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The invitation-only audio-chat social networking app Clubhouse is pictured on a smartphone on January 26, 2021 in Berlin, Germany.

Thomas Trutschel | Photothek | Getty Images

The audio-only social media app Clubhouse appears to have been blocked in China.

Queeny Li, a communications professional based in Shenzhen, and Michael Norris, a tech analyst in Shanghai, told CNBC that the Clubhouse app no longer works for them.

"Clubhouse has been blocked," said Norris, echoing what multiple media reports have said.

"Clubhouse's ban was expected," Norris added. "Indeed, the sudden rush to give Clubhouse a whirl was driven by the sense that a ban was imminent."

Some Clubhouse users in China are now being shown an error message when they open the app. The message reads: "An SSL error has occurred and a secure connection to the server cannot be made."

U.S.-based Clubhouse, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China and the Chinese embassy in London did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.

The invite-only discussion app, which lets people chat with their voices instead of written messages, has boomed in popularity over the last few months.

It initially gained traction with the Silicon Valley tech community, but in recent weeks the app has been downloaded onto smartphones across China.

While the iPhone app is not available to download from the Chinese App Store, people in China were able to get it by using overseas Apple IDs.

Chinese ecommerce sites have been selling thousands of Clubhouse invites for up to $77, according to The Financial Times.

Clubhouse, which is valued at around $1 billion and boasts over 2 million users, worked for people in China that managed to download the app and obtain an invite up until Monday, when the apparent block came in.

Unlike other apps, Clubhouse was not censored by the Chinese Communist Party and users were free to talk about whatever they pleased.

Chinese authorities have blocked U.S. social media apps like Facebook and Twitter, and internet search results are censored by the government. The country's digital censorship of overseas platforms has been dubbed the "Great Firewall."

Meanwhile, the U.S. government has been clamping down on Chinese tech firms like Huawei and TikTok over the last few years.

"At one level, China is cracking down on any technology that challenges how the government controls society," Abishur Prakash, a geopolitical specialist at the Center for Innovating the Future (CIF), told CNBC.

"This is nothing new," he added. "But, at another level, China is rapidly 'unplugging' from U.S. technology, even the new platforms and services. This is further driving the split between the U.S. and China."

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Buzzy new social media app Clubhouse appears to have been blocked in China - CNBC

Local and federal authorities are investigating after an attempt Friday to poison the city of Oldsmars water supply, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said.

Someone remotely accessed a computer for the citys water treatment system and briefly increased the amount of sodium hydroxide, also known as lye, by a factor of more than 100, Gualtieri said at a news conference Monday. The chemical is used in small amounts to control the acidity of water but its also a corrosive compound commonly found in household cleaning supplies such as liquid drain cleaners.

The citys water supply was not affected. A supervisor working remotely saw the concentration being changed on his computer screen and immediately reverted it, Gualtieri said. City officials on Monday emphasized that several other safeguards are in place to prevent contaminated water from entering the water supply and said theyve disabled the remote-access system used in the attack.

The Pinellas County Sheriffs Office is investigating, along with the FBI and the Secret Service, Gualtieri said.

Nobody has been arrested, Gualtieri said, though investigators have some leads. They do not know why Oldsmar was targeted, he said. He added that other area municipalities have been alerted to the attack and encouraged to inspect the safeguards to their water treatment systems and other infrastructure.

Though some cities obtain water through Pinellas County, Oldsmar provides water directly to its businesses and roughly 15,000 residents, Gualtieri said. The computer system at the water treatment plant was set up to allow authorized users to remotely access it for troubleshooting.

A plant operator was monitoring the system at about 8 a.m. Friday and noticed that someone briefly accessed it. He didnt find this unusual, Gualtieri said, because his supervisor remotely accessed the system regularly.

But at about 1:30 p.m. the same day, Gualtieri said, someone accessed the system again. This time, he said, the operator watched as someone took control of the mouse, directed it to the software that controls water treatment, worked inside it for three to five minutes and increased the amount of sodium hydroxide from 100 parts per million to 11,100 parts per million.

The attacker left the system, Gualtieri said, and the operator immediately changed the concentration back to 100 parts per million.

At no time was there a significant adverse effect on the water being treated, the sheriff said. Importantly, the public was never in danger.

Even if the operator hadnt caught it, he said, it would have taken more than a day for the water to enter the water supply.

The protocols that we have in place, monitoring protocols, they work thats the good news, said Oldsmar Mayor Eric Seidel. Even had they not caught them, theres redundancies in the system that would have caught the change in the pH level.

The important thing is to put everyone on notice, he said. Theres a bad actor out there.

Sen. Marco Rubio also addressed the attack in a tweet Monday, saying it should be treated as a matter of national security.

The Sheriffs Office learned of the attack and began investigating Friday evening, Gualtieri said. Investigators dont yet know whether the attack originated within or outside Pinellas County, Florida or the United States. If the attacker is apprehended, he said, theyll face state felony charges and possibly federal charges.

Contact with sodium hydroxide can kill skin and cause hair loss, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Ingestion can be fatal.

Gualtieri said he didnt know what physiological effects would result from the concentration dialed up in the attack. Nor was it immediately apparent whether a similar attack had ever happened in the U.S. In 2007, the water of a town in Massachusetts was accidentally treated with too much lye, causing burns and skin irritation among people who showered with it.

Im not a chemist, Gualtieri said. But I can tell you what I do know is if you put that amount of that substance into the drinking water, its not a good thing.

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Someone tried to poison Oldsmars water supply during hack, sheriff says - Tampa Bay Times

Google's media streaming offerings got a rather important bump in the form of the Chromecast with Google TV last year. Unlike its predecessors, the dongle is based on Android TV and has plenty of things going for it, including its remote and $50 price tag. Unfortunately, it's not all been smooth sailing. A lot of users have recently reported a bug that's randomly asking them to reset the device as "data may be corrupted."

The issue has been highlighted by affected users on various platforms, including Twitter, Reddit, and even on Google's own forums. It crops up randomly and renders the remote control useless, making it difficult for users to get around it.

There's no official word on what's causing the boot screen to pop up for users, but we suspect that a botched system update could've caused this. Since the device does automatic "seamless" updates, this can happen without any input from the user.

If you come across this error, the most natural thing to do is try to navigate the interface using the remote. However, that won't be possible since the device is in recovery mode, and you'll have to make use of the single button that's situated on the back of the dongle a herculean task if your TV is wall-mounted and the Chromecast is hidden behind it.

You can see the button in the image above.

A single press of this button lets you cycle through the options, whereas a long press will let you select one. It's recommended to click on "Try again" if you come across this error. This should reboot the device and solve the problem. But if this doesn't work out for you, you will have to resort to performing a factory data reset, which is the only other option on the screen.

While that reset trick works, it would be better if we weren't running into this problem in the first place and luckily for us, Google's on top of things. We reached out to try and learn a little bit more about this issue, and were told by a spokesperson that the company is not only aware of the issue, but has already developed a fix and is in the process of rolling it out.

Indeed, there's a new firmware update for the Chromecast with Google TV that has just appeared, promising (among other changes) fixes to not only make that scary-looking recovery screen appear a lot less frequently, but also to change the instructions it gives to help make things a little clearer for your average user.

Google says the update should hit users over the course of the next two days.

New firmware

Added Google's response and details on new firmware release.

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There's a fix arriving for Chromecast with Google TV's annoying boot error - Android Police

But what he did on Tuesday would have certainly made Akram proud as the Indian batting line-up, save Kohl, didn't have an idea as to how they could stop Anderson.

When he made his Test debut, Shubman Gill was in play-school and Rishabh Pant in nursery.

At 38 years 194 days and in his 158th Test match, Anderson became an example of why one should can never discount experience.

Ishant Sharma, on first two days, bowled a few spells of lively reverse swing. What Ishant did well, Anderson just did that way better.

Gill (50, 83 balls) once again looked dazzling till the time he was at the crease. The sinewy wrists were in play as he hit seven fours and a six, dealing with spinners comfortably.

Even Cheteshwar Pujara's (15 off 38 balls) dismissal off Jack Leach's "peach" didn't unfaze the young man from Punjab as he along with Kohli calmly went about their business.

It was the 27th over when Anderson first came into the attack and the second ball was a perfect reverse inswinger which had Gill in a daze as the off-stump went for a walk.

The way the shiny part on the inside tailed in was a sight to behold.

Rahane (0), for all the appreciation coming his way, was in very poor form for the better part of the Australia series, save a hundred at MCG where he was dropped thrice.

The first ball he faced on Tuesday was another one that came back a shade and it was hitting the middle of the middle stump with the Umpires' Call saving the vice-captain of what looked like a plumb leg before.

The wily Anderson realised that an out-of-form Rahane's feet are not moving.

The next time he just went a shade wide off the crease and delivered another reverse inswinger. Rahane knew that there was no comeback.

Pant (11) has had three great knocks but he was facing a bowler with supreme game awareness and immaculate understanding of conditions.

Against a left-hander, he predictably came round the wicket and angled a few in with a busy Pant hitting a boundary.

By then, Anderson had gauged that Pant could be hurried on the drive.

So the master changed his tactic and bowled a slower one enticing Pant to go for a drive.

Pant tried his best to check it but the bowler had asked his skipper Joe Root to specifically stand at short cover for that particular shot.

From 92 for 2, it was 110 for five and Kohli cut a lonely figure at the other end.

Washington Sundar (0) was then picked by Dom Bess with the one that turned away leaving India in complete tatters.

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Swing it like Jimmy: Andersons reverse swing deflates India, England win by 227 runs - National Herald

Shares of the happiest of exhibitors AMC Entertainment continued an upward trajectory Monday fueled by retail traders on Reddit chat rooms, even as a leading Wall Street analyst downgraded the stock to sell and valued it at $1.

In our view, the recent volatility and spike in the companys stock, thanks to the Reddit/WallStreetBets crowd, has decoupled AMCs share price and its valuation. Near term prospects of bankruptcy have been avoided thanks to $1.2bn of fresh capital being raised since mid-December. However, equity shareholders have been diluted by roughly 75% over the last couple months and there is still approximately $5.7bn of debt, a total which is growing each quarter due to deferred interest payments, writes Eric Handler of MKM Partners.

Dilution refers to millions of newly issued AMC shares, including to Silver Lake Partners, which last week swapped its AMC bonds for stock and subsequently cashed out in the midst of the #SaveAMC buying frenzy. Handler and others believe AMC is likely to explore an additional equity offering as a result of its elevated stock price and who could blame it?

GameStop and other Reddit-targeted stocks have also soared in a sudden upending of the traditional investment ecosystem by retail traders. (GameStops eroding business model and skyrocketing shares were derided on SNL Saturday.) The action, which targets stocks with heavy short positions, is mostly happening on e-trading platforms like Robin Hood, which caused a furor last week by limiting trades.

AMC is up nearly 6% at $14 in midday trading. GameStop whose shares had moved from $2.57 to a high of $483 is down 25% at $244.

Meanwhile, spooked commentators Monday attributed a sharp spike in the price of silver to the Reddit army, which, they said, is now expanding into commodities a move denied by some on Wall Street Bets.

Guys DO NOT listen to the poeple influencing you to buy silver . The media is litterly coordinating a situation to get us all distracted from GME$ and AMC %, said one WSB post, accusing mainstream media and investors of throwing out names that no one on Reddit is actually buying. Iv been reading stuff all weekend about how R/ WSB IS into this stock and into this and that atleast 5 different stocks there attempting to get us to chase and when you go on WSB not a single one is spoken of.

Others agreed, urging the Reddit community to focus on GameStop and AMC.

Theyre talking on CNBC as if people on Reddit are actually squeezing silver. Its f-cking absurd, theyre practically encouraging it, says another.

We are going to spread ourselves too thin, its important that we unite our strategy into one stock at a time. AMC is already on the verge of skyrocketing with 500M in volume, reads yet another (there are thousands). Focus on AMC guys, stop talking about all of these other stocks and stand together, if we want to screw these hedge investors its the only way to do it. Simply put the more of us that buy and hold AMC, the higher it will go this week.

This is being called a populist revolution on Wall Street but theres little clarity on the ultimate gains or losses that might be sustained by either individuals or institutions.

On AMC, Handler wrote, the emotion behind the #SaveAMC movement could carry the shares higher in the near-term, but we believe this valuation-be-damned momentum is not sustainable over the long term.

AMC theaters shuttered in March and have opened in fits and starts in the U.S. and around the world. The stock was pummeled as the pandemic lingered, key markets remained closed and studios postponed releases, fueling speculation of bankruptcy. Led by CEO Adam Aron, AMC announced a large financing package on Jan. 25 to see it through the year as moviegoing picked up. The stock responded, moving from a low of under two bucks to five or six before the Reddit frenzy wafted it skyward to over $20.

The convulsive Wall Street drama is morphing into Hollywood dramas plural. A Deadline scoop yesterday reported that MGM acquired in bidding a book proposal by Ben Mezrich about GameStop trading. Today, Deadline reported that Netflix is in talks to make an untitled film about the battle between day traders and Wall Street giants.

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AMC Ent. Stock Rises More As Analyst Warns Its Worth A Buck; GameStop Dips, Reddit Furor Grows From Shares To Silver - Deadline