategy for containing the leaking of 533 million accounts -- and what the memo contained was infuriating though unsurprising. Belgian tech journalist Pieterjan van Leemputten asked the Mark Zuckerberg-owned company some questions about the theft and dumping online of account data earlier this month.

Miscreants had helped themselves to 70GB of names, phone numbers, dates of birth, email addresses, and more from people's Facebook profiles, thanks to a security weakness in the platform. Having stolen the data in 2019, crims bought and sold it among themselves before one shared it via a Tor-hidden site in early April, inviting anyone to come and help themselves to it all. Yet when van Leemputten asked Facebook's mouthpieces to respond, what he got in return was quite unexpected. As he told The Register: "Facebook accidentally sent me an internal email where they literally state that they will frame the recent 533 million data leak as a 'broad industry issue' and that they want to normalize this." The memo added, "To do this, the team is proposing a follow-up post in the next several weeks that talks more broadly about our anti-scraping work and provides more transparency around the amount of work we're doing in this area."

A U.S. advocacy group called The Repair Association is urging Americans to demand protections for their right to repair from the country's consumer protection agency.

"Tell the FTC: People just want to fix their stuff!" argues a page urging concerned U.S. citizens to sign an online petition (shared by long-time Slashdot reader Z00L00K).

The petition asks the FTC to...

• Enforce the law against companies who use illegal tying arrangements to force consumers to purchase connected repair services.

• Enforce the law against companies who violate the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act by voiding warranties when a consumer fixes something themselves or uses third-party parts or repair services.

• Enforce the law against companies who refuse to sell replacement parts, diagnostic and repair tools, or service information to independent repair providers.

• Publish new guidance on unfair, deceptive, and abusive terms in end user license agreements (EULAs) that: restrict independent or self repair; restrict access to parts and software; prohibit the transfer of user licenses; that and that purport to void warranties for independent or self repair.

• Issue new rules prohibiting exclusivity arrangements with suppliers, customers, and repair providers that exclude independent repair providers and suppress competition in the market for repair services.

• Issue new rules prohibiting companies from deceiving customers by selling products which cannot be repaired without destroying the device or cannot be repaired outside of the company's own service network, without disclosing that fact at the point of sale.

The Internet of Secure Things Alliance, an IoT security certification body (a.k.a. ioXt), has launched a new security certification for mobile apps and VPNs. From a report: The new ioXt compliance program includes a 'mobile application profile' -- a set of security-related criteria against which apps can be certified. The profile or mobile app assessment includes additional requirements for virtual private network (VPN) applications. Google and Amazon had a hand in shaping the criteria, along with number of certified labs such as NCC Group and Dekra, and mobile app security testing vendors such as NowSecure. Google's VPN within the Google One service is one of the first to be certified against the criteria. Mobile app makers can get their apps certified against a set of security and privacy requirements. The ioXt Alliance has a broad cross-section of members from the tech industry, with its board comprising execs from Amazon, Comcast, Facebook, Google, Legrand, Resideo, Schneider Electric, T-Mobile, the Zigbee Alliance, and the Z-Wave Alliance. About 20 industry figures helped write the requirements for the mobile app profile, including Amit Agrawal, a principal security architect at Amazon, and Brooke Davis from the Strategic Partnerships team at Google Play. Both are vice-chairs of the mobile app profile group.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Charter Communications employees who have been on strike since 2017 are building an Internet service provider in New York City called "People's Choice." "People's Choice Communications is an employee-owned social enterprise launched by members of IBEW Local #3 to bridge the digital divide and help our neighbors get connected to the Internet during the COVID-19 pandemic," the ISP's website says. "We are the workers who built a large part of New York City's Internet infrastructure in the first place. We built out [Charter] Spectrum's cable system, until in 2017, the company pushed us out on strike by taking away our healthcare, retirement, and other benefits. It's now the longest strike in US history."

So far, People's Choice says it has completed rooftop antenna installations at two schools in the Bronx and installed "hardline connections to wireless access points connecting 121 units" at housing for survivors of domestic violence who have disabilities. A Gizmodo article said the system is equipped to offer minimum speeds of 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream, meeting a broadband standard that has been used by the Federal Communications Commission since 2015. "We have a big portion of most of the Bronx covered with our antenna," IBEW Local #3 steward Troy Walcott told Gizmodo. "Now we have to go building by building to let people know we're out there and start turning them on." "A few dozen Spectrum strikers have been actively involved in the installations, but Walcott expects that at least one hundred workers are waiting in the wings for the project to scale up," the Gizmodo article said. "We work in affordable housing, supportive housing, co-op housing, NYCHA [NYC Housing Authority], homeless shelters, and regular old apartment complexes," the webpage notes. You can fill out this form if you're interested in bringing broadband to your building.

"After we build out a network in your building, it transfers to cooperative ownership, so profits are returned to users," the People's Choice website says. "We are able to provide high-speed service in most cases for $10-$20/month. No more cable company ripping you off, and as an owner, you have a vote in policies like data privacy."

Facebook said Thursday that since 2020, all its operations have been fully supported by renewable energy, hitting a goal the social media giant set in 2018 to combat climate change. From a report: The social network made the announcement ahead of Earth Day, an annual event on April 22 that focuses on environmental protection. The milestone shows what tech firms are doing to offset the harmful impacts they have on the environment as they make new devices and power data centers amid a growing appetite for tech products. For years, environmental groups such as Greenpeace have been putting increasing pressure on businesses like Facebook to become more eco-friendly.

Facebook also said its operations reached "net zero emissions," which the company says means "removing the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere as we emit." These emissions contribute to some pollution and a warmer climate, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. The social network said in the last three years, it cut down on its greenhouse gas emissions by 94%, surpassing its 75% reduction goal. Some of the emissions Facebook reduced came from its data centers, offices and other buildings the company leases.

Bloomberg's William Turton and Joshua Brustein have published a profile of the 23-year-old proprietor of VanwaTech, an internet provider in Vancouver, Wash. that "provides tech support to the U.S. networks of White nationalists and conspiracy theorists banned by the likes of Amazon." An anonymous Slashdot reader shares an excerpt from the report: Two and a half months before extremists invaded the U.S. Capitol, the far-right wing of the internet suffered a brief collapse. All at once, in the final weeks of the country's presidential campaign, a handful of prominent sites catering to White supremacists and adherents of the QAnon conspiracy movement stopped functioning. To many of the forums' most devoted participants, the outage seemed to prove the American political struggle was approaching its apocalyptic endgame. "Dems are making a concerted move across all platforms," read one characteristic tweet. "The burning of the land foreshadows a massive imperial strike back in the next few days."

In fact, there'd been no conspiracy to take down the sites; they'd crashed because of a technical glitch with VanwaTech, a tiny company in Vancouver, Wash., that they rely on for various kinds of network infrastructure. They went back online with a simple server reset about an hour later, after the proprietor, 23-year-old Nick Lim, woke up from a nap at his mom's condo. Lim founded VanwaTech in late 2019. He hosts some websites directly and provides others with technical services including protection against certain cyberattacks; his annual revenue, he says, is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Although small, the operation serves clients including the Daily Stormer, one of America's most notorious online destinations for overt neo-Nazis, and 8kun, the message board at the center of the QAnon movement, whose adherents were heavily involved in the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Lim exists in a singularly odd corner of the business world. He says he's not an extremist, just an entrepreneur with a maximalist view of free speech. "There needs to be a me, right?" he says, while eating pho at a Vietnamese restaurant near his headquarters. "Once you get to the point where you look at whether content is safe or unsafe, as soon as you do that, you've opened a can of worms." At best, his apolitical framing comes across as naive; at worst, as preposterous gaslighting. In interviews with Bloomberg Businessweek early in 2020, Lim said he didn't really know what QAnon was and had no opinion about Donald Trump. What's undeniable is the niche Lim is filling. His blip of a company is providing essential tech support for the kinds of violence-prone hate groups and conspiracists that tend to get banned by mainstream providers such as Amazon Web Services.

According to a new report from Light Reading, the three major U.S. carriers (four at the time) have reportedly abandoned their joint venture to launch a new Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative (CCMI), that promised interoperability for an RCS Universal Profile-based messaging standard. It was originally set to be launched in 2020. [For a detailed explanation of RCS Messaging, we recommend this article.] Android Police reports: Although the company handling the logistics behind the cross-carrier effort claims that it's still "continuing to move forward with preparations," a Verizon spokesperson told Light Reading that "the owners of the Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative decided to end the joint venture effort." [...] This may seem like bad news, but things have changed since 2019. In the time since the CCMI was announced, Google leapfrogged the carrier's selfish dithering and rolled out its own RCS messaging solution via the Messages app, all connected to its Jibe network (though it will use your carrier network if it's Universal Profile-compatible). It's a move that means customers don't have to wait on their carriers to start the work they should have done five years ago. More recently, T-Mobile has essentially handed the reins for its whole network messaging solution to Google by adopting Messages as the default SMS app for all T-Mobile phones, connecting all its customers to Google's RCS network.

Given what has and hasn't succeeded when it comes to RCS messaging, what we'd like to see is for Verizon and AT&T to follow T-Mobile, give up on their own stupid standards, and simply adopt Google's RCS Messaging -- either by connecting their chat apps to Google's Jibe network somehow or by adopting the Messages app as sanctioned solutions, as T-Mobile did. But in the meantime, there's nothing to prevent customers on either network from just installing the Messages app themselves and bypassing the carrier mess altogether -- especially since it sounds like the carriers have given up on fixing it.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: The Open Invention Network (OIN) defends the intellectual property (IP) rights of Linux and open-source software developers from patent trolls and the like. This is a global fight and now the OIN has a new, powerful allied member in China: Inspur. Inspur is a leading worldwide provider and China's leading data center infrastructure, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI) server providers. While not a household name like Lenovo, Inspur ranks among the world's top-three server manufacturers.

Inspur is only the latest of many companies to join the OIN. Besides such primarily hardware-oriented companies as Inspur, Baidu, China's largest search engine company, and global banks such as Barclays and the TD Bank Group, have joined the OIN. In 2021, companies far removed from traditional Linux companies such as Canonical, Red Hat, and SUSE all recognize Linux and OSS's importance. Donny Zhang, VP of Inspur information, said, "Linux and open source are critical elements in technologies which we are developing and provisioning. By joining the Open Invention Network, we are demonstrating our continued commitment to innovation, and supporting it with patent non-aggression in core Linux and adjacent open-source software." "Linux is rewriting what is possible in infrastructure computing," says OIN CEO Keith Bergelt. "OSS-based cloud computing and on-premise data centers are driving down the cost-per-compute while significantly increasing businesses' ability to provision AI and machine-learning (ML) capabilities. We appreciate Inspur's participation in joining OIN and demonstrating its commitment to innovation and patent non-aggression in open source."

An online tool lets customers pay to unmask the phone numbers of Facebook users that liked a specific Page, and the underlying dataset appears to be separate from the 500 million account database that made headlines last week, signifying another data breach or large scale scraping of Facebook users' data, Motherboard reports. From the report: Motherboard verified the tool, which comes in the form of a bot on the social network and messaging platform Telegram, outputs accurate phone numbers of Facebook users that aren't included in the dataset of 500 million users. The data also appears to be different to another Telegram bot outputting Facebook phone numbers that Motherboard first reported on in January. "Hello, can you tell me how you got my number?" one person included in the dataset asked Motherboard when reached for comment. "Omg, this is insane," they added. Another person returned Motherboard's call and, after confirming their name, said "If you have my number then yes it seems the data is accurate."

A description for the bot reads "The bot give [sic] out the phone numbers of users who have liked the Facebook page." To use the bot, customers need to first identify the unique identification code of the Facebook Page they want to get phone numbers from, be that a band, restaurant, or any other sort of Page. This is possible with at least one free to use website. From there, customers enter that code into the bot, which provides a cost of the data in U.S. dollars and the option to proceed with the purchase, according to Motherboard's tests. A Page with tens of thousands of likes from Facebook users can cost a few hundred dollars, the bot shows. The data for Motherboard's own Page would return 134,803 results and cost $539, for example.

Cory Doctorow, writing at Wired: When we talk about social media monopolies, we focus too much on network effects, and not enough on switching costs. Yes, it's true that all your friends are already stuck in a Big Tech silo that doesn't talk to any of the other Big Tech silos. It needn't be that way: interoperable platforms have existed since the first two Arpanet nodes came online. You can phone anyone with a phone number and email anyone with an email address.

The reason you can't talk to Facebook users without having a Facebook account isn't that it's technically impossible -- it's that Facebook forbids it. What's more, Facebook (and its Big Tech rivals) have the law on their side: the once-common practice of making new products that just work with existing ones (like third-party printer ink, or a Mac program that can read Microsoft Office files, or an emulator that can play old games) has been driven to the brink of extinction by Big Tech. They were fine with this kind of "competitive compatibility" when it benefited them, but now that they dominate the digital world, it's time for it to die.

To restore competitive compatibility, we would need reform to many laws: software copyright and patents, the anti-circumvention laws that protect digital rights management, and the cybersecurity laws that let companies criminalize violations of their terms of service.

Professional political trolling is still a thriving underground industry around the world, despite crackdowns from the biggest tech firms. From a report: Coordinated online disinformation efforts offer governments and political actors a fast, cheap way to get under rivals' skin. They also offer a paycheck to people who are eager for work, typically in developing countries. "It's a more sophisticated means of disinformation to weaken your advisories," said Todd Carroll, CISO and VP of Cyber Operations at CybelAngel. Facebook last week said it had uncovered a massive troll farm in Albania, linked to an Iranian militant group. The operation had the the hallmarks of a typical troll farm, which Facebook defines as "a physical location where a collective of operators share computers and phones to jointly manage a pool of fake accounts as part of an influence operation." "The main thing we saw was strange signals centralized coordination between different fake accounts," said Ben Nimmo, Facebook's global influence operations threat intelligence lead. Like numerous troll farms uncovered over the past few years, there was one easy giveaway: content from the network targeted Iran, but was posted on social media during normal working hours on Central European Time.

In late March, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) readmitted its founder Richard M. Stallman (RMS) to its board, catching everyone by surprise. Now, weeks later, RMS "offers a defensive non-apology apology for the words and actions that led to his resignation from the FSF," writes Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols via ZDNet. Slashdot reader destinyland shares an excerpt of his statement from the Free Software Foundation's official website: Looking back over his life starting as a teenager, Stallman writes: "I realized that I didn't understand the subtle cues that other people were responding to. Later in life, I discovered that some people had negative reactions to my behavior, which I did not even know about. Tending to be direct and honest with my thoughts, I sometimes made others uncomfortable or even offended them -- especially women. This was not a choice: I didn't understand the problem enough to know which choices there were."

"Sometimes I lost my temper because I didn't have the social skills to avoid it," Stallman adds. "Some people could cope with this; others were hurt. I apologize to each of them. Please direct your criticism at me, not at the Free Software Foundation. Occasionally I learned something about relationships and social skills, so over the years I've found ways to get better at these situations. When people help me understand an aspect of what went wrong, and that shows me a way of treating people better, I teach myself to recognize when I should act that way. I keep making this effort, and over time, I improve. Some have described me as being 'tone-deaf,' and that is fair. With my difficulty in understanding social cues, that tends to happen."

This is just an excerpt. But through eight short paragraphs, Stallman seems to want to offer up a larger context for his badly-received defense of Professor Minsky on an MIT mailing list. (And Stallman adds later that "I condemn racism and sexism, including their systemic forms, so when people say I don't, that hurts too...") "I've learned something from this about how to be kind to people who have been hurt," writes Stallman. "In the future, that will help me be kind to people in other situations, which is what I hope to do." "RMS did not, however, address the many other issues which caused people to regret his return to a position of leadership," writes Vaughan-Nichols. Soon after the RMS post appeared on the FSF's front page, the board spoke on why they'd brought him back. The unsigned document states: The voting members of the Free Software Foundation, which include the board of directors, voted to appoint Richard Stallman to a board seat after several months of thorough discussion and thoughtful deliberation.

We decided to bring RMS back because we missed his wisdom. His historical, legal and technical acumen on free software is unrivaled. He has a deep sensitivity to the ways that technologies can contribute to both the enhancement and the diminution of basic human rights. His global network of connections is invaluable. He remains the most articulate philosopher and an unquestionably dedicated advocate of freedom in computing.

RMS acknowledges that he has made mistakes. He has sincere regrets, especially at how anger toward him personally has negatively impacted the reputation and mission of FSF. While his personal style remains troubling for some, a majority of the board feel his behavior has moderated and believe that his thinking strengthens the work of the FSF in pursuit of its mission. We take full responsibility for how badly we handled the news of his election to a board seat. We had planned a flow of information that was not executed in a timely manner or delivered in the proper sequence. [...]

Long-time Slashdot reader xiando quotes LinuxReviews: The community distribution Arch Linux has up to now required you to manually install it by entering a whole lot of scary commands in a terminal. Arch version 2021.04.01 features a new guided installer [reached by] typing python -m archinstall guided into the console you get when you boot the Arch Linux installation ISO.

It is not very novice-friendly, or user-friendly, but it gets the job done and it will work fine for those with some basic GNU/Linux knowledge.
Tech Radar writes that previously Arch Linux had "a rather convoluted installation process, which has given rise to a stream of Arch-based distros that are easier to install," adding that the new installer "was reportedly promoted as an official installation mechanism back in January, and was actively worked upon leading to its inclusion in the installation medium." Users have been calling on Arch Linux for simplifying the installation process for a long time, to bring it in line with other Linux distros. However, the Arch philosophy has always been to put the users in charge of every aspect of their installation, which is the antithesis of automated installers.
Phoronix calls the new installer "very quick and easy," although "granted not as user-friendly / polished as say the Debian Installer, Red Hat's Anaconda installer, even Ubuntu's Subiquity, and other TUI/GUI Linux installers out there." They also note that Archinstall "does allow automatically partitioning the drive with your choice of file-system options, automatically installing a desktop environment if desired, configuring the network interfaces, and all the other basics." The method is quick enough that I'll likely use archinstall for future Arch Linux benchmarks on Phoronix as it also then applies a sane set of defaults for users... Five minutes or less and off to the races, ready for Arch Linux."
But Slashdot reader I75BJC still favors "scary commands in a terminal," leaving this comment on the original submission: If you can't type with the big adults, stay on your PlayStation.

Even Apple, with its very good GUI has a command line. The command line commands are more flexible, more specific, more subtle than the pointy-clicky GUI.

Angel investor Balaji S. Srinivasan (also the former CTO of Coinbase) is now focused on 1729.com, which wants to give you money to do his bidding — or something like that. He's calling it "the first newsletter that pays you.

"It has a regular feed of paid tasks and tutorials with $1000+ in crypto prizes per day, and doubles as a vehicle for distributing a new book I've been writing called The Network State."

His latest post? "How to Start a New Country" (which envisions starting with a "cloud first" digital community): We recruit online for a group of people interested in founding a new virtual social network, a new city, and eventually a new country. We build the embryonic state as an open source project, we organize our internal economy around remote work, we cultivate in-person levels of civility, we simulate architecture in VR, and we create art and literature that reflects our values.

Over time we eventually crowdfund territory in the real world, but not necessarily contiguous territory. Because an under-appreciated fact is that the internet allows us to network enclaves. Put another way, a cloud community need not acquire all its territory in one place at one time. It can connect a thousand apartments, a hundred houses, and a dozen cul-de-sacs in different cities into a new kind of fractal polity with its capital in the cloud. Over time, community members migrate between these enclaves and crowdfund territory nearby, with every individual dwelling and group house presenting an independent opportunity for expansion...

[Cloud countries] are set up to be a scaled live action role-playing game (LARP), a feat of imagination practiced by large numbers of people at the same time. And the experience of cryptocurrencies over the last decade shows us just how powerful such a shared LARP can be...

The cloud country concept "just" requires stacking together many existing technologies, rather than inventing new ones like Mars-capable rockets or permanent-habitation seasteads. Yet at the same time it avoids the obvious pathways of election, revolution, and war — all of which are ugly and none of which provide much venue for individual initiative...

Could a sufficiently robust cloud country with, say, 1-10M committed digital citizens, provable cryptocurrency reserves, and physical holdings all over the earth similarly achieve societal recognition from the United Nations?
For the "do his bidding" part, the post promises that up to ten $100 prizes will be awarded to people who share constructive reviews on their sites/social media pages (including proposals for extensions).

Previously the site had offered $100 for the ten best hirelings "running a newsletter for technological progressives at your own domain, as a way to begin incentivizing the decentralization of media." (It cited a tweet that argues succinctly that "The NYT is telling anti-longevity stories for us. We must take control of our own story.") In general the site describes itself as "a newsletter for technological progressives. That means people who are into cryptocurrencies, startup cities, mathematics, transhumanism, space travel, reversing aging, and initially-crazy-seeming-but-technologically-feasible ideas." So the newsletter-creating task had envisioned them all "constantly pushing for technology in general and reversing aging in particular, writing like their lives depended on it. In other words, blog or die!"

Other rewards went to the first 10 people to complete three Elixir problems, the 100 people who posted the best inspiring proof-of-exercising photos, and 40 people who helped identify people and places "where the ascending world is surpassing the declining world."

For one of his latest "tasks," Srinivasan wants you to read a long essay on quantum computing (and answer questions), with an optional series of "review emails". $10 in bitcoin will be awarded only to the first and last 50 readers/question-answerers, while another $100 in bitcoin will be awarded to the first and last 5 review-email readers who "persist for a month."

Broadband use surged 30% to 40% during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, and even reached 60% in some areas, an industry group has concluded. CNET reports: The Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group released data this week that it gathered from internet service providers, broadband analytics firms, and networking companies that help deliver data. We all consumed more downstream data -- the flow from the internet to the home -- but upstream use grew faster. That's an important consideration given that most cable and DSL services offer much higher downstream capacity. All those videoconferences for work meetings and online schooling likely were involved in the upstream data traffic. "Some networks saw more than 300% increase in the amount of video conferencing traffic from February to October 2020," the report said.

Though the internet itself held up well overall, there are problems. "Rural and low-income households have struggled" with broadband access to online services, the report said, and some households suffered with older equipment that couldn't handle heavy traffic or the increase in networked devices in the home. If you're having problems at home, you should consider an Ethernet cable connection to your network router, upgrading to a mesh network with multiple network access points, upgrading your PC or phone, or paying for a faster internet connection if it's available.

Twitter held talks in recent months to acquire Clubhouse, the buzzy audio-based social network, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The companies discussed a potential valuation of roughly $4 billion for Clubhouse, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. Discussions are no longer ongoing, and it's unclear why they stalled, the people added. [...] Clubhouse is barely a year old but has drawn appearances from some of the biggest names in business and Hollywood. Established social media companies have quickly gone to work on their own versions of Clubhouse, including Twitter. Facebook is exploring one, too, and Microsoft's LinkedIn and Slack have also said they're working on similar features for their networks.

T-Mobile made a series of announcements Wednesday as part of its latest 'Un-carrier' initiative, including the official launch of its new home internet service, 5G phone offerings, and new investment in rural areas. From a report: T-Mobile Home Internet: After piloting a home internet service powered by its wireless network, T-Mobile Home Internet is now available to more than 30 million U.S. households. It costs $60 per month -- $10 more per month than the pilot program -- with average expected speeds of 100 Mbps for most customers and an included 4G/5G gateway device.

T-Mobile Hometown: The Bellevue, Wash.-based company will build hundreds of new retail stores and create 5,000 jobs in small U.S. towns. It is also adding "Hometown Experts" to towns where it can't build a store, and committing $25 million over five years to fund community development projects in rural areas.

5G phones: T-Mobile said it will let postpaid customers trade in any old phone in working condition for a new Samsung Galaxy A32 5G smartphone for free after 24 monthly bill credits.

Google today open-sourced Lyra in beta, an audio codec that uses machine learning to produce high-quality voice calls. VentureBeat reports: The code and demo, which are available on GitHub, compress raw audio down to 3 kilobits per second for "quality that compares favorably to other codecs," Google says. Lyra's architecture is separated into two pieces, an encoder and decoder. When someone talks into their phone, the encoder captures distinctive attributes, called features, from their speech. Lyra extracts these features in 40-millisecond chunks and then compresses and sends them over the network. It's the decoder's job to convert the features back into an audio waveform that can be played out over the listener's phone.

According to Google, Lyra's architecture is similar to traditional audio codecs, which form the backbone of internet communication. But while these traditional codecs are based on digital signal processing techniques, the key advantage for Lyra comes from the ability of its decoder to reconstruct a high-quality signal. Google believes there are a number of applications Lyra might be uniquely suited to, from archiving large amounts of speech and saving battery to alleviating network congestion in emergency situations.