- Russia’s Military Announces, Then Backtracks on ‘Regrouping’ in Southern Ukraine The Moscow Times
- How Ukraine gained a foothold across the river in Kherson Oblast: told by surviving Russian soldiers Yahoo News
- Russia labels reports on troop movements in Ukraine ‘provocation’ Al Jazeera English
- Russian State News Agencies Publish, Then Immediately Retract Story On Troops ‘Regrouping’ East Of Dnieper Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
- Russian State Media Withdraw Alerts on Troop ‘Regrouping’ in Southern Ukraine U.S. News & World Report
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: backtracks
U.K. Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng backtracks on 45 percent tax rate cut
In a major U-turn for the British government, Prime Minister Liz Truss said Monday that the proposed scrapping of the 45 percent rate for those earning more than 150,000 pounds ($168,000) had become a “distraction.”
We get it and we have listened.
The abolition of the 45pc rate had become a distraction from our mission to get Britain moving.
Our focus now is on building a high growth economy that funds world-class public services, boosts wages, and creates opportunities across the country. https://t.co/ee4ZFc7Aes
— Liz Truss (@trussliz) October 3, 2022
Kwasi Kwarteng, the new chancellor of the Exchequer, or finance minister, issued a similar statement, saying: “We get it, and we have listened.”
Truss’s government unveiled its hugely controversial economic plan in a “mini-budget” on Sept. 23. It would see the U.K. borrowing billions to pay for tax cuts and spending to insulate consumers from soaring energy bills.
The reaction to the plans was swift. Investors, fearing the moves would worsen inflation, dumped the pound and government bonds. In a highly unusual move, the Bank of England intervened last week to stop a financial market revolt.
The Conservative Party’s popularity has plummeted as well. In one breathtaking survey by YouGov, the Conservatives lagged 33 percentage points behind the opposition Labour Party, a gap not seen since the 1990s.
The U-turn is a huge blow to the authority of Truss, who has been in office for just under a month. As recently as Sunday morning, she said she was committed to the policy and would stick with the tax cuts. Kwarteng had been expected to defend the measures in his address to the Conservative Party’s annual conference later Monday.
But the government faced a growing backlash from within its own ranks, with several Conservative lawmakers coming out publicly to voice their opposition to plans that offered the best paid a tax cut while millions are facing a financial squeeze from the cost-of-living crisis.
The plans still have to be passed by Parliament and some commentators have questioned whether they would have made it through.
“I can’t support the 45p tax removal when nurses are struggling to pay their bills,” tweeted Conservative lawmaker Maria Caulfield, who served as a minister of state for health in the previous government.
Michael Gove, a senior Conservative, said that unfunded tax cuts were “not Conservative.”
Asked by the BBC if he was scrapping the plans because they wouldn’t get support in Parliament, Kwarteng said: “It’s not a question of getting it through, it’s a question of actually getting people behind the measure. It’s not about parliamentary games or votes in the House of Commons.
“It’s about listening to people, listening to constituents, who have expressed very strong views about this, and on balance I thought it was the right thing not to proceed,” he said.
EA Backtracks On Sims 4 Mod Restrictions Following Backlash
Last month, EA announced new rules and restrictions on paid mods, early access, and how creators can advertise their creations. And this led to many unhappy responses and ongoing controversy within the Sims community.
The Sims 4 might have been released in 2014, but the life simulator continues to get massive official updates and boasts a large, active community of modders who regularly produce user-made content for the game on PC. Some of these creators make a living selling mods or taking donations from players who enjoy their work. So it’s not surprising that the July 26 update to EA’s policy—which outlined that selling mods or locking them behind a Patreon sub would no longer be allowed—set off a firestorm online.
In the update posted to the official EA Sims 4 help site, the company explained that mods can’t be “sold, licensed, or rented for a fee” and that mods can’t add or support “monetary transactions of any type.” What this means is you can’t stick your own digital store inside of The Sims 4 and sell NFT shirts or sell your mods via a website.
EA did acknowledge that developing a mod takes time and resources and allows for creators to sell advertisements on their modding sites and to take donations, but creators can’t include that stuff in the game itself.
Read More: Sims 4 Update Accidentally Adds Incest
But when this support page first went live, the part mentioning paid Early Access being allowed, wasn’t included. This led to a large backlash as many content creators and modders use the Early Access model to release mods to dedicated fans willing to pay before everything is working properly or finished. The idea is that once the mod is done, the devs release it for free and that paid period helps support them while working on finishing the mod.
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EA seemingly coming after this fairly old system that was mostly accepted by the community went over about as well as you’d expect. It’s also quite a turn as the publisher is typically supportive of its Sims modding community. Gamespot talked to some content creators about the situation, with some explaining selling access to mods was how they were able to survive.
“Patreon early access is one of the only reasons I can afford my own medications, food, pet care, and apartment so I can live above my disabled dad to take care of him,” Sims 4 modder JellyPaws told Gamespot.
After a lot of backlash from players and some bad press, EA has now changed course and earlier today updated the help article to include a specific carve-out for paid Early Access. While straight-up selling mods or locking them behind a paywall is still a no-no, this new update does allow for the community-approved Patreon system.
Here’s the text EA has added to confirm it is okay with this type of paid mod system.
Offer an early access incentive for a reasonable amount of time. After a reasonable early access period, all users must be able to access the Mods in full for free regardless of whether they donate.
However, while this helped put out some of the fire, others are still nervous about how vague this new rule seems to be. How long can a mod remain in Early Access before EA declares it must be removed and published for free? EA only says a “reasonable amount of time” but doesn’t specify, likely to allow the publisher some wiggle room as they evaluate mods on a case-by-case basis.
Kotaku has contacted EA about the Early Access rule and asked for clarification.
For now, Sims fans and creators like KawaiiFoxita seem cautiously optimistic about the situation. Of course, if EA reveals that a “reasonable amount of time” is like five days or a week, it’s likely to find itself in another mess.
Musk backtracks on job cuts, says Tesla salaried staff to be ‘fairly flat’
June 4 (Reuters) – Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Saturday that the electric vehicle maker’s total headcount will increase over the next 12 months, but the number of salaried staff should be little changed, backtracking from an email just two days ago saying that job cuts of 10% were needed.
“Total headcount will increase, but salaried should be fairly flat,” Musk tweeted in a reply to an unverified Twitter account that made a “prediction” that Tesla’s headcount would increase over the next 12 months.
Musk in an email to Tesla executives on Thursday, which was seen by Reuters on Friday, said he has a “super bad feeling” about the U.S. economy and needed to cut jobs by about 10%. read more
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In another email to employees on Friday, Musk said Tesla would reduce salaried headcount by 10%, as it has become “overstaffed in many areas.” But “hourly headcount will increase,” he said.
Tesla’s shares sank 9.2% on Friday on the news.
According to a Tesla U.S. regulatory filing, the company and its subsidiaries had almost 100,000 employees at the end of 2021.
Ahead of his emails on staffing levels, Musk on Wednesday in an email to Tesla employees issued an ultimatum to return to the office for a minimum of 40 hours a week. Failure to do so would be taken as a resignation, he wrote. read more
Musk on Thursday said Tesla’s AI day has been pushed to Sept. 30, and said a prototype of Optimus, a humanoid robot that is a company priority, could be ready by then and could be launched next year read more
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Reporting by Rachna Dhanrajani in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Google backtracks on legacy GSuite account shutdown, won’t take user emails
Enlarge / An artist’s rendering of Google’s current reputation.
Google finally launched a solution for people with “legacy” GSuite Google accounts. After initially threatening to shut down free GSuite accounts if users didn’t start paying for the service, Google has completely backed off. Once users jump through some sign-up hoops, Google will allow their ~16-year-old accounts to continue functioning. You’ll even get to keep your email address.
The saga so far, if you haven’t been following, is that Google has a custom-domain user account service, currently called “Google Workspace” and previously called “G Suite” and “Google Apps.” The service is mostly a normal Google account that lets you use an email that ends in your custom domain name rather than “@gmail.com.” Today this service is aimed at businesses and costs money each month, but that was not always the case. From 2006 to 2012, custom domain Google accounts were free and were even pitched at families as a geeky way to have an online Google identity.
In January, some bean counter at Google apparently noticed this tiny group of longtime users was technically getting a paid service for free and decided this was unacceptable. Google posted an announcement in January declaring these people “Legacy GSuite users” and basically told them, ‘Pay up or lose your account.’ These users signed up for a free Google service and stored data on it for as long as 16 years, and there were no indications it would ever be charged. Google held this decade-plus of user data hostage, telling users to start paying business rates for Workspace or face an account shutdown.
A week later, after the inevitable public outcry, Google relented somewhat and said it would vaguely, eventually provide “an option for you to move your non-Google Workspace paid content and most of your data to a no-cost option.” Being told you’ll be able to keep “most of your data” that you’ve been accumulating for 16 years is a rather alarming statement. Google’s one bit of specifics in January was that “this new option won’t include premium features like custom email,” so you’d have to stop hosting your email with Google, and you’d presumably have to go through some wild Google account conversion process. It then let these users anxiously flap in the wind, with no further details, for six months.
How to save your free GSuite account
In May, Google finally told these users what would happen to their accounts. The new support page says, “For individuals and families using your account for non-commercial purposes, you can continue using the G Suite legacy free edition and opt out of the transition to Google Workspace.” The link for that is here or in your GSuite admin panel. You’ll need to confirm that your GSuite account is for personal use, and not business use, because businesses are still expected to pay for Workspace. If you already bent to Google’s will and started paying for Workspace because of the January announcement, Google says you should contact support.
Enlarge / That bottom “Personal use” button is what you want.
Lee Hutchinson
The biggest news from this latest announcement is that Google has decided against taking people’s custom email away. A second support page says, “You can continue using your custom domain with Gmail, retain access to no-cost Google services such as Google Drive and Google Meet, and keep your purchases and data.” It now sounds like there will be no changes to your account, provided you click through the “self-transition” screen before the deadline.
The deadline to opt out of an account shutdown, which has changed several times now, is June 27, 2022. If you don’t complete this opt out by June 27, you will be automatically billed for Workspace. If you don’t have a card on file and don’t opt out, your account will be suspended on August 1 and shut down.
The automatic enrollment and billing, without explicit user consent, is one of the wilder parts of this story. If you don’t closely follow the tech news scene, there’s a good chance you won’t know this is coming, and you will either suddenly be billed without your consent or find that your Google account has suddenly stopped working.
For a company whose key business pillar is convincing users to store vast amounts of data on its servers, playing games like this is a bizarre decision. At least it came to a reasonable conclusion.
Writer who spread the Rihanna and ASAP Rocky news backtracks on his first report
After the sensational news about the alleged breakup between ASAP Rocky and Rihanna broke, there was a lot of controversy that followed. Allegedly, the rapper cheated on the R&B singer after she found out he cheated on her with shoe designer Amina Muaddi. The initial rumor caught fire after writer Louis Pisano wrote the entire story without backing from any source. Over the next 24 hours, all hel broke loose and one of the parties involved immediately came out to dismiss this as a blatant lie. Designer Amina Muaddi was the first to come out and state that the entire rumor was an evil lie that was aimed to directly hurt all parties involved.
Not long after that, both Page Six and TMZ came out with their own versions of the story. TMZ claimed they spoke to a source who is directly connected to ASAP Rocky and Rihanna, they immediately said that the entire story was ‘1 million per cent not true’. It didn’t take long for the person who spread the rumor first was getting harrassed by both Rihanna and ASAP Rocky’s fans. Louis Pisano needed to come out with a statement that could clarify what he worte but the damage is already done. Getting back from this as a wirte will be almost impossible, nobody will believe another piece he ever publishes.
How did Louis Pisano respond?
This is what Pisano posted on his Twitter account: “Hi all, so I’d like to address the situation. Last night I made a dumb decision to tweet some information I had received. I’m not going to talk about sources, blame others for a discussion that was started because at the end of the day, I made the decision to draft that tweet. I pressed send and put that out with my name on it. So I’d like to formally apologize to all parties I involved with my actions and for my wreckless tweets. I fully accept the consequences of my actions for my tweets and any harm they caused. I have no excuse for it, I’ve been way too wrapped around in Twitter drama.”
Microsoft backtracks on Windows 11’s controversial default browser changes
Microsoft is backtracking on changes it made to Windows 11 that made it more difficult to switch default browsers. A new test build of Windows 11 now allows users of Chrome, Firefox, and other browsers to set a default browser with a single button, which is a far simpler process.
Rafael Rivera, developer of the excellent EarTrumpet Windows app, discovered the new Windows 11 changes earlier this week. Instead of having to change individual file extensions or protocol handlers for HTTP, HTTPS, .HTML, and .HTM, Windows 11 now offers a simple button that lets people switch default browsers in a similar way to Windows 10.
Microsoft has confirmed the changes are intentional and are currently being tested. “In the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22509 released to the Dev Channel on Wednesday, we streamlined the ability for a Windows Insider to set the ‘default browser’ to apps that register for HTTP:, HTTPS:, .HTM, and .HTML,” explains Aaron Woodman, vice president of Windows marketing, in a statement to The Verge. “Through the Windows Insider Program you will continue to see us try new things based on customer feedback and testing.”
Microsoft originally defended its decision to make it more difficult to switch defaults, telling The Verge earlier this year that it was “implementing customer feedback to customize and control defaults at a more granular level.” Rival browser makers weren’t happy with the changes, however, and Mozilla, Brave, and even Google’s head of Chrome and Android criticized Microsoft’s approach to default apps.
While Windows 11 does currently offer a prompt when a rival browser has been installed, it’s only triggered when you click a link from outside a browser, try to open an HTML document, or attempt to access browser protocols and files. The prompt lets you open a file or link in a different browser, with a checkbox to always use this program. If you forget to check the box, you’ll have to dig into the settings app in Windows 11 and manually configure a bunch of options.
Microsoft is still testing these new Windows 11 changes that make it easier to switch default apps and browsers, but it’s not clear when they will be available to all users. We’re expecting to see these debut with a larger update to Windows 11 next year, but Microsoft hasn’t announced a release date and some features and updates are appearing ahead of the big annual drop of features.
Still, it’s encouraging to see Microsoft listen to the criticism and feedback around its Windows 11 changes. This u-turn comes amid anger over a new built-in “buy now, pay later” tool in Microsoft Edge, and Microsoft’s efforts to dissuade people from downloading Chrome.
Microsoft backtracks on a price hike after backlash
Microsoft backtracks on Xbox Live Gold price hike
Microsoft has reversed its controversial Xbox Live price increase. The company announced a price hike on Friday that would have doubled the cost of a yearly subscription to the service, which is required to play games online on Xbox consoles, to $120 for many users. Now, though, Microsoft says the price will stay the same.
Beyond that, Microsoft has decided to bring Xbox Live in line with Sony and Nintendo’s online services by dropping the subscription requirement for free-to-play games. Popular free-to-play titles like Fortnite are playable on PlayStation consoles and the Nintendo Switch without an online subscription, but you still need one for Xbox consoles; Microsoft says it’s “working hard to deliver this change as soon as possible in the coming months.”
Here’s Microsoft’s full statement, which was just delivered as an update to a blog post:
We messed up today and you were right to let us know. Connecting and playing with friends is a vital part of gaming and we failed to meet the expectations of players who count on it every day. As a result, we have decided not to change Xbox Live Gold pricing.
We’re turning this moment into an opportunity to bring Xbox Live more in line with how we see the player at the center of their experience. For free-to-play games, you will no longer need an Xbox Live Gold membership to play those games on Xbox. We are working hard to deliver this change as soon as possible in the coming months.
If you are an Xbox Live Gold member already, you stay at your current price for renewal. New and existing members can continue to enjoy Xbox Live Gold for the same prices they pay today. In the US, $9.99 for 1-month, $24.99 for 3-months, $39.99 for 6-months and $59.99 for retail 12-months.
Thank you.
Microsoft’s focus in recent years has been on Xbox Game Pass, which has an Ultimate tier that includes access to Xbox Live Gold. While Game Pass provides great value for many players, the Gold price increases came off as an attempt to nudge people into paying for the more expensive service.
It’s not surprising that the initial announcement was so poorly received, but Microsoft’s reversal is good news for Xbox Live Gold subscribers who aren’t interested in Xbox Game Pass, and even better news for people who only use Xbox Live Gold to play free-to-play games.