Hackers are threatening to release confidential data stolen from Reddit unless the company pays a ransom demand -- and reverses its controversial API price hikes. From a report: In a post on its dark web leak site, the BlackCat ransomware gang, also known as ALPHV, claims to have stolen 80 gigabytes of compressed data from Reddit during a February breach of the company's systems. Reddit spokesperson Gina Antonini declined to answer TechCrunch's questions but confirmed that BlackCat's claims relate to a cyber incident confirmed by Reddit on February 9.

At the time, Reddit CTO Christopher Slowe, or KeyserSosa, said that hackers had accessed employee information and internal documents during a "highly-targeted" phishing attack. Slowe added that the company had "no evidence" that personal user data, such as passwords and accounts, had been stolen. Reddit didn't share any further details about the attack or who was behind it. However, BlackCat over the weekend claimed responsibility for the February intrusion and threatened to leak "confidential" data stolen during the breach. It's unclear exactly what types of data the hackers have stolen, and BlackCat hasn't shared any evidence of data theft.

In the heart of Silicon Valley, the city of Mountain View, California "just approved its biggest development ever," reports SFGate, "and it's for exactly the company you'd expect." Google got the go-ahead to build a 153-acre mixed-use neighborhood just south of its headquarters in north Mountain View on June 13, with unanimous city council approval.

Plans for the 30-year project, which will supplant the Google offices and parking lots currently in the area, include over 3 million square feet of office space and 7,000 residential units... Originally, the developers planned to dedicate 20% of the new housing to affordable units, but the approved plan sets aside only 15% for lower- and middle-income housing. Google lowered the target to make the project viable in an uncertain economic climate, a spokesperson told SFGATE. This past January, the firm laid off 12,000 workers.

The new development sounds an awful lot like the "company towns" of 1900-era American settlement — firms ran all the stores and housing for their workers — but a Google spokesperson said the new project's restaurants, housing and services would serve the broader Mountain View community. Along with the housing and Google office space, the plans include 26 acres of public parks and open space, up to 288,990 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, land for a school, new streets and a private utility system. The developers have 30 years to complete the project, as long as Google and Lendlease hit permit benchmarks and complete other terms within the first 15.

A new Harris Poll shared exclusively with Fast Company found that most Americans would prefer to live "in a simpler era before everyone was obsessed with screens and social media," reports Fast Company, adding "this sentiment is especially strong among older millennials and Gen Xers."

The Wrap summarizes the poll results: 77% of middle-age Americans (35-54 years old) say they want to return to a time before society was "plugged in," meaning a time before there was widespread internet and cell phone usage...

63% of younger folks (18-34 years old) were also keen on returning to a pre-plugged-in world, despite that being a world they largely never had a chance to occupy. In total, 67% of respondents said they'd prefer things as they used to be versus as they are now.
"Interestingly, baby boomers were slightly less eager to time hop, with only 60% of people over 55 saying they'd prefer to return to yesteryear," notes Fast Company: While Americans may want to unshackle themselves from the burden of constant connectivity, an overwhelming 90% also said that being open-minded about new technologies is important, a finding that mostly held up across demographics. About half of respondents even said they tend to adopt new technologies before most people they know...

Just over half said they found keeping up with new technologies overwhelming, and about that same percentage said they believe technology is more likely to divide people than unite them. Here, it was younger respondents who took the most pessimistic view, with 57% of people under 35 agreeing that technology divides, versus 43% who disagreed.

"Compared to the website's average daily volume over the past month, the 52,121,649 visits Reddit saw on June 13th represented a 6.6 percent drop..." reports Engadget (citing data provided by internet analytics firm Similarweb). [A]s many subreddits continue to protest the company's plans and its leadership contemplates policy changes that could change its relationship with moderators, the platform could see a slow but gradual decline in daily active users. That's unlikely to bode well for Reddit ahead of its planned IPO and beyond.
In fact, the Financial Times now reports that Reddit "acknowledged that several advertisers had postponed certain premium ad campaigns in order to wait for the blackouts to pass." But they also got this dire prediction from a historian who helps moderate the subreddit "r/Askhistorians" (with 1.8 million subscribers).

"If they refuse to budge in any way I do not see Reddit surviving as it currently exists. That's the kind of fire I think they're playing with."

More people had the same same thought. The Reddit protests drew this response earlier this week from EFF's associate director of community organizing: This tension between these communities and their host have, again, fueled more interest in the Fediverse as a decentralized refuge... Unfortunately, discussions of Reddit-like fediverse services Lemmy and Kbin on Reddit were colored by paranoia after the company banned users and subreddits related to these projects (reportedly due to "spam"). While these accounts and subreddits have been reinstated, the potential for censorship around such projects has made a Reddit exodus feel more urgently necessary...
Saturday the EFF official reiterated their concerns when Wired asked: does this really signal the death of Reddit? "I can't see it as anything but that... [I]t's not a big collapse when a social media website starts to die, but it is a slow attrition unless they change their course. The longer they stay in their position, the more loss of users and content they're going to face."

Wired even heard a thought-provoking idea from Amy Bruckman, a regents' professor/senior associate chair at the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. Bruckman "advocates for public funding of a nonprofit version of something akin to Reddit."

Meanwhile, hundreds of people are now placing bets on whether Reddit will backtrack on its new upcoming API pricing — or oust CEO Steve Huffman — according to Insider, citing reports from online betting company BetUS.

CEO Huffman's complaint that the moderators were ignoring the wishes of Reddit's users led to a funny counter-response, according to the Verge. After asking users to vote on whether to end the protest, two forums saw overwhelming support instead for the only offered alternative: the subreddits "now only allow posts about comedian and Last Week Tonight host John Oliver."

Both r/pics (more than 30 million subscribers) and r/gifs (more than 21 million subscribers) offered two options to users to vote on... The results were conclusive:

r/pics: return to normal, -2,329 votes; "only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy," 37,331 votes.
r/gifs: return to normal, -1,851 votes; only feature GIFs of John Oliver, 13,696 votes...

On Twitter, John Oliver encouraged the subreddits — and even gave them some fodder. "Dear Reddit, excellent work," he wrote to kick off a thread that included several ridiculous pictures. A spokesperson for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver didn't immediately reply to a request for comment.

Wednesday BleepingComputer reported: Malwarebytes confirmed today that the Windows 11 22H2 KB5027231 cumulative update released this Patch Tuesday breaks Google Chrome on its customers' systems... While uninstalling the KB5027231 update fixes the issue, admins report that it's not possible to do so via Windows Server Update Services because of a "catastrophic error..." The Google Chrome process is actually running but is prevented from fully launching the application and loading the user interface due to the conflict.
Then Friday BleepingComputer reported that the same update "also breaks Google Chrome on systems protected by Cisco and WatchGuard EDR and antivirus solutions." "We deploy Secure Endpoint 8.1.7 to our few thousand devices, and we started getting a mountain of reports this morning that Google Chrome would not appear on the screen after attempting to open it," one admin said. "With a little trial & error, I found that killing the Secure Endpoint service or uninstalling Secure Endpoint will allow Chrome to open again..."

WatchGuard staff also confirmed on Friday that Google Chrome wouldn't open on Windows 11 after installing KB5027231 if anti-exploit protection is enabled in the company's Endpoint Security software.
Thanks to Slashdot reader boley1 for sharing the news.

"If everyone has an electric car, will the electric grid be able to support all those cars being recharged?"

That's the question being answered this week in the Washington Post's "Climate Coach" newsletter: We can already see a preview of our electric future in Norway, one of the countries with the highest share of EVs. More than 90 percent of new cars sold in the country were plug-in electric, according to the latest data, from May. More than 20 percent of the country's overall vehicle fleet is electric, a share expected to rise to one-third by 2025. So far, the grid has essentially shrugged it off. "We haven't seen any issue of the grid collapsing," says Anne Nysæther, a managing director at Elvia, a utility serving Oslo and the surrounding areas with the nation's largest concentration of EVs. The country, now almost entirely powered by renewables, has easily met the extra demand from EVs while slashing greenhouse gas emissions. That's good, because Norway will ban all new petrol and diesel cars by 2025...

To electrify everything — all these expected EVs, heat pumps and other big power draws — [the U.S.] will need to start building up our grid, according to Jesse Jenkins, an energy modeling and engineering expert at Princeton University. The United States must at least double its electricity supply by 2050, while stringing up 75,000 miles of new high-voltage lines by 2035, the equivalent of 15 round trips from Los Angeles to New York City, and connect new wind and solar generation to the grid. That sounds like a lot. But something like this has already been done. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the U.S. built new transmission capacity at a speed close to what is required today, writes Jenkins in Mother Jones, even as electricity demand grew.

An anonymous reader shared this report from The Penny Hoarder: If you Googled anything between 2006 and 2013, then Google owes you money for violating your privacy. Those are the terms of a class-action lawsuit that Google has settled for $23 million.

How much money does Google owe you? Well, it depends on how many people come forward to claim their share of the settlement. The current estimated payout is about $7.70 per person.

Of course, that number could go up or down before it's all over. If fewer people than expected file claims, the payout amount will go up. But if more people than expected file claims, the payout amount will go down because more people are sharing the settlement money... The deadline to file a claim is July 31...

Basically, the class-action lawsuit alleges that Google Search "improperly shared your search queries with third-party websites and companies" during the time period in question. This has to do with how Google allegedly included your search query in the link that's created whenever you click on a website in a Google search. This involves something called a "referrer header."

Even though Google settled the case, it still denies any wrongdoing or liability. As part of the lawsuit settlement, Google is updating its FAQ page.
Some interesting history from SFGate: The lawsuit was filed in 2010 over allegations that Google shared its users' search terms with third-party websites based on its use of referrer headers, which essentially shows websites how a user found them. In 2015, the case reached an $8.5 million settlement in the Northern District of California, with a vast majority of the settlement going to a collection of internet privacy groups, because the amount allocated for each individual would have been mere pennies. But the case was brought all the way up to the Supreme Court after Ted Frank, a conservative activist and vocal class action suit critic, disputed the settlement being sent to those nonprofit groups instead of the users affected by the suit. In 2019, the case made its way back down to the district court, where the preliminary settlement was approved in 2022...

The final approval hearing for the settlement, which includes whether the class action representatives will receive $5,000 and the representing attorneys will receive 25% of the $23 million sum, is scheduled for Oct. 12.
From the Settlement agreement: If the Settlement becomes final, Settlement Class Members will be releasing Google (and certain others related to Google, such as Google directors, officers and employees) from all of the settled claims. This means that you will no longer be able to sue Google (or the other released parties) regarding any of the settled claims if you are a Settlement Class Member and do not timely and properly exclude yourself from the Settlement Class...


YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS AND OPTIONS IN THIS SETTLEMENT:

FILE A CLAIM BY JULY 31, 2023
This is the only way to get a payment under the Settlement.

DO NOTHING
Get no payment under the Settlement and give up your right to compensation for the claims and allegations in this case.

EXCLUDE YOURSELF BY JULY 31, 2023
Get no payment under the Settlement. This is the only option that allows you to be a part of any other lawsuit against Google about the claims and allegations in this case.

OBJECT BY JULY 31, 2023
Write to the Court about why you think the Settlement should not be approved. You may also ask to speak in Court about the fairness of the Settlement.

Reddit "appears to be laying the groundwork for ejecting forum moderators committed to continuing the protests," CNN reported Friday afternoon, "a move that could force open some communities that currently remain closed to the public.

"In response, some moderators have vowed to put pressure on Reddit's advertisers and investors." As of Friday morning, nearly 5,000 subreddits were still set to private and inaccessible to the public, reflecting a modest decrease from earlier in the week but still including groups such as r/funny, which claims more than 40 million subscribers, and r/aww and r/music, each with more than 30 million members. But Reddit has portrayed the blacked-out communities as a small slice of its wider platform. Some 100,000 forums remain open, the company said in a blog post, including 80% of its 5,000 most actively engaged subreddits...

Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman told NBC News the company will soon allow forum users to overrule moderators by voting them out of their positions, a change that may enable communities that do not wish to remain private to reopen. In addition, one company administrator said Thursday, Reddit may soon view communities that remain private as an indicator that the moderators of those communities no longer wish to moderate. That would constitute a form of inactivity for which the moderators can be removed, the company said. "If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users," the administrator said, adding that Reddit may intervene even if most moderators on a team wish to remain closed and only a single moderator wants to reopen...

Omar, a moderator of a subreddit participating in this week's blackout, told CNN Friday that many subreddits have participated in the blackouts based on member polls that indicate strong support for the protests... Content moderation on Reddit stands to worsen if the company continues with its plan, Omar said, warning that the coming changes will deter developers from creating and maintaining tools that Reddit communities rely on to detect and eliminate spam, hate speech or even child sexual abuse material. "That's both harmful for users and advertisers," Omar said, adding that supporters of the protests have been contacting advertisers to explain how the platform's coming changes may hurt brands. Already, Omar said, the blackout has made it harder for companies to target ads to interest groups; video game companies, for example, can no longer target ads to gaming-focused subreddits that have taken themselves private...

Huffman has also said that the protests have had little impact on the company financially.
NBC News adds: In an interview Thursday with NBC News, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman praised Musk's aggressive cost-cutting and layoffs at Twitter, and said he had chatted "a handful of times" with Musk on the subject of running an internet platform. Huffman said he saw Musk's handling of Twitter, which he purchased last year, as an example for Reddit to follow.

According to Dish, the company says it now covers 70 percent of the U.S. population and has "also satisfied all other June 14, 2023 FCC commitments." The Verge reports: In meeting this FCC milestone, Dish says it has deployed over 15,000 5G cell sites and would like to remind us that it's still the first wireless provider in the country to launch voice calling over 5G, known as VoNR -- Voice over New Radio. This is all well and good, but Dish's wireless service still doesn't look quite the same as AT&T's or Verizon's. The network itself is very much still in beta testing under its Project Genesis program, which requires you to purchase a new phone specially equipped to use new network features like three-carrier aggregation. The network is available to Boost customers in supported markets, but they need to use a phone that supports band 70 to access Dish's 5G -- and those are still uncommon.

New submitter ole_timer shares a report from Wired: TikTok to Huawei routers to DJI drones, rising tensions between China and the US have made Americans -- and the US government -- increasingly wary of Chinese-owned technologies. But thanks to the complexity of the hardware supply chain, encryption chips sold by the subsidiary of a company specifically flagged in warnings from the US Department of Commerce for its ties to the Chinese military have found their way into the storage hardware of military and intelligence networks across the West. In July of 2021, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security added the Hangzhou, China-based encryption chip manufacturer Hualan Microelectronics, also known as Sage Microelectronics, to its so-called "Entity List," a vaguely named trade restrictions list that highlights companies "acting contrary to the foreign policy interests of the United States." Specifically, the bureau noted that Hualan had been added to the list for "acquiring and ... attempting to acquire US-origin items in support of military modernization for [China's] People's Liberation Army."

Yet nearly two years later, Hualan -- and in particular its subsidiary known as Initio, a company originally headquartered in Taiwan that it acquired in 2016 -- still supplies encryption microcontroller chips to Western manufacturers of encrypted hard drives, including several that list as customers on their websites Western governments' aerospace, military, and intelligence agencies: NASA, NATO, and the US and UK militaries. Federal procurement records show that US government agencies from the Federal Aviation Administration to the Drug Enforcement Administration to the US Navy have bought encrypted hard drives that use the chips, too. The disconnect between the Commerce Department's warnings and Western government customers means that chips sold by Hualan's subsidiary have ended up deep inside sensitive Western information networks, perhaps due to the ambiguity of their Initio branding and its Taiwanese origin prior to 2016. The chip vendor's Chinese ownership has raised fears among security researchers and China-focused national security analysts that they could have a hidden backdoor that would allow China's government to stealthily decrypt Western agencies' secrets. And while no such backdoor has been found, security researchers warn that if one did exist, it would be virtually impossible to detect it.

"If a company is on the Entity List with a specific warning like this one, it's because the US government says this company is actively supporting another country's military development," says Dakota Cary, a China-focused research fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington, DC-based think tank. "It's saying you should not be purchasing from them, not just because the money you're spending is going to a company that will use those proceeds in the furtherance of another country's military objectives, but because you can't trust the product." [...] The mere fact that so many Western government agencies are buying products that include chips sold by the subsidiary of a company on the Commerce Department's trade restrictions list points to the complexities of navigating the computing hardware supply chain, says the Atlantic Council's Cary. "At minimum, it's a real oversight. Organizations that should be prioritizing this level of security are apparently not able to do so, or are making mistakes that have allowed for these products to get into their environments," he says. "It seems very significant. And it's probably not a one-off mistake."

The new Mac Studio started shipping to customers this week, giving product reviewers a chance to test Apple's "most capable chip ever." According to new benchmarks by YouTuber Luke Miani, the M2 Ultra features nearly double the GPU performance of last year's M1 Ultra, with notable performance improvements in other areas. 9to5Mac reports: While the M1 Max and M1 Ultra are blazing fast, the difference between the two wasn't as notable as some expected. In many tasks, the much cheaper M1 Max wasn't too far off from the top-end M1 Ultra variant, especially in video editing, photo editing, and 3D rendering. Despite the M1 Ultra literally being 2 M1 Max's fused, the performance was never doubled. For the M2 series, Apple has made some significant changes under the hood, especially in GPU scaling. In Luke's testing, he found that in some GPU heavy applications, like Blender 3D and 3DMark, the M2 Ultra was sometimes precisely twice the performance of M2 Max -- perfect GPU scaling! In Final Cut Pro exports, it nearly doubled again. He also found that the M2 Ultra doubled the GPU performance of the M1 Ultra in these same benchmarks -- a genuinely remarkable year-over-year upgrade.

The reason for the massive performance improvement is that Apple added a memory controller chip to the M2 generation that balances the load between all of M2 Ultra's cores -- M1 Ultra required the ram to be maxed out before using all cores. M1 Ultra was very good at doing many tasks simultaneously but struggled to do one task, such as benchmarking or rendering, faster than the M1 Max. With M2 Ultra, because of this new memory controller, Apple can now achieve the same incredible performance without the memory buffer needing to be maxed out. It's important to note that some applications cannot take advantage of the M2 Ultra fully, and in non-optimized applications, you should not expect double the performance.

Despite this incredible efficiency and performance, the better deal might be the M2 Max. In Luke's testing, the M2 Max performed very similarly or outperformed last year's M1 Ultra. In Blender, Final Cut Pro, 3DMark, and Rise of the Tomb Raider, the M2 Max consistently performed the same or better than the M1 Ultra. Instead of finding an M1 Ultra on eBay, it might be best to save money and get the M2 Max if you're planning on doing tasks that heavily utilize the GPU. While the GPU performance is similar, the M1 Ultra still has the advantage of far more CPU cores, and will outperform the M2 Max in CPU heavy workloads.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: iPhone maker Foxconn is betting big on electric cars and redrawing some of its supply chains as it navigates a new era of icy Washington-Beijing relations. In an exclusive interview, chairman and boss Young Liu told the BBC what the future may hold for the Taiwanese firm. He said even as Foxconn shifts some supply chains away from China, electric vehicles (EVs) are what will drive its growth in the coming decades. As US-China tensions soar, Mr Liu said, Foxconn must prepare for the worst.

"We hope peace and stability will be something the leaders of these two countries will keep in mind," 67-year-old Mr Liu told us, in his offices in Taipei, Taiwan's capital. "But as a business, as a CEO, I have to think about what if the worst case happens?" The scenarios could include attempts by Beijing to blockade Taiwan, which it claims as part of China, or worse, to invade the self-ruled island. Mr Liu said "business continuity planning" was already under way, and pointed out that some production lines, particularly those linked to "national security products" were already being moved from China to Mexico and Vietnam. He was likely to be referring to servers Foxconn makes that are used in data centers, and can contain sensitive information. [...]

Foxconn's hopes to capture about 5% of the global electric vehicle market in the next few years -- an ambitious target given the firm has only made a handful of models so far. But it is a gamble that Mr Liu is confident will pay off. "It doesn't make sense for you to make [EVs] in one place, so regionalized production for cars is very natural," he added. Foxconn car factories will be based in Ohio in the US, in Thailand, Indonesia and perhaps even in India, he said. For now, the company will keep focusing on what it does best -- making electronic products for clients. But perhaps not too far in the future, Foxconn will do the same for clients with electric cars. Either way, with the foray into electric cars, Foxconn is diversifying not just production but also supply lines -- both of which, Mr Liu believes, hold the key to the company's future.

The pitch for vertical farming had all the promise of a modern venture capital dream: a new way to grow crops that would use robots and artificial intelligence to conserve water, combat food insecurity and save the environment. But after firms poured billions of dollars into these startups, pushing valuations into the stratosphere, the industry is now facing a harsh new reality: funding is drying up, profits remain elusive, and creditors are circling. From a report: AeroFarms last week became the latest, most high-profile example of the challenges facing the business, filing for bankruptcy after building a massive new facility in Virginia that drained its cash, according to court papers. Its collapse comes on the heels of lettuce grower Kalera seeking court protection in April. And in May, publicly traded AppHarvest, which operates high-tech greenhouses, received a notice of default from one of its investors, according to a regulatory filing. The company contests the default notice, but if it can't reach an agreement with its creditors, the firm warned it could become "bankrupt or insolvent."

"We really were in a hype cycle," said Vonnie Estes, vice president of innovation for the International Fresh Produce Association. Venture capitalists entered the scene in a frenzy, likening these companies to software firms, and expecting comparable returns. "There was a lot of money that rushed in without really understanding that this is actually just farming." Industry experts still say that indoor farming is a crucial piece of agriculture's future, especially as climate change spurs more destructive wildfires and floods. Nonetheless, the ability of vertical farms to carve out meaningful market share on a national scale could be years away, they note.

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wants the FCC to open a formal inquiry into how data caps harm Internet users and why broadband providers still impose the caps. The inquiry could eventually lead to the FCC regulating how Internet service providers such as Comcast impose limits on data usage. From a report: Rosenworcel yesterday announced that she asked fellow commissioners to support a Notice of Inquiry on the topic. Among other things, the Notice would seek comment from the public "to better understand why the use of data caps continues to persist despite increased broadband needs of consumers and providers' demonstrated technical ability to offer unlimited data plans."

The inquiry would also seek comment on "trends in consumer data usage... on the impact of data caps on consumers, consumers' experience with data caps, how consumers are informed about data caps on service offerings, and how data caps impact competition." Finally, Rosenworcel wants to seek comment about the FCC's "legal authority to take actions regarding data caps." "In particular, the agency would like to better understand the current state of data caps, their impact on consumers, and whether the Commission should consider taking action to ensure that data caps do not cause harm to competition or consumers' ability to access broadband Internet services," the press release said.

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his deputies want other companies to freely use and profit from new artificial intelligence software Meta is developing, a decision that could have big implications for other AI developers and businesses that are increasingly adopting it. The Information: Meta is working on ways to make the next version of its open-source large-language model -- technology that can power chatbots like ChatGPT -- available for commercial use, said a person with direct knowledge of the situation and a person who was briefed about it. The move could prompt a feeding frenzy among AI developers eager for alternatives to proprietary software sold by rivals Google and OpenAI. It would also indirectly benefit Meta's own AI development.

[...] Meta stands to gain from releasing open-source AI models. As developers adopt and improve those models or patch their security holes, Meta will be able to incorporate those improvements in AI models for its own consumer and advertising products, Zuckerberg said in an April call with stock analysts. For instance, Zuckerberg has said he wants small businesses and content creators that use Facebook's apps to have access to "AI agents" who can act on their behalf by automatically communicating with fans or customers. "LLaMA or the language model underlying this is basically going to be the engine that powers that," he said in an interview last week with podcaster Lex Fridman.

What's old is new again, at least in the European Union. The European Parliament recently voted in favor of new legislation that would overhaul the entire battery life cycle, from design to end-of-life, which includes important caveats for smartphone users. From a report: Among the many changes, the new rules would require batteries in consumer devices like smartphones to be easily removable and replaceable. That's far from the case today with most phones, but that wasn't always the case.

Alphabet's Google on Friday sued a Los Angeles man and his companies in San Jose, California federal court, claiming he created hundreds of fake business listings on its platforms and sold them to real businesses to lure in unsuspecting customers. From a report: Fake reviews have been a recurring problem on internet commerce sites. Google said in a statement that it filed the lawsuit against Ethan QiQi Hu to "help put an end to these types of malicious schemes." Google's lawsuit said Hu creates sham businesses that appear in its search engine and Google Maps, using an "elaborate set of props" to verify them on video calls with the tech giant's agents. The lawsuit said Hu keeps a tool bench as a prop to verify fraudulent listings for garage repair, tree cutting and plumbing, and essential oils for verifying fake aromatherapy and reiki therapy businesses. Google said Hu buys thousands of fake positive reviews to make the businesses appear legitimate. He then allegedly sells the profiles as "leads" to real businesses in the same fields, which receive contacts from potential customers who reach out to the fake businesses.

The massive federal effort to expand internet access to every home in the U.S. took a major step forward on Friday with the announcement of $930 million in grants to shore up connections in remote parts of Alaska, rural Texas and dozens of other places where significant gaps in connectivity persist. From a report: The so-called middle mile grants, announced by the Department of Commerce, are meant to create large-scale networks that will enable retail broadband providers to link subscribers to the internet. Department officials likened the role of the middle mile -- the midsection of the infrastructure necessary to enable internet access, composed of high-capacity fiber lines carrying huge amounts of data at very high speeds -- to how the interstate highway system forged connections between communities. "These networks are the workhorses carrying large amounts of data over very long distances," said Mitch Landrieu, the White House's infrastructure coordinator, in a media Zoom call. "They're the ones that are bridging the gap between the larger networks and the last mile connections, from tribal lands to underserved rural and remote areas to essential institutions like hospitals, schools, libraries and major businesses."

Reddit is pledging it will respect the subreddit blackout where thousands of subreddits are currently staying dark -- but it's not clear the company actually will. From a report: "We are not shutting down discussions or unilaterally reopening communities," reads a line from a "Reddit API Fact Sheet" that the company shared with The Verge alongside our full Reddit CEO interview. But that word "unilaterally" may be doing a awful lot of work -- because Reddit has apparently given itself a framework and justification to eject the moderators who support a blackout, replacing them with those who would re-open the sub. On Reddit, the ModCodeofConduct account has informed moderators that it will replace inactive moderators with active ones, even if they all agree to "stop moderating." That Reddit admin suggests that it breaks Rule 4 of Reddit's Moderator Code of Conduct and is nothing new -- even though Rule 4 says nothing of the sort.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google Search's dominance has created a cottage industry of SEO professionals who promise to share their lucrative tricks to climb to the top of search results. From YouTubers to firms peddling proprietary tools, SEO hustlers propagate a never-ending stream of marketing content that floods Search. Some companies sell tools that allow marketers to mass-produce and distribute blog posts, press releases, and even robot-narrated podcast materials, with the purpose of creating backlinks -- a signal that Google uses to rank content in Search. Small businesses must decide if they'll try to learn SEO practices themselves or pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to have a marketing firm do it for them.

While other platforms are still nowhere close to overtaking Search, entrepreneurs like Dziura, who sells feminist gifts, are taking note of how people are (or aren't) using Google. Now, any retailer, big or small, can add more text to their website without a team of copywriters, and given AI's tendency to generate falsehoods, there's even less guarantee that what consumers are reading is real. It's why people append "reddit" to the end of searches -- they want an actual answer or opinion, not one mediated by a search ranking algorithm. Dziura specifically notes the trend of young people using TikTok for Google-able things and has seen shoppers flocking to TikTok, Reels, or live shopping events. People like videos and product shots with hands holding items. If shoppers want candid shots and videos of products, Dziura will give them that.