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Security expert Carl Schou has spotted an interesting bug in Apple's iPhone WiFi connectivity. Joining to a specifically named WiFi network will freeze the phone's entire WiFi connectivity - permanently.

After user joins such network, the WiFi connections freeze completely and not even rebooting the phone will fix the problem. Neither will disabling WiFi and turning it on again. Only solution is to reset all iPhone's network connections completely through iPhone's settings, which will wipe out all the stored WiFi passwords and settings.

After joining my personal WiFi with the SSID "%p%s%s%s%s%n", my iPhone permanently disabled it's WiFi functionality. Neither rebooting nor changing SSID fixes it :~) pic.twitter.com/2eue90JFu3

-- Carl Schou (@vm_call) June 18, 2021

The problem exists also in Apple iPad tablets and behaves similarly. Apple hasn't released a fix to the problem yet.

Rumors surrounding the upcoming Windows event on 24th of June have been pretty wild lately. There has been speculation whether Microsoft will actually roll back on its promise that the Windows 10 would be the last Windows ever. Now, it seems that Windows 10 will, in deed, get a successor.

Microsoft's own Windows product page now lists the end of life date for Windows 10 Pro and Windows 10 Home editions. Both operating systems are listed to reach their end of support life in 2025. This is pretty solid proof that Microsoft is about to release Windows 11 next week.

When Microsoft released Windows 10 back in July, 2015, the company stated that it would be the "last Windows ever". Since then, company has kept its promise and has simply provided big feature updates to its operating system in form of semi-annual big update packs. But now, it seems that the Redmond giant has something so big in pipeline that it wont be just another update, but an entire new operating system version.

Yes. As unbelievable as it is, its been exactly 22 years since our site was officially launched back in June, 1999.

Back then, majority of the online users connected to the internet using 56k modems and 2G phones were just getting popular. Texting wasn't available in most of the U.S. networks. AltaVista was the biggest search engine...

Yes, technologies have changed over the years. Our site has evolved accordingly. We've seen the good times and bad times - and are unfortunately somewhat experiencing one of those bad times for our dear old site as of now. But as with everything that has happened during the past 22 years, we'll adapt.

I wont go into details of our past further, as I covered our site's history pretty extensively two years ago when our site turned 20. Instead, as always, I'd like to thank all of you. I'd like to thank my coworkers and my co-founders for all these years we've spent together building this site. And obviously, I'd like to thank all of our employees - past and present - for all the hard work they've put into AfterDawn. And last but not least, I'd like to thank all of you: our users, visitors and moderators who have continued to support our site from year after year.

Apparently hackers have managed to breach into gaming giant EA's servers and have stolen 760 gigabytes of data. This stolen data includes the full source code for EA's soccer game FIFA 21 as well as source code for its Frostbite engine.

Frostbite engine is used for games such as Battlefield. According to VICE, EA has confirmed the incident and the data that was stolen from the company.

User data was not stolen, just company's internal development tools, source codes and other development assets. Hackers behind this have tried to sell the material in various net's shady underground forums and commerce sites. Thus, the stolen data hasn't leaked to the wider public - at least, not yet.

About ten minutes ago, some part of the internet's structure crashed. The fingers are pointing to some of the various large CDN and cache providers - guesses at Twitter are that the culprit is Fastly.

Due this, various huge websites, such as Reddit and StackOverflow simply show 503 error for now.

According to DownDetector site, the problems started about 10 minutes ago before we published this story:

The list of affected sites continues to grow: and Twitch are both down. And fingers are pointing at Fastly's server outages.

it looks like Fastly is having a catastrophic outage right now https://t.co/T2ZLzCUVlF

-- Tom Warren (@tomwarren) June 8, 2021

Netflix has published a list of its most popular own movies ever.

Topping the chart is the last year's action movie The Extraction with a whopping 99 million views to date. Overall, the list has tons of movies from very recent years, as number of Netflix's subscribers has steadily grown over the years, most notably, globally.

The latest entry to the list is the May 2021 release of Army of the Dead with 72 million views, climbing to the list's tied ninth place, sharing the last spot in the list with last year's George Clooney movie The Midnight Sky.

Here's the full top ten:

1. Extraction (99M)
2. Bird Box (89M)
3. Spenser Confidential (85M)
4. 6 Underground (83M)
5. Murder Mystery (83M)
6. The Old Guard (78M)
7. Enola Holmes (76M)
8. Project Power (75M)
9. The Midnight Sky
   Army of the Dead (tied, both with 72M)

Here' the trailer of the latest entry, the zombie movie Army of the Dead:

As Google launched the first public beta of Android 12 this week, the beta release was also released for various Android manufacturers' phones globally.

As one would expect, all Google Pixel models from Pixel 3 upwards got the Android 12 beta release (which also means that original Pixel and Pixel 2 series have noe both reached their end of life and wont get Android 12). Xiaomi released the beta for handful of its most recent high-end models, including Xiaomi Mi 11i - see full list of Xiaomi models with Android 12 beta.

Recently released Asus Zenfone 8 got Android 12 beta, too. Also selected Chinese manufacturers, such as TCL, OPPO and ZTE released the beta for some of their high-end models.

One of the bigger manufacturers among the beta team is OnePlus: their recent flagship pair OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro (read our OnePlus 9 Pro review) got the Android 12 beta, too. Unfortunately, some of the OnePlus users have already reported various problems with the beta. Most notably, some OnePlus 9 phones have been stuck into infinite reboot loop after the update. OnePlus quickly released instructions on how to downgrade back to Android 11.

Instagram has provided users with a way to block out abusive messages that are sent as DM requests on its platform.

While people can avoid abusive or offensive messages in DMs on Instagram by limiting who can contact them, many users report getting abusive messages via the DM request inbox on Instagram.

A new tool can now be used that will automatically filter DM requests containing offensive words, phrases, and emojis, so you never have to see them. It will work in a similar way to the comment filters that are already available on Instagram.

Instagram worked with anti-discrimination and anti-bullying organizations to develop a predefined list of offensive terms that will be filtered from DM requests when the feature is turned on. There is also the option to create your own custom list of words, phrases, or emojis that you don't want to see in your DM requests.

All DM requests that contain these offensive words, phrases, or emojis - whether from your custom list or the predefined list - will be automatically filtered into a separate hidden requests folder. If you choose to open the folder, the message text will be covered so you're not confronted with offensive language, unless you tap to uncover it.

Sixteen-year-old classic RE4 has been demonstrated ahead of its release for the Oculus Quest 2.

Originally released for the GameCube, Resident Evil 4 is a beloved classic of the horror series and has been ported several times already. This year it is getting the Oculus VR makeover, and we now have a glimpse of what that will look and feel like.

Weapons, ammo, and items are physical objects in the game you can reach out to manipulate or pick up. Drawing a weapon can be done with your hand rather than a menu, along with the act of reloading.

You can move Leon from your first-person perspective using the controllers or you can use a new teleportation feature that makes it easy to skip Leon's movement forward.

The game can be run at a higher framerate than the original 30FPS also, and all original characters and textures have been ported to Unreal Engine 4. More details will be available soon ahead of its launch later this year.

Take a look at the demo:

There is now an enhanced version of Monday's historic first powered flight from the Martian surface.

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter made history this week when it powered up and lifted off on the surface of Mars. The brief excursion into Mars' thin atmosphere is the first time a human-made device has taken powered flight from the surface of another planet, even if it was just a short hop into the air. It is important to state it is the first powered flight, as the Soviet Union achieved the first balloon flight in the atmosphere of Venus in 1985.

The first images of Ingenuity were grainy and choppy and were followed by a better video. However, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory channel on YouTube has uploaded an enhanced video with more detail.

It actually contains two separate recordings of the event, presented side by side. The view on the left uses motion filtering to show where dust was detected during liftoff and landing and the view on the right is enhanced with the motion filtering.

Here is the video:

Several dozen popular free-to-play games can now be enjoyed on Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X without an Xbox Live Gold subscription.

Popular titles including Call of Duty: Warzone, Apex Legends, Fortnite, Rocket League, Roblox, and many more were limited to paying Xbox Live Gold subscribers up until now. Microsoft is known to have been testing the change for weeks.

Additionally, Xbox party chat and the Looking For Groups (LFG) have been similarly liberated from the premium tier.

The move comes after Microsoft irked gamers with a planned doubling of the yearly cost of an Xbox Live subscription earlier this year. It also happens as Microsoft is phasing out the branding of Xbox Live, to be replaced by Xbox network.

SpaceX has denied recent reports of a near-miss incident involving one of its Internet-beaming Starlink satellites, and one belonging to rival OneWeb.

The news has reignited concerns about the ambitious plans of SpaceX and others to launch arrays of satellites into low-Earth orbit in order to provide low-latency, high-speech broadband services. Critics warn that launching too many satellites into low Earth orbit increases the risk of collisions that could produce large amounts of dangerous space junk, inhibiting future space operations.

There are also concerns about the presence of satellite constellations in orbit and the effect it will have on ground-based astronomy.

In recent days news spread about a close call between a Starlink satellite, operated by SpaceX, and a OneWeb satellite. In a filing, SpaceX essentially accuses OneWeb of spreading false information about what actually occurred.

The initial reports stated that SpaceX has turned off its collision avoidance system when its satellite came within 190 feet of the OneWeb satellite on April 2. OneWeb had performed a maneuver and avoided a collision. Representatives of SpaceX and OneWeb met with FCC staff since the incident.

Apple finally released its long anticipated AirTag device yesterday. And to be honest to its reputation, the item tracking device comes in wide variety of styles. And yes, some of those styles are insanely priced.

AirTag is essentially a small Bluetooth-like device that you can hook to your key ring, your laptop, etc and can then find your misplaced item with your phone. Similar solutions have existed before, from wide variety of manufacturers over the past few years.

The basic version of AirTag is quite reasonably priced, at $29 in U.S. But..

A genuine leather luggage tag, including a built-in AirTag and designed by famous French luxury designer Hermès is something else. It is currently available only in the United States, but it costs a whopping $449 on Apple's own store.

screenshot from Apple US website

According to a report from Digital Music News last week, Spotify will resume removing Joe Rogan Experience podcasts from its inventory.

The popular podcast made the jump to Spotify at the end of 2020, with the Swedish streaming platform securing exclusivity over the existing catalog and new episodes. Some older episodes still remain on YouTube, while Spotify decided against bringing over several dozen podcast episodes. Additionally, clips from new podcast episodes are still uploaded to YouTube.

Spotify has reportedly removed 42 episodes of the podcast which features guests including provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, comedian Chris D'Elia, and more. While Spotify did not bring over old episodes featuring Alex Jones, it still has a more recent episode online with Mr. Jones and comedian Tim Dillan, which Rogan himself described as a "big test."

The popular podcaster, comedian, and UFC commentator clashed with Spotify employees shortly after the transition to the service. Reports circulated that Spotify employees were demanding editing oversight be given to Spotify staffers, that trigger warnings be displayed for some episodes, as well as clarifications by "fact-checkers."

According to a report, Microsoft may be preparing to launch its Cloud PC service as soon as this summer.

Codenamed 'Project Deschutes', Microsoft sees potential in offering the familiar Windows Desktop environment as a service to subscribers. With this Cloud PC service, customers could use their devices to access a remote Desktop running atop Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform.

Of course, familiar Microsoft products such as Office 365 would likely be accessible through the service. Believed to be in testing now, the Cloud PC service may roll out as soon as June or July, reports ZDNet.

Leaks have revealed that Microsoft is planning multiple options for potential subscribers designated Medium, Heavy, and Advanced. The three separate options would vary based on the allocated CPU capacity, RAM capacity, and storage space.

Another potential use for the Cloud PC service is to allow customers running Windows 10X devices to run Win32 applications. Windows 10x is an upcoming operating system that will target the Chrome OS market, and it will not run standard Win32 applications.