Poland admits purchase of Pegasus spyware
For days, Poland’s ruling party had denied, with some abstruse statements, that the country had bought the Pegasus spyware. Now there is a U-turn. Jarosław Kaczyński said in an interview that “it would be bad if Poland’s security authorities did not have this tool”. At the same time, Kaczyński again rejected the charge that the tool had been used against political opponents. It was only on Thursday that the human rights organization Amnesty International independently confirmed that at least one Polish opposition politician had been spied on with Pegasus.
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Thousands of electricity customers are slipping into the basic supply
At least 38 providers have notified the Federal Network Agency by the end of 2021 that they no longer want to supply customers with electricity. The companies justify this with the sharp rise in prices on the electricity exchanges. Hundreds of thousands of customers are likely to be affected. If a provider no longer delivers, customers automatically switch to the tariff of the local basic supplier. Then electricity continues to come from the socket, but usually has to be paid much more expensively than before. The federal government sees breaches of contract by providers in the current wave of dismissals.
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Quick right to repair
Cell phone batteries cannot be changed, and TV repairs are more expensive than a new one – consumer advocates believe that this must change quickly. The Federation of German Consumer Organizations has asked the new federal government to initiate the planned right to repair within the first hundred days. In addition, the VAT should be lowered on certain repairs so that they are more worthwhile, the association demands. A repair index on the packaging could indicate how easily a product can be repaired.
New functions at Clubhouse
The creators of the talk app Clubhouse have activated new functions on the occasion of the turn of the year. Among other things, it should be much easier to share interesting conversations, conversation initiators have more diagnostic data available and, at least for the USA, the function is being introduced to be able to call up clubhouse discussion groups without a clubhouse app in the browser. The “Web Listening” is possible for live discussions and replays and should also work without an account at Clubhouse. If the “experiment” is successful, browser listening will also be introduced in other countries.
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