Matter -- the IOT connectivity standard with ambitions to fix the smart home and make all of our gadgets talk to each other -- has hit version 1.2, adding support for nine new types of connected devices. From a report: Robot vacuums, refrigerators, washing machines, and dishwashers are coming to Matter, as are smoke and CO alarms, air quality sensors, air purifiers, room air conditioners, and fans. It's a crucial moment for the success of the industry-backed coalition that counts 675 companies among its members. This is where it moves from the relatively small categories of door locks and light bulbs to the real moneymakers: large appliances.

The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), the organization behind Matter, released the Matter 1.2 specification this week, a year after launching Matter 1.0, following through on its promise to release two updates a year. Now, appliance manufacturers can add support for Matter to their devices, and ecosystems such as Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings can start supporting the new device types. Yes, this means you should finally be able to control a robot vacuum in the Apple Home app -- not to mention your wine fridge, dishwasher, and washing machine.

The initial feature set for the new device types includes basic function controls (start / stop, change mode) and notifications -- such as the temperature of your fridge, the status of your laundry, or whether smoke is detected. Robot vacuum support is robust -- remote start and progress notifications, cleaning modes (dry vacuum, wet mopping), and alerts for brush status, error reporting, and charging status. But there's no mapping, so you'll still need to use your vacuum app if you want to tell the robot where to go.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple was caught flat-footed when ChatGPT and other AI tools took the technology industry by storm. But the company is now preparing its response and plans to develop features for its full range of devices. One of the most intense and widespread endeavors at Apple right now is its effort to respond to the AI frenzy sweeping the technology industry. The company has some catching up to do. Apple largely sat on the sidelines when OpenAI's ChatGPT took off like a rocket last year. It watched as Google and Microsoft rolled out generative AI versions of their search engines, which spit out convincingly human-like responses to users' queries. Microsoft also updated its Windows apps with smarter assistants, and Amazon unveiled an AI-enhanced overhaul of Alexa. All the while, the only noteworthy AI release from Apple was an improved auto-correct system in iOS 17.

Apple's senior vice presidents in charge of AI and software engineering, John Giannandrea and Craig Federighi, are spearheading the effort. On Cook's team, they're referred to as the "executive sponsors" of the generative AI push. Eddy Cue, the head of services, is also involved, I'm told. The trio are now on course to spend about $1 billion per year on the undertaking. Giannandrea is overseeing development of the underlying technology for a new AI system, and his team is revamping Siri in a way that will deeply implement it. This smarter version of Siri could be ready as soon as next year, but there are still concerns about the technology and it may take longer for Apple's AI features to spread across its product line. Federighi's software engineering group, meanwhile, is adding AI to the next version of iOS. There's an edict to fill it with features running on the company's large language model, or LLM, which uses a flood of data to hone AI capabilities. The new features should improve how both Siri and the Messages app can field questions and auto-complete sentences, mirroring recent changes to competing services.

Japan's antitrust watchdog has begun an investigation into whether Alphabet's Google abuses its market position to block rival services, compounding scrutiny of the internet leader's business practices across the globe. From a report: The country's Fair Trade Commission has begun a probe centered on allegations of potential antitrust violations, an official with the agency said, confirming a Nikkei report. It plans to solicit information and views on the matter from the public, the official added. The agency plans to examine whether Google inappropriately asked smartphone makers to prioritize its search services on their devices.

The Japanese investigation marked the first time the commission has consulted with third parties from the outset of an individual probe, agency officials told reporters in Tokyo. The probe could widen to include Android phone makers found to be complicit in antitrust activity, an official said, without elaborating. Japan's review comes on top of an antitrust case the US has mounted against the global search leader. Federal regulators accuse Google of abusing its dominance to block startups and larger rivals such as Microsoft, a key argument in the biggest tech anti-monopoly case since the 1990s.

"New data suggests that what a lot of people do most often in their car is listen to AM/FM radio," writes 9to5Mac. "Yes, it's 2023, and you might think AM/FM radio is on the way out, but new data show that to not be the case for a lot of people..."

The market research company Edison Research used one-day listening diarires (for Americans older than 13) to measure the amount of time spent listening to audio — then compared results for those with and without an in-car entertainment system.

Those without an in-car entertainment system spent 67% of their time listening to AM/FM radio — with the rest listening to Sirius XM (12%), a streaming service (9%), or podcasts (4%).

But among those with an in-car entertainment system... 46% still listened to AM/FM radio. Less than a fifth listened to Sirus XM (19%), a streaming service (18%), or podcasts (7%).

The researchers' conclusion? "Even those with these systems choose AM/FM for nearly half of their in-car listening. For many people, even with so many new options, radio and the in-car environment continue to just go together."

"In 2023, the state of our digital privacy is: Very Creepy." That's the verdict from Mozilla's first-ever "Annual Consumer Creep-o-Meter," which attempts to set benchmarks for digital privacy and identify trends: Since 2017, Mozilla has published 15 editions of *Privacy Not Included, our consumer tech buyers guide. We've reviewed over 500 gadgets, apps, cars, and more, assessing their security features, what data they collect, and who they share that data with. In 2023, we compared our most recent findings with those of the past five years. It quickly became clear that products and companies are collecting more personal data than ever before — and then using that information in shady ways...

Products are getting more secure, but also a lot less private. More companies are meeting Mozilla's Minimum Security Standards like using encryption and providing automatic software updates. That's good news. But at the same time, companies are collecting and sharing users' personal data like never before. And that's bad news. Many companies now view their hardware or software as a means to an end: collecting that coveted personal data for targeted advertising and training AI. For example: The mental health app BetterHelp shares your data with advertisers, social media platforms, and sister companies. The Japanese car manufacturer Nissan collects a wide range of information, including sexual activity, health diagnosis data, and genetic information — but doesn't specify how.

An increasing number of products can't be used offline. In the past, the privacy conscious could always buy a connected device but turn off connectivity, making it "dumb." That's no longer an option in many cases. The number of connected devices that require apps and can't be used offline are increasing. This trend, coupled with the first, means it's harder and harder to keep your data private.
Privacy policies also need improvement. "Legalese, ambiguity, and policies that sprawl across multiple documents and URLs are the status quo. And it's getting worse, not better. Companies use these policies as a shield, not an actual resource for consumers." They note that Toyota has more than 10 privacy policy documents, and that it would actually take five hours to read all the privacy documents the Meta Quest Pro VR headset.

In the end they advise opting out of data collection when possible, enabling security features, and "If you're not comfortable with a product's privacy, don't buy it. And, speak up. Over the years, we've seen companies respond to consumer demand for privacy, like when Apple reformed app tracking and Zoom made end-to-end encryption a free feature."

You can also take a quiz that calculates your own privacy footprint (based on whether you're using consumer tech products like the Apple Watch, Nintendo Switch, Nook, or Telegram). Mozilla's privacy advocates award the highest marks to privacy-protecting products like Signal, Sonos' SL Speakers, and the Pocketbook eReader (an alternative to Amazon's Kindle. (Although 100% of the cars reviewed by Mozilla "failed to meet our privacy and security standards.")

The graphics on the site help make its point. As you move your mouse across the page, the cartoon eyes follow its movement...

"Mark Zuckerberg is making good on his promise to accelerate the use of Threads," reports Business Insider: The Meta CEO insisted in July that the app was not in its final form. "I'm highly confident that we're gonna be able to pour enough gasoline on this to help it grow," Zuckerberg said. Since then, Threads has rolled out a host of major new features, including a web version, keyword search, voice posts, and the ability to edit posts, even as it avoids promoting news. Smaller things, too, like being able to follow updates in individual threads at the tap of a bell icon, a way to mass follow people mentioned in a post, and even tag people's Instagram accounts, are now available... More Threads features are said to be on the way, like polls.
But Insider also reports that "As the app has matured quickly in recent weeks, users have started to return and downloads have continued to rise." So far in October, Threads has hovered around 33 million daily active users and 120 million monthly active users, according to data from Apptopia, up from about 25 million daily users and 100 million monthly users in July... Since the app launched on July 6, it's been downloaded 260 million times, Apptopia data shows, with downloads in September almost double the downloads in August...

Although the entire team working on Threads remains small by Meta standards, around 50 people, the company was surprised by the interest in the app and "really wants it to work," an employee said. To that end, Threads is now being integrated to an extent with Facebook and Instagram, two of the most popular apps in the world. There is a direct link to Threads on each user's Instagram page, a post on Threads can be sent in Instagram DMs, and as of this week, Threads is being promoted within the Instagram app feed via a small carousel of select posts under the header "Threads for you...."
It's not just Instagram, according to BGR. "If you've been posting some especially strange messages Threads, thinking that only the few people who follow you will see them, I have some bad news for you..." As spotted by TechCrunch, users on Facebook have noticed something new on their News Feed: content from Threads. It appears that Meta is now showing Facebook users a new "For You from Threads" section on the News Feed that contains recommended content from the sibling social media platform.

The Washington Post tells the story of a veteran political operative and a former army intelligence officer hired to help keep in power the president of the west African nation Burkina Faso: Their company, Percepto International, was a pioneer in what's known as the disinformation-for-hire business. They were skilled in deceptive tricks of social media, reeling people into an online world comprised of fake journalists, news outlets and everyday citizens whose posts were intended to bolster support for [president Roch Marc] Kaboré's government and undercut its critics. But as Percepto began to survey the online landscape across Burkina Faso and the surrounding French-speaking Sahel region of Africa in 2021, they quickly saw that the local political adversaries and Islamic extremists they had been hired to combat were not Kaboré's biggest adversary. The real threat, they concluded, came from Russia, which was running what appeared to be a wide-ranging disinformation campaign aimed at destabilizing Burkina Faso and other democratically-elected governments on its borders.

Pro-Russian fake news sites populated YouTube and pro-Russian groups abounded on Facebook. Local influencers used WhatsApp and Telegram groups to organize pro-Russian demonstrations and praise Russian President Vladimir Putin. Facebook fan pages even hailed the Wagner Group, the Russian paramilitary network run by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the late one-time Putin ally whose Internet Research Agency launched a disinformation campaign in the United States to influence the 2016 presidential election... Percepto didn't know the full scope of the operation it had uncovered but it warned Kaboré's government that it needed to move fast: Launch a counteroffensive online — or risk getting pushed out in a coup.

Three years later, the governments of five former French colonies, including Burkina Faso, have been toppled. The new leaders of two of those countries, Mali and Burkina Faso, are overtly pro-Russian; in a third, Niger, the prime minister installed after a July coup has met recently with the Russian ambassador. In Mali and the Central African Republic, French troops have been replaced with Wagner mercenaries...

Percepto's experience in French-speaking Africa offers a rare window into the round-the-clock information warfare that is shaping international politics — and the booming business of disinformation-for-hire. Meta, the social media company that operates Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, says that since 2017 it has detected more than 200 clandestine influence operations, many of them mercenary campaigns, in 68 countries.
The article also makes an interesting point. "The burden of battling disinformation has fallen entirely on Silicon Valley companies."

"The major online platforms are breaking up with news," reports the New York Times: Campbell Brown, Facebook's top news executive, said this month that she was leaving the company. Twitter, now known as X, removed headlines from the platform days later. The head of Instagram's Threads app, an X competitor, reiterated that his social network would not amplify news. Even Google — the strongest partner to news organizations over the past 10 years — has become less dependable, making publishers more wary of their reliance on the search giant. The company has laid off news employees in two recent team reorganizations, and some publishers say traffic from Google has tapered off... Some executives of the largest tech companies, like Adam Mosseri at Instagram, have said in no uncertain terms that hosting news on their sites can often be more trouble than it is worth because it generates polarized debates...

Publishers seem resigned to the idea that traffic from the big tech companies will not return to what it once was. Even in the long-fractious relationship between publishers and tech platforms, the latest rift stands out — and the consequences for the news industry are stark. Many news companies have struggled to survive after the tech companies threw the industry's business model into upheaval more than a decade ago. One lifeline was the traffic — and, by extension, advertising — that came from sites like Facebook and Twitter. Now that traffic is disappearing. Top news sites got about 11.5% of their web traffic in the United States from social networks in September 2020, according to Similarweb, a data and analytics company. By September this year, it was down to 6.5%...

The sharp decline in referral traffic from social media platforms over the past two years has hit all news publishers, including The New York Times. The Wall Street Journal noticed a decline starting about 18 months ago, according to a recording of a September staff meeting obtained by the Times. "We are at the mercy of social algorithms and tech giants for much of our distribution," Emma Tucker, the Journal's editor-in-chief, told the newsroom in the meeting...

Google cut some members of its news partnership team in September, and this week it laid off as many as 45 workers from its Google News team, the Alphabet Workers Union said. (The Information, a tech news website, reported the Google News layoffs earlier.) "We've made some internal changes to streamline our organization," Jenn Crider, a Google spokesperson, said in a statement... Jaffer Zaidi [Google's vice president of global news partnerships], wrote in an internal memo reviewed by the Times that the team would be adopting more artificial intelligence. "We had to make some difficult decisions to better position our team for what lies ahead," he wrote...

Privately, a number of publishers have discussed what a post-Google traffic future may look like and how to better prepare if Google's AI products become more popular and further bury links to news publications.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The Supreme Court on Friday blocked in full a lower court ruling that would have curbed the Biden administration's ability to communicate with social media companies about contentious content on such issues as Covid-19. The decision in a short unsigned order (PDF) puts on hold a Louisiana-based judge's ruling in July that specific agencies and officials should be barred from meeting with companies to discuss whether certain content should be stifled. The Supreme Court also agreed to immediately take up the government's appeal, meaning it will hear arguments and issue a ruling on the merits in its current term, which runs until the end of June. Three conservative justices noted that they would have denied the application: Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

"At this time in the history of our country, what the court has done, I fear, will be seen by some as giving the government a green light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news. That is most unfortunate," Alito wrote in a dissenting opinion. GOP attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, along with five social media users, filed the underlying lawsuit, alleging that U.S. government officials went too far in what they characterize as coercion of social media companies to address posts, especially those related to Covid-19. The individual plaintiffs include Covid-19 lockdown opponents and Jim Hoft, the owner of the right-wing website Gateway Pundit. They claim that the government's actions violated free speech protections under the Constitution's First Amendment.

Long-time Slashdot reader Noryungi writes: OpenBSD 7.4 has been officially released. The 55th release of this BSD operating system, known for being security oriented, brings a lot of new things, including dynamic tracer, pfsync improvements, loads of security goodies and virtualization improvements. Grab your copy today! As mentioned by Phoronix's Michael Larabel, some of the key highlights include:

- Dynamic Tracer (DT) and Utrace support on AMD64 and i386 OpenBSD
- Power savings for those running OpenBSD 7.4 on Apple Silicon M1/M2 CPUs by allowing deep idle states when available for the idle loop and suspend
- Support for the PCIe controller found on Apple M2 Pro/Max SoCs
- Allow updating AMD CPU Microcode updating when a newer patch is available
- A workaround for the AMD Zenbleed CPU bug
- Various SMP improvements
- Updating the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) graphics driver support against the upstream Linux 6.1.55 state
- New drivers for supporting various Qualcomm SoC features
- Support for soft RAID disks was improved for the OpenBSD installer
- Enabling of Indirect Branch Tracking (IBT) on x86_64 and Branch Target Identifier (BTI) on ARM64 for capable processors

You can download and view all the new changes via OpenBSD.org.

An anonymous reader shares a Tom's Hardware report: Unfortunately, a default setting in Windows 11 Pro, having its software BitLocker encryption enabled, robs as much as 45 percent of the speed from your SSD as it forces your processor to encrypt and decrypt everything. According to our tests, random writes and reads -- which affect the overall performance of your PC -- get hurt the most, but even large sequential transfers are affected.

While many SSDs come with hardware-based encryption, which does all the processing directly on the drive, Windows 11 Pro force-enables the software version of BitLocker during installation, without providing a clear way to opt out. (You can circumvent this with tools like Rufus, if you want, though that's obviously not an official solution as it allows users to bypass the Microsoft's intent.) If you bought a prebuilt PC with Windows 11 Pro, there's a good chance software BitLocker is enabled on it right now. Windows 11 Home doesn't support BitLocker so you won't have encryption enabled there.

To find out just how much software BitLocker impacts performance, we ran a series of tests with three scenarios: unencrypted (no BitLocker), software BitLocker (the Windows 11 Pro default), and with hardware BitLocker (OPAL) enabled. While the software encryption increased latency and decreased transfer rates, hardware encryption and no encryption at all were basically tied. If you have software BitLocker enabled, you may want to change your settings.

Redis, the go-to in-memory database used as a cache and system broker, is looking to include disk as part of a tiered storage architecture to reduce costs and broaden the system's appeal. From a report: Speaking to The Register, CEO Rowan Trollope said he hoped the move would help customers lower costs and simplify their architecture. Redis counts Twitter X, Snapchat, and Craigslist among its customers, and it's popular among developers of modern internet-scale applications owing to its ability to create a cache to prevent the main database from overloading. Trollope said the sub-millisecond distributed system gives devs the performance they need, but admitted other systems built for internet scale, such as MongoDB, might offer price advantages. To address this, the company has already created a tiered approach to memory by offering flash support behind its in-memory system.

"We have a half-step between disk and memory. For some specific use cases, in gaming for example, a company might use us for leaderboards and other in-game stats, which they need in real time," he said. However, after an initial flush of the game launch, a large chunk of users would finish the game and their accounts would go dormant until the release of a new episode or some new content, when they might return. Trollope said using flash allowed users to dynamically tier memory. "We can take the lesser-used data that hasn't been touched in a while and shuttle it off to flash where it can sit for a while. When the user comes back eventually, it's very easy for us to seamlessly move it from flash back into memory. And that allows the company to save costs," he said.

The popular messaging app Telegram can leak your IP address if you simply add a hacker to your contacts and accept a phone call from them. From a report: Denis Simonov, a security researcher, who is also known as n0a, recently highlighted the issue and wrote a simple tool to exploit it. TechCrunch verified the researcher's findings by adding Simonov to the contacts of a newly created Telegram account. Simonov then called the account, and shortly after provided TechCrunch with the IP address of the computer where the experiment was being carried out.

Telegram boasts 700 million users all over the world, and has always marketed itself as a "secure" and "private" messaging app, even though experts have repeatedly warned that Telegram is not as secure as end-to-end encrypted app Signal, for example. The fact that Telegram leaks your IP address to people in your contacts during a voice call has been known for years, but it's likely that new, less technical users may not be aware.

Is Google laying the groundwork for a true challenger to language learning apps like Duolingo, Memrise and Babbel? In a blog post on Thursday, the search giant announced that it's rolling out a new Google Search feature designed to help people improve their English speaking skills. TechCrunch's Kyle Wiggers reports: Rolling out over the next few days for Search on Android devices in Argentina, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Mexico and Venezuela, with more countries and languages to come in the future, the new feature will provide interactive speaking practice for language learners translating to or from English, Google writes in a blog post. "Google Search is already a valuable tool for language learners, providing translations, definitions, and other resources to improve vocabulary," reads the the post, attributed to Google Research director Christian Plagemann and product manager Katya Cox. "Now, learners translating to or from English on their Android phones will find a new English speaking practice experience with personalized feedback."

The new experience presents Search users with prompts and asks them to speak the answers using a provided vocabulary word. During each practice session, which last 3 to 5 minutes, Search gives personalized feedback -- and the option to sign up for daily reminders to keep practicing and advance to the next stage of difficulty. How personalized is it, exactly? Well, according to Google, the experience gives semantic feedback -- indicating whether a response was relevant to a given question and comprehensible to a theoretical conversation partner. It also recommends areas where grammar could be improved, and, to give concrete suggestions for alternative ways to respond, provides a set of example answers at varying levels of language complexity. During practice sessions, learners can tap on any word they don't understand to see a translation of that word that considers the word in context.

"Designed to be used alongside other learning services and resources, like personal tutoring, mobile apps and classes, the new speaking practice feature on Google Search is another tool to assist learners on their journey," Plagemann and Cox write. [...] "We look forward to expanding to more countries and languages in the future, and to start offering partner practice content soon," Plagemann and Cox continued. "With these latest updates, which will roll out over the next few days, Google Search has become even more helpful."

Slash_Account_Dot shares a report from 404 Media: Hackers are targeting accounts on Kodex, a platform that connects law enforcement agencies and tech companies and which is designed to verify emergency requests for customer data, according to multiple online conversations between hackers viewed by 404 Media. Screenshots from one of the compromised accounts shows a panel where a law enforcement officer, or a hacker, can potentially 'create a new request.' The screenshots show a wide range of companies such as tech giants Meta and Microsoft's LinkedIn; cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Coinbase; social media platforms Pinterest, Discord, and Snapchat; financial service Fidelity, and gaming platform Roblox. The compromised account appears to belong to a national police force, but the screenshots do not include the agency's full name.

There is no evidence that hackers have successfully used compromised Kodex accounts to obtain data from a tech company, and Matt Donahue, the former FBI agent and now CEO of Kodex, said that multiple compromised accounts 404 Media found did not have authorization to make such requests, and that Kodex had shut down those accounts. But the repeated examples of criminal chatter show that Kodex is a target of interest for hackers.

Ty Roush reports via Forbes: Convoy, a Seattle-based digital freight booker with investors that include billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, announced Thursday it would be shutting down, according to Bloomberg, after the company failed to find a buyer amid a "massive freight recession." Convoy's founder and chief executive Dan Lewis notified employees in an internal memo Thursday that "today is your last day at the company," noting the company is "exploring and evaluating strategic options for what might come next," Bloomberg reported.

Lewis said the company had evaluated potential suitors to acquire it, though "none of the options ultimately materialized into anything sufficient to keep the company going in its then current form." Convoy was in "the middle of a massive freight recession and a contraction in the capital markets," according to Lewis, who added "this combination ultimately crushed our progress" and likely swayed potential suitors away from acquiring the firm. "Following an exhaustive process, spanning many, many months during which we explored all viable strategic options for the business, the result is where we are today," Lewis wrote. Convoy was founded in 2015 in an effort to prevent trucks from driving "empty miles" without loads. The idea was to use technology to make freight more efficient by connecting truck drivers with freight companies -- reducing shippers' costs, increasing carriers' earnings, and eliminating carbon emissions in the process.

Discord is overhauling the way it moderates its platform with a new warning system and teen safety assist feature. From a report: The new Discord warning system has been totally revamped to be far more transparent, educating Discord users how they've broken rules and are restricted from parts of the service rather than permanently banning them. "The new system gives users more room to learn from their mistakes and correct misjudgments," explains Savannah Badalich, Discord's senior director of policy, in a briefing with The Verge. "We're moving away from permanent bans to one-year temporary bans for many violations, except for violations that are extremely harmful."

In the coming weeks, Discord will start to limit features for rule breakers, instead of banning them outright. If a Discord user violates the rules, then they'll be met with a DM from Discord letting them know about the warning or violation and what action Discord is taking. So, if a Discord user uploads an image that breaks the rules, they might temporarily take away the ability to post images.

The FCC has unanimously approved plans by several tech companies to use the 6GHz band for wireless devices. From a report: FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel proposed the new rules, which would authorize very low power (VLP) operations -- meaning their signals won't be able to go very far -- in about 850MHz of the spectrum, on September 27th. The rules will also allow devices to "use higher power levels" so long as they're geofenced to keep from interfering with actual licensed 6GHz usage, and the FCC will be taking comments on other ways it can expand 6GHz spectrum usage by technology devices.

A September Bloomberg report pointed to some of the kinds of devices the FCC's affirmative vote could open up, including in-car connections, mobile virtual or augmented reality devices, and more. The FCC originally opened up 1,200MHz of the 6GHz spectrum for unlicensed use by Wi-Fi routers and client devices (think smartphones or laptops), giving home networks far more wireless overhead than existing Wi-Fi standards already had. This new approval expands the spectrum for much more general use.

Google has been caught hosting a malicious ad so convincing that there's a decent chance it has managed to trick some of the more security-savvy users who encountered it. From a report: Looking at the ad, which masquerades as a pitch for the open source password manager Keepass, there's no way to know that it's fake. It's on Google, after all, which claims to vet the ads it carries. Making the ruse all the more convincing, clicking on it leads to Äeepass[.]info, which, when viewed in an address bar, appears to be the genuine Keepass site. A closer look at the link, however, shows that the site is not the genuine one. In fact, Äeepass[.]info -- at least when it appears in the address bar -- is just an encoded way of denoting xn--eepass-vbb[.]info, which, it turns out, is pushing a malware family tracked as FakeBat. Combining the ad on Google with a website with an almost identical URL creates a near-perfect storm of deception.

"Users are first deceived via the Google ad that looks entirely legitimate and then again via a lookalike domain," Jerome Segura, head of threat intelligence at security provider Malwarebytes, wrote in a post on Wednesday that revealed the scam. Information from Google's Ad Transparency Center shows that the ads have been running since Saturday and last appeared on Wednesday. The ads were paid for by an outfit called Digital Eagle, which the transparency page says is an advertiser whose identity has been verified by Google.

In its antitrust confrontation with the government, the pillar of Google's defense has been that innovation -- not restrictive contracts, backed by billions in payments to industry partners -- explains its success as the giant of internet search. From a report: Its competitive advantage, it says, is brilliant people, working tirelessly to improve its products. Pandu Nayak, Google's first witness in the antitrust trial that began last month, is the face of that defense. Mr. Nayak, a vice president of search, was raised in India and graduated at the top of his class at one of that nation's elite technical schools. He came to America, earned his Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford University and then spent seven years as a research scientist on artificial intelligence projects at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley.

Nineteen years ago, Mr. Nayak joined Google and found a particularly welcoming workplace, filled with professional friends. "At the end of the day, Google is a technology company -- it really values the skills that I have," Mr. Nayak said in his testimony on Wednesday. The computer scientist's testimony is an attempt to rebut a central argument in the case filed by the Justice Department and 38 states and territories. Their suit claims that scale is essential to competition in search. That is, the more data from user queries a search engine collects, the more it learns to improve its service, which attracts still more users, advertisers and ad revenue. That flywheel, the suit says, is fueled by ever-increasing volumes of user data.