Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s relentless anti-vaccine agenda is getting reined in as Republicans warn that further attacks on lifesaving vaccines could harm the party during the midterms, according to a report by The Washington Post.

The Post reported Wednesday that Kennedy’s hand-selected committee of vaccine advisors—who share his anti-vaccine views—have abruptly abandoned plans to attack mRNA vaccines in an upcoming meeting.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is scheduled to meet March 18–19. While no agenda has been published for the meeting, a Federal Register notice stated that the meeting would include discussion of “COVID-19 vaccine injuries,” and may include a vote to change the CDC’s vaccine recommendations. Sources close to the committee told the Post that Kennedy’s advisors have been looking for ways to remove mRNA COVID-19 vaccines entirely from federal recommendations. And according to clearly stated goals in a meeting of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine allies earlier this week, the long-term goal is to eliminate all childhood vaccine recommendations and remove the shots from the market.

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It is fairly common for satellite companies to verbally spar over constellations, battling over territory such as preferred orbits and the electromagnetic spectrum for data transmission. The venue for such disputes is often the Federal Communications Commission, which has regulatory authority over satellite communications.

Everyone pretty much fights with everyone, but of late, the exchanges between SpaceX and Amazon have turned a bit nasty. And on Wednesday, the FCC chairman weighed in against Amazon.

The issue of the moment is SpaceX’s recent application to the FCC for permission to launch up to 1 million satellites to form a megaconstellation to provide data center services from space.

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In April, Microsoft will be rolling out a full-screen “Xbox mode” to all Windows 11 PCs, including laptops, desktops, and tablets. The move follows last week’s confirmation of its next-generation Xbox console, known internally as Project Helix, which will be capable of running both Xbox titles and PC games. The Verge reports: Technically, you’ve been able to try the Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) in preview since November 2025, if you were part of both the Windows Insider and Xbox Insider Programs. But it needed work, as well as a better name. When Microsoft originally shipped it on the Asus-designed Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X handhelds, we were clear: it didn’t meaningfully turn a PC experience into an easy-to-use Xbox one. But if Microsoft is putting its full weight behind PC as the future of Xbox gaming, perhaps that will change change.

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Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox isn’t an Xbox. Or it isn’t just an Xbox, anyway: While the rumored console will undoubtedly play Xbox games, “Project Helix,” as it’s codenamed, will reportedly also play PC titles. That’s huge news for gamers who usually have to decide whether to buy a console for the convenience, or a PC for the potential.

‘Xbox mode’ lets you access games on your PC with a controller

But while Project Helix is still a ways off (we won’t see it until 2027, at least), Microsoft is already doubling down on merging its two major gaming platforms. As reported by PCMag, Microsoft is giving PC gamers access to the Xbox Full Screen Experience, and rebranding it “Xbox mode.” Starting next month, every Windows 11 PC will be able to use Xbox mode—including laptops, desktops, and tablets. That means that at some point in April, your PC will kind of be an Xbox. And next year, the reverse will be true as well. (Well, assuming you buy the new Xbox, that is.)

PC gamers are likely quite comfortable already with accessing their games in their existing setups, so offering an “Xbox mode” may come across as a bit odd. The idea behind it, however, is to make your game library easier to access using a controller. It’s a bit more of a console experience in that way, which could make it a little easier to access your games on a PC connected to your TV. If you’re in Xbox mode, you can simply control the interface with your controller, rather than deal with a mouse and keyboard setup from the couch.

The feature has been in testing since last year

This won’t be a brand new feature for some Windows 11 users. Microsoft has been testing Xbox mode on PC thorough the Windows Insiders program since November. If you enroll your PC in the Insider program, you’re able to try out features before Microsoft officially launches them—so long as you’re okay taking on the risks of bugs and instability.

To that point, Xbox mode might still need some polishing. Certainly that was the case on mobile. In Michelle Ehrhardt’s review of the ROG Xbox Ally, she found the Xbox Full Screen Experience underbaked, ugly, and filled with ads. While she thought the experience should be Microsoft’s answer to SteamOS, in execution, it was the “the worst thing about this handheld.” We’ll have to see next month whether things have improved for the PC.

Researchers say they have uncovered a takedown-resistant botnet of 14,000 routers and other network devices—primarily made by Asus—that have been conscripted into a proxy network that anonymously carries traffic used for cybercrime.

The malware—dubbed KadNap—takes hold by exploiting vulnerabilities that have gone unpatched by their owners, Chris Formosa, a researcher at security firm Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs, told Ars. The high concentration of Asus routers is likely due to botnet operators acquiring a reliable exploit for vulnerabilities affecting those models. He said it’s unlikely that the attackers are using any zero-days in the operation.

A botnet that stands out among others

The number of infected routers averages about 14,000 per day, up from 10,000 last August, when Black Lotus discovered the botnet. Compromised devices are overwhelmingly located in the US, with smaller populations in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Russia. One of the most salient features of KadNap is a sophisticated peer-to-peer design based on Kademlia, a network structure that uses distributed hash tables to conceal the IP addresses of command-and-control servers. The design makes the botnet resistant to detection and takedowns through traditional methods.

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Grammarly has disabled its Expert Review feature after backlash from writers whose names were used to present AI-generated feedback without their permission. Superhuman (formerly Grammarly) CEO Shishir Mehrotra wrote in a LinkedIn post that the company will disable Expert Review while they “reimagine” the feature: Back in August, we launched a Grammarly agent called Expert Review. The agent draws on publicly available information from third-party LLMs to surface writing suggestions inspired by the published work of influential voices.

Over the past week, we received valid critical feedback from experts who are concerned that the agent misrepresented their voices. This kind of scrutiny improves our products, and we take it seriously. As context, the agent was designed to help users discover influential perspectives and scholarship relevant to their work, while also providing meaningful ways for experts to build deeper relationships with their fans. We hear the feedback and recognize we fell short on this. I want to apologize and acknowledge that we’ll rethink our approach going forward.

After careful consideration, we have decided to disable Expert Review while we reimagine the feature to make it more useful for users, while giving experts real control over how they want to be represented — or not represented at all.

We deeply believe in our mission to solve the “last mile of AI” by bringing AI directly to where people work, and we see this as a significant opportunity for experts. For millions of users, Grammarly is a trusted writing sidekick — ever-present in every application, ready to help. We’re opening up this platform so anyone can build agents that work like Grammarly — expanding from one sidekick to a whole team. Imagine your professor sharpening your essay, your sales leader reshaping a customer pitch, a thoughtful critic challenging your arguments, or a leading expert elevating your proposal. For experts, this is a chance to build that same ubiquitous bond with users, much like Grammarly has. But in this world, experts choose to participate, shape how their knowledge is represented, and control their business model. That future excites me, and I hope to build it with experts who want to develop it alongside us.

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The key to working at a place like Ars Technica is solid news judgment. I’m talking about the kind of news judgment that knows whether a pet peeve is merely a pet peeve or whether it is, instead, a meaningful example of the Ways that Technology is Changing our World.

The difference between the two is one of degree: A pet peeve may drive me nuts but does not appear to impact anyone else. A Ways that Technology is Changing our World story must be about something that drives a lot of people nuts.

“But where is the threshold?” I hear you asking plaintively. “It’s extremely important that I know when something crosses the line from pet peeve to important, chin-stroking journalism topic!”

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When Asus and Microsoft launched the ROG Xbox Ally X last summer, it came with a bespoke controller-driven full-screen interface running on top of Windows 11. The handheld was still running Windows under the hood, and you could bring up the typical Windows desktop any time, but it defaulted to the full-screen gaming UI.

Then called either the “Xbox Experience for Handheld” or the “Xbox Full-Screen Experience (FSE)” depending on who you asked and when, Microsoft said it would be available on all Windows PCs at some point in 2026. That point has apparently arrived: Microsoft announced this week at the Game Developers Conference that other Windows 11 PCs “in select markets” would be getting what’s now being called “Xbox mode” starting in April.

Under the hood, a PC running in Xbox mode is still running regular-old Windows, with the same capabilities as any other PC. But there are system services and UI elements (like the standard Start menu and taskbar) that don’t launch when the system is in Xbox mode, something Microsoft claims can save a gigabyte or two of RAM while also allowing systems to use less energy. Users can return to Windows’ traditional desktop mode whenever they want, though.

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An advocacy group said its study of 10 artificial intelligence chatbots found that most of them gave at least some help to users planning violent attacks and that nearly all failed to discourage users from violence. Several chatbot makers say they have made changes to improve safety since the tests were conducted between November and December.

Of the 10 chatbots, “Character.AI was uniquely unsafe,” said the report published today by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which conducted research in collaboration with CNN reporters. Character.AI “encouraged users to carry out violent attacks,” with specific suggestions to “use a gun” on a health insurance CEO and to physically assault a politician, the CCDH wrote.

“No other chatbot tested explicitly encouraged violence in this way, even when providing practical assistance in planning a violent attack,” the report said.

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Superhuman has taken its writing assistant Grammarly on quite the merry-go-round ride regarding its approach to AI tools. In August, the company launched a feature called Expert Review that would offer feedback on your writing, offering AI-generated feedback that would appear to come from a famous writer or academic of note. These recreations were based on “publicly available information from third-party LLMs,” which sounds a lot like web crawlers of dubious legality were involved. 

The suggested experts would be based on the subject matter and could be anyone from great scientific minds to bestselling fiction authors to your friendly neighborhood tech bloggers. Living or dead, these writers’ names appeared on Grammarly without their permission or knowledge. “References to experts in this product are for informational purposes only and do not indicate any affiliation with Grammarly or endorsement by those individuals or entities,” the company hedged in a disclaimer on the service. 

As one might imagine, once people took notice, a large number of the living contingent of those writers were none too pleased with Grammarly and Superhuman. The company initially attempted to address the complaints by allowing writers to opt out of the platform. Which I’m sure was a big relief to the deceased contingent and to those living ones who aren’t closely following AI news and might still not know they were being cited by the tool. 

Today, Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra wrote in a LinkedIn post that the company will disable Expert Review while it reassesses the feature. “The agent was designed to help users discover influential perspectives and scholarship relevant to their work, while also providing meaningful ways for experts to build deeper relationships with their fans,” he said. Yes, Carl Sagan must be bemoaning the lack of deep relationships with his fans from the afterlife.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/grammarly-has-disabled-its-tool-offering-generative-ai-feedback-credited-to-real-writers-201614257.html?src=rss

It probably comes as no surprise that government agencies have access to a lot of your data—in part because we hand some of it over to them directly, and in part because they are able to purchase it from data brokers that already exist to harvest, aggregate, and sell it to other companies. A recent report from 404 Media confirms that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is among those buying and using location data collected via ads to track users’ movements.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the FBI, and a handful of other federal agencies have also purchased location data from brokers in recent years, but the internal document from the Department of Homeland Security obtained by 404 Media confirms that CBP has sourced its location tracking in part from real-time bidding (RTB), which is behind every online ad you are served.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation describes how this process exposes your location data, which happens within milliseconds each time you open an ad-supported app or visit a website. The app or website pings an ad tech company to figure out which ads to serve, and that company puts together a “bid request” using your data, including your device’s advertising ID, IP address, demographic information, GPS coordinates, and more. That bid request goes out to thousands of advertisers, and the highest bidder is the one that ultimately gets displayed.

In the meantime, both ad tech companies and advertisers receive all of your data, and organizations that purchase this data can connect movements to specific devices, facilitating surveillance over a period of time.

How to protect your location data against tracking

As EFF points out, law enforcement agencies in almost every state can purchase location data from data brokers without first obtaining a warrant, so the onus is largely on users to protect themselves against location tracking. (It’s worth noting that Apple devices generally have more privacy-forward settings than Android, as apps running on iOS are required to request access to advertising IDs, allowing users to more easily opt out.)

All of this means that you can (and should) take a few steps to minimize how your location is tracked and shared.

Disable ad IDs on your device

To delete ad identifiers on Android, go to Settings > Security & privacy > Privacy controls > Ads and tap Delete advertising ID.

On iOS, disable the advertising ID globally under Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking and toggle off Allow Apps to Request to Track. Then, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Apple Advertising and disable Personalized Ads to eliminate internal tracking for Apple’s native services.

Audit which apps have access to location services

You need to know which apps are using your location data, and disable permissions where it is not essential for the app to function. Alternatively, allow apps to access your location only when in use and turn off precise location sharing (so only your approximate location is visible).

On iOS, this is under Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services, where you can select permissions and toggle off Precise Location for individual apps. On Android, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Privacy Controls > Permission Manager.

Use airplane mode to stop real-time tracking

Airplane mode is a one-touch way to limit tracking—useful if you are headed to a protest or other sensitive location. Your device can still store and transmit this data later, but EFF notes that most apps aren’t that likely to do so.

A Swiss e-voting pilot was suspended after officials couldn’t decrypt 2,048 ballots because the USB keys needed to unlock them failed. “Three USB sticks were used, all with the correct code, but none of them worked,” spokesperson Marco Greiner told the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation’s Swissinfo service. The canton government says it “deeply regrets” the incident and has launched an investigation with authorities. The Register reports: Basel-Stadt announced the problem with its e-voting pilot, open to about 10,300 locals living abroad and 30 people with disabilities, last Friday afternoon. It encouraged participants to deliver a paper vote to the town hall or use a polling station but admitted this would not be possible for many. By the close of polling on Sunday, its e-voting system had collected 2,048 votes, but Basel-Stadt officials were not able to decrypt them with the hardware provided, despite the involvement of IT experts. […]

The votes made up less than 4 percent of those cast in Basel-Stadt and would not have changed any results, but the canton is delaying confirmation of voting figures until March 21 and suspending its e-voting pilot until the end of December, while its public prosecutor’s office has started criminal proceedings. The country’s Federal Chancellery said e-voting in three other cantons — Thurgau, Graubunden, and St Gallen — along with the nationally used Swiss Post e-voting system, had not been affected.

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