Samsung has announced that its self-repair program is now available in the UK and other European countries, after launching in the US last year. Users will be able to access tools and parts needed to fix supported devices, namely the Galaxy S20, S21 and S22 smartphones, along with the Galaxy Book Pro regular and Galaxy Book Pro 360 laptops.

"Samsung is working to extend the lifecycle of our devices to encourage users to experience the optimised performance of their Galaxy device for as long as possible," said Samsung's president and Head of Mobile eXperience, TM Roh. "We are committed to scaling access to our Self-Repair program around the world while improving the repairability of our products."

In addition to the UK, the program will be available in Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden. Samsung collaborated with iFixit in the US, but parts distributors ASWO and 2Service will handle sales and distribution of the repair kits in Europe. The program is already live in parts of Europe, and will come to other regions including the UK by the end of June. 

Galaxy S20, S21 and S22 series owners will be able to replace the phone screen, back glass and charging ports. If you need to fix a Galaxy Book Pro, you'll have access to seven parts, including the case front, case rear, display, battery, touchpad, power key with fingerprint reader and rubber feet. 

Repair kits cost around €30 in Germany (UK pricing isn't yet available). For a Galaxy S20, the charging port and back panel are around €50, while the display costs €200. That climbs for newer and higher-end models, up to €310 for the Galaxy S22 Ultra display. Samsung has how-to videos and more on a dedicated support page. 

In February, Reddit revealed it had been the victim of a targeted phishing scheme that exposed internal docs, dashboards, code and contracts, along with some advertisers' and current and former employees' information. None of the data appears to have found its way to the public, but that could soon change. Ransomware gang BlackCat, also known as ALPHV, has just taken responsibility for the hack and claims to have 80GB of compressed data. In a post called "The Reddit Files," BlackCat announced it would delete the information if Reddit gives it $4.5 million and reverses API price increases.

BlackCat captured the information through a scheme that saw employees receive "plausible sounding prompts" to visit a website designed just like Reddit's intranet gateway. One individual fell for the trick, allowing hackers to steal their login details and second-factor tokens. The person then self-reported their mistake, and it's believed the security breach didn't compromise Reddit users' personal information.

Now, months later, the hackers have publicly revealed themselves in the midst of site-wide protests against API price hikes (yes, the same ones BlackCat is so admirably demanding be undone). The increased cost is forcing popular third-party apps like Narwhal and Apollo to shut down, with Apollo creator Christian Selig claiming he would need to spend $20 million per year to stay in business. Developers also fear losing third-party apps will lead to more censoring and less opportunity for growing ad revenue.

A massive protest saw up to 8,000 subreddits go dark at one time, but the results are mixed, with Reddit doubling down on its plans. "These people who are mad, they're mad because they used to get something for free, and now it's going to be not free," Reddit CEO Steve Hoffman said in an interview with The Verge. He has also suggested making it easier to remove moderators who aren't making "popular" decisions. Though Reddit shows no signs of reversing its decision, some advertisers have paused on the site while blackouts continue.

It's uncertain how, if at all, this new development will impact API prices, with Reddit yet to comment on whether it will meet the demands. BlackCat claims Reddit ignored its past two contact attempts, in April and June, and doesn't have much hope a public ultimatum will make a difference. "We are very confident that Reddit will not pay any money for their data," BlackCat stated in its post. "We expect to leak the data."

Tudum, Netflix’s in-house mix of Comic Con and shareholder presentation, took place this weekend. The company used the moment to tease plenty of forthcoming projects, including its live-action remakes of One Piece and Avatar: The Last Airbender. It also showed off its adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning World War II novel All The Light We Cannot See.

The streamer also revealed the first teaser for the adaptation of Liu Cixin’s award-winning sci-fi novel The Three Body Problem. That has the distinction of being the first (finished) project to come from Game of Thrones co-creators / co-ruiners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss since all of that.

But what’s likely to be the biggest new release was the game show adaptation of blockbuster dystopia Squid Game, which will land in November. The series puts 456 contestants through a set of grueling challenges until one winner walks away with $4.56 million in prize money. Bear in mind that participants have already described their experiences on the show as “absolutely inhumane,” and plenty of contestants required medical attention during the challenges. Satire, eh?

– Dan Cooper

The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.

The biggest stories you might have missed

The Pixel 8 Pro could feature a flat display

Microsoft confirms June Outlook and OneDrive outages were caused by DDoS attacks

Sony Bravia TV owners can soon take Zoom calls from the couch

Google unexpectedly sells its domain-hosting business to Squarespace

Summer Game Fest 2023: All the games announced

Biden administration announces $930 million in grants to expand rural internet access

Meta rolls back COVID-19 misinformation rules in many countries

Time to let people shout ‘fire’ in that crowded theater.

Facebook’s parent company has rolled back its slightly more active stance on COVID-19 misinformation. Late on Friday, it said it would loosen the rules in territories which no longer have the pandemic listed as an active public health emergency. In those countries, like the US, users should expect a spike in mistruths, conspiracy theories and other nonsense. If you lost a loved one, either to the pandemic itself or one of its second-order effects, consider this a pointed insult to their memory from Mark Zuckerberg straight to you.

Continue Reading.

Google's designers on why the Pixel Fold isn't just another foldable

Learn all about the trials of making a folding phone.

Google

Samsung’s dominance of the foldables space puts pressure on new entrants, like Google, who can’t be seen to be playing catch-up. Ahead of the launch of the Pixel Fold, Sam Rutherford sat down with two of the people behind the device, George Hwang and Andrea Zvinakis. The trio discussed the importance of that front-facing display, the challenges of developing software for multi-screened devices and why we still need to be smart with hinges. Read on to learn all of the thought that goes into building something that’ll be under so much scrutiny.

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The Reddit blackout is already forcing unexpected changes

Third-party analytics data says the protests did cause a fall in traffic.

Karissa Bell has written an exhaustive report into everything going on at Reddit right now, which is well worth your attention. As CEO Steve Huffman goes on the offensive, threatening to depose protesting moderators, this fight is already damaging the platform’s reputation. Some communities are hunting out alternative venues, while some advertisers have pressed pause to sit out the unrest. And, much as Huffman’s putting a brave face on things, analysts believe the protests did cause a noticeable drop in Reddit’s daily traffic numbers.

Continue Reading.

Binance reaches deal with SEC to avoid US asset freeze

A stay of execution, at least for now.

Until the resolution of its lawsuit, the SEC will allow Binance to continue operating in the US. Officials sued the exchange for various alleged misdeeds and had initially sought to freeze its assets entirely, essentially putting it out of business. But a judge has forced a compromise, allowing Binance to keep going, doing just enough to safeguard its users’ assets and enable withdrawals before the courtroom drama begins proper.

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Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairperson Jessica Rosenworcel wants to open a formal Notice of Inquiry into the impact of internet data caps on consumers, according to an FCC document spotted by Ars Technica. The regulator will also consider "taking action" to ensure that data caps don't harm competition or impact access to broadband services, according to the letter. 

"Internet access is no longer nice-to-have, but need-to-have for everyone, everywhere," Rosenworcel said in a statement. "When we need access to the internet, we aren’t thinking about how much data it takes to complete a task, we just know it needs to get done. It’s time the FCC take a fresh look at how data caps impact consumers and competition."

With the Notice of Inquiry, the FCC would "seek comment to better understand why the use of data caps continues to persist despite increased broadband needs of consumers and providers' demonstrated technical ability to offer unlimited data plans," according to the letter. 

Rosenworcel would be unable to take any action on data caps at the moment, though. The FCC currently has just four members (two Democrats and two Republicans), as the Senate refused to confirm President Biden's first nominee, Gigi Sohn, and she subsequently withdrew her name for consideration. The White House has since nominated telecom attorney Anna Gomez, who appears to have the support of the telecom industry. A nomination hearing for Gomez is scheduled for this Thursday, June 22nd. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, broadband provider Comcast temporarily removed data caps, but it continues to impose a 1.2TB data cap on certain contracts in some US regions. Charter's deal with the FCC to not impose data caps on its Spectrum service (struck when it acquired Time Warner) ended this year, but the company recently said it has "no plans to [restart data caps] when the condition sunsets." 

Along with the proposed Notice of Inquiry, the FCC has opened a new portal to allow consumers to share how data caps have affected them (on fixed or wireless broadband networks) at fcc.gov/datacapstories. That will help the FCC determine how data caps impact access for everyone "including those with disabilities, low-income consumers, and historically disadvantaged communities, and access to online education, telehealth and remote work," the Commission wrote.

Between all the trailers Netflix shared yesterday during its Tudum event for properties like One Piece and 3 Body Problem, you may have missed some of the more grounded dramas the company was promoting at the same time. One of those was its upcoming adaption of Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, All The Light We Cannot See. Netflix shared a new teaser for its four-part miniseries of the same name.

If you haven’t read Doerr’s excellent 2014 novel, All The Light We Cannot See is set during the Second World War and follows Marie-Laure, a blind French girl, and Werner, a German orphan who is conscripted into the Nazi war machine at the start of the conflict. The two are connected to one another over the radio. Doerr’s lyrical prose is a highlight, but so is the novel’s attention to detail, with much of the narrative unfolding in the town of Saint-Malo.

In addition to a star-studded cast that includes Mark Ruffalo, as well as Aria Mia Loberti and Louis Hofmann as the story’s protagonists, All The Light We Cannot See features some noteworthy talent behind the camera. Steven Knight, best known for his work on Locke, Spencer and Peaky Blinders, wrote the adaption, while Stranger Things producer Shawn Levy directed the series. All The Light We Cannot See will start streaming on November 2nd, giving you some time to read the source material if you’re so inclined.

If Google’s Pixel Pro family has had your interest for a while, but the thought of using a phone with a curved display prevented you from buying the Pixel 7 Pro or Pixel 6 Pro, the Pixel 8 Pro could be interesting. According to an Android Authority report published Saturday, Google’s next flagship will feature a flat display.

After writing last week about the camera upgrades Google has planned for the Pixel 8 family, leaker Kamila Wojciechowska says the Pixel 8 Pro will sport a 6.7-inch OLED panel sourced from Samsung with a 1,344 x 2,992 resolution and 490 PPI pixel density. If you don’t have a Pixel 7 Pro on hand, each figure is slightly smaller than the specs offered by Google’s current flagship, which features a curved 6.71-inch display with a 1,440 x 3,120 resolution and 512 PPI pixel density. However, according to Wojciechowska, the Pixel 8 Pro’s screen will get much brighter, reaching 1,600 nits of peak brightness – compared to 1,000 nits on the Pixel 7 Pro – when displaying HDR content. Additionally, the 120Hz panel will be able to transition more smoothly between refresh rates.

As for the Pixel 8, it too is slated to receive a new display. Interestingly, the device will reportedly feature a smaller screen than the one found on the Pixel 7. Android Authority claims the phone will ship with a 6.17-inch screen that has a 1,080 x 2,400 resolution. That’s the same resolution as the Pixel 7’s 6.31-inch screen, meaning the new phone will offer a higher dot pitch. Moreover, the screen reportedly offers 1,400 nits of peak brightness, up from 1,000 on its predecessor, and a 120Hz refresh rate instead of 90Hz like the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7a. Speaking of Google’s latest mid-range phone, there have been rumors the 7a could be the company’s final a-Series phone, which may explain why the Pixel 8 reportedly comes with a smaller display.

Android Authority reports both the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro will feature more rounded corners than Google’s current pair of high-end phones, corroborating a previous report from leaker Steve Hemmerstoffer. That change would make them easier to use with one hand. Between their new displays and the larger primary camera sensor Google reportedly plans to equip the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro with, the company’s new phones are shaping up nicely. Expect more information to come out about devices in the weeks and months leading up to their release later this year.

Earlier this month, a group known as Anonymous Sudan took credit for a service outage that disrupted access to Outlook, OneDrive and a handful of other Microsoft online services. After initially sharing little information about the incident, the company confirmed late Friday it had been the target of a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks. In a blog post spotted by the Associated Press (via The Verge), Microsoft said the attacks “temporarily impacted” the availability of some services, adding they were primarily designed to generate “publicity” for a threat actor the company has dubbed Storm-1359. Under Microsoft's threat actor naming convention, Storm is a temporary designator the company employs for groups whose affiliation it hasn’t definitively established yet.

“We have seen no evidence that customer data has been accessed or compromised,” the company said. In a statement Microsoft shared with the Associated Press, the tech giant confirmed Anonymous Sudan was responsible for the attacks. It’s not clear how many Microsoft customers were affected by the attacks, or if the impact was global. The company believes Storm-1359 likely relied on a combination of virtual private servers and rented cloud infrastructure to carry out its operation.

Per Bleeping Computer, Anonymous Sudan began carrying out cyberattacks at the start of 2023. At the time, the group claimed it was targeting countries that meddle in Sudanese politics and promote anti-Muslim policies. However, some cybersecurity researchers believe the group is in fact an offshoot of the Kremlin-affiliated Killnet gang, and the reference to Sudan is a false flag designed to mislead casual onlookers. The likelihood of that link became more apparent on Friday when Anonymous Sudan said it was forming a “Darknet Parliament” with Killnet and Revil, another pro-Russian gang. As a first order of business, the alliance threatened to target SWIFT, the international interbanking system the United States and European Union cut Russia off from in response to its invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.

The Biden administration on Friday announced $930 million in grants designed to expand rural access to broadband internet. Part of the Department of Commerce’s “Enabling Middle Mile Broadband Infrastructure Program,” the grants will fund the deployment of more than 12,000 miles of new fiber optic cable across 35 states and Puerto Rico. The administration said Friday it expects grant recipients to invest an additional $848.46 million, a commitment that should double the program's impact.

“Much like how the interstate highway system connected every community in America to regional and national systems of highways, this program will help us connect communities across the country to regional and national networks that provide quality, affordable high-speed internet access,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said.

According to the Commerce Department, it received over 260 applications for the Middle Mile Grant Program, totaling $7.47 billion in funding requests. The agency primarily awarded grants to telecom and utility companies, though it also set aside funding for tribal governments and nonprofits. Per Gizmodo, the largest grant, valued at $88.8 million, went to a telecommunications company in Alaska that will build a fiber optic network in a part of the state where 55 percent of residents have no internet access. On average, the Commerce Department awarded $26.6 million to most applicants. Grant recipients now have five years to complete work on their projects, though the administration hopes many of the buildouts will be completed sooner.

In addition to creating new economic opportunities in traditionally underserved communities, the government says the projects should improve safety in those areas too. “They can improve network resilience in the face of the climate crisis, and increasing natural disasters like wildfires, floods, and storms, creating multiple routes for the internet traffic to use instead of just one, like a detour on the freeway,” White House infrastructure coordinator Mitch Landrieu told Bloomberg.

The funding is just one of many recent efforts by the government to close the rural digital divide. At the start of last year, the Federal Communications Commission announced an accountability program designed to ensure recipients of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund properly spend the money they receive from the public purse.

The problem with studying the universe around us is that it is simply too big. The stars overhead remain too far away to interact with directly, so we are relegated to testing our theories on the formation of the galaxies based on observable data. 

Simulating these celestial bodies on computers has proven an immensely useful aid in wrapping our heads around the nature of reality and, as Andrew Pontzen explains in his new book, The Universe in a Box: Simulations and the Quest to Code the Cosmos, recent advances in supercomputing technology are further revolutionizing our capability to model the complexities of the cosmos (not to mention myriad Earth-based challenges) on a smaller scale. In the excerpt below, Pontzen looks at the recent emergence of astronomy-focused AI systems, what they're capable of accomplishing in the field and why he's not too worried about losing his job to one.  

Riverhead Books

Adapted from THE UNIVERSE IN A BOX: Simulations and the Quest to Code the Cosmos by Andrew Pontzen published on June 13, 2023 by Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2023 Andrew Pontzen.

As a cosmologist, I spend a large fraction of my time working with supercomputers, generating simulations of the universe to compare with data from real telescopes. The goal is to understand the effect of mysterious substances like dark matter, but no human can digest all the data held on the universe, nor all the results from simulations. For that reason, artificial intelligence and machine learning is a key part of cosmologists’ work.

Consider the Vera Rubin Observatory, a giant telescope built atop a Chilean mountain and designed to repeatedly photograph the sky over the coming decade. It will not just build a static picture: it will particularly be searching for objects that move (asteroids and comets), or change brightness (flickering stars, quasars and supernovae), as part of our ongoing campaign to understand the ever-changing cosmos. Machine learning can be trained to spot these objects, allowing them to be studied with other, more specialized telescopes. Similar techniques can even help sift through the changing brightness of vast numbers of stars to find telltale signs of which host planets, contributing to the search for life in the universe. Beyond astronomy there are no shortage of scientific applications: Google’s artificial intelligence subsidiary DeepMind, for instance, has built a network that can outperform all known techniques for predicting the shapes of proteins starting from their molecular structure, a crucial and difficult step in understanding many biological processes.

These examples illustrate why scientific excitement around machine learning has built during this century, and there have been strong claims that we are witnessing a scientific revolution. As far back as 2008, Chris Anderson wrote an article for Wired magazine that declared the scientific method, in which humans propose and test specific hypotheses, obsolete: ‘We can stop looking for models. We can analyze the data without hypotheses about what it might show. We can throw the numbers into the biggest computing clusters the world has ever seen and let statistical algorithms find patterns where science cannot.’

I think this is taking things too far. Machine learning can simplify and improve certain aspects of traditional scientific approaches, especially where processing of complex information is required. Or it can digest text and answer factual questions, as illustrated by systems like ChatGPT. But it cannot entirely supplant scientific reasoning, because that is about the search for an improved understanding of the universe around us. Finding new patterns in data or restating existing facts are only narrow aspects of that search. There is a long way to go before machines can do meaningful science without any human oversight.

To understand the importance of context and understanding in science, consider the case of the OPERA experiment which in 2011 seemingly determined that neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light. The claim is close to a physics blasphemy, because relativity would have to be rewritten; the speed limit is integral to its formulation. Given the enormous weight of experimental evidence that supports relativity, casting doubt on its foundations is not a step to be taken lightly.

Knowing this, theoretical physicists queued up to dismiss the result, suspecting the neutrinos must actually be traveling slower than the measurements indicated. Yet, no problem with the measurement could be found – until, six months later, OPERA announced that a cable had been loose during their experiment, accounting for the discrepancy. Neutrinos travelled no faster than light; the data suggesting otherwise had been wrong.

Surprising data can lead to revelations under the right circumstances. The planet Neptune was discovered when astronomers noticed something awry with the orbits of the other planets. But where a claim is discrepant with existing theories, it is much more likely that there is a fault with the data; this was the gut feeling that physicists trusted when seeing the OPERA results. It is hard to formalize such a reaction into a simple rule for programming into a computer intelligence, because it is midway between the knowledge-recall and pattern-searching worlds.

The human elements of science will not be replicated by machines unless they can integrate their flexible data processing with a broader corpus of knowledge. There is an explosion of different approaches toward this goal, driven in part by the commercial need for computer intelligences to explain their decisions. In Europe, if a machine makes a decision that impacts you personally – declining your application for a mortgage, maybe, or increasing your insurance premiums, or pulling you aside at an airport – you have a legal right to ask for an explanation. That explanation must necessarily reach outside the narrow world of data in order to connect to a human sense of what is reasonable or unreasonable.

Problematically, it is often not possible to generate a full account of how machine-learning systems reach a particular decision. They use many different pieces of information, combining them in complex ways; the only truly accurate description is to write down the computer code and show the way the machine was trained. That is accurate but not very explanatory. At the other extreme, one might point to an obvious factor that dominated a machine’s decision: you are a lifelong smoker, perhaps, and other lifelong smokers died young, so you have been declined for life insurance. That is a more useful explanation, but might not be very accurate: other smokers with a different employment history and medical record have been accepted, so what precisely is the difference? Explaining decisions in a fruitful way requires a balance between accuracy and comprehensibility.

In the case of physics, using machines to create digestible, accurate explanations which are anchored in existing laws and frameworks is an approach in its infancy. It starts with the same demands as commercial artificial intelligence: the machine must not just point to its decision (that it has found a new supernova, say) but also give a small, digestible amount of information about why it has reached that decision. That way, you can start to understand what it is in the data that has prompted a particular conclusion, and see whether it agrees with your existing ideas and theories of cause and effect. This approach has started to bear fruit, producing simple but useful insights into quantum mechanics, string theory, and (from my own collaborations) cosmology.

These applications are still all framed and interpreted by humans. Could we imagine instead having the computer framing its own scientific hypotheses, balancing new data with the weight of existing theories, and going on to explain its discoveries by writing a scholarly paper without any human assistance? This is not Anderson’s vision of the theory-free future of science, but a more exciting, more disruptive and much harder goal: for machines to build and test new theories atop hundreds of years of human insight.

At its Tudum 2023 event today, Netflix revealed new trailers for two highly anticipated live-action adaptations of beloved animated series. One Piece gets a full trailer ahead of its August 31st premiere on the streaming service, while we’ll have to settle for a brief teaser trailer for Avatar: The Last Airbender, which won’t arrive until 2024.

The 90-second One Piece trailer shows the cast and settings of the live-action take on the manga and long-running anime series. We see plenty of star Iñaki Godoy as the naive but kind protagonist Monkey D. Luffy, who can stretch like rubber. The other Straw Hat Pirate crew members are Mackenyu as Roronoa Zero, Emily Rudd as Nami, Jacob Romero Gibson as Usopp and Taz Skylar as Sanji.

Meanwhile, the 37-second Avatar: The Last Airbender teaser doesn’t give us any shots of the cast or environments from the live-action remake. Instead, we see symbols of the four nations (Water Tribes, Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation and Air Nomads) fading in and out. Each includes a subtle audio cue corresponding to its element. Whenever we do finally see its cast, it will include Gordon Cormier as Aang, Kiawentiio as Katara, Ian Ousley as Sokka and Daniel Dae Kim as Fire Lord Ozai.

You may recall from a few years back that Avatar: The Last Airbender original series creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko departed the project, raising questions about how faithful the new adaptation will be to the source material. “I realized I couldn’t control the creative direction of the series, but I could control how I responded,” DiMartino said in 2020. “So, I chose to leave the project. It was the hardest professional decision I’ve ever had to make, and certainly not one that I took lightly, but it was necessary for my happiness and creative integrity.” Still, he added at the time that the Netflix adaption “has the potential to be good.” We’ll have to wait until next year to find out.