Month: September 2022

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | rolfo)

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) yesterday recommended that all new vehicles be equipped with alcohol detection systems that can stop people from driving when drunk.

The NTSB can't issue such a regulation on its own but urged the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to do so. The NTSB said it "is recommending measures leveraging new in-vehicle technologies that can limit or prohibit impaired drivers from operating their vehicles as well as technologies to prevent speeding."

If adopted, this would require "passive vehicle-integrated alcohol impairment detection systems, advanced driver monitoring systems or a combination of the two that would be capable of preventing or limiting vehicle operation if it detects driver impairment by alcohol," the NTSB said. The agency urged the NHTSA to "require all new vehicles to be equipped with such systems."

Enlarge (credit: OnePlus)

Some other manufacturers might take six months to deliver an Android update, but not OnePlus, which is already rolling out Android 13 just over a month after launch. The company announced that its Android 13 skin, Oxygen OS 13, has started rolling out to the OnePlus 10 Pro.

Android 13 shipped on August 15 and brought a limited number of new features to the world's most popular operating system. Users now need to grant notifications permissions to the app to see a message, there's a built-in task manager for background apps, and a new media player design. It's a minor release, but it's the second major Android release this year after Android 12L came out in March.

OnePlus' month-long delay makes it the fastest third-party OEM to update to the latest version of Android. Compare OnePlus' speed to Android's biggest OEM, Samsung, which only shipped Android 12L this month, taking around six months to ship an Android update. We would call OnePlus the best at updating Android, but sadly OnePlus doesn't release Android's monthly security updates on time.

Enlarge / Gambling-focused streams like this one will see more restrictions from Twitch in the coming weeks.

Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch announced late Tuesday that it will start cracking down on streams that promote certain types of gambling sites in the coming weeks. The move comes after a number of prominent streamers publicly mulled a "Twitch blackout" to protest what they see as Twitch's implicit promotion of damaging and addictive gambling behavior.

The concern over gambling among some streamers has become newly relevant this week thanks in part to Sliker, a somewhat prominent streamer who admitted on a stream last weekend to a serious addiction to gambling on the outcome of CS: GO matches. Regular readers will recognize that type of gambling as one that Valve and other streamers have struggled with for years.

Sliker says he solicited at least $200,000 in donations from other streamers and viewers under false pretenses, using the money to fund his gambling habit rather than to help with a claimed temporary cash flow issue. "I don’t know what to say to the people I borrowed from," Sliker said in his confession stream. "This is the epitome of gambling. I want to say don’t touch it.”

Enlarge / The Chromebook Edition of the Framework Laptop. (credit: Framework)

Fans of the modular Framework Laptop who also prefer ChromeOS to Windows or Linux are in for a treat: Framework and Google are announcing a Chromebook Edition of the Laptop today. It has the same basic hardware design and works with most of the same parts as the regular Framework Laptop but with tweaks to make it a full-fledged Chromebook.

While you could always take a standard Framework Laptop and install ChromeOS Flex on it, the standard version of ChromeOS still has a few features that Flex doesn't, including Android app support via Google Play, automated firmware updates, and a few other security and device management features.

Framework says that the Chromebook Edition laptop will be available for preorder starting today—a version with a Core i5-1240P CPU will cost $999, although you'll only need to put down $100 to reserve your preorder. Orders begin shipping in December. Framework is also putting parts specific to the Chromebook Edition laptop into its Framework Marketplace parts store.

Enlarge (credit: Eugene Mymrin / Getty Images)

Burmese influencer Han Nyein Oo rose to prominence in 2020, posting memes and gossip about Burmese celebrities on Facebook to an audience that grew to several hundred thousand people in Myanmar by early 2021. Then, after the country’s military seized power that February, he lurched rightwards, becoming a full-blooded supporter of the junta, which has killed more than 1,500 people and arrested thousands more in bloody crackdowns.

He was soon banned from Facebook for violating its terms of service, so he moved to Telegram, the encrypted messaging app and social sharing platform. There, he posted messages of support for the military, graphic pictures of murdered civilians, and doctored pornographic images purporting to be female opposition figures. Often, these were cross-posted in other channels run by a network of pro-junta influencers, reaching tens of thousands of users.

This year, Han Nyein Oo moved on to direct threats. Opponents of the junta planned to mark the anniversary of the coup on February 1 with a “silent strike,” closing businesses and staying home to leave the streets abandoned. On his Telegram channel, Han Nyein Oo raged, asking his followers to send him photos of shops and businesses that were planning to shut. They obliged, and he began posting the images and addresses to his 100,000 followers. Dozens of premises were raided by police. Han Nyein Oo claimed credit. He did not respond to a request to comment.