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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Andrew Cunningham: As its name implies, the venerable Notepad++ text editor began as a more capable version of the classic Windows Notepad, with features such as line numbering and syntax highlighting. It was created in 2003 by Don Ho, who continues to be its primary author and maintainer, and it has been a Windows-exclusive app throughout its existence (older Notepad++ versions support OSes as old as Windows 95; the current version officially supports everything going back to Windows 7). I'm not a devoted user of the app, but I was aware of its history, which is why I was surprised to see news of a "Notepad++ for Mac" port making the rounds last week, as though it were a port of the original available from the Notepad++ website. Apparently, this news surprised Ho as well, who claims that the Mac version and its author, Andrey Letov, are "using the Notepad++ trademark (the name) without permission." "This is misleading, inappropriate, and frankly disrespectful to both the project and its users," Ho wrote. "It has already fooled people -- including tech media -- into believing this is an official release. To be crystal clear: Notepad++ has never released a macOS version. Anyone claiming otherwise is simply riding on the Notepad++ name." Ho repeatedly asked the developer to stop using the brand and eventually reported the trademark use to Cloudflare, the CDN of the Notepad++ for Mac site. "Every day that website remains active, you are in further violation of the law," Ho wrote. "I cannot authorize a 'week or two' of continued trademark infringement." Letov has since begun rebranding the app as "NextPad++," though the old branding and URL reportedly remained available. The name changes is "an homage to NeXT Computer," notes Ars, "and uses a frog icon rather than the Notepad++ lizard."

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Faster, better, cheaper is back and history suggests you can't get all three at the same time

Faster, better, cheaper is back and history suggests you can't get all three at the same time

OPINION NASA's budget and its new administrator's statements are evoking a ghost from the agency's past: Faster, better, cheaper.…

Zig's no-AI policy is at odds with view that most open source code will be AI-written in future

Zig's no-AI policy is at odds with view that most open source code will be AI-written in future

Bun creator Jarred Sumner has posted a Zig-to-Rust porting guide, igniting speculation that the project may migrate away from Zig, though Sumner said there is no commitment to rewriting, only that he is "curious to see what a working version of this looks like."…

Cushman & Wakefield activated incident response protocols after serial extortionists issued separate threats

Cushman & Wakefield activated incident response protocols after serial extortionists issued separate threats

Real estate giant Cushman & Wakefield has confirmed a data breach after two cybercrime groups, ShinyHunters and Qilin, separately claimed responsibility for attacks on the company.…

ERP giant previously leaned on Databricks for integration

ERP giant previously leaned on Databricks for integration

SAP has snapped up Dremio, a data integration and analytics provider, to extend the reach of its data analytics and AI agent-building tools into external data sources.…

Delivers update aimed at reducing hardware bill shock

Delivers update aimed at reducing hardware bill shock

VMware has announced an update to its flagship Cloud Foundation (VCF) private cloud suite and tried to make it fit the times by adding features that allow users to run with less hardware.…

Vimeo points finger at analytics supplier Anodot, says no logins or card data were touched

Vimeo points finger at analytics supplier Anodot, says no logins or card data were touched

More than 119,000 Vimeo users's email addresses were extracted in a breach traced to a third-party analytics vendor, according to Have I Been Pwned.…

Professor Fry's AI experiment shows light and dark sides of agentic tech

Professor Fry's AI experiment shows light and dark sides of agentic tech

British mathematician Professor Hannah Fry has shared a cautionary experiment involving an AI agent, a set of tasks, and a bank card number Fry's team gave it "to show us what it could do."…

Victims losing £280K a day to fake profiles and sob stories

Victims losing £280K a day to fake profiles and sob stories

Romance fraudsters scammed Britons out of £102 million ($138 million) last year, according to the latest police figures.…

CK Hutchison takes early cash as UK mobile tie-up moves ahead of schedule

CK Hutchison takes early cash as UK mobile tie-up moves ahead of schedule

Vodafone has struck a deal to take full ownership of VodafoneThree, the mobile network formed from last year's merger of its British operations with Three, in a move designed to accelerate its UK ambitions.…

A new Nature Climate Change study suggests airborne microplastics -- especially darker and colored particles -- are likely contributing to atmospheric warming by absorbing more heat than they reflect. Researchers estimate the effect could be roughly one-sixth that of black carbon, though outside experts say the uncertainties remain large and more study is needed before drawing firm policy conclusions. "We can say with confidence that overall they are warming agents," said Drew Shindell, a Duke University earth science professor and co-author of the study. "To me, that's the big advance." The Washington Post reports: To undertake their study, a group led by researchers at Fudan University in China examined how different colors and sizes of microplastics interact with light across the spectrum, while combining that information with simulations of how particles get dispersed in the air across the planet. "Black, yellow, blue and red [particles] absorb sunlight much more strongly than the white particles," Yu Liu, a Fudan professor and study co-author, said in a call with reporters. In fact, the study details how black and colored particles showed "absorption levels nearly 75 times higher than pristine, non-pigmented plastics." The scientists also found that different sizes of particles absorb light at different intensities -- and that how they absorb light can change as they age. The authors estimate that microplastics suspended in the atmosphere could be contributing to global warming at about one-sixth the amount of black carbon, also known as soot, a pollutant generated largely from burning fossil fuels. If the latest estimates are right, Shindell said, microplastics might not be an enormous source of atmospheric warming, compared with massive contributors such as cars and trucks, belching industrial plants or even burping cows. "But not a trivial one, either," he said. By his calculation, the effect of one year's microplastic emissions globally is approximately equivalent to 200 coal-fired power plants running for that year. But that rough estimate does not factor the longer-term repercussions of microplastics decaying and persisting in the environment for decades to come. Whatever the exact impact, the topic deserves further study, the authors say, because current climate modeling does not account for any additional warming that these tiny particles might be causing.

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