Europe's biggest telecoms companies have called on the EU to compel Big Tech to pay a "fair" contribution for using their networks, the latest stage in a battle for payments that has pitched the sector against companies such as Netflix and Google. From a report: Technology companies that "benefit most" from telecoms infrastructure and drive traffic growth should contribute more to costs, according to the chief executives of 20 groups including BT, Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica, who signed an open letter seen by the Financial Times. It will be sent to the European Commission and members of the European parliament. "Future investments are under serious pressure and regulatory action is needed to secure them," they warned. "A fair and proportionate contribution from the largest traffic generators towards the costs of network infrastructure should form the basis of a new approach."

They added that regulators need to take action to help secure future investment, with telecoms groups having to spend billions to support the rollout of 5G and upgrade to full-fibre networks. Signatories included Timotheus Hottges at Deutsche Telekom, Christel Heydemann at Orange, Jose Mara Alvarez-Pallete at Telefonica and Pietro Labriola at Telecom Italia. It was also supported by outgoing BT chief executive Philip Jansen, his successor Allison Kirkby, who is currently chief executive at Telia, as well as Vodafone's chief executive Margherita Della Valle. They suggested that a payment mechanism might only make demands on "the very largest traffic generators" with a focus on "accountability and transparency on contributions...so that operators invest directly into Europe's digital infrastructure."

America's Department of Justice "has finally posted what judge Amit Mehta described at the Google search antitrust trial as an 'embarrassing' exhibit that Google tried to hide from the public," reports Ars Technica: The document in question contains meeting notes that Google's vice president for finance, Michael Roszak, "created for a course on communications," Bloomberg reported. In his notes, Roszak wrote that Google's search advertising "is one of the world's greatest business models ever created" with economics that only certain "illicit businesses" selling "cigarettes or drugs" "could rival."

At trial, Roszak told the court that he didn't recall if he ever gave the presentation. He said that the course required that he tell students "things I don't believe as part of the presentation." He also claimed that the notes were "full of hyperbole and exaggeration" and did not reflect his true beliefs, "because there was no business purpose associated with it." According to Bloomberg, Google repeatedly objected to the document being shared in court, claiming it was irrelevant to the DOJ's case. Then, after Mehta allowed the DOJ to present the document as evidence, Google tried to seal off Roszak's testimony on the document...

Beyond likening Google's search advertising business to illicit drug markets, Roszak's notes also said that because users got hooked on Google's search engine, Google was able to "mostly ignore the demand side" of "fundamental laws of economics" and "only focus on the supply side of advertisers, ad formats, and sales." This was likely the bit that actually interested the DOJ. "We could essentially tear the economics textbook in half," Roszak's notes said. Part of the DOJ's case argues that because Google has a monopoly over search, it's less incentivized to innovate products that protect consumers from harm like invasive data collection.

A Google spokesman told Bloomberg that Roszak's statements "don't reflect the company's opinion" and "were drafted for a public speaking class in which the instructions were to say something hyperbolic and attention-grabbing." The spokesman also noted that Roszak "testified he didn't believe the statements to be true."

"We're committed to developing AI responsibly," says Google's VP of Trust, "guided by our AI principles and in line with our consumer privacy commitment. However, we've also heard from web publishers that they want greater choice and control over how their content is used for emerging generative AI use cases."

And so, Mashable reports, "Websites can now choose to opt out of Google Bard, or any other future AI models that Google makes." Google made the announcement on Thursday introducing a new tool called Google-Extended that will allow sites to be indexed by crawlers (or a bot creating entries for search engines), while simultaneously not having their data accessed to train future AI models. For website administrators, this will be an easy fix, available through robots.txt — or the text file that allows web crawlers to access sites...

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, recently launched a web crawler of its own, but included instructions on how to block it. Publications like Medium, the New York Times, CNN and Reuters have notably done so.
As Google's blog post explains, "By using Google-Extended to control access to content on a site, a website administrator can choose whether to help these AI models become more accurate and capable over time..."

"OpenAI's latest image generation model, DALL-E 3, makes it SO easy to create comic books!" posted Ammaar Reshi on Twitter. The former Palintir product manager (now a design manager at Brex) then shared "four panels for a fan-made Batman comic made in under five minutes."

Comic Book Resources reports that then "social media spent most of the day dunking on the post, criticizing the idea of celebrating the idea of a 'comic' created through 'A.I. art.'" Comic book artist Javier Rodriguez noted that this is no different from simply cutting and pasting other comic books into a comic... ["You could do the same thing a while ago with a photocopier and some scissors. Stealing other people's art seems easier now and lucrative for those behind generative models."] Comic book writer Sarah Horrocks called out the use of Brian Bolland's work... ["That's literally just Brian Bolland's Joker. The shamelessness of this 'technology' is appalling. I guess it's okay to steal. Just call it AI."]

Justine Bateman, the former actor who has become a vocal opponent of A.I. usage in the arts, explained that DC must act to legally protect usage like this in the future... ["@DCOfficial, the longer you wait to send legal teams to @OpenAI, etc to demand that generative #AI training sets containing your copyrighted work be deleted, the more you make your entire library 'fair use'..."]

This week the UK's conservative Daily Telegraph newspaper published an interesting perspective from their world economy editor.

"Saudi and OPEC officials self-evidently do not believe their own claim that world oil demand will keep growing briskly for another generation as if electric vehicles had never been invented, and there was no such thing as the Paris Accord." OPEC had to slash output last October in order to shore up prices. It had to cut again in April. The Saudis then stunned traders with a unilateral cut of one million barrels a day (b/d) in June. All told, the OPEC-Russia cartel has had to take 2m b/d of production off the table at a high point in the economic cycle, after China's post-Covid reopening and at a time when the US economy has been running hot with a fiscal expansion roughly equal to Roosevelt's world war budget.

That 2m b/d figure happens to be more or less the amount of crude currently being displaced by EV sales worldwide, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Yet the mood was all defiance and plucky insouciance at the 24th World Petroleum Congress in Calgary this month... This skips over the awkward detail that EVs are already on track to reach 60pc of total car sales in the world's biggest car market within two years (not a misprint). The cartel is being hit from two sides. Petrol and diesel cars are becoming more efficient, gradually displacing 1.4bn vintage models disappearing into the scrap yard. BP says that alone will cut up to a tenth global oil demand by 2040. With a lag, EVs are now starting to take a material bite, with an S-curve trajectory likely to go parabolic this decade.

China's EVs sales hit 38pc this summer, even though subsidies have mostly been scrapped. This is far ahead of schedule under Beijing's New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan. China's Chebai think tank says the emerging consensus is that EV sales will hit 17m or 60pc of total Chinese share by 2025, rising to 90pc by 2030, assuming that the grid can keep up... Vietnam is a few years behind but with similar ambitions. Its EV start-up, VinFast Auto, became the world's third most valuable carmaker after it launched on Nasdaq last month, briefly worth as much as the German car industry before the share price came back down to earth...

OPEC's central premise has long been that the rise of a billion-strong middle class in emerging Asia will more than offset declining oil use in the OECD bloc. That notion is 'withering under scrutiny'... The International Energy Agency (IEA) says global oil demand will peak at 105.5m b/d in 2028 and then flatten for a few years before going into decline... The IEA pulls its punches. The Rocky Mountain Institute argues in its latest report — End of the ICE Age — that half of global car sales could be EVs by 2026, reaching 86pc later this decade.
The article closes by citing "the breathtaking pace of global electrification. The decline of oil in car and bus transport may be closer than almost anybody imagined. OPEC as we know it may be on the cusp of a death spiral."

Wednesday seven U.S. Republican candidates for President held their second debate before the 2024 primary — during which TikTok led to some surprisingly heated attacks against entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy:

Moderator: Mr. Ramaswamy, TikTok is banned on government-issed devices because of its ties to the Chinese government. Yet you joined TikTok at the dinner with boxer and influencer Jake Paul. Should the commander in chief be so easily persuaded by an influencer?

Vivek Ramaswamy: So the answer is, I have a radical idea for the Republican party: we need to win elections. And part of how we win elections is reaching the next generation of young Americans where they are. So when I get into office, I've been very clear. Kids under the age of 16 should not be using addictive social media. We're only going to ever get to declaring independence from China, which I favor, if we actually win. So while the Democrats are running rampant reaching the next generation three-to-one, there's exactly one person in the Republican party — which talks a big game about reaching young people — and that's me.... [Scattered applause]
Donald Trump declined to participate in the debate. But his former vice president Mike Pence immediately interrupted to say that "TikTok is controlled by the Chinese communist party." Continuing criticisms he'd made in an earlier interview, Pence said that TikTok "compromises the privacy of Americans every day."

Ramaswamy responded "And that is why we will end it once we win this election."

This immediately drew a strong response from from South Carolina governor Nikki Haley (also a former US ambassador to the UN): Nikki Haley: This is infuriating, because TikTok is one of the most dangerous social media apps —

Ramaswamy: Yes it is.

Haley: — that we could have. And once you've got — honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say. Because I can't believe that — here you've got a TikTok situation. What they're doing is these — 150 million people are on TikTok. That means they can get your contacts, they can get your financial information, they can get your emails, they can get —

Ramaswamy: Let me just say —

Haley: — your text messages, they can get all of these things.

Ramaswamy: Hurling — this is important. This is very important for our party —

Haley: China knows exactly what they're doing.

Ramaswamy: This is very important for our party, and I'm going to say it —

Haley: And what we've seen is you've gone and you've helped China go make medicines in China, not America.

Ramaswamy: Excuse me, excuse me —

Haley: You're now wanting kids to go and get on this social media that's dangerous for all of us. You went and you were in business with the Chinese... We can't trust you. We can't trust you. We can't have TikTok in our kids' lives. We need to ban it. [Loud applause]

Moderator: You have 15 seconds, Mr. Ramaswamy.

Ramaswamy: I think we would be better served as a Republican party if we're not sitting here hurling personal insults, and actually have a legitimate debate.

The Associated Press reports: The National Security Agency is starting an artificial intelligence security center -- a crucial mission as AI capabilities are increasingly acquired, developed and integrated into U.S. defense and intelligence systems, the agency's outgoing director announced Thursday. Army Gen. Paul Nakasone said the center would be incorporated into the NSA's Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, where it works with private industry and international partners to harden the U.S. defense-industrial base against threats from adversaries led by China and Russia.

Nakasone was asked about using AI to automate the analysis of threat vectors and red-flag alerts -- and he reminded the audience that U.S. intelligence and defense agencies already use AI. "AI helps us, But our decisions are made by humans. And that's an important distinction," Nakasone said. "We do see assistance from artificial intelligence. But at the end of the day, decisions will be made by humans and humans in the loop."

Nakasone said it would become "NSA's focal point for leveraging foreign intelligence insights, contributing to the development of best practices guidelines, principles, evaluation, methodology and risk frameworks" for both AI security and the goal of promoting the secure development and adoption of AI within "our national security systems and our defense industrial base." He said it would work closely with U.S. industry, national labs, academia and the Department of Defense as well as international partners.

Aaron Gordon writes via Motherboard: Kia and Hyundai say it is not their fault that their cars are being stolen in an unprecedented theft surge made possible by the vehicles lacking a basic anti-theft technology virtually every other car has, according to a recent court filing. Instead, the companies point the finger at social media companies, such as TikTok and Instagram, where instructions on how to steal the cars have been widely shared and thieves show off their stolen cars.

The lawyers representing the two corporations -- which are owned by the same parent company -- are not subtle about this argument. The filing (PDF) -- in which the company is arguing a roughly $200 million class-action settlement ought to be approved by the court -- includes an entire section heading titled "Social Media and Intervening Third-Party Criminals Caused An Unprecedented Increase In Thefts." The lawyers argue in that section that because Kia and Hyundai vehicles have "not been the subject of significant theft" before the Kia Boys social media trend, social media and the people who steal the cars -- and not the car companies -- are to blame for the thefts. This argument is summarized in the section titled "Social Media Incited Unprecedented Rise In Thefts." The filing broadly reflects both the public communications strategy Kia and Hyundai have used throughout this crisis and some of the national news headlines that have covered the story,

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether state laws that seek to regulate Facebook, TikTok, X and other social media platforms violate the Constitution. The justices will review laws enacted by Republican-dominated legislatures and signed by Republican governors in Florida and Texas. While the details vary, both laws aim to prevent the social media companies from censoring users based on their viewpoints. The court's announcement, three days before the start of its new term, comes as the justices continue to grapple with how laws written at the dawn of the digital age, or earlier, apply to the online world.

The justices had already agreed to decide whether public officials can block critics from commenting on their social media accounts [...]. Separately, the high court also could consider a lower-court order limiting executive branch officials' communications with social media companies about controversial online posts. The new social media cases follow conflicting rulings by two appeals courts, one of which upheld the Texas law, while the other struck down Florida's statute. By a 5-4 vote, the justices kept the Texas law on hold while litigation over it continues.

Jude Karabus writes via The Register: Norway has told the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) it believes a countrywide ban on Meta harvesting user data to serve up advertising on Facebook and Instagram should be made permanent and extended across Europe. The Scandinavian country's Data Protection Authority, Datatilsynet, had been holding back Facebook parent Meta from scooping up data on its citizens with the threat of fines of one million Kroner (about $94,000) per day if it didn't comply.

In August, it said Meta hadn't been playing ball and started serving up the daily fines. However, the ban that resulted in these fines, put into place in July, expires on November 3 â" hence Norway's request for a "binding decision." The July order came after a Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruling [PDF] earlier that month stating Meta's data processing operation was also hauling in protected data â" race and ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation etc. â" when it cast its behavioral ads net.

Norway is not a member of the EU but is part of the European single market, and the CJEU, as Europe's top court, has the job of making sure the application and interpretation of law within the market is compliant with European treaties (this part would apply to Norway) as well as ensuring that legislation adopted by the EU is applied the same way across all Member States. Datatilsynet's ruling said the central processing of that data by the American company was putting Meta in violation of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation. A spokesperson for Meta said it was "surprised" by the Norwegian authority's actions, "given that Meta has already committed to moving to the legal basis of consent for advertising in the EU/EEA."

It added: "We remain in active discussions with the relevant data protection authorities on this topic via our lead regulator in the EU, the Irish Data Protection Commission, and will have more to share in due course."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Even more Google products are getting the ax this week. Next up is Google Jamboard, a $5,000 digital whiteboard (and its $600-a-year fee) and software ecosystem marketed to schools and corporations. Google has a new post detailing the "Next phase of digital whiteboarding for Google Workspace," and the future for Jamboard is that there is no future. In "late 2024," the whole project will shut down, and we don't just mean the hardware will stop being for sale; the cloud-based apps will stop working, too.

Most people probably haven't ever heard of Jamboard, but this was a giant 55-inch, 4K touchscreen on a rolling stand that launched in 2016. Like most Google touchscreens, this ran Android with a locked-down custom interface on top instead of the usual phone interface. The digital whiteboard could be drawn on using the included stylus or your fingers, and it even came with a big plastic "eraser" that would remove items. The SoC was an Nvidia Jetson TX1 (a quad-core Cortex-A57 CPU attached to a beefy Maxwell GPU), and it had a built-in camera, microphone, and speakers for video calls. There was HDMI input and Google cast support, and it came in whimsical colors like red, gray, and blue (it feels like Google was going for an iMac rainbow and quit halfway). "We're grateful to the consumers, educators, students, and businesses who have used Jamboard since its launch in 2016," says Google. "While Jamboard users make up a small portion of our Workspace customer base, we understand that this change will impact some of you, and we're committed to helping you transition..."

"Over the coming months, we'll provide Jamboard app users and admins clear paths to retain their Jamboard data or migrate it," Google tells users in its blog post. Third-party options include Figma's FigJam, Lucid Software's Lucidspark, and Miro.

Ars Technica notes: "[T]he whole cloud system is going down, too, so all of your existing $5,000 whiteboards will soon be useless, and you won't be able to open the cloud data on other devices."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Next time you try to wipe a smudge off your iPhone screen, take a closer look. See if you can spot one of the two tiny QR codes etched into its glass. Chances are you won't be able to find them. Both codes are tiny -- one is the size of a grain of sand and can only be seen with special equipment, while the other, roughly the size of the tip of a crayon, is laser-printed on the reverse side of the glass somewhere along its black border or bezel. The codes are placed on the glass at different stages of manufacturing to help Apple track and reduce defects. They represent the company's obsessive attention to detail in manufacturing devices such as the iPhone, which has helped it squeeze costs in a traditionally low-margin business.

"Apple has been granularly and singularly tracking many components in the iPhone for some time, but expanding that to the glass and doing it with a microscopic bar code is another level of obsessive attention to detail that few companies would do," said Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, a popular Apple gadget repair site. "I've never heard of serial numbers on the glass level, but if you're throwing infinite money at improving your manufacturing knowledge, then why not?" Apple added the smaller of the two QR codes -- 0.2 mm in width -- to iPhone screens in 2020 so it can track precisely how many usable cover glass units its two Chinese suppliers, Lens Technology and Biel Crystal, are making and how many defective cover glass units they are throwing away during manufacturing. Lens and Biel have previously stymied Apple's efforts to learn the true rate of defects, which can raise its production costs. Apple has paid millions of dollars to install laser and scanning equipment at Lens and Biel factories to both add the microscopic QR code and scan the cover glass at the end of the production process.

Slash_Account_Dot writes: I recently got my hands on an ordinary-looking iPhone-to-HDMI adapter that mimics Apple's branding and, when plugged in, runs a program that implores you to "Scan QR code for use." That QR code takes you to an ad-riddled website that asks you to download an app that asks for your location data, access to your photos and videos, runs a bizarre web browser, installs tracking cookies, takes "sensor data," and uses that data to target you with ads. The adapter's app also kindly informed me that it's sending all of my data to China.

The cord was discovered by friend of 404 Media John Bumstead, an electronics refurbisher and artist who buys devices in bulk from electronics recyclers. Bumstead tweeted about the cord and was kind enough to send me one so I could try it myself. Joseph has written about malicious lightning cables and USB cables made by hackers that can be used for keystroke logging and spying. While those malicious lightning cables are products marketed for spying, the HDMI adapter Bumstead has been found in the wild and is just another crappy knockoff cable sold on Amazon's increasingly difficult to navigate website. This HDMI adapter is designed to look exactly like Apple's same adapter.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In December 2022, we published a short PSA, reminding users they could still activate Windows 11 and 10 with valid Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 keys. This practice dates back to 2015 when Microsoft launched Windows 10 with a one-year free upgrade window. Besides letting Windows 7/8 users upgrade for free to Windows 10, Microsoft allowed activating its newest OS using keys from the previous releases.

Upgrade from Windows 7 and 8 to Windows is no longer possible, and it now seems that Microsoft is removing the loophole to prevent users from activating Windows 11 with old Windows license keys. As spotted by Deskmodder, Microsoft published a message on the Device Partner Center, notifying customers that the installation path to obtain free upgrades from Windows 7 and 8 to more recent Windows versions is no longer available. What it means is that you can no longer update from Windows 7/8/8.1 to Windows 10 or 11.

"Nissan will make the switch to full electric by 2030 in Europe. We believe it is the right thing to do for our business, our customers and for the planet," said Nissan's chief executive Makoto Uchida. The announcement comes despite the UK postponing its 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars to 2035. The BBC reports: In an interview with the BBC, Mr Uchida said the company was aiming to bring down the cost of electric vehicles for customers, so that they were no more expensive than petrol and diesel cars. "It may take a bit of time, but we are looking at the next few years," he said. "We are looking at it from the point of view of the technology, from the point of view of cooperating with suppliers, and of course working with the government on how we can deliver that kind of cost competitiveness to the consumer," Mr Uchida added. Will that price parity happen by 2030? "That's what we're aiming for," confirmed Mr Uchida.

Mr Uchida also said that the company was fast-tracking a different kind of battery technology, known as all-solid-state batteries (ASSB), which are lighter, cheaper, and quicker to charge. "We are going to have a pilot plant for ASSB in Japan from next year, and we want to ensure they can be mass produced by 2028," he said. "There are a lot of challenges with this, but we do have a solution, and we are on track [to meet that target]", he added.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fast Company: The Lockheed Martin X-59 is probably the strangest airplane ever designed. Its razor-sharp nose takes half of the airplane's length; there's no cockpit in sight; the wings are tiny compared to the entire fuselage; and its oversized tail engine looks like a weird hump about to fall off. Of course, there's a method to this madness. The design is the secret sauce that has produced a true unicorn: a supersonic jet that doesn't boom the hell out of people and buildings on the ground. [...] The X-59, developed alongside NASA, is designed as an experimental jet that NASA will use to test just how big of a boom people on the ground are willing to accept from a supersonic aircraft. According to Dave Richardson, the program director for X-59 at Lockheed Martin, with this new design, people shouldn't expect much of a boom at all.

The X-59's "quiet" supersonic boom isn't made possible by expensive magical materials or exotic engines, Richardson explains. "There is no radical technology in the airplane itself. It really is just the shape of the aircraft." And if the shape looks more like an anime alien spaceship than an actual vehicle created by human beings, that's because it was dreamed up in another dimension -- by computers and humans -- through special software created by the Bethesda, Maryland, company's engineers. [...] Richardson and his team learned a few important lessons about designing for supersonic boom. First, the heavy, bulky parts of the plane needed to be as far back as possible. "We really put nothing out in the front, but we want to have that long, fine ratio," he says. This resulted in an extremely fine nose and body, with no surface interruptions that can produce noise when the plane breaks the sound barrier. "You want to be able to stretch out and manage the different shocks across the length of the airplane," he adds.

They also learned that anything that causes discontinuity in the airplane's shape -- for instance a windshield or canopy -- can add to the boom effect. This led them to get rid of the windshield altogether. Instead, the X-59 uses an external vision system, which is the only advanced technology in the plane, according to Richardson. The pilot navigates using a camera, viewing the outside through a large display. This system had to undergo rigorous certification by the Federal Aviation Administration for use in the national airspace. [...] The X-59 has been designed to manage and distribute shockwaves differently from the very start while also flying at slower speeds than the Concorde (the Concorde's cruising speed was 1,350 mph, while the X-59 will cruise at around 925 mph). "I think most people look at the airplane and they say, 'Wait, something's wrong,'" Richardson says. "[They think] it's too long. The landing gear is too far in the back. And why is the nose so long?" The inaugural flight is scheduled for early 2024, notes Fast Company. "If they achieve their objectives, there's no reason why aircraft manufacturers can't take the concepts they discovered and turn them into commercial airliners, Richardson says."

"Someday, people might be able to look up and see an alien shape in the sky, with the X-59's design transcending experimental nature and ushering in a new era for high-speed travel across the globe."

Ivan Mehta writes via TechCrunch: Reddit said Wednesday that the platform is revamping its privacy settings with an aim to make ad personalization and account visibility toggles consistent. Most notably though, it is removing the ability to opt out of ad personalization based on Reddit activity. The company said that it will still have opt-out controls in "select countries" without specifying which ones. It mentioned in a blog post that users won't see more ads but they will see better-targeted ads following this change.

The company is essentially removing the option to not track you based on whatever you do on Reddit. Additionally, Reddit is consolidating two toggles on showing ads based on activity and information from partners into one toggle. So there is no way to separate those two settings now. Reddit is seemingly removing toggles for getting post recommendations based on "general location" and activity on partner sites and apps. It's not clear if this means those parameters will be used for post suggestions by default and there is no way to turn them off.

The social network said it will also roll out controls to limit certain advertising categories such as alcohol, weight loss, dating, gambling pregnancy and parenting. The company noted that ad-limiting controls will possibly show you fewer ads from mentioned categories if the toggles are turned off, but won't possibly filter out all ads. Reddit justified this by saying it uses manual tagging and machine learning to label ads, so there is a chance that it is not 100% accurate. Reddit is also simplifying its location customization setting under a single menu, which will be easily accessible through settings on apps and on the web.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Nvidia's French offices were raided this week on suspicion the chipmaker engaged in anticompetitive practices. Reuters reports: The French competition authority, which disclosed the dawn raid on Wednesday, did not say what practices it was investigating or which company it had targeted, beyond saying it was in the "graphics cards sector." The French competition authority said that its operation this week followed a broader inquiry into the cloud-computing sector. The broader inquiry revolves around concerns that cloud-computing companies could use their access to computing power to exclude smaller competitors.

This week's operation had targeted Nvidia, which is the world's largest maker of chips used both for artificial intelligence and for computer graphics, the WSJ report added, citing people familiar with the raid. Chips originally made for computer graphics are suited for AI-related computing.

An anonymous reader shares a story: Almost two years ago, Mark Zuckerberg rebranded his company Facebook to Meta -- and since then, he has been focused on building the "metaverse," a three-dimensional virtual reality. But the metaverse has lost some of its luster since 2021. Companies like Disney have closed down their metaverse divisions and deemphasized using the word, while crypto-based startup metaverses have quietly languished or imploded. In 2022, Meta's Reality Labs division reported an operational loss of $13.7 billion. But at Meta Connect 2023, Zuckerberg still hasn't given up on the metaverse -- he's just shifted how he talks about it. He once focused on the metaverse as a completely digital new world. Now, he aims to convince the public that the future is a blend of the digital and the physical.

At Connect this year, Zuckerberg emphasized that the modern "real world" combines the physical world and the digital world still being built -- and that it all builds up to "this concept we call the metaverse." He added: "Pretty soon, I think we're going to be at a point where you're going to be there physically with some of your friends, and others will be there digitally as avatars or holograms, and they'll feel just as present as everyone else. Or you'll walk into a meeting and sit down at a table. There will be people who are there physically and people who are there digitally as holograms, but also sitting around the table with you are going to be a bunch of AI guys who are embodied as holograms and are helping you get different stuff done too."

Microsoft weighed investing multiple billions in a deal with Apple in 2016 to make its Bing search engine the default on the Safari browser and better compete with Alphabet's dominant Google search, a Microsoft vice president testified Thursday in court. From the report: Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella met with Apple CEO Tim Cook as part of the talks, said Jon Tinter, a Microsoft business development vice president who is on the stand during the US Justice Department's antitrust trial in Washington against Alphabet. Microsoft would have taken a multi-billion dollar loss on the terms of the deal, Tinter said, but it would have bolstered Bing, eventually gaining more share and revenue. Microsoft had secured a deal for Apple to use Bing in Siri and Spotlight, an Apple feature to help find apps on iPhones from 2013 to 2017, but wanted to expand to Safari. Instead, Google wound up expanding its own deal with Apple to the products that had used Bing.