Public Notices

Proton announces Proton Pass, a password manager

Proton, the Geneva, Switzerland-based company behind the end-to-end encrypted email service Proton Mail, as well as Proton VPN, Proton Drive and Proton Calendar, is announcing a brand new product today. And it’s a password manager called Proton Pass.

Like other Proton products, the company is insisting on the privacy and security features of this new password manager. Everything you store in Proton Pass is end-to-end encrypted, including passwords (obviously), email addresses, URLs and notes.

This way, Proton never has access to your personal information as the user key is required to decrypt data and cryptographic operations occur locally on your device. Even if Proton’s servers are breached, your data should still be safe.

“This is important because seemingly innocuous bits of information (such as saved URLs, which many other password managers don’t encrypt) can be used to create a highly detailed profile on you. For example, if an attacker can see that you have passwords saved for an account with Grindr, gop.com or even a manga fan site, they’ll know a lot about you as a person, even if they can’t actually access your accounts,” Proton’s founder and CEO Andy Yen wrote in a blog post.

A beta version of Proton Pass is available to loyal Proton customers, such as users who have a lifetime plan. Customers with a Visionary plan will be able to access the product shortly. The Visionary plan is no longer available to new customers.

Proton Pass is also the result of the acquisition of SimpleLogin, an email alias startup. The SimpleLogin team worked on Proton Pass with a few team members of the Proton team.

Like with Proton VPN and the company’s other products, the company plans to use a freemium business model when it rolls out Proton Pass to everyone. Some features will be available for free, while you will have to pay for a subscription to access advanced features. Proton offers an all-in-one subscription, Proton Unlimited, with all the paid features in Proton Mail, Proton VPN, Proton Drive and Proton Calendar. Advanced Proton Pass features will also be included in this premium subscription tier.

Proton Pass is currently available as a desktop browser extension, and iOS or Android app. Browser extensions work in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. Customers can also use Proton Pass as their two-factor authenticator (like Bitwarden, 1Password or iCloud Passwords).

In other news, Proton has recently reached an important milestone, as there are 100 million registered users across all of the company’s products. Of course, Proton has a free tier for all its services, including Proton VPN, which means that there are likely more free users than paid users. But it also means that Proton has no issue attracting new users to its products.

Public Notices

Japan just found 7,000 islands it didn’t know it had

Japan has recounted its islands – and discovered it has 7,000 more than it previously thought.

Digital mapping by the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI) recently found there to be 14,125 islands in Japanese territory, more than double the figure of 6,852 that has been in official use since a 1987 report by Japan’s Coast Guard.

However, the GSI this week stressed that the new figure reflected advances in surveying technology and the detail of the maps used for the count – it did not change the overall area of land in Japan’s possession.

It said that while there is no international agreement on how to count islands, it had used the same size criterion as the previous survey 35 years ago.

That entailed counting all naturally occurring land areas with a circumference of at least 100 meters (330 feet).

The new number does not include any artificially reclaimed land.

The islands surrounding Japan have been at the heart of several territorial disputes.

Japan lays claim to the Russian-held southern Kuril islands, which Tokyo calls the Northern Territories, a dispute that dates to the end of World War II, when Soviet troops seized them from Japan.

Japan also says it has a historical claim to the uninhabited Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which it currently administers, but China has repeatedly challenged that claim.

Meanwhile, Japan and South Korea remain locked in a more than 70-year dispute over the sovereignty of a group of islets known as Dokdo by Seoul and Takeshima by Tokyo in the Sea of Japan, which Korea calls the East Sea.

Public Notices

Yosemite National Park to partially reopen after 3-week closure

Yosemite National Park will begin to reopen Saturday with limited access and hours, the US National Park Service has announced. The park remains closed today.

The popular park, nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountains, was closed because of a series of damaging storms that have swept across the region in recent weeks.

Public Notices

Charles and Camilla

Britain’s King Charles III and his wife, Queen Camilla, have been married since 2005. They reportedly met at a polo match in 1970 and became friends when Charles was a prince.

When Charles joined the Royal Navy in 1971, Camilla married cavalry officer Andrew Parker Bowles.

Charles married Diana Spencer in 1981 but then admitted in 1994 that he had been having an extramarital affair with Camilla. Diana confirmed his infidelity and her own the following year.

Camilla got a divorce in 1995, and Charles and Diana divorced in 1996. Camilla all but vanished from public life at the time as public and media support swung behind Diana.

In 1999, Clarence House embarked on a program to reintroduce Camilla to the public with a carefully orchestrated first appearance with Charles outside the Ritz Hotel in London.

Six years later, their decades-long love story culminated in a wedding that had the consent of Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II. Camilla was confirmed as Charles’ official consort and future queen.