sciencehabit writes: In its final stages, the neurological disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) can bring extreme isolation. People lose control of their muscles, and communication may become impossible. But with the help of an implanted device that reads his brain signals, a man in this "complete" locked-in state could select letters and form sentences, researchers report this week. "People have really doubted whether this was even feasible," says Mariska Vansteensel, a brain-computer interface researcher at the University Medical Center Utrecht who was not involved in the study, published in Nature Communications. If the new spelling system proves reliable for all people who are completely locked in -- and if it can be made more efficient and affordable -- it might allow thousands of people to reconnect to their families and care teams, says Reinhold Scherer, a neural engineer at the University of Essex.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine is suing Grubhub for deceptive business practices, saying its food delivery app covertly inflates prices for diners who order through it. The suit demands an end to a laundry list of allegedly illegal practices as well as financial restitution and civil penalties. The newly filed lawsuit (PDF) argues that Grubhub's promises of "free" online orders -- and "unlimited free delivery" for Grubhub Plus -- are misleading. While customers can make pickup orders for free, the company charges delivery and service fees for standard orders and service fees for Grubhub Plus orders, displaying the service fee until recently as part of a single line with sales taxes. "Grubhub misled District residents and took advantage of local restaurants to boost its own profits, even as District consumers and small businesses struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic," said Racine in a statement. "Grubhub charged hidden fees and used bait-and-switch advertising tactics -- which are illegal."

The complaint says Grubhub orders often cost more than ordering the same item at a restaurant and argues that the company fails to reasonably disclose this to consumers. "Because Grubhub already charges consumers several different types of fees for its services ... consumers expect that the menu prices listed on Grubhub are the same prices offered at the restaurant or on the restaurant's website," it says. Grubhub has also listed many restaurants without their permission to expand its service, routing orders through its services and taking a commission. The complaint says it listed "over a thousand" restaurants in DC that had no connection with the company, asserting that the unapproved listings often contained menu errors and resulted in orders that would "take longer to fill, would be filled incorrectly, would be delivered cold, or would eventually be cancelled altogether."

Grubhub -- which also operates Seamless and several other food delivery apps -- has made more elaborate attempts to insert itself into restaurant transactions as well. The lawsuit notes its launch of unsanctioned microsites that appear to be official restaurant sites, as well as custom phone numbers that let it charge fees when customers call restaurants, even when the calls didn't result in orders. The company also offered a "Supper for Support" promotion that required restaurants to foot the bill for a special discount; it offered restaurants $250 in compensation after a backlash. "During the past year, we've sought to engage in a constructive dialogue with the DC attorney general's office to help them understand our business and to see if there were any areas for improvement," said Katie Norris, director of corporate communications, in a statement. "We are disappointed they have moved forward with this lawsuit because our practices have always complied with DC law, and in any event, many of the practices at issue have been discontinued. We will aggressively defend our business in court and look forward to continuing to serve DC restaurants and diners."

According to The Verge, Grubhub "says the app no longer lists restaurants that haven't agreed to work with it, and it's retired its microsites and the Supper for Support program." It will also make it more clear to users that prices might be lower when ordering directly from the restaurant, "and it will specify in marketing that only pickup orders are free," adds The Verge. The company maintains that it "has not misrepresented its fees," however.

A judge on Brazil's Supreme Court has reversed a ban on Telegram, two days after blocking the messaging app for ignoring orders. Engadget reports: Telegram CEO Pavel Durov said the company missed the court's emails. "We complied with an earlier court decision in late February and responded with a suggestion to send future takedown requests to a dedicated email address," Durov wrote on Telegram on Friday. "Unfortunately, our response must have been lost, because the Court used the old general-purpose email address in further attempts to reach us. As a result, we missed its decision in early March that contained a follow-up takedown request. Luckily, we have now found and processed it, delivering another report to the Court today."

Durov added that Telegram will appoint a representative in Brazil and set up a framework so it can address requests more promptly. According to The New York Times, Telegram complied with the court's demands by taking down classified information posted on President Jair Bolsonaro's channel and deleting the accounts of a Bolsonaro supporter who was allegedly spreading misinformation. The court then reversed the ban. Telegram reacted so swiftly that the ban (which was imposed by a judge who is running multiple investigations into Bolsonaro and his allies for spreading misinformation) was never actually in effect. The court order gave Apple, Google, ISPs and phone providers five days to block the app. Telegram will also "start promoting verified information and labeling posts containing falsehoods," adds Engadget. "It will also monitor the 100 most popular channels in the country," which account for 95 percent of views of public posts.

OneWeb, the satellite company part-owned by the British state, is turning to Elon Musk's SpaceX for help after it was barred from using Russian rockets to launch its latest orbiters. From a report: Under the arrangement, the communications firm will partner with SpaceX for its first launches later this year, adding to the 428 micro-satellites it already has in low-earth orbit. OneWeb and SpaceX did not disclose the terms of the launch arrangement. The company quotes a standard price of $67m to launch a Falcon 9 rocket â" up from $62m earlier this year, "to account for excessive levels of inflation." The 12% increase is the first in nearly six years. OneWeb was forced to abandon its plans to launch on one of Russia's Soyuz rockets earlier this month, after Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the Russian space agency, demanded the satellites not be used for military purposes and the British government halt its financial backing.

The Washington Post looks at what happened after Starlink activated its satellite-based internet service to help Ukraine: Ukraine has already received thousands of antennas from Musk's companies and European allies, which has proved "very effective," Ukraine's minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov said in an interview with The Washington Post Friday. "The quality of the link is excellent," Fedorov said through a translator, using a Starlink connection from an undisclosed location. "We are using thousands, in the area of thousands, of terminals with new shipments arriving every other day...." A person familiar with Starlink's effort in Ukraine, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said there are more than 5,000 terminals in the country....

Internet flows deteriorated on the first day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 and have not fully recovered, according to data-monitoring services. But since that initial dip, connectivity has remained fairly stable, with mainly temporary, isolated outages even during heavy Russian shelling. "Every day there are outages, but generally service comes back," said Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis for Kentik, which monitors global data flows.

Even before Fedorov tweeted at Musk for help, SpaceX was working on a way to get Starlink to Ukraine. President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in a talk at California Institute of Technology this month that the company had been working for several weeks to get regulatory approval to allow the satellites to communicate in Ukraine.
In addition, the Washington Post reports, this week on Twitter Elon Musk also "challenged Putin to a fight and followed up by pledging he would use just one hand if Putin was scared. And he told Putin he could bring a bear." Reached for comment by the Post's reporters, Elon Musk responded by telling The Post to give his regards "to your puppet master Besos," following it with two emojis.

But the Post's article also argues Starlink's technology "could have widespread implications for the future of war. Internet has become an essential tool for communication, staying informed and even powering weapons." And The Telegraph reports that Starlink "is helping Ukrainian forces win the drone war as they use the technology in their effort to track and kill invading Russians." In the vanguard of Ukraine's astonishingly effective military effort against Vladimir Putin's forces is a unit called Aerorozvidka (Aerial Reconnaissance) which is using surveillance and attack drones to target Russian tanks and positions. Amid internet and power outages, which are expected to get worse, Ukraine is turning to the newly available Starlink system for some of its communications. Drone teams in the field, sometimes in badly connected rural areas, are able to use Starlink to connect them to targeters and intelligence on their battlefield database. They can direct the drones to drop anti-tank munitions, sometimes flying up silently to Russian forces at night as they sleep in their vehicles...

Should Ukraine's internet largely collapse, the "drone warriors" of Aerorozvidka would still be able to communicate with their bases by sending signals from mobile Starlink terminals, and using ground stations in neighbouring countries including Poland.... As Ukraine's internet is inevitably degraded, Starlink will be an alternative. General James Dickinson, commander of US Space Command, told the Senate armed services committee: "What we're seeing with Elon Musk and the Starlink capabilities is really showing us what a megaconstellation, or a proliferated architecture, can provide in terms of redundancy and capability."
It's not all Starlink. The Telegraph points out that "The Ukrainian system benefitted from equipment given by Western countries, including radio communications which superceded Soviet-era technology, and the US has also poured in millions of dollars to protect against Russian hacking, jamming of signals and attempts to 'spoof' GPS technology."

And meanwhile, weakness in Russia's own communications infrastructure may have played a role in the killing of five senior Russian generals in the last three weeks, according to a recent CNN interview with retired U.S. army general and former CIA director David Petraeus: "The bottom line is that [Russia's] command-and-control has broken down. Their communications have been jammed by the Ukranians.

Their secure comms didn't work. They had to go single-channel. That's jammable, and that's exactly what the Ukranians have been doing to that. They used cellphones. The Ukranians blocked the prefix for Russia, so that didn't work. Then they took down 3G. [The Russians] are literally stealing cellphones from Ukranian civilians to communicate among each other.

So what happens? The column gets stopped. An impatient general is sitting back there in his armored or whatever vehicle. He goes forward to find out what's going on... And the Ukranians have very, very good snipers, and they've just been picking them off left and right.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for submitting the story.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Proposed UK laws could see top managers at tech companies be jailed if they fail to meet the demands of regulators. The laws, coming in the form of an Online Safety Bill, were introduced to Parliament on Thursday after almost a year of consultation. The UK government commenced work on the proposed laws in May last year to push a duty of care onto social media platforms so that tech companies are forced to protect users from dangerous content, such as disinformation and online abuse.

Under the proposed legislation, executives of tech companies could face prosecution or jail time if they fail to cooperate with information notices issued by Ofcom, UK's communications regulator. Through the Bill, Ofcom would gain the power to issue information notices for the purpose of determining whether tech companies are performing their online safety functions. A raft of new offenses have also been added to the Bill, including making in-scope companies' senior managers criminally liable if they destroy evidence, fail to attend or provide false information in interviews with Ofcom, or obstruct the regulator when it enters company offices.

The Bill also looks to require social media platforms, search engines, and other apps and websites that allow people to post their own content to implement various measures to protect children, tackle illegal activity and uphold their stated terms and conditions. Among these measures are mandatory age checks for sites that host pornography, criminalizing cyberflashing, and a requirement for large social media platforms to give adults the ability to automatically block people who have not verified their identity on the platforms. The proposed laws, if passed, would also force social media platforms to up their moderation efforts, with the Bill calling for platforms to remove paid-for scam ads swiftly once they are alerted of their existence. A requirement for social media platforms to moderate "legal but harmful" content is also contained in the Bill, which will make large social media platforms have a duty to carry risk assessments on these types of content. Platforms will also have to set out clearly in terms of service how they will deal with such content and enforce these terms consistently.

The U.S. government is warning of "possible threats" to satellite communication networks amid fears that recent attacks on satellite networks in Europe, sparked by the war in Ukraine, could soon spread to the United States. From a reportL: A joint CISA-FBI advisory published this week urges satellite communication (SATCOM) network providers and critical infrastructure organizations that rely on satellite networks to bolster their cybersecurity defenses due to an increased likelihood of cyberattack, warning that a successful intrusion could create risk in their customer environments.

While the advisory did not name specific sectors under threat, the use of satellite communications is widespread across the United States. It's estimated that about eight million Americans rely on SATCOM networks for internet access. Ruben Santamarta, a cybersecurity expert who specializes in analyzing satellite communications systems, told TechCrunch that networks are used in a wide number of industries, including aviation, government, the media and the military, as well as gas facilities and electricity service stations that are located in remote places.

Slashdot reader quonset shares this report from Reuters: Instagram users in Russia have been notified that the service will cease as of midnight on Sunday after its owner Meta Platforms said last week it would allow social media users in Ukraine to post messages such as "Death to the Russian invaders". An email message from the state communications regulator told users to move their photos and videos from Instagram before it was shut down, and encouraged them to switch to Russia's own "competitive internet platforms".

Meta, which also owns Facebook, said Friday that the temporary change in its hate speech policy applied only to Ukraine, in the wake of Russia's Feb. 24 invasion. The company said it would be wrong to prevent Ukrainians from "expressing their resistance and fury at the invading military forces"....

The message to Instagram users from the state media regulator, Roskomnadzor, described the decision to allow calls for violence against Russians as a breach of international law. "We need to ensure the psychological health of citizens, especially children and adolescents, to protect them from harassment and insults online," it said, explaining the decision to close down the platform.
"The tears were flowing Sunday among Russia's airbrushed Instagram influencers, who begged their followers in farewell posts to join them on alternative social media platforms..." reports the Washington Post: On the platform, emotions ran high Sunday among Russians who were about to lose thousands of dollars they received to promote various products, as well as access to millions of followers amassed over the years. "I'm writing this post now and crying," Olga Buzova, a Russian reality television star, wrote, saying she hoped "it's all not true and we will remain here...."

The ban on Instagram is the latest example of how Russia's citizens are being isolated from the rest of the world as a result of Moscow's war against Ukraine. Since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion on Feb. 24, his government has also pulled the plug on Russia's opposition-oriented radio and television networks, part of a broader effort to squelch domestic dissent in response to the war. Thousands of Russians have been arrested for attempting to protest the invasion.... But perhaps no move is more isolating than removing Russians from social media platforms that connect them directly to other users around the world. Instagram counted nearly 60 million users in Russia in 2021, according to the market data firm Statista, about 40 percent of the country's population. The platform is also a huge revenue source for its users, who rake in cash from sponsors by posting promotional content.
"We know that over 80 percent of people in Russia on Instagram follow an account from outside of Russia," Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a video, according to the Post's article.

It adds that "It is unclear how many Russians will continue to be able to access Instagram using Virtual Private Networks, or VPNs."

Slashdot reader nickwinlund77 quotes the New York Times (also quoted here): DuckDuckGo has little control over its search results because they are provided by Microsoft's Bing, which announced that it would follow the European Union's order to restrict access to the Russian state news agencies RT and Sputnik. But the criticism from the far right was directed at DuckDuckGo. The conservative website Breitbart said DuckDuckGo was "adopting the censorship policies" of Big Tech. In social media channels devoted to conspiracy theories, users vowed to switch to alternatives like the Russian search engine Yandex....

In a statement, Kamyl Bazbaz, the vice president of communications for DuckDuckGo, said that the affected sites were engaged in "active disinformation campaigns," meaning they were similar to other low-quality websites already penalized by search algorithms. "This isn't censorship, it's just search rankings," he said....

The company also announced this month that it would pause its relationship with Yandex, the Russian search engine, which was providing certain links for results in Russia and Turkey.

The White House has been closely watching TikTok's rise as a dominant news source, leading to its decision to approach a select group of the platform's most influential names. From a report: This week, the administration began working with Gen Z For Change, a nonprofit advocacy group, to help identify top content creators on the platform to orchestrate a briefing aimed at answering questions about the conflict and the United States' role in it.

The briefing was led by Matt Miller, a special adviser for communications at the White House National Security Council, and Psaki. The Washington Post obtained a recording of the call, and in it, Biden officials stressed the power these creators had in communicating with their followers. "We recognize this is a critically important avenue in the way the American public is finding out about the latest," said the White House director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty, "so we wanted to make sure you had the latest information from an authoritative source."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Consumer Reports wants the Federal Communications Commission to take a closer look at whether Internet service providers are complying with a US law that prohibits them from charging hardware rental fees when customers use their own equipment. In a filing submitted to the FCC this week, Consumer Reports said it asked members about their Internet bills and got over 350 responses, with some suggesting violations of either the letter or spirit of the law. "Some contain allegations that the law is being violated, whereas others state the new statute is being respected. Many more stories suggest that ISPs dissuade consumers from using their own equipment, typically by refusing to troubleshoot any service disruptions if consumers opt not to rent the ISP's devices. Such practices result in de facto situations where consumers feel pressured or forced to rent equipment that they would prefer to own instead," Consumer Reports told the FCC.

Consumer Reports' filing came in response to the FCC asking for public comment on the implementation of the Television Viewer Protection Act (TVPA), which took effect in December 2020. In addition to price-transparency rules for TV service, the law prohibited TV and broadband providers from charging rental or lease fees when "the provider has not provided the equipment to the consumer; or the consumer has returned the equipment to the provider." All the comments collected by Consumer Reports are available here. The FCC filing includes examples of complaints about AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Charter Spectrum, Frontier, Windstream, and Cox, though the complaints weren't all about rental fees.

In its call for public input, the FCC asked for comment on "the extent to which (if at all) subject entities continue to assess charges for equipment that are expressly prohibited by the statute." [...] Consumer Reports said its questions for members were "designed to measure whether or not ISPs were in compliance... and also to solicit consumer opinion on whether or not it was difficult to use consumer-owned equipment versus renting those devices from the provider. Notably, neither of the two cable industry trade associations mentioned this issue in any detail in their comments filed last month at the Commission." Consumer Reports said that some of the responses "suggest the statute is not being complied with as vigorously as Congress intended... These allegations merit further investigation by the Commission." Consumer Reports offered to share contact information for the customers with the FCC so it can investigate further.

The Ukrainian government is preparing for the potential need to move its data and servers abroad if Russia's invading forces push deeper into the country, a senior cybersecurity official told Reuters on Wednesday. From the report: Victor Zhora, the deputy chief of Ukraine's State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection, emphasized his department was planning for a contingency, but that it is being considered at all suggests Ukrainians want to be ready for any Russian threat to seize sensitive government documents. The move could only happen after regulatory changes approved by Ukrainian lawmakers, Zhora said.

Government officials have already been shipping equipment and backups to more secure areas of Ukraine beyond the reach of Russian forces, who invaded on Feb. 24 and are laying siege to several cities. Last month Zhora told Politico there were plans to move critical data out of the capital Kyiv should it be threatened, but preparations for potentially moving data abroad go a step further. Ukraine has received offers to host data from a variety of countries, Zhora said, declining to identify them. For reasons of proximity "a European location will be preferred," he said.

Zhora gave few details of how such a move might be executed, but he said past efforts to keep government data out of Russia's grasp involved either the physical transport of servers and removable storage devices or the digital migration of data from one service or server to another. Government agencies would have to decide on a case by case basis whether to keep their operations running inside the country or evacuate them. [...] Russia possessing Ukrainian government databases and intelligence files could be helpful if Russia wanted to control Ukraine.

"The events of recent days have taken us away from the stable and predictable development of mankind," argue two Moscow-based technology professors in Communications of the ACM, citing anticipated shortages of high-performance processors. But fortunately, they have a partial workarond...

One of the professors — Andrei Sukhov of HSE University in Moscow — explained their idea to the Register: In a timely piece Sukhov explains how Russian computer science teams are looking at building the next generation of clusters using older clustering technologies and a slew of open-source software for managing everything from code portability to parallelization as well as standards including PCIe 3.0, USB 4, and even existing Russian knock-off buses inspired by Infiniband (Angara ES8430).... While all the pieces might be in place, there is still the need to manufacture new boards, a problem Sukhov said can be routed around by using wireless protocols as the switching mechanism between processors, even though the network latency hit will be subpar, making it difficult to do any true tightly coupled, low-latency HPC simulations (which come in handy in areas like nuclear weapons simulations, as just one example).

"Given that the available mobile systems-on-chip are on the order of 100 Gflops, performance of several teraflops for small clusters of high-performance systems-on-chip is quite achievable," Sukhov added. "The use of standard open operating systems, such as Linux, will greatly facilitate the use of custom applications and allow such systems to run in the near future. It is possible that such clusters can be heterogeneous, including different systems-on-chip for different tasks (or, for example, FPGAs to create specialized on-the-fly configurable accelerators for specific tasks)...."

As he told The Register in a short exchange following the article, "Naturally, it will be impossible to make a new supercomputer in Russia in the coming years. Nevertheless, it is quite possible to close all the current needs in computing and data processing using the approach we have proposed. Especially if we apply hardware acceleration to tasks, depending on their type," he adds.... "During this implementation, software solutions and new protocols for data exchange, as well as computing technologies, will be worked out."
As for Russia's existing supercomputers, "no special problems are foreseen," Sukhov added. "These supercomputers are based on Linux and can continue to operate without the support of the companies that supplied the hardware and software."

Thanks to Slashdot reader katydid77 for sharing the article.

Cogent Communications, one of the world's largest internet intercontinental backbone providers, has cut ties with Russian customers over its invasion of Ukraine. The Verge reports: In a letter to Russian customers obtained by The Washington Post, Cogent cited "economic sanctions" and "the increasingly uncertain security situation" as the motives behind its total shutdown in the country. Cogent similarly told The Verge that it "terminated its contracts" with Russian customers in compliance with the European Union's move to ban Russian state-backed media outlets.

As Doug Madory, an internet analyst at network tracking company Kentik points out... unplugging Russia from Cogent's global network will likely result in slower connectivity, but won't completely disconnect Russians from the internet... Traffic from Cogent's former customers will instead fall back on other backbone providers in the country, potentially resulting in network congestion. There isn't any indication as to whether other internet backbone providers will also suspend services in Russia.

Digital rights activists have criticized Cogent's decision to disconnect itself from Russia, arguing that it could prevent Russian civilians from accessing credible information about the invasion. "Cutting Russians off from internet access cuts them off from sources of independent news and the ability to organize anti-war protests," Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said on Twitter....

Cogent's goal is to prevent the Russian government from using the company's networks for cyberattacks and propaganda, The Post reports.
The Post argues that on a larger scale,"these moves bring Russia closer to the day when its online networks face largely inward, their global connections weakened, if not cut off entirely." "I am very afraid of this," said Mikhail Klimarev, executive director of the Internet Protection Society, which advocates for digital freedoms in Russia. "I would like to convey to people all over the world that if you turn off the Internet in Russia, then this means cutting off 140 million people from at least some truthful information. As long as the Internet exists, people can find out the truth. There will be no Internet — all people in Russia will only listen to propaganda...."

[E]ven two weeks ago, Russia's Internet was comparatively free and integrated into the larger online world, allowing civil society to organize, opposition figures to deliver their messages and ordinary Russians to gain ready access to alternative sources of news in an era when Putin was strangling his nation's free newspapers and broadcast stations.... Patrick Boehler, head of digital strategy at Radio Free Europe, said CrowdTangle data showed that independent news stories in the Russian language worldwide were getting shared many more times on social media than stories from state-run media. He said that once the Kremlin lost control of the narrative, it would have been hard to regain.

Now the last independent journalistic outposts are gone, and the Internet options are increasingly constricted through a combination of forces — all spurred by war in Ukraine but coming from both within and outside Russia.... Government censors also blocked access to the BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Deutsche Welle, as well as major Ukrainian websites. The BBC, CNN and other international news organizations said they were suspending reporting in Russia because of a new law that could result in 15 years of prison for publishing what government officials deem false news on the war.
Meanwhile, Politico reminds us that even Oracle has shut down its Russian cloud service operations. Laura Manley, the executive director of Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, said Russia is creating a perfect situation to control its narrative and limit outside coverage of its Ukrainian invasion by Western social media sources. "You have the lack of eyewitness information because you have critical infrastructure being shut off," she said. "So it's sort of a worst case scenario in terms of getting real-time accurate information."

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk yesterday warned that Starlink user terminals in Ukraine could be targeted by Russia and advised users to take precautions. Ars Technica reports: "Important warning: Starlink is the only non-Russian communications system still working in some parts of Ukraine, so probability of being targeted is high. Please use with caution," Musk tweeted. When asked for specific advice, Musk said people in Ukraine should turn Starlink on only when it's needed, place the antenna "as far away from people as possible," and "place light camouflage over [the] antenna to avoid visual detection." A thin layer of spray paint would work if there are no metal particles in the paint, he wrote. One Twitter user asked Musk if Starlink could face a cyberattack from Russia similar to the one that affected Viasat satellite service. Musk responded, "Almost all Viasat Ukraine user terminals were rendered permanently unusable by a Russian cyberattack on day of invasion, so... yes."

As previously reported, Ukraine Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov asked Musk to activate Starlink in Ukraine shortly after Russia's invasion of the country disrupted Internet service. Musk responded in the affirmative, and two days later, Fedorov tweeted a photo of a truck full of newly arrived Starlink terminals. It's not clear exactly how many Starlink terminals are available in Ukraine, but Fedorov tweeted to Musk, "We will keep you posted as we roll out more Starlinks across the country." In another tweet, he said, "SpaceX reprioritized to cyber defense and overcoming signal jamming. Will cause slight delays in Starship and Starlink V2."

The Wikimedia Foundation has issued a statement supporting Russian Wikipedia volunteers after a censorship demand from internet regulators. From a report: On Tuesday, tech and communications regulator Roskomnadzor threatened to block Wikipedia over the Russian-language page covering Russia's invasion of Ukraine, claiming it contained "false messages" about war casualties and the effects of economic sanctions, among other things. "On March 1st 2022 the Wikimedia Foundation received a Russian government demand to remove content related to the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine posted by volunteer contributors to Russian Wikipedia," reads the statement sent to The Verge via email. "As ever, Wikipedia is an important source of reliable, factual information in this crisis. In recognition of this important role, we will not back down in the face of efforts to censor and intimidate members of our movement. We stand by our mission to deliver free knowledge to the world."

A leading American Internet service provider, Cogent Communications, said it was severing relations with Russian customers on Friday, a move that gives Ukrainian officials another victory in their campaign to isolate Russia online. The Washington Post reports: Cogent chief executive Dave Schaeffer said the company did not want to keep ordinary Russians off the Internet but did want to prevent the Russian government from using Cogent's networks to launch cyberattacks or deliver propaganda targeting Ukraine at a time of war. "Our goal is not to hurt anyone. It's just to not empower the Russian government to have another tool in their war chest," Schaeffer said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Cogent, based in Washington, D.C., is one of the world's largest providers of what's known as Internet backbone -- roughly comparable to the interstate highway system, providing the primary conduit for data flows that local companies then route to individual domains. Schaeffer said Cogent's networks carry about one-quarter of the world's Internet traffic. Cogent has several dozen customers in Russia, with many of them, such as state-owned telecommunications giant Rostelecom, being close to the government.

Russia, like most nations, is connected to the world by several backbone providers, but Cogent is among its largest. The company began terminating its Russian companies at noon Friday but was doing so gradually. Some customers asked for a delay of up to several days while they found other Internet sources, Schaeffer said, and the company is trying to accommodate those requests. "We're pretty confident that we're not interfering with anyone's ability to get some information," he said, though he acknowledged the likelihood of slowdowns and other disruptions with Russia. "In light of the unwarranted and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Cogent is terminating all of your services effective at 5 p.m. GMT on March 4, 2022," wrote Cogent in a letter to one of their Russian customers. "The economic sanctions put in place as a result of the invasion and the increasingly uncertain security situation make it impossible for Cogent to continue to provide you with service. All Cogent-provided ports and IP address space will be reclaimed as of the termination date."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed News: Facebook and Twitter on Friday were blocked in Russia, amid President Vladimir Putin's ongoing military invasion of Ukraine. In a statement issued on Friday, Roskomnadzor, the country's communications regulator, explained the decision was made to "block access to the Facebook network" after at least 26 cases of "discrimination against Russian media and information resources" since October 2020. The agency highlighted Facebook's recent restriction of Kremlin-tied media sources RT News and Sputnik News across the EU. Hours later, Russian news agency Interfax reported that Roskomnadzor had also begun blocking Twitter. "Soon millions of ordinary Russians will find themselves cut off from reliable information, deprived of their everyday ways of connecting with family and friends and silenced from speaking out," Nick Clegg, president of global affairs for Facebook parent Meta, wrote on Twitter in response. "We will continue to do everything we can to restore our services so they remain available to people to safely and securely express themselves and organize for action."

Yesterday, Russian state-controlled news network RT announced it would be "ceasing production" and laying off most of its staff after YouTube blocked its channels.

For years, the tiny startup Kytch worked to invent and sell a device designed to fix McDonald's notoriously broken ice cream machines, only to watch the fast food Goliath crush their business like the hopes of so many would-be McFlurry customers. Now Kytch is instead seeking to serve out cold revenge -- nearly a billion dollars worth of it. Wired: Late Tuesday night, Kytch filed a long-expected legal complaint against McDonald's, accusing the company of false advertising and tortious interference in its contracts with customers. Kytch's cofounders, Melissa Nelson and Jeremy O'Sullivan, are asking for no less than $900 million in damages.

Since 2019, Kytch has sold a phone-sized gadget designed to be installed inside McDonald's ice cream machines. Those Kytch devices would intercept the ice cream machines' internal communications and send them out to a web or smartphone interface to help owners remotely monitor and troubleshoot the machines' many foibles, which are so widely acknowledged that they've become a full-blown meme among McDonald's customers. The two-person startup's new claims against McDonald's focus on emails the fast food giant sent to every franchisee in November 2020, instructing them to pull Kytch devices out of their ice cream machines immediately.

Those emails warned franchisees that the Kytch devices not only violated the ice cream machines' warranties and intercepted their "confidential information" but also posed a safety threat and could lead to "serious human injury," a claim that Kytch describes as false and defamatory. Kytch also notes that McDonald's used those emails to promote a new ice cream machine, built by its longtime appliance manufacturing partner Taylor, that would offer similar features to Kytch. The Taylor devices, meanwhile, have yet to see public adoption beyond a few test installations.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Ukraine's core cyberdefense has done better than expected because it focused on the issue after Russian hackers briefly knocked out power to swaths of the country in 2015 and 2016, said David Cowan, a veteran cybersecurity venture capitalist and corporate director, and because it has had help from American and European experts. "I would have thought that by now Russia would have disabled a lot more infrastructure around communications, power and water," Cowan said. "If Russia were attacking the U.S., there would be more cyber damage." The absence of major disruptions predicted by cyberwar doctrine has allowed Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky to deliver propaganda coups with little more than a smartphone and a data link.