Azul secures majority investment from Thoma Bravo to boost Java cloud solutions and expand its global enterprise presence. Read...

What went wrong this time? Read...

Researchers from the University of Vienna and SBA Research did something pretty astonishing: they were able to retrieve all existing WhatsApp numbers. In fact, they were able to view and analyze an incredible 3.5 billion WhatsApp profiles, making this one of the largest data collection efforts in history. According to the researchers, all existing WhatsApp profiles were unprotected on the web and they were able to download all phone numbers and their associated profile data. The researchers informed Meta (owner of WhatsApp) about this leak back in September 2024, but Mark Zuckerberg’s company didn’t respond at first. (Incidentally, Meta is being sued by a former WhatsApp security chief!) Meta’s initial lack of interest is all the more surprising when you consider everything that emerges from this freely accessible data. For example, we can determine how many WhatsApp users there are per country and how they’re distributed between Android and iOS. India has the most WhatsApp users, followed by Indonesia and Brazil. The association of WhatsApp accounts to certain countries isn’t as harmless as it may sound. In authoritarian states where the use of WhatsApp is banned and/or monitored—such as North Korea, China, and Myanmar—it can be life-threatening for the owners of certain phone numbers if state surveillance bodies can analyze this data. Sensitive data freely accessible Around 30 percent of WhatsApp users have entered detailed information about themselves in their WhatsApp profiles, including sexual orientation and/or political views. Some users have even mentioned their drug habits, while others (who are obviously drug dealers) have mentioned their drug supply and operations. Links to Tinder and OnlyFans posted on WhatsApp were also freely accessible. Some WhatsApp profiles were also registered using email addresses associated with government and military organizations. Many profiles contained photos in which the users can be clearly identified. In other words, all of this freely accessible WhatsApp data could be used to synthesize full identities complete with phone numbers, photos, preferences, and email addresses. The researchers also found security problems with some public keys of WhatsApp accounts. What you can do about this Based on the findings, we recommend that all WhatsApp users keep their profile information as limited as possible and refrain from posting photos in which they can be identified. Also, don’t provide any links to dating profiles or other sites that could be detrimental to you. The full research paper—entitled “Hey there! You are using WhatsApp: Enumerating Three Billion Accounts for Security and Privacy”—is published for free on GitHub. Read...

The trend of developing applications for web browsers is still popular, but Puter takes this approach to a whole new level. This online service provides a complete operating system with a graphical desktop and built-in apps. The developers refer to this as a cloud OS. To test it, open the Puter website and you’ll be taken to the system’s desktop, which features two toolbars. In the bottom left corner you’ll find the start button, as with Windows, which displays available applications. You’ll also see icons for the file explorer, integrated app store, development tools, and access to your computer’s webcam or microphone. The bar at the top of the screen hides automatically. To show the element in full, move your mouse over the small button in the center. The icon on the left opens a display with information about the computer system, including available storage space as well as account and security settings. In “Personalization,” you can change the desktop background and the color of the interface elements. You can also select the system language via “Language.” On the far right, open the personal settings. Use “Save Session” to create a computer account: assign a username, enter your e-mail address, and set a password. The Puter operating system and desktop run entirely within the browser. From here, you can launch various programs.Foundry The third button from the left, which opens a pop-up window, is particularly interesting. Copy the address under “Invitation Link” and send it to a friend. If they create a Puter account, you’ll receive 1GB of memory for free. The applications integrated in Puter are varied. You’ll find many games in the list, but also tools for developing your own apps. There’s also “Photopea,” a web-based Photoshop clone. Users who want to install Puter on their local computer can find instructions with commands for Windows on Puter’s Github page. Read...

Keyboards are a type of archaic manual input device from the age before the iPhone, known for being popular with old people like me. If you’ve never encountered these antiques, you might be surprised to discover that they offer not only rapid text creation but also superior manual control of computer programs—like the Firefox browser, which just added custom keyboard shortcuts. Alright, I’ll dispense with the irony. The newest nightly builds of Firefox for desktop platforms allow users to change existing keyboard shortcuts for actions like moving backwards and forwards in your history, opening a new tab or window, finding text on the page, printing, etc. You can find the new options for changing or clearing these shortcuts by typing about:keyboard in the URL bar in Firefox version 147. As GHacks notes, custom keyboard shortcuts are available in some browsers that offer more advanced user control (like Opera or Vivaldi) but aren’t exactly a mainstream feature. It’s claimed that Firefox users have been asking for this feature for over 20 years now. I can’t independently verify that apart from a few ancient forum posts… though knowing how tweak-happy Firefox users got back in the glory days before Chrome, that seems entirely possible. Various extensions have offered some of this functionality, but having it baked into the core of the browser is a big deal for a very particular kind of web denizen. Other recent additions to Firefox include more strenuous anti-fingerprinting measures for user privacy. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also point out that Mozilla is offering a much different flavor of new feature to Firefox: an “AI Window” that mirrors similar AI efforts like Copilot in Edge and Gemini in Chrome. In the wise words of Liz Lemon, an icon from back when Firefox was young: “Blerg.” Custom keyboard shortcuts are now live in Firefox Nightly builds as Mozilla tests them out. It’s not guaranteed that they’ll make it to the stable build (145, as of this writing), but it seems likely sooner or later. Read...

Another day, another worldwide outage of a critical online service that brings numerous websites (including several high-profile ones) down to their knees. This news comes hot on the heels of last month’s Amazon cloud outage, which took down everything from web services to Ring video doorbells to smart beds that cooked their owners. This time, it’s Cloudflare’s turn. Cloudflare is a US-based company that operates hundreds of data centers, serves as a content delivery network for millions of websites, provides security and DDoS mitigation services for many of those websites, and a lot more. As of this writing, the Cloudflare outage is causing issues on sites like X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, PayPal, and Uber, as well as online games like League of Legends and Valorant. According to the Cloudflare System Status: Cloudflare is experiencing an internal service degradation. Some services may be intermittently impacted. We are focused on restoring service. We will update as we are able to remediate. More updates to follow shortly. (Nov 18, 2025 at 6:48 AM EST) Later, there was an update: We have made changes that have allowed Cloudflare Access and WARP to recover. Error levels for Access and WARP users have returned to pre-incident rates. We have re-enabled WARP access in London. We are continuing to work towards restoring other services. (Nov 18, 2025 at 8:13 AM EST) And the latest update as of this writing: We are continuing to work on a fix for this issue. (Nov 18, 2025 at 9:22 AM EST) Many sites are still affected and unavailable, but there should be an improvement soon as Cloudflare restores its services. It’s possible that maintenance work at a data center was responsible for the disruption, but more details are not yet known. Tip: If you’re unable to use the above-mentioned services via their websites, try using their apps. It may be possible to access them that way. We can access the ChatGPT and X/Twitter apps without any problems, whereas access is currently not possible via their websites. Read...

The company says it is working to understand the full impact of a problem which potentially `impacts multiple customers.` Read...

A “cyberdeck” is a portable, handmade computer inspired by William Gibson’s science fiction of the 1980s. It’s basically a cyberpunk laptop. A “writerdeck,” then, is a similar concept but only for writing text. I’ve been dabbling with some commercial options lately. But I think both device categories might just have a new champion: the Micro Journal Rev 2.1. Look at this beautiful thing. Just look at it! Un Kyu Lee has been designing, 3D-printing, and hand-assembling a series of Micro Journal gadgets for the last couple of years, painstakingly documenting his efforts on YouTube and /r/writerdeck. Rev 2.1 is actually his 10th generation (at least) and a gentle revision of an earlier model. Lee’s choices are eclectic and highly personal—he’s got everything from a full-on mini-laptop design to a device that’s just a 2.8-inch screen you plug a keyboard into. One of his latest projects was creating a new, retro-futurist housing for an AlphaSmart Neo 2, a classic in the admittedly niche category of writing-only devices from the 90s and 2000s. But having followed his work for some time, I think the Micro Journal 2.1 may be his masterpiece. It uses a 65% mechanical keyboard with a standard layout, which is more user-friendly than some of the ortholinear keyboards in other Micro Journals. It has a full LCD screen instead of e-ink for faster response, and at 8 inches wide it’s relatively huge compared to most of the displays on earlier Micro Journals. It has built-in batteries for portability, though they are AA and need to be swapped out by hand. Documents can be accessed via a web interface from another device or manually moved over from a USB drive. And it’s powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, so you can keep it running WordGrinder (the focused writing environment that’s loaded on by default) or flash it with a huge variety of other operating systems compatible with the semi-standardized micro-computer. You could even turn it into a classic game emulator if you wanted to. (Please don’t do that. Mr. Lee is a nice guy and I think it might cause him pain if he saw it.) The design looks like a beautiful blend of suitcase typewriters and classic all-in-one PCs from the 80s, something that would fit right at home next to a Commodore 64 or Osborne 1. And those round knobs on the side aren’t just decorative! They’re up/down and left/right buttons, giving even more satisfying tactility to the gadget. An earlier version of the Micro Journal 2.1 that shows the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, batteries, and wiring.Un Kyu Lee You can buy the Micro Journal 2.1—along with some of his earlier designs—from Un Kyu Lee’s Tindie shop. (It costs $359 USD if you’re wondering, which is a lot less than some similar, less-capable designs in the Pomera and Freewrite lines.) But these things are quickly becoming hard-to-find collector’s items, as Lee builds each one by hand and only has time for very limited runs. If you have access to a soldering iron and a 3D printer, and if you’re up to the challenge, you can build it yourself. As a devotee of open-source software and hardware, Lee gives away the print files, instructions, and a bill of materials for all his Micro Journal devices on Github. Read...

Embrace acquires SpeedCurve to enhance its observability platform with advanced web performance monitoring, uniting mobile and web user experience insights. Read...

New Zealand farmers gain improved high-speed satellite internet through Amazon`s Project Kuiper, boosting digital tools across remote agricultural regions. Read...