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The United States Senate has passed a bill that requires TikTok, a Chinese-based company, to divest or face a ban on American shores.
ByteDance, the owner of the viral video social media platform, has been continuously scrutinized by U.S. politicians and rivals, but now the end seems nigh.
US Senate decides on TikTok ban
The clock seems to have run out for TikTok. President Biden agrees that the U.S. Senate ruling marks a marquee milestone for applications based and developed outside of America.
The President commented on the bill: “Tonight, a bipartisan majority in the Senate joined the House to answer history’s call at this critical inflection point. Congress has passed my legislation to strengthen our national security and send a message to the world about the power of American leadership: we stand resolutely for democracy and freedom, and against tyranny and oppression.”
As we reported last month, the U.S. Senate received a disturbing FBI briefing on the app and its threat to American national security. The app was accused of being able to harvest personal data and was presumed to have powerful spying capabilities.
This security development catalyzed the bill’s passing and cemented the view of U.S. politicians that the app’s time was up. Passing the ban would involve the particulars being wrapped up in the President’s foreign aid bill, known as the National Security Package.
If the bill passes through both chambers of Congress President Biden has made his pledge public, saying “I will sign this bill into law and address the American people as soon as it reaches my desk tomorrow.”
Once the bill is signed into U.S. law, TikTok’s owners, ByteDance, will have little under a year to sell the company or face a complete ban in America.
The United States isn’t the only region cracking down on TikTok as the European Commission (EC) has had concerns over the launched TikTok Lite. It was seen to have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA) of the EC and was given a day to respond to challenges from senior European politicians.
Image: Ideogram.
 
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While we are some way off Honkai: Star Rail’s 2.3 update right now, some details are beginning to emerge about what we can expect in the HoYoverse at some point in the middle of this year.
Honkai: Star Rail continues to compete with the mighty Genshin Impact, which is going into its version 4.6 imminently, as a gacha game stablemate with another license to print money.
Honkai Star Rail however continues to try and forge its own path away from its older sibling and for a brief period at the end of last year actually toppled it from the number one spot.
With both games going strong there is no sign of updates (and indeed leaks) drying up in the near future, so let’s have a look at what we can expect from HSR when it hits its 2.3 birthday.
When is Honkai: Star Rail 2.3 released?
At this stage, we are looking t a data around June. The 2.2 update will be with us shortly so that will give a run time of a couple of months. As soon as the 2.2 version releases on Friday we expect the leaks and news for 2.3 to ramp up considerably.
What do we know about Honkai: Star Rail 2.3?

“Extraterrestrial Satellite Communication” Firefly
“Fireflies are such magical creatures, aren’t they? They may throw themselves at a flame or suddenly grow old, but every night before that, they will shine brighter than the stars.”
A member of the Stellaron Hunters and a young… pic.twitter.com/9zFpsZp7l0
— Honkai: Star Rail (@honkaistarrail) April 23, 2024

Even at this early stage, some details are emerging. We know we will be getting a new character, Firefly, who will be a new five-star character. Firefly has already been part of the game as an NPC but will become playable in the 2.3 update.
A post from the official HSR X account titled “Extraterrestrial Satellite Communication” gave us some new info on the character who will be voiced in English by Analesa Fisher and Adin Rudd.
The post has already received nearly eight million views – an indicator of how popular the game is.
The post Honkai: Star Rail 2.3 – everything we know so far, release date and new character appeared first on ReadWrite.

At least 18 government websites in the U.K. and the U.S. send visitor information to multiple online advertising brokers, according to a report. This includes an ad-tech business in China previously embroiled in privacy disputes.
Google previously blacklisted Yeahmobi’s SDK as “malicious” following an investigation into ad fraud and attribution abuse, Silent Push stated.
Selling ad space involves finding third parties willing to showcase themselves to the host’s audience. They can sell the space directly to the advertisers or go through an intermediary. Ad.txt files are aimed at combating certain types of ad fraud.
However, in the U.S. through the Registry Team, the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA) explicitly forbids the use of .gov websites for any commercial activities that benefit private individuals or entities, including online advertising.
The company said it into any .gov U.S. government domains with the ability to host programmatic ads, and found four domains with an ads.txt file that are potentially in violation of CISA rules:

mcdowellcountywv.gov/ads.txt
fortdeposital.gov/ads.txt
cohassetpolicema.gov/ads.txt
sports.celina-tx.gov/ads.txt

According to their investigation, the first three domains each list only one vendor in their ads.txt file—Google. The site sports.celina-tx.gov, however, lists dozens of partners in its ads.txt file. Although it displays no ads on public pages, the footer suggests it is managed by a vendor named SportsEngine[.]com.
U.K. government sites and ad brokers
However, in the UK, advertising is permitted on .gov.uk websites with certain restrictions. The .gov and .gov.uk sites identified by Silent Push publish an ads.txt file that specifies the companies allowed to automatically sell the site’s ad space to advertisers upon a visitor’s arrival.
A handful of authorities have been identified allegedly using the file including Transport for London, the country’s national weather service the Met Office, as well as various councils around England and Wales.
Silent Push states: “Whilst programmatic advertising is not prohibited on UK council websites, allowing a Chinese ad vendor with a questionable past to collect data on visitors to UK public sector websites is problematic for reasons that are self evident.”
The Council Advertising Network (CAN) is a U.K.-based organization that creates revenue for local authorities throughout the UK by managing digital premium and programmatic advertising on council websites.
CAN oversees the ads.txt files for all the mentioned UK domains. These files contain account IDs confirming that Yeahmobi is authorized to display ads and access visitor data from these domains.
ReadWrite has reached out to the Council Advertising Network for comment.
Featured image: Canva
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While not exactly a new phenomenon, some games did it almost a decade ago, the increase in the number of games offering gamers the chance to play the game up to three days early in exchange for paying a premium fee certainly seems more prevalent than ever before.
Steam’s Refund Policy, while not overly generous but still useful, allows you to play up to two hours of a game to see if you like it, or even if it runs well on your setup.
Until now there has been one slight caveat in that the two hours only start kicking in once a game is “released” properly, any advance access paid for as part of a premium edition has not counted.
This has led to enough people gaming the system, ie buying a premium edition, playing it solidly for the three-day access period ranking up in some cases 30-50 hours of gameplay, and then refunding it on launch day.
Well no more. Valve has moved to update its refund policy to now include any advance access saying in a statement:
“Today we have updated a portion of our Refund Policy regarding pre-purchased titles. This change covers titles that are in pre-purchase and offer “Advanced Access”. Playtime acquired during the Advanced Access period will now count towards the Steam refund period. You can find out more information regarding Steam Refunds here.”
Pay more to play early
TopSpin 2K25 is the next game to offer Advanced Access before its release.
The sudden surge in publishers offering this kind of benefit to those willing to shell out extra cash to get a game early seems to have encouraged some people to take advantage.
A Reddit thread highlighted the issue after the change was made with comments such as:
“I first heard of it when there was Starfield available in “Early Access” (their term, not Steam’s EA) and a few people just bought the deluxe edition then refunded the game before the launch. Some with 40 hours of playtime.”
“Absolutely. I know a couple (of) people who did this and told me I was dumb for not doing it. Was obvious to me that it was an exploit and figured it was just a matter of time before Steam did something about it.
“They probably didn’t care when it was just a couple (of) games a year but this is happening with more and more games so might as well make a stop to it now.”
Many people dislike the tactic of advanced access. The same thread is littered with the likes of, “Pay Extra To Play Early just sucks, it’s exploitative FOMO nonsense and there should be more things discouraging it, but yeah the rule as it existed before also just wasn’t a good rule. It was clear that how it was functioning wasn’t intended behavior or in line with the spirit of the policy.”
Valve’s move to shut down the practice will not affect legitimate gaming in any way, but if the number of gamers refunding using the tactic was high, it could have served as a deterrent to publishers charging such high prices to play a game “early” – a practice which is only ever beneficial to one party. Most major releases now offer a short period of “exclusive” access in exchange for paying a higher price.
TopSpin 2K25, due to be released tomorrow can be purchased for £49.99 but also has two other versions, priced at £89.99 and £104.99 that you can buy now and start playing immediately. These editions are marked with an Advanced Access badge and contain gameplay extras such as cosmetics, alongside the Advanced Access perk.
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