Long-time Slashdot reader couchslug shares a report from Ars Technica, writing: "A new attack on the right to do with one's property as the owner sees fit. First step, threaten without providing evidence." From the report: Before last week, owners of certain Mazda vehicles who also had a Home Assistant setup could create some handy connections for their car. One CX60 driver had a charger that would only power on when it confirmed his car was plugged in and would alert him if he left the trunk open. Another used Home Assistant to control their charger based on the dynamic prices of an Agile Octopus energy plan. Yet another had really thought it through, using Home Assistant to check the gas before their morning commute, alert them if their windows were down before rain was forecast, and remotely unlock and start the car in cold conditions. The possibilities were vast, and purportedly beyond what Mazda's official app offered. Mazda, however, had issues with the project, which was largely the free-time work of one software developer, Brandon Rothweiler. In a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice sent to GitHub, Mazda (or an authorized agent) alleges that Rothweiler's integration: contains code that "is violating [Mazda's] copyright ownership"; used "certain Mazda information, including proprietary API information," to "create code and information"; and contained code that "provides functionality same as what is currently" in Mazda's apps posted to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store for Android. One day later, Rothweiler made a pull request to the Home Assistant core project: "I'm removing the Mazda integration due to a legal notice sent to me by Mazda." The Home Assistant project pushed an update to remove the integration, posted about the removal, and noted that they were "disappointed that Mazda has decided to take this position" and that "Mazda's first recourse was not to reach out to us and the maintainer but to send a cease and desist letter instead." One of the many commenters confused by Mazda's code claims said they couldn't find any of the copyrighted code the company referenced. Additionally, Ars Technica suggests the project "could be considered a fair use exception to the DMCA, as explained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation." "When Mazda contacted me, my options were to either comply or open myself up to potential legal risk," said Rothweiler. "Even if I believe that what I'm doing is morally correct and legally protected, legal processes still have a financial cost. I can't afford to take on that financial risk for something that I do in my spare time to help others."

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Kyle Orland writes via Ars Technica: The "first official Unity user group in the world" has announced that it is dissolving after 13 years because "the trust we used to have in the company has been completely eroded." The move comes as many developers are saying they will continue to stay away from the company's products even after last week's partial rollback of some of the most controversial parts of its fee structure plans. Since its founding in 2010, the Boston Unity Group (BUG) has attracted thousands of members to regular gatherings, talks, and networking events, including many technical lectures archived on YouTube. But the group says it will be hosting its last meeting Wednesday evening via Zoom because the Unity of today is very different from the Dave Helgason-led company that BUG says "enthusiastically sanctioned and supported" the group at its founding. "Over the past few years, Unity has unfortunately shifted its focus away from the games industry and away from supporting developer communities," the group leadership wrote in a departure note. "Following the IPO, the company has seemingly put profit over all else, with several acquisitions and layoffs of core personnel. Many key systems that developers need are still left in a confusing and often incomplete state, with the messaging that advertising and revenue matter more to Unity than the functionality game developers care about." BUG says the install-fee terms Unity first announced earlier this month were "unthinkably hostile" to users and that even the "new concessions" in an updated pricing model offered late last week "disproportionately affect the success of indie studios in our community." But it's the fact that such "resounding, unequivocal condemnation from the games industry" was necessary to get those changes in the first place that has really shaken the community to its core. "We've seen how easily and flippantly an executive-led business decision can risk bankrupting the studios we've worked so hard to build, threaten our livelihoods as professionals, and challenge the longevity of our industry," BUG wrote. "The Unity of today isn't the same company that it was when the group was founded, and the trust we used to have in the company has been completely eroded."

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Apple has agreed to install updates for the iPhone 12 in France after French regulators ordered the company to stop selling the model because it emits electromagnetic radiation levels that exceed European Union standards. From a report: The company, which just unveiled its newest generation of iPhones, insists the 12 model is safe and the phones have been certified in countries around the world since its introduction in 2020. It says the problem raised by the French government agency that manages wireless communications frequencies is "related to a specific testing protocol." The French agency said the iPhone 12 recently failed one of two types of tests for electromagnetic waves capable of being absorbed by the body. On Tuesday, France's government ordered a halt to sales of the iPhone 12 and told Apple to issue a software update to address the problem or face a recall. Apple said in a statement Friday that it "will issue a software update for users in France to accommodate the protocol used by French regulators." It did not elaborate.

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Lockheed Martin may see more than $800 million in payments withheld through next June until it wins approval for the software powering its most advanced version of the F-35, according to newly disclosed delivery figures. From a report: The No. 1 US defense contractor is on tap to finish production of about 52 of the upgraded TR-3 model fighter jets by Dec. 31 and approximately 12 per month after that, or 72 more by June 30, for as many as 124 jets, according to the data released Monday by Russ Goemaere, the Pentagon's spokesman on the F-35. The Pentagon is withholding $7 million per aircraft until the new software is validated because the aircraft are being placed in storage until then. At 124 jets, that's $868 million. Last month, the Defense Department withheld $7 million on each of the first four upgraded F-35s. The aircraft needs the delay-plagued software upgrade to function fully with new cockpit hardware before it can carry more precise weapons and gather more information on enemy aircraft and air defenses. The upgrade will increase processing power 37 times and memory 20 times over the F-35's current capabilities.

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Apple's increasing use of "serialization," which pairs hardware components with the logic board using proprietary software locks, is making simple repairs on devices like iPads and iPhones harder and more expensive. In a recent Forbes article, a repair expert claims the Apple Pencil won't work properly on the iPad Pro if the display is replaced with a non-genuine Apple part, or even a screen from another iPad. From the report: This has now been extended to the displays of fifth and sixth generations of the iPad Pro 12.9-inch and third and fourth generation 11-inch tablets, repair expert Ricky Panesar, founder of iCorrect.co.uk, told me. While repairing a customer's device, Panesar found that the Apple Pencil wasn't delivering straight lines when the iPad display was replaced with a screen from another Apple iPad. "We found with the newer versions of the iPad that when you put a new screen on, even if it's taken from another iPad, the pencil strokes don't work perfectly." Panesar explained to me. "They have a memory chip that sits on the screen that's programmed to only allow the Pencil functionality to work if the screen is connected to the original logic board." He continued. In practice, Panesar found that lines drawn on the replaced display (Panesar says he doesn't use aftermarket parts for repairs) with the Apple Pencil aren't completely straight. He demoed this in the video [here]. Panesar isn't the only person to discover this, a Reddit post from May complained about the same issue. The poster claimed to have bought a sixth generation iPad Mini from a reseller, which is having the same squiggly line problem. Commenters pointed out that the issue is likely related to serialization and linked to Panesar's video.

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WhatsApp has announced it is retiring its Electron-based desktop app, forcing users to switch to the native app for their OS to continue using WhatsApp. Android Police reports: Back when WhatsApp was in the early stages of development, the developers created an app for desktop, based on the Electron JavaScript framework. This allowed them to share a code base between WhatsApp Web and the new, platform-agnostic desktop app that worked on both Windows and macOS. Around four weeks ago, a countdown timer showed up on the main screen of this desktop app, announcing its shutdown. Doomsday is now here and WABetaInfo reports anyone visiting the Electron-based app just sees a screen saying "App expired." The deprecated app helpfully links to the native WhatsApp Desktop app available on the Microsoft Store or the Mac App Store. The new native app has been stable for around a year now, but is still relatively new. Some users may lament the transition period was too short, or the native app still doesn't have all the functionality for business users, like catalog management and quick replies, and they would be right.

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Jonathan Corbet, writing at LWN: In the fast-moving open-source world, programs can come and go quickly; a tool that has many users today can easily be eclipsed by something better next week. Even in this environment, though, some programs endure for a long time. As an example, consider the PostgreSQL database system, which traces its history back to 1986. Making fundamental changes to a large code base with that much history is never an easy task. As fundamental changes go, moving PostgreSQL away from its process-oriented model is not a small one, but it is one that the project is considering seriously. A PostgreSQL instance runs as a large set of cooperating processes, including one for each connected client. These processes communicate through a number of shared-memory regions using an elaborate library that enables the creation of complex data structures in a setting where not all processes have the same memory mapped at the same address. This model has served the project well for many years, but the world has changed a lot over the history of this project. As a result, PostgreSQL developers are increasingly thinking that it may be time to make a change.

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theodp writes: "My advice to all the young tech enthusiasts, future engineering managers, and CTOs is simple," writes Vadim Kravcenko in The Surprising Power of Documentation. "Cultivate a love for documentation. You may view it as a chore, an afterthought, or a nuisance. But trust me when I say this: Documentation isn't just a task on your to-do list; it's a pillar for success and a bridge that connects ideas, people, and vision. Treat it not as a burden but as an opportunity to learn, share, and create an impact." So, what would Goldilocks make of your organization's documentation -- Too much? Too little? Just right? Got any recommended tools and management tips for creating useful and sustainable documentation?

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Apple has released (PDF) its first App Store Transparency Report, as mandated by a lawsuit settlement in 2021. In 2022, the report reveals that over 1.6 million apps were rejected, 186,195 apps were removed for violating App Store rules, and China topped the list with the most government-requested app takedowns. MacRumors reports: In 2022, there were 1,783,232 apps on the App Store, with 6,101,913 total app submissions received and 1,679,694 apps rejected for various reasons like safety, performance, design, and legal. Apple provides numbers on the specific App Store guidelines that were violated by rejected apps, with the highest number of single rule rejections (149,378) due to violations of the Design 4.0 rule and the DPLA 3.2 Fraud rule (32,009). A total of 253,466 app submissions were approved after rejection when developers worked with Apple to resolve issues, and 186,195 apps were removed from the App Store for breaking the App Store rules. The majority of apps removed from the App Store were games, followed by Utilities, Business, and Education. Apple outlines the total number of apps removed from the App Store due to government takedowns, and China is at the top of the list. The Chinese government asked Apple to remove 1,435 apps, but 1,276 of those apps were games that were removed for not having the GRN license that China requires. Apple removed 14 apps at the request of India's government, 10 apps for Pakistan, and seven apps for Russia. In other countries including Turkiye, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Italy, Latvia, and Nigeria, fewer than two apps were removed at the government's request. Developers appealed 18,412 app removals in total, and Apple restored just 616 developer accounts. Apple says that apps that are appealed were typically pulled from the App Store for fraud or illegality, which is why the rejected appeal number is so high. There are 36,974,015 registered developers, and in 2022, Apple terminated 428,487 developer accounts. According to Apple, developers are removed from the Apple Developer Program "for a number of reasons," but most commonly because of accounts that are connected with other terminated developer accounts. 3,338 developers appealed their App Store bans, and Apple reinstated just 159 accounts. Again, Apple says that this is because "most developer account terminations that are appealed are removed from the App Store due to fraud," so Apple rejects most of them. 282,036,628 customer accounts were terminated, but that number does incorporate all accounts created, even those made on the website by non-iPhone and iPad users. There were 656,739,889 average weekly visitors to the App Store and 747,873,877 average weekly app downloads. Customer accounts searched the App Store 373,211,396 times on average, and 1,399,741 apps appeared in the top 10 results of at least 1000 searches. You can download the report from Apple's legal site.

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Apple is bringing Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro to the iPad. Both apps will be available for $4.99 per month or $49 per year on iPad starting on May 23rd. For comparison, buying Logic Pro on a Mac costs $199.99, and buying Final Cut Pro normally costs $299.99. From a report: The video and music editing apps will come with enhancements specifically for iPads. Final Cut Pro, for example, will come with a new jog wheel that's supposed to make the editing process "easier than ever," allowing you to navigate the magnetic timeline, move clips, and perform edits using just your finger and multi-touch gestures. There's also a new feature called Live Drawing that lets you use your Apple Pencil to draw and write directly on top of video content. If you have an iPad Pro with an M2 chip, you can use the Apple Pencil's hover feature to skim and preview footage without even touching the screen.

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Across the software development field, founders are experiencing an income tax season that has become an existential threat to their company's survival. Software startups say they were blindsided by shocking tax bills as a result of a change in law related to research and development costs, and if Congress does not provide a retroactive fix, business failures will spread throughout the industry. From a report: The root of the issue is the inability of lawmakers to extend a key tax provision that had bipartisan support at the end of last year that allows for full expensing of research and development costs under Section 174 of the tax code. That did not come out of nowhere, and was a big disappointment to major corporations that had lobbied for the measure. But for many small business owners who often wear multiple hats, don't have lobbying arms or relationships with big four CPA firms, the change to require R&D amortization over a period of five years first became known this spring when accountants showed them the massive tax bills they owed the government. As word has spread throughout the software community, some owners remain too afraid to look at the full tax cost as they file for tax extensions and accountants revise their returns. The pain is being felt from the smallest software developers of a dozen or less employees to large venture-backed companies sitting on pre-2022 frothy valuations, with tax bills rising to a level where cash flow is being drained, forcing painful financial decisions. Startups need to take out loans or extend lines of credit at a time of tighter bank lending and higher rates, ask VCs for more money during the worst fundraising environment in over a decade, freeze hiring and contemplate layoffs -- if they have not started making them already within a sector leading the economy in job losses and running at a rate higher than the worst layoffs of the dotcom bubble. Many software firms will make it through this year, but if R&D full expensing treatment is not brought back, they say survival will become an issue. The software development field is the starkest example of the fallout from the R&D tax change because its biggest expense is software development talent. Developers don't come cheap, and until tax year 2022, these companies could fully expense those costs as R&D rather than having to amortize them over multiple years. Industry success relies on the contribution of software talent, but when that cost overwhelms cash flow and profits, it potentially makes the business model untenable.

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The Ethereum blockchain, the most important commercial highway in the digital-asset sector, successfully implemented a widely anticipated software upgrade. From a report: The so-called Shanghai update enables investors to queue up to withdraw Ether coins that they had pledged to help operate the network in return for rewards, a process called staking. Tim Beiko, who helps to co-ordinate the development of Ethereum, posted on Twitter on Wednesday that the upgrade is now "official." The network revamp -- also known as Shapella -- is designed to let people exit an Ether staking investment and has stirred debate on whether the appeal of the largest token after Bitcoin will increase over time. "Ethereum is updating and navigating with great skill -- so far anyway -- and cementing its position as the No. 2 crypto," said Aaron Brown, a crypto investor who writes for Bloomberg Opinion. He added that the network is "moving to the future much faster than Bitcoin." About 1.2 million of Ether tokens -- worth approximately $2.3 billion at current prices -- are expected to be withdrawn over the next five days, according to researcher Coin Metrics. Some $36.7 billion of Ether is locked up for staking, data from Staking Rewards shows.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Jonathan M. Gitlin: A perennial question that has accompanied the spread of Android Automotive has been the question of support. A car has a much longer expected service life than a smartphone, especially an Android smartphone, and with infotainment systems so integral to a car's operations now, how long can we reasonably expect those infotainment systems to be supported? I got the chance to put this question to Dirk Hilgenberg, CEO of CARIAD, Volkswagen Group's software division: Given the much longer service life of a car compared to a smartphone, how does VW plan to keep those cars patched and safe 10 or 15 years from now? "We actually have a contract with the brands, which took a while to negotiate, but lifetime support was utterly important," Hilgenberg told me. The follow-up was obvious: How long is "lifetime"? "Fifteen years after service, and an extra option for brands who would like to have it even longer; you know, we have to guarantee updatability on all legal aspects," he said. "So that's why we are, as you can imagine, very cautious with branches of releases because every branch we need to maintain over this long time. So when you have end of operation and EOP [end of production] and it's 15 years longer, we still have to maintain that; plus, some brands actually said 'because my vehicle is a unicorn, it's something that people want even more, they only occasionally drive it but they want to be safe,'" Hilgenberg told me. (The unicorn reference should make sense in the context of VW Group owning Bugatti, Lamborghini, and Porsche, whose cars are often collected and can be on the road for many decades.) In those cases, CARIAD would provide continued support, Hilgenberg said. "Especially as cybersecurity, all the legal things are concerned, you see that already. Now we do upgrades and releases, whether it's in China, whether it's in the US, whether it's in Europe, we take very cautious steps. Security and safety has, in the Volkswagen group, you know, the utmost importance, and we see it actually as an opportunity to differentiate," he said. In an update to the article, Ars said CARIAD got in touch with them to add some clarifications. "As part of its development services to Volkswagen's automotive brands, CARIAD provides operational services, updates, upgrades and new releases as well as bug fixes and patches relating to its hardware- and software-products. We usually support our hard- and software releases for extended periods of time. In some cases this can be up to 15 years after the end of production ('EOP') for hardware and 10 years after EOP for software releases. Moreover, there are legally mandatory periods we comply with, e.g. cybersecurity as well as safety updates and patches are provided for as long as a function is available. In addition, there may be individual agreements with brands for longer support periods to specifically satisfy their customers' needs," wrote a CARIAD spokesperson. Ars notes: "there's no guarantee that OEMs can make the business model work for this long-term support."

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After debating the term in a recent Slashdot subthread, longtime reader Tablizer wants to pose the question to a larger audience: what exactly are 'microservices'? Over the past few years I've asked many colleagues what "microservices" are, and get a gazillion different answers. "Independent deploy-ability" has been an issue as old as the IBM hills. Don't make anything "too big" nor "too small"; be it functions, files, apps, name-spaces, tables, databases, etc. Overly large X's didn't need special terms, such as "monofunction". We'd just call it "poorly partitioned/sized/factored". (Picking the right size requires skill and experience, both in technology and the domain.) Dynamic languages are usually "independently deployable" at the file level, so what is a PHP "monolith", for example? Puzzles like this are abound when trying to use the Socratic method to tease out specific-ness. Socrates would quit and become a goat herder, as such discussions often turn sour and personal. Here's a recent Slashdot subthread debating the term.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: When you first start messing with the command line, it can feel like there's an impermeable wall between the local space you're messing around in and the greater Internet. On your side, you've got your commands and files, and beyond the wall, there are servers, images, APIs, webpages, and more bits of useful, ever-changing data. One of the most popular ways through that wall has been cURL, or "client URL," which turns 25 this month. The cURL tool started as a way for programmer Daniel Stenberg to let Internet Chat Relay users quickly fetch currency exchange rates while still inside their chat window. As detailed in an archived history of the project, it was originally built off an existing command-line tool, httpget, built by Rafael Sagula. A 1.0 version was released in 1997, then changed names to urlget by 2.0, as it had added in GOPHER, FTP, and other protocols. By 1998, the tool could upload as well as download, and so version 4.0 was named cURL. Over the next few years, cURL grew to encompass nearly every Internet protocol, work with certificates and encryption, offer bindings for more than 50 languages, and be included in most Linux distributions and other systems. The cURL project now encompasses both the command-line command itself and the libcurl library. In 2020, the project's history estimated the command and library had been installed in more than 10 billion instances worldwide. How do you celebrate a piece of indispensable Internet architecture turning 25? Stenberg plans to host a "Zoom birthday party" at 17:00 UTC time on March 20. Double-check that time in your area: "It is within this weird period between [when] the US has switched to daylight saving time while Europe has not yet switched," Stenberg writes on his blog. Stenberg plans to sip on a 25-year Bowmore Islay single-malt Scotch, while presenting the project's history and future plans while taking questions. (A link to the Zoom call will be added to Stenberg's blog post closer to March 20.)

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dcblogs writes: Despite the demand of employers like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, AT&T and others, nearly 40% of software engineers preferred only remote roles, and if their employers mandated a return to the office, 21% indicated they would quit immediately, while another 49% said they would start looking for another job, according to Hired's 2023 State of Software Engineers. This report gathered its data from 68,500 software engineering candidates and a survey of more than 1,300 software engineers and 120 talent professionals. Employers open to remote workers "are able to get better-quality talent that's a better fit for the organization," said Josh Brenner, CEO of Hired, a job-matching platform for technology jobs.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: BMW i4 owner was rightfully puzzled when their car flashed a strange alert on the screen, saying its parking spot was "too steep" to perform an over-the-air software upgrade. How does that happen? And why is it a problem in the first place? As Clare Eliza found out, it simply isn't possible to remotely update any of the i4's software if the car isn't parked on flat ground. And instead of allowing the operator to override this, it will wait until you physically move it somewhere more level to continue. As it turns out, BMW doesn't have one singular reason why the vehicle can't perform this task on an incline. Rather, the limitation is there as a safety blanket. "The vehicle has all sorts of sensors (pitch, yaw, lateral and longitudinal acceleration and deceleration, etc.) that allow it to understand its orientation, so it knows when it's on an incline," a BMW spokesperson told The Drive. "It's likely a catchall, every-worst-case-no-matter-how-unlikely scenario safety precaution to try to prevent any chance of the vehicle moving should the programming be interrupted or go wrong." Essentially, it's there just in case something unexpected happens; it's better to plan for the worst, after all.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: For nearly a year and a half, a Massachusetts high school has been lit up around the clock because the district can't turn off the roughly 7,000 lights in the sprawling building. The lighting system was installed at Minnechaug Regional High School when it was built over a decade ago and was intended to save money and energy. But ever since the software that runs it failed on Aug. 24, 2021, the lights in the Springfield suburbs school have been on continuously, costing taxpayers a small fortune. "We are very much aware this is costing taxpayers a significant amount of money," Aaron Osborne, the assistant superintendent of finance at the Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District, told NBC News. "And we have been doing everything we can to get this problem solved." Osborne said it's difficult to say how much money it's costing because during the pandemic and in its aftermath, energy costs have fluctuated wildly. "I would say the net impact is in the thousands of dollars per month on average, but not in the tens of thousands," Osborne said. That, in part, is because the high school uses highly efficient fluorescent and LED bulbs, he said. And, when possible, teachers have manually removed bulbs from fixtures in classrooms while staffers have shut off breakers not connected to the main system to douse some of the exterior lights. But there's hope on the horizon that the lights at Minnechaug will soon be dimmed. Paul Mustone, president of the Reflex Lighting Group, said the parts they need to replace the system at the school have finally arrived from the factory in China and they expect to do the installation over the February break. "And yes, there will be a remote override switch so this won't happen again," said Mustone, whose company has been in business for more than 40 years.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A Canadian woman has been ordered by a civil tribunal to compensate her former employer for "time theft" after she was caught misrepresenting hours worked by controversial tracking software. Karlee Besse, who worked remotely as an accountant in British Columbia, initially claimed she was fired from her job without cause last year and sought $3,729 in compensation -- both in unpaid wages and severance. But the company, Reach CPA, told the tribunal Beese had logged more than 50 hours that "did not appear to have spent on work-related tasks." Reach said it installed employee-tracking software called TimeCampon Besse's work laptop after it found her assigned files were over budget and behind schedule, a strategy companies are increasingly taking in the era of remote work. The software tracks how long a document is open, how the employee uses the document and logs the time as work. Weeks later, the company said an analysis "identified irregularities between her timesheets and the software usage logs." While Besse told the tribunal she found the program "difficult" and worried it didn't differentiate between work and personal use, the company demonstrated how TimeCamp automatically makes those distinctions, separating time logs for work from activities such as using the laptop to stream movies and television shows. Besse said she had printed documents to work on, but did not tell Reach she was using hard copy because she "knew they wouldn't want to hear that" and she was afraid of repercussions. The company said that the software also tracks printing -- and that few documents had been logged as printed. It also said any work from the printed documents would have needed to be input into the company's software, which never happened. [...] The judge tossed out Besse's claim of wrongful termination and ordered her to pay $1,840.27, both in returned wages and as a part of previous advance she had received from the company.

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Jacob Ridley writes via PC Gamer: MSI Afterburner is an app used the world over for graphics card monitoring, overclocking, and undervolting. It's become pretty synonymous with general GPU tinkering, yet the app's developer has suggested it might not have long left to live in a forum post earlier this month. MSI disagrees, telling us "we fully intend to continue with MSI Afterburner." MSI Afterburner is developed by Alexey 'Unwinder' Nicolaychuk, a Russian national who has kept the overclocking app functioning over many years. Nicolaychuk is also responsible for the development of RivaTuner Statistics Server, which is part of the foundational software layer powering Afterburner. In a post on the Guru3D forums (via TechPowerUp), Nicolaychuk suggests that Afterburner's development has been "semi-abandoned." "...MSI afterburner project is probably dead," Nicolaychuk says. "War and politics are the reasons. I didn't mention it in MSI Afterburner development news thread, but the project is semi abandoned by company during quite a long time already. Actually we're approaching the one year mark since the day when MSI stopped performing their obligations under Afterburner license agreement due to 'politic [sic] situation'." Nicolaychuk says development of the app has continued over the past 11 months, but that may also be ending soon. "I tried to continue performing my obligations and worked on the project on my own during the last 11 months, but it resulted in nothing but disappointment; I have a feeling that I'm just beating a dead horse and waste energy on something that is no longer needed by company. "Anyway I'll try to continue supporting it myself while I have some free time, but will probably need to drop it and switch to something else, allowing me to pay my bills." Development of the RivaTuner Statistics Server -- software is pivotal to many of the functions of Afterburner -- is materially separate from Afterburner and will continue, Nicolaychuk notes. Nicolaychuk suggests the issue comes down to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and we've since confirmed with MSI that this is the case. MSI has stated to PC Gamer that the payments were halted due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, saying: "payments had been put on hold due to the RU/UA war and the economic regulations that entailed." [...] On this being the end for Afterburner, MSI disagrees. "We fully intend to continue with MSI Afterburner," MSI tells PC Gamer. "MSI have been working on a solution and expect it to be resolved soon."

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