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Meta has quietly reversed course on encrypted Instagram direct messages, stripping away end-to-end protection from one of the world's most used social platforms. The company says adoption was limited and is pointing users toward WhatsApp instead — a move that trades user privacy for consolidation, and raises real questions about who can now read your conversations.
Across the Atlantic, the UK Home Office has pulled the plug on a cloud migration project for the Police National Database after costs ballooned by an additional twenty-six million pounds and timelines slipped by eighteen months. The program, which was meant to modernize how police forces across Britain share critical information, will now be brought in-house — bringing the total transformation spend to roughly thirty-five million pounds with little to show for it.
And in a story that's equal parts nostalgia and commentary, a developer has built a working clone of the veteran text editor Vi — in BASIC. Vi turns fifty this year, and programmer and artist Lee Tusman chose Yabasic, an open-source interpreter, to pay tribute. Sometimes the oldest tools inspire the strangest celebrations.
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