schwit1 shares a report from Popular Science: [T]wo women filed a potential class action lawsuit against Apple, alleging the company has ignored critics' and security experts' repeated warnings that the company's AirTag devices are being repeatedly used to stalk and harass people. Both individuals were targets of past abuse from ex-partners and argued in the filing that Apple's subsequent safeguard solutions remain wholly inadequate for consumers. "With a price point of just $29, it has become the weapon of choice of stalkers and abusers," reads a portion of the lawsuit, as The New York Times reported [...].

Apple first debuted AirTags in April 2021. Within the ensuing eight months, at least 150 police reports from just eight precincts reviewed by Motherboard explicitly mentioned abusers utilizing the tracking devices to stalk and harass women. In the new lawsuit, plaintiffs allege that one woman's abuser hid the location devices within her car's wheel well. At the same time, the other woman's abuser placed one in their child's backpack following a contentious divorce, according to the suit. Security experts have since cautioned that hundreds more similar situations likely remain unreported or even undetected.

The lawsuit (PDF), published by Ars Technica, cites them as "one of the products that has revolutionized the scope, breadth, and ease of location-based stalking," arguing that "what separates the AirTag from any competitor product is its unparalleled accuracy, ease of use (it fits seamlessly into Apple's existing suite of products), and affordability." The proposed class action lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for owners of iOS or Android devices which have been tracked with an AirTag or are at risk of being stalked. Since AirTags' introduction last year, at least two murders have occurred directly involving using Apple's surveillance gadget, according to the lawsuit.

"China's control of the internet has become so strong that dissidents must cling to any crack in the so-called Great Firewall," writes Qz.

But as anti-government protests sprung up on campuses and cities in China over the weekend, Qz reminds us that "the country's most widespread show of public dissent in decades will have to manage without a crucial communication tool, because Apple restricted its use in China earlier this month." AirDrop, the file-sharing feature on iPhones and other Apple devices, has helped protestors in many authoritarian countries evade censorship. That's because AirDrop relies on direct connections between phones, forming a local network of devices that don't need the internet to communicate. People can opt into receiving AirDrops from anyone else with an iPhone nearby.

That changed on Nov. 9, when Apple released a new version of its mobile operating system, iOS 16.1.1, to customers worldwide. Rather than listing new features, as it often does, the company simply said, "This update includes bug fixes and security updates and is recommended for all users." Hidden in the update was a change that only applies to iPhones sold in mainland China: AirDrop can only be set to receive messages from everyone for 10 minutes, before switching off. There's no longer a way to keep the "everyone" setting on permanently on Chinese iPhones.

The change, first noticed by Chinese readers of 9to5Mac, doesn't apply anywhere else.

Apple didn't respond to questions about the AirDrop change. It plans to make the "Everyone for 10 Minutes" feature a global standard next year, according to Bloomberg.

Frederick P. Brooks Jr., whose innovative work in computer design and software engineering helped shape the field of computer science, died on Thursday at his home in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 91. His death was confirmed by his son, Roger, who said Dr. Brooks had been in declining health since having a stroke two years ago. The New York Times reports: Dr. Brooks had a wide-ranging career that included creating the computer science department at the University of North Carolina and leading influential research in computer graphics and virtual reality. But he is best known for being one of the technical leaders of IBM's 360 computer project in the 1960s. At a time when smaller rivals like Burroughs, Univac and NCR were making inroads, it was a hugely ambitious undertaking. Fortune magazine, in an article with the headline "IBM's $5,000,000,000 Gamble," described it as a "bet the company" venture.

Until the 360, each model of computer had its own bespoke hardware design. That required engineers to overhaul their software programs to run on every new machine that was introduced. But IBM promised to eliminate that costly, repetitive labor with an approach championed by Dr. Brooks, a young engineering star at the company, and a few colleagues. In April 1964, IBM announced the 360 as a family of six compatible computers. Programs written for one 360 model could run on the others, without the need to rewrite software, as customers moved from smaller to larger computers. The shared design across several machines was described in a paper, written by Dr. Brooks and his colleagues Gene Amdahl and Gerrit Blaauw, titled "Architecture of the IBM System/360." "That was a breakthrough in computer architecture that Fred Brooks led," Richard Sites, a computer designer who studied under Dr. Brooks, said in an interview.

But there was a problem. The software needed to deliver on the IBM promise of compatibility across machines and the capability to run multiple programs at once was not ready, as it proved to be a far more daunting challenge than anticipated. Operating system software is often described as the command and control system of a computer. The OS/360 was a forerunner of Microsoft's Windows, Apple's iOS and Google's Android. At the time IBM made the 360 announcement, Dr. Brooks was just 33 and headed for academia. He had agreed to return to North Carolina, where he grew up, and start a computer science department at Chapel Hill. But Thomas Watson Jr., the president of IBM, asked him to stay on for another year to tackle the company's software troubles. Dr. Brooks agreed, and eventually the OS/360 problems were sorted out. The 360 project turned out to be an enormous success, cementing the company's dominance of the computer market into the 1980s. "Fred Brooks was a brilliant scientist who changed computing," Arvind Krishna, IBM's chief executive and himself a computer scientist, said in a statement. "We are indebted to him for his pioneering contributions to the industry."

Dr. Brooks published a book in 1975 titled, "The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering." It was "a quirky classic, selling briskly year after year and routinely cited as gospel by computer scientists," reports the Times.

The UK's antitrust watchdog has moved to deepen its scrutiny of the Apple and Google mobile duopoly -- kicking off an in-depth investigation into elements of the pair's mobile ecosystem dominance by probing their approach toward rival mobile browsers and cloud gaming services which it's concerned could be restricting competition and harming consumers. From a report: The move follows a market study conducted by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) last year that led to a final report this summer which concluded there are substantial competition concerns -- with the regulator finding the tech giants have what it described as "an effective duopoly on mobile ecosystems that allows them to exercise a stranglehold over operating systems, app stores and web browsers on mobile devices."

At the same time, the CMA proposed to undertake what's known as a market investigation reference (MIR) with two points of focus: One looking at Apple's and Google's market power in mobile browsers; and another probing Apple's restrictions on cloud gaming through its App Store. That proposal for an MIR kicked off a standard consultation process, with the regulator seeking feedback on the scope of its proposed probe, and today it's confirmed the decision to make a market investigation -- opening what's referred to as a 'Phase 2' (in-depth) investigation which could take up to 18 months to complete. The probe will focus on the supply of mobile browsers and browser engines; and the distribution of cloud gaming services through app stores on mobile devices, the CMA said today.

Google announced today that it's introducing a slew of new Maps, Search and Shopping features. The company revealed a majority of the new features during its Search On event in September and is now starting to roll them out to users. TechCrunch reports: Search
Starting today, users will be able to use Search to find their favorite dish at a restaurant near them. For example, you can search "truffle mac and cheese near me" to see which nearby restaurants carry the dish on their menu. Once you find a specific dish that you're looking for, you can get more information about its price, ingredients and more. Another new Search functionality lets you use Google's multisearch feature to find specific food near you. Say you see something tasty-looking online, but don't know what it is or where to find it. You can now use Lens in the Google app for Android or iOS to snap a picture or take a screenshot of a dish and add the words "near me" to find a place that sells it nearby. Later this year, Google is going roll out an update to its Lens AR Translate capabilities so users can more seamlessly translate text on complex backgrounds. Instead of covering up the original text like it currently does, Google is going to erase the text and re-create the pixels underneath with an AI-generated background, and then overlay the translated text on top of the image.

Maps
As for the new Maps features, Google is launching a new visual search experience called Live View in London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, San Francisco and Tokyo. [...] In addition to displaying information about where places are, users will be able to see key information about each spot overlaid, such as whether the location is busy, if its open, what the price range is, etc. Another new Maps feature makes it easier for EV owners to find the best charging station for their vehicle. Now, you can search for "EV charging stations" and select the "fast charge" filter. You can also filter for stations that offer your EV's plug type. Google also announced that it's expanding its "accessible places" feature globally after initially launching it in the U.S., Australia, Japan and the U.K. in 2020. The feature is designed to help people determine whether a place is wheelchair accessible.

Shopping
Google has announced a new AR shopping feature that is designed to make it easier to find your exact foundation match. The company says its new photo library features 148 models representing a diverse spectrum of skin tones, ages, genders, face shapes, ethnicities and skin types. As a result, it should be easier for shoppers to better visualize what different products will look like on them. [...] Users can now also shop for shoes using AR.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Privacy-focused search site DuckDuckGo has added yet another way to prevent more of your data from going to advertisers, opening its App Tracking Protection for Android to beta testers. DuckDuckGo is positioning App Tracking Protection as something like Apple's App Tracking Transparency for iOS devices, but "even more powerful." Enabling the service in the DuckDuckGo app for Android (under the "More from DuckDuckGo" section) installs a local VPN service on your phone, which can then start automatically blocking trackers on DDG's public blocklist. DuckDuckGo says this happens "without sending app data to DuckDuckGo or other remote servers."

Google recently gave Android users some native tools to prevent wanton tracking, including app-by-app location-tracking approval and a limited native ad-tracking opt-out. Apple's App Tracking Transparency asks if users want to block apps from accessing the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), but apps can still use the largest tracking networks across many apps to better profile app users. Allison Goodman, senior communications manager for DuckDuckGo, told Ars Technica that App Tracking Protection needs Android's VPN permission so it can monitor network traffic. When it recognizes a tracker from its blocklist, it "looks at the destination domain for any outbound request and blocks them if they are in our blocklist and the requesting app is not owned by the same company that owns the domain." Goodman added that "much of the data collected by trackers is not controlled by [Android] permissions," making App Tracking Protection a complementary offering.

A new study has found that Apple's wireless earbuds can serve as a more affordable and accessible sound amplification device than medical hearing aids. Gizmodo reports: Inspired by a feature called Live Listen released in 2016 by Apple, which allows an iPhone or iPad to be used as sound-boosting microphone, researchers from the Taipei Veterans General Hospital wondered whether the performance of AirPods 2 and the original AirPods Pro using this feature could compare to medical hearing aids. Apple does not position Live Listen as a tool for those dealing with hearing loss but as a way for users with normal hearing to boost desired sounds, like the calls of a bird. However, the researchers found that, in some situations, consumer-level personal sound amplification products faired quite well against pricier medically prescribed solutions, and given the popularity of products like Apple's AirPods, there's no stigma associated with wearing them.

The researchers tested the $129 AirPods 2 and $249 AirPods Pro paired with iPhone XS Max smartphones running iOS 13. They compared these against the $10,000 OTICON Opn 1 behind-the-ear hearing aids and a more affordable alternative, the $1,500 Bernafon MD1. The four options were tested with 21 participants dealing with mild to moderate hearing loss, who were asked to repeat short sentences read to them by the researchers in varying environments. In a quiet setting, the AirPods Pro were found to perform as well as the cheaper hearing aids and almost as good as the premium model, while the Air Pods 2 performed the worst of all four tested devices but still helped participants hear what was being read to them more clearly than not using a sound-enhancing device at all. In a noisy environment, the AirPods Pro performed even closer to the premium hearing aid model, thanks to their built-in noise cancellation, but only when the distracting noises were coming from the sides of the participant. When the noise was coming from the front, alongside the sample sentences being read by the researchers, both wireless earbud products failed to help improve what was being heard. "Hearing aids remain the best option for those dealing with hearing loss, but for those who don't have access to them for whatever reason, a cheaper product like Apple's AirPods Pro could provide noticeable improvements in hearing and clarity for those dealing with mild-to-moderate hearing loss and could serve as a useful alternative until over-the-counter solutions are more readily available and affordable," concludes the report.

Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration decided to allow hearing aids to be sold over the counter and without a prescription to adults, a decision that "could fundamentally change technology," said Nicholas Reed, an audiologist at the Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Sony's first OTC hearing aids were announced last month.

Netflix has introduced a new account management page called "Manage Access and Devices" that gives users the ability to remove access privileges from specific devices. The feature is available on the web and in the streaming service's Android and iOS apps. Ars Technica reports: Previously, users could see a list of devices that had recently accessed their accounts, and they could revoke access to all devices simultaneously, but they could not revoke access on a case-by-case basis. Each item in the list of devices will include an IP address-based location, a device type, and the user profile that most recently accessed Netflix from that device.

Netflix describes it as a security feature, in that it's useful to users who don't share their passwords at all. For example, you now have a way to clean up after yourself if you stayed at an Airbnb and signed into your Netflix account on the smart TV there but forgot to sign out before you left. Further, the page could help you identify if someone has gained access to your account via a compromised password.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It has been over a year now since a US District Court ruled that Apple did not violate antitrust law by forcing iOS developers (like plaintiff and Fortnite-maker Epic Games) to use its App Store and in-app payments systems. But that doesn't mean the case is settled, as both sides demonstrated Monday during oral arguments in front of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The hearing was full of arcane discussion of legal standards and procedures for reviewing the case and its precedents, as well as input from state and federal governments on how the relevant laws should be interpreted. In the end, though, the core arguments before the appeals court once again centered on issues of walled gardens, user lock-in, and security versus openness in platform design.

In defending Apple's position, counsel Mark Perry argued that the company's restraints on iOS app distribution were put in place from the beginning to protect iPhone users. Based on its experience managing software security and privacy on Macs, Apple decided it "did not want the phone to be like a computer. Computers are buggy, they crash, they have problems. They wanted the phone to be better." If the Mac App Store was the equivalent of a lap belt, the iOS App Store, with its costly human review system, is "a six-point racing harness," Perry said. "It's safer. They're both safe, but it's safer." While Epic argued that the iPhone's walled garden "only keeps out competition," Perry shot back that "what's kept out by walled gardens is fraudsters and pornsters and hackers and malware and spyware and foreign governments..." Providing superior user safety, Perry said, is a key "non-price feature" that helps set the iPhone apart from its Android-based competition. Users who want the more open system that Epic is fighting for can already buy an Android phone and choose from a variety of App Stores, Perry said. By doing so, though, those users "open themselves up to more intrusion" compared to an iPhone, he argued. Those kinds of "pro-competitive" security features Apple offers with its App Store restrictions legally outweigh the "minor anti-competitive effects" iOS app developers face on the platform, Perry said.

[...] Apple's Perry argued that Epic presented "no data or empirical evidence" to show that users felt locked in to Apple's app ecosystem. Epic failed to commission the usual survey that would show users were worried about switching costs or information costs in a case like this, Perry said, a "failure of proof" that he said obviates all other technical legal claims. At the same time, Perry said Epic carefully "crafted a market definition only fitting Google and Apple" in arguing its case and has not been able to bring in other developers to support a class action. Epic "didn't want to pick a fight with the consoles, didn't want to pick a fight with Microsoft," he said, despite similarities in the "walled garden" approaches in those markets. The three-judge appeals panel betrayed little as to which arguments it favored during Monday's hearing, offering pointed questions for both sides. A ruling in the appeals case is expected sometime next year.

Apple on Tuesday announced that Emergency SOS via satellite is officially available to iPhone 14 users in the US and Canada. Next month, Apple will launch Emergency SOS via satellite in France, Germany, Ireland, and the UK. Apple is enabling the feature on all iPhone 14 models that are running iOS 16.1, which was released near the end of October. From a report: If you have the feature, you'll see a new section detailing your phone's new capability of connecting to satellites, and offering a demo mode for you to get a feel for what the process is like should you ever have to use it. For those unfamiliar, Emergency SOS via Satellite will allow an iPhone 14 owner to contact emergency services when in an area without cellular or Wi-Fi coverage. The feature is triggered by calling 911 when "SOS" is shown at the top of the iPhone's screen where the cellular coverage bars are normally visible. Once you're connected to a satellite, you'll either directly exchange messages with a local dispatcher if they accept text messages, or talk with local emergency services using an Apple-trained emergency specialist as a go-between.

In a post to /r/reddit, Reddit announced that it began rolling out a feature that will allow users to mute specific communities that contain content they don't want to see. Ars Technica reports: If you mute a subreddit using this feature, posts from it won't show up in your notifications, home feed recommendations, or Popular, Reddit's feed of the most upvoted content from across its various communities. Later, Reddit plans to apply muting to other places like "All" and "Discover." Muting a community won't stop you from being able to visit or post it, though. You can mute up to 1,000 communities and tweak your muted list at any time in Settings. The report notes that this new muting feature is only available in Reddit's iOS and Android apps for now. For updates on availability, Reddit directs users to their changelog feed.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple has limited the AirDrop wireless file-sharing feature on iPhones in China after the mechanism was used by protesters to spread images to other iPhone owners. AirDrop allows the quick exchange of files like images, documents or videos between Apple devices. The latest version -- iOS 16.1.1, released Wednesday -- caps the window in which users can receive files from non-contacts at 10 minutes. The previous options didn't limit the time involved. Users could choose to get files from everyone, no one or just their contacts. After the 10-minute period expires, the system reverts to the mode where files can only be received from contacts. That means that individuals won't be able to get an AirDrop transfer from a stranger without actively turning on the feature in the preceding few minutes. It makes it harder for anyone seeking to distribute content and reach people in a discreet manner.

Apple made the change to AirDrop on iPhones sold in China. The shift came after protesters in the country used the service to spread posters opposing Xi Jinping and the Chinese government. The use of AirDrop to sidestep China's strict online censorship has been well-documented over the past three years and was highlighted again recently. Apple didn't comment on why the change was introduced in China, but said that it plans to roll out the new AirDrop setting globally in the coming year. The idea is to mitigate unwanted file sharing, the company said.

A new antitrust class-action lawsuit accuses Apple and Amazon of colluding to raise the price of iPhones and iPads, according to Hagens Berman, the law firm representing consumers against two of the world's largest companies in today's filing. From a report: The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington accuses Apple and Amazon of seeking to eliminate third-party Apple resellers on Amazon Marketplace in a scheme to stifle competition, and maintain premium pricing for Apple products. The class action alleges an "unlawful horizontal agreement between Apple and Amazon to eliminate or at least severely reduce the competitive threat posed by third-party merchants," which attorneys say violates federal antitrust laws and has cost consumers.

The lawsuit says the parties' illegal agreement brought the number of third-party sellers of Apple products on Amazon Marketplace from roughly 600 to just seven sellers -- a loss of 98%, and by doing so, Amazon, which was formerly a marginal seller of Apple products, became the dominant seller of Apple products on Amazon Marketplace. The consumer-rights law firm behind the filing has bested Apple in multiple antitrust lawsuits, including a $400 million settlement related to price-fixing of e-books and a $100 million settlement on behalf of iOS developers harmed by App Store policies. Hagens Berman has also brought multiple pending antitrust cases against both defendants.

Google is bringing its VPN access to desktop today. Google One subscribers on Premium plans (2TB or higher) can now download VPN apps for Windows and macOS, allowing users in 22 countries to mask their IPs on desktop and reduce online trackers. From a report: While Google is expanding its VPN service, it still comes with the same restrictions as Android and iOS. You'll only be able to use the service in one of the supported countries, and you won't be able to use Google's VPN freely to avoid geo-restrictions on live sports or other streaming video. Much like Apple's iCloud Plus VPN service, the Google One VPN won't let you assign an IP address from a different country manually. Instead, Google assigns you an IP in the region you're connecting from.

By Tuesday morning Mastodon had gained 123,562 new users since October 27 (the site told TechCrunch) and had 528,607 active users. But by Saturday the number of new users had nearly doubled, to 230,000, reports CNN — with 655,000 active users.

In fact, for every 363 active users on Twitter, there's now one on Mastodon, CNN's figures suggest (since Twitter has nearly "238 million daily active monetizable users"). Exploring the recent spike, they note that Mastodon "has a similar look to Twitter, with a timeline of short updates sorted chronologically rather than algorithmically. It lets users join a slew of different servers run by various groups and individuals, rather than one central platform controlled by a single company like Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook." Unlike larger social networks, Mastodon is both free to use and free of ads. It's operated by a nonprofit run by Mastodon creator Eugen Rochko, and is supported via crowdfunding... "It is not as large as Twitter, obviously, but it is the biggest that this network has ever been," said Rochko, who originally created Mastodon as more of a project than a consumer product (and, yes, its name was inspired by the heavy metal band Mastodon)....

A lot of Mastodon's features and layout (particularly in its iOS app) will look and feel familiar to current Twitter users, though with some slightly different verbiage; you can follow others, create short posts (there's a 500 character limit, and you can upload images and videos), favorite or repost other users' posts, and so on.... There are some key differences, particularly in how the network is set up. Because Mastodon users' accounts are hosted on a slew of different servers, the costs of hosting users is spread among many different people and groups. But that also means users are spread out all over the place, and people you know can be hard to find.
CNN also notes the problem with signing up for a Mastodon server: "some of which are open to anyone, some of which require an invitation (you can also run your own server). There is a server operated by the nonprofit behind Mastodon, Mastodon.social, but it's not accepting more users."

According to a new report, almost half of Android-based mobile phones used by U.S. state and local government employees are running outdated versions of the operating system, exposing them to hundreds of vulnerabilities that can be leveraged for attacks. From a report: These statistics come from a report by cybersecurity firm Lookout, based on an analysis of 200 million devices and 175 million applications from 2021 to H2 2022. The report additionally warns of a rise in all threat metrics, including attempted phishing attacks against government employees, reliance on unmanaged mobile devices, and liability points in mission-critical networks. Outdated versions of mobile operating systems allow attackers to exploit vulnerabilities that can be used to breach targets, run code on the device, plant spyware, steal credentials, and more. For example, last week, Apple released iOS 16.1, fixing an actively exploited zero-day memory corruption flaw used by hackers against iPhone users to achieve arbitrary code execution with kernel privileges.

Lookout reports that ten months after iOS 15 had been made available to users, 5% of federal government employees and 30% of state and local government devices were running older versions of the operating system. The situation is much worse for Android, as ten months after the release of version 12, approximately 30% of federal devices and almost 50% of state and local government devices still needed to upgrade to the latest versions, thus remaining vulnerable to bugs that can be exploited in attacks. It should be noted that Android 13 is the latest version of the operating system, but it was released after the first half of 2022, from which this data was collected.

Much of the Windows world has yet to adopt Microsoft's latest desktop operating system more than a year after it launched, according to figures for October collated by Statcounter. From a report: Just 15.44 percent of PCs across the globe have installed Windows 11, meaning it gained 1.83 percentage points in a month. This compares to the 71.29 percent running Windows 10, which fell marginally from 71.88 percent in September. Windows 7 is still hanging on with a tenuous grip, in third place with 9.61 percent, Windows 8.1 in fourth with 2.45 percent, plain old Windows 8 with 0.69 percent, and bless its heart, Windows XP with 0.39 percent because of your extended family. In total, Windows has almost 76 percent of the global desktop OS market followed by OS X with 15.7 percent and Linux with 2.6 percent. Android comprised 42.37 percent of total operating system market share, with Windows trailing on 30.11 percent, iOS on 17.6 percent, OS X on 6.24 percent, and Linux on 1.04 percent.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Google is preparing to shut down the dedicated Street View app on Android, keeping the feature in Google Maps. Google's Street View is an easy way to get a 360-degree look at almost any given street on the planet, perfect for getting a sense of your next travel destination or simply exploring the world from the comfort of home. While the Google Maps app has long offered an easy way to hop into Street View, there has also been a dedicated Street View app on Android and iOS.

This standalone app served two distinct groups of people -- those who wanted to deeply browse Street View and those who wanted to contribute their own 360 imagery. Considering the more popular Google Maps app has Street View support and Google offers a "Street View Studio" web app for contributors, it should be no surprise to learn that the company is now preparing to shut down the Street View app.

In the latest update, version 2.0.0.484371618, Google has prepared a handful of deprecation/shutdown notices for the Street View app. These notices are not yet visible in the app today, but our team managed to enable them. In the notice, Google confirms that the Street View app is set to shut down on March 31, 2023, encouraging users to switch to either Google Maps or Street View Studio. However, one feature that is being fully shut down with the Street View app's demise is that of "Photo Paths." First launched last year, Photo Paths were intended as a way to let nearly anyone with a smartphone contribute simple 2D photos of a road or path that had not yet been documented by Street View. Unlike every other feature of the Street View app, there is no replacement for Photo Paths on the web app or Google Maps app.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Darin Fisher has built a lot of web browsers. A lot of web browsers. He was a software engineer at Netscape early in his career, working on Navigator and then helping turn that app into Firefox with Mozilla. Then, he went to Google and spent 16 years building Chrome and ChromeOS into massively successful products. Last year, he left Google for Neeva, where he worked on ways to build a browser around the startup's search engine. And now, he's leaving Neeva to join The Browser Company and work on Arc, one of the hottest new browsers on the market. Arc, which has been in an invite-only beta for more than a year, is trying to rethink the whole browser UI. It has a sidebar instead of a row of tabs, offers a lot of personalization options, and is meant for people who live their computing life in a browser (which is increasingly most people). CEO Josh Miller often talks about building "the internet computer," too, and using the browser as a way to make the internet more useful.

Fisher has been an advisor to The Browser Company for a while, but Monday is his first official day at the company as a software engineer. Ahead of his new gig, Fisher and I got on a call to talk about why he thinks browsers are due for a reinvention -- and why he thinks a startup is the best place to do it. The answer starts with the browser's defining feature: tabs. Fisher doesn't hate tabs -- in fact, he helped popularize them. But he hates that using a modern browser involves opening a million of them, not being able to find them again, and eventually just giving up and starting all over again. "I remember when tabbed browsing was novel," Fisher says, "and helped people feel less cluttered because you don't have as many windows." But now, "even when I use Chrome," Fisher says, "I get a bunch of clutter. At some point, I just say, 'Forget it, I'm not even going to bother trying to sort through all these tabs. If it's important, I'll open it again.'" Browsers need better systems for helping you manage tabs, not just open more of them.

The best way to improve the browser, Fisher ultimately decided, is to just start from scratch. Arc is full of new ideas about how web browsers can work: it combines bookmarks and tabs into one app switcher-like concept; it makes it easy to search among your open tabs; it has built-in tools for taking notes and making shareable mini websites. The experience can be jarring because it's so different, but Fisher says that's part of what he's excited about. "This is not stuff people haven't talked about before," he says, "but actually putting it together and focusing on it and thinking about the small steps that go a long way, I think that's where there's so much opportunity." Fisher likes to compare a browser to an operating system, which matches with The Browser Company's idea that Arc isn't just a browser but rather an iOS-like system for the open web. "It has task management UI, it has UI for creating and starting a journey, but there's so much more in between," he says. What the iPhone did for native apps, Arc hopes to do for web apps. Fisher says he's interested in improving the way files move around the internet, for instance, finding a better way than the constant downloading and uploading we all do all day. He likes that Arc has a picture-in-picture mode that works by default, pulling your YouTube video out when you switch tabs. All these make the web feel more connected and cohesive rather than just a bunch of tabs in a horizontal line. The Browser Company also plans to reinvent the internet browser for mobile, too. On mobile, in particular, he says, "there are so many opportunities because the starting point is so archaic."

"He's vague on the details of his plans -- and The Browser Company hasn't really started working on a mobile browser yet anyway -- but says that's a big focus for him going forward," adds The Verge.

Tumblr has made an update it hinted at in September, changing its rules to allow nudity -- but not sexually explicit images -- on the platform. The Verge reports: The company updated its community guidelines earlier today, laying out a set of rules that stops short of its earlier permissive attitude toward sexuality but that formally allows a wider range of imagery. "We now welcome a broader range of expression, creativity, and art on Tumblr, including content depicting the human form (yes, that includes the naked human form). So, even if your creations contain nudity, mature subject matter, or sexual themes, you can now share them on Tumblr using the appropriate Community Label," the post says. "Visual depictions of sexually explicit acts remain off-limits on Tumblr."

A help center post and the community guidelines offer a little more detail. They say that "text, images, and videos that contain nudity, offensive language, sexual themes, or mature subject matter" is allowed on Tumblr, but "visual depictions of sexually explicit acts (or content with an overt focus on genitalia)" aren't. There's an exception for "historically significant art that you may find in a mainstream museum and which depicts sex acts -- such as from India's Sunga Empire," although it must be labeled with a mature content or "sexual themes" tag so that users can filter it from their dashboards.

"Nudity and other kinds of adult material are generally welcome. We're not here to judge your art, we just ask that you add a Community Label to your mature content so that people can choose to filter it out of their Dashboard if they prefer," say the community guidelines. However, users can't post links or ads to "adult-oriented affiliate networks," they can't advertise "escort or erotic services," and they can't post content that "promotes pedophilia," including "sexually suggestive" content with images of children. On December 17th, 2018, Tumblr permanently banned adult content from its platform. The site was owned by Verizon at the time and later sold to WordPress.com owner Automattic, which largely maintained the ban "in large part because internet infrastructure services -- like payment processors and Apple's iOS App Store -- typically frown on explicit adult content," reports The Verge.