The Federal Trade Commission is preparing a potential antitrust lawsuit against Amazon that in the coming months could challenge an array of the tech giant's business practices as anticompetitive, WSJ reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The timing of any case remains in flux, some of the people said. The commission also could opt not to proceed, and doesn't always bring cases even when it is making preparations to do so. Amazon officials haven't had individual late-stage meetings with each of the FTC commissioners to make their arguments against a legal challenge, those people said.

The commission in recent years has been examining Amazon practices including whether it favors its own products over competitors' on its platforms and how it treats outside sellers on Amazon.com, according to some of the people familiar with the matter. The FTC also has been scrutinizing the company's Amazon Prime subscription service's bundling practices, some of the people said. Exactly which aspects of the business the FTC would target in a potential Amazon lawsuit couldn't be learned. Amazon and the FTC declined to comment.

Google has invested about $300mn in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, making it the latest tech giant to throw its money and computing power behind a new generation of companies trying to claim a place in the booming field of "generative AI." From the report: The terms of the deal, through which Google will take a stake of around 10 per cent, requires Anthropic to use the money to buy computing resources from the search company's cloud computing division, according to three people familiar with the arrangement. Google's move highlights the influence that a small number of Big Tech companies have assumed over other companies working on AI, which need access to cloud computing platforms to handle the giant AI models developed by groups such as Anthropic. The search company's investment also echoes the $1bn cash-for-computing investment that Microsoft made in OpenAI three years ago.

Ryan Grewell, who runs a small wireless Internet service provider in Ohio, last month received an email that confirmed some of his worst suspicions about cable companies. From a report: Grewell, founder and general manager of Smart Way Communications, had heard from some of his customers that the Federal Communications Commission's new broadband map falsely claimed fiber Internet service was available at their homes from another company called Jefferson County Cable. Those customer reports spurred Grewell to submit a number of challenges to the FCC in an attempt to correct errors in Smart Way's service area.

One of Grewell's challenges elicited a response from Jefferson County Cable executive Bob Loveridge, who apparently thought Grewell was a resident at the challenged address rather than a competitor. "You challenged that we do not have service at your residence and indeed we don't today," Loveridge wrote in a January 9 email that Grewell shared with Ars. "With our huge investment in upgrading our service to provide xgpon we reported to the BDC [Broadband Data Collection] that we have service at your residence so that they would not allocate addition [sic] broadband expansion money over [the] top of our private investment in our plant."

The email is reminiscent of our November 2022 article about a cable company accidentally telling a rival about its plan to block government grants to competitors. Speaking to Ars in a phone interview, Grewell said, "This cable company happened to just say the quiet part out loud." He called it "a blatant attempt at blocking anyone else from getting funding in an area they intend to serve." It's not clear when Jefferson County Cable plans to serve the area. Program rules do not allow ISPs to claim future coverage in their map submissions. Jefferson County Cable ultimately admitted to the FCC that it filed incorrect data and was required to submit a correction. The challenge that the ISP conceded was for an address on State Route 43 in Bergholz, Ohio. The town is not one of the coverage areas listed on Jefferson County Cable's website.

An anonymous reader shares a report: BMW i4 owner was rightfully puzzled when their car flashed a strange alert on the screen, saying its parking spot was "too steep" to perform an over-the-air software upgrade. How does that happen? And why is it a problem in the first place? As Clare Eliza found out, it simply isn't possible to remotely update any of the i4's software if the car isn't parked on flat ground. And instead of allowing the operator to override this, it will wait until you physically move it somewhere more level to continue. As it turns out, BMW doesn't have one singular reason why the vehicle can't perform this task on an incline. Rather, the limitation is there as a safety blanket.

"The vehicle has all sorts of sensors (pitch, yaw, lateral and longitudinal acceleration and deceleration, etc.) that allow it to understand its orientation, so it knows when it's on an incline," a BMW spokesperson told The Drive. "It's likely a catchall, every-worst-case-no-matter-how-unlikely scenario safety precaution to try to prevent any chance of the vehicle moving should the programming be interrupted or go wrong." Essentially, it's there just in case something unexpected happens; it's better to plan for the worst, after all.

"A Chinese spy balloon is floating over the continental United States," writes Slashdot reader q4Fry. "As it headed over Montana, 'civilian flights in the area were halted and U.S. military aircraft, including advanced F-22 fighter jets, were put in the air.'" The Washington Post reports: The balloon's flight path takes it over "a number of sensitive sites," the senior [Pentagon] official said, but it appears it does not have the ability collect information that is "over and above" other tools at China's disposal, like low-orbit satellites. Nevertheless, the Pentagon is taking undisclosed "mitigation steps" to prevent Beijing from gathering additional intelligence.

"We put some things on station in the event that a decision was made to bring this down," the official said. "So we wanted to make sure we were coordinating with civil authorities to empty out the airspace around that potential area. But even with those protective measures taken, it was the judgment of our military commanders that we didn't drive the risk down low enough. So we didn't take the shot." "The US believes Chinese spy satellites in low Earth orbit are capable of offering similar or better intelligence, limiting the value of whatever Beijing can glean from the high-altitude balloon, which is the size of three buses," reports CNN, citing a defense official.

"It does not create significant value added over and above what the PRC is likely able to collect through things like satellites in low Earth orbit," the senior defense official said. Nevertheless, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called for a briefing of the "Gang of Eight" -- the group of lawmakers charged with reviewing the nation's most sensitive intelligence information.

Nostr, a startup decentralized social network, got its Twitter-like Damus application listed on Apple's App Store. CoinDesk reports: Nostr is an open protocol that aims to create a censorship-resistant global social network. Media commentators have described it as a possible alternative to Elon Musk's Twitter. According to an article in Protos, Nostr is popular with bitcoiners partly because most implementations of it support payments over Bitcoin's Lightning Network.

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who last year donated roughly 14 BTC (worth $245,000 at the time) to fund Nostr's development, hailed the debut of Damus on Apple's App Store as a "milestone for open protocols," in a tweet posted late Tuesday. As of press time, the tweet had been viewed 2.1 million times. According to the Nostr website, Damus is one of several Nostr projects, including Anigma, a Telegram-like chat; Nostros, a mobile client; and Jester, a chess application. You can download the iOS app here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Meta has routinely fought data scrapers, but it also participated in that practice itself -- if not necessarily for the same reasons. Bloomberg has obtained legal documents from a Meta lawsuit against a former contractor, Bright Data, indicating that the Facebook owner paid its partner to scrape other websites. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the relationship in a discussion with Bloomberg, but said his company used Bright Data to build brand profiles, spot "harmful" sites and catch phishing campaigns, not to target competitors.

Stone added that data scraping could serve "legitimate integrity and commercial purposes" so long as it was done legally and honored sites' terms of service. Meta terminated its arrangement with Bright Data after the contractor allegedly violated company terms when gathering and selling data from Facebook and Instagram. Neither Bright Data nor Meta is saying which sites they scraped. Bright Data is countersuing Meta in a bid to keep scraping Facebook and Instagram, arguing that it only collects publicly available information and respects both European Union and US regulations.

After years of day-to-day absence, Google cofounder Sergey Brin filed a request for access to code related to the company's natural language chatbot, LaMDA. Forbes reports: Two sources said the request was related to LaMDA, Google's natural language chatbot -- a project initially announced in 2021, but which has recently garnered increased attention as Google tries to fend off rival OpenAI, which released the popular ChatGPT bot in November. Brin filed a "CL," short for "changelist," to gain access to the data that trains LaMDA, one person who saw the request said. It was a two line change to a configuration file to add his username to the code, that person said. Several dozen engineers gave the request LGTM approval, short for "looks good to me." Some of the approvals came from workers outside of that team, seemingly just eager to be able to say they gave code review approval to the company cofounder, that person added.

The move was a small technical change, but underscores how seriously the company is taking the looming threat from OpenAI and other competitors. Brin and cofounder Larry Page have been largely absent from the company since 2019, when Page handed the reins over to Sundar Pichai to become CEO of Google parent Alphabet. But Pichai has recently called in the company founders to review the company's AI strategy and help form a response to ChatGPT, according to the New York Times. Brin's tinkering highlights the level of involvement the cofounders have taken.

An anonymous reader shares a report: 'Astroturfing' and other non-transparent lobbying tactics used to target digital policymakers in the European Union in recent years -- including during a blitz of spending aimed at influencing major new pan-EU rules like the Digital Services Act (DSA) -- have inspired a group of MEPs and NGOs to fight back by launching a hotline for reporting attempts at indirectly influencing the bloc's tech policy agenda. The new tips line, which was first reported by the Guardian, is being called LobbyLeaks.

The office of one of the MEPs co-leading the effort, Paul Tang of the S&D Group, said the idea is to gather data on underhand lobbying efforts that may be targeting the EU's digital policymaking -- such as the use of third party 'industry associations' or consultancies without clear disclosures, or even academics being quietly funded to author favorable research -- in order that they can be studied and called out. They also want to ensure EU lawmakers are better informed about the myriad ways tech giants may be seeking to influence them as they work on shaping the rules platform giants will have to play by.

Google has expanded OSS-Fuzz Reward Program to offer rewards of up to $30,000 for researchers who find security flaws in open source programs. From a report: The expanded scope of the program now means the total rewards possible per project integration rise from $20,000 to $30,000. The purpose of OSS-Fuzz is to support open source projects adopt fuzz testing and the new categories of rewards support those who create more ways of integrating new projects.

Google created two new reward categories that reward wider improvements across all OSS-Fuzz projects. It offers up to $11,337 available per category. It's also offering rewards for notable FuzzBench fuzzer integrations, and for integrating new sanitizers or 'bug detectors' that help find vulnerabilities. "We hope to accelerate the integration of critical open source projects into OSS-Fuzz by providing stronger incentives to security researchers and open source maintainers," explains Oliver Chang of Google's OSS-Fuzz team.

Microsoft is adding artificial intelligence capabilities from ChatGPT maker OpenAI to another of its products -- this time a customer-relationship app that's meant to help win revenue from Salesforce. From a report: Viva Sales, which connects Microsoft's Office and video conferencing programs with customer relations management software, will be able to generate email replies to clients using OpenAI's product for creating text. The AI tools, which include OpenAI's GPT 3.5 -- the system that is the basis for the ChatGPT chatbot -- will cull data from customer records and Office email software. That information will then be used to generate emails containing personalized text, pricing details and promotions. The Viva Sales app was initially released in October and works with Microsoft's Dynamics customer management program and that of rival Salesforce. It's free for users who sign up for the premium versions of Dynamics and $40 per user per month for Salesforce customers.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) wrote to Google and Apple on Thursday, urging both companies to remove TikTok from their app stores. From a report: In a letter addressed to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Bennet urges both leaders to boot TikTok immediately, calling the popular video-sharing app "an unacceptable threat to the national security of the United States." Bennet's letter marks the first time a member of Congress has suggested TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, should not be available for download via the Google Play or Apple App store. "No company subject to [Chinese Communist Party] dictates should have the power to accumulate such extensive data on the American people or curate content to nearly a third of our population," Bennet wrote in the letter.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google and Microsoft don't always take pains to make sure their products work great together -- Google originally declared Microsoft's Chromium-based Edge browser "not supported" by the Google Drive web apps; Microsoft is always trying to make you use Bing -- but it looks like Google's ChromeOS will start working a bit better with the Microsoft 365 service later this year. Google says ChromeOS will add a "new integration" for Microsoft 365, making it easier to install the app and adding built-in support for OneDrive in ChromeOS' native Files app.

This should allow users to search for and access OneDrive files the same way they get to local files, or files stored in their Google Drive account. The integration will be added in "the coming months," and users in ChromeOS' dev and beta channels will be able to access it before it rolls out to all ChromeOS users later this year. ChromeOS users can currently access OneDrive and other Microsoft 365 services through their web interfaces or Android apps installed via the Google Play Store, but they don't integrate with the built-in ChromeOS Files app the way that Google Drive does. This integration will help close that gap for people who, for example, use Google products at home but Microsoft products at work or vice versa.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Millions of Americans have used GoodRx, a drug discount app, to search for lower prices on prescriptions like antidepressants, H.I.V. medications and treatments for sexually transmitted diseases at their local drugstores. But U.S. regulators say the app's coupons and convenience came at a high cost for users: wrongful disclosure of their intimate health information. On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission accused the app's developer, GoodRx Holdings, of sharing sensitive personal data on millions of users' prescription medications and illnesses with companies like Facebook and Google without authorization. [...]

From 2017 to 2020, GoodRx uploaded the contact information of users who had bought certain medications, like birth control or erectile dysfunction pills, to Facebook so that the drug discount app could identify its users' social media profiles, the F.T.C. said in a legal complaint. GoodRx then used the personal information to target users with ads for medications on Facebook and Instagram, the complaint said, "all of which was visible to Facebook." GoodRx also targeted users who had looked up information on sexually transmitted diseases on HeyDoctor, the company's telemedicine service, with ads for HeyDoctor's S.T.D. testing services, the complaint said. Those data disclosures, regulators said, flouted public promises the company had made to "never provide advertisers any information that reveals a personal health condition."

The company's information-sharing practices, the agency said, violated a federal rule requiring health apps and fitness trackers that collect personal health details to notify consumers of data breaches. While GoodRx agreed to settle the case, it said it disagreed with the agency's allegations and admitted no wrongdoing. The F.T.C.'s case against GoodRx could upend widespread user-profiling and ad-targeting practices in the multibillion-dollar digital health industry, and it puts companies on notice that regulators intend to curb the nearly unfettered trade in consumers' health details. [...] If a judge approves the proposed federal settlement order, GoodRx will be permanently barred from sharing users' health information for advertising purposes. To settle the case, the company also agreed to pay a $1.5 million civil penalty for violating the health breach notification rule.

During Samsung's Unpacked event on Wednesday where it unveiled its new Galaxy S23 smartphones, the company said it'll work with Google and Qualcomm on an upcoming mixed-reality platform. Samsung didn't mention any specific products or timeline. CNET reports: "It's more of a declarative announcement about how we are going to get it right in trying to build the XR ecosystem," TM Roh, president of Samsung's mobile division, said in an interview with CNET through a translator ahead of the event. "Google's been investing for a long time across both experiences and technology in AR and VR," Lockheimer said onstage. "Delivering this next generation of experiences requires cutting-edge advanced hardware and software. That's why our collaboration with Samsung and Qualcomm is so exciting."

Samsung has been relatively quiet about virtual reality aside from its Gear VR headset, which it launched several iterations of between 2015 and 2017. That device is a head-mounted holster for smartphone-powered VR experiences. Roh says there's been more demand from consumers for augmented and virtual reality, which is why the company chose this time to start discussing its plans. He says that the company has been researching the category for a while. "And now we believe that we have reached a certain threshold," he said.

The collaboration makes sense since Samsung, Google and Qualcomm already work together to develop smartphones. Samsung builds the hardware of its Galaxy phones, while Qualcomm supplies the processor and Google manages the software's underlying Android operating system. Roh said Google and Qualcomm will play similar roles in the development of this upcoming XR platform, although they will likely overlap in certain areas. Even though Qualcomm would supply the processor, for example, Samsung might make some optimizations, just as it's done for the chip inside the Galaxy S23 lineup. "Each player is taking leadership in each category, and then we will be working very closely together across the different categories," Roh said.

At Samsung's first Galaxy Unpacked event of the year, the company unveiled its new Galaxy S23 devices: the Galaxy S23, S23 Plus, and Galaxy S23 Ultra. Here's what The Verge's Allison Johnson says about the most premium phone of the bunch, the Galaxy S23 Ultra: Compared to the outgoing model, it comes with an updated processor, a new 200-megapixel main camera sensor, and a tweak to the form factor. The built-in S Pen is still here, naturally. And thankfully the price hasn't inflated. In fact, the starting MSRP of $1,199.99 now comes with 256GB of storage -- double last year's base model. It's a little extra shine on what was already Samsung's star smartphone. [...]

The S23 Ultra also features a very slight exterior redesign. The long edges of the phone are slightly less curved, so there's more of a flat surface to grip when you're holding the device. The back panel and the screen also curve around the sides a bit less, so you might be less likely to run your S Pen off the edge of the device, which tended to happen with the more rounded design. [...] That's the short list of what's new. What's not new is basically everything else: a 5,000mAh battery, IP68 dust and water resistance, and either 8GB or 12GB of RAM depending on the configuration. Your color options this year are phantom black, lavender, green, and cream [...]. [T]he S23 Ultra is up for preorder today and starts shipping on February 17th. "Samsung's trio of flagships for 2023 offer some refined designs -- which look a little iPhone-like, if I'm being candid -- with some camera, battery, and processor improvements over last year's S22 generation," adds The Verge's Antonio G. Di Benedetto. You can view a full list of specs here.

Netflix has unveiled its plans to prevent password sharing between people in households outside of an account owner's primary location. From a report: As reported by gHacks, the streaming service has detailed how it aims to crackdown on account sharing in an updated FAQ. The information varies between countries, but it looks like the company will be paying careful attention to the devices used to log in to accounts from now on. The FAQ pages for US and UK subscribers currently highlight that devices may require verification if they are not associated with the Netflix household or if they attempt to access an account outside the subscriber's primary location for an extended period of time.

The FAQ pages for countries where Netflix is testing extra membership fees for account sharing have tweaked the rules. The Costa Rican Help Center states that devices must connect to the Wi-Fi at the primary location and watch something on Netflix "at least once every 31 days." The company will use information "such as IP addresses, device IDs, and account activity" to determine whether a device signed into an account is connected to the primary location. A device may be blocked from watching Netflix if it's deemed to fall outside of the household. As further set out in the guidelines, if you are the primary account owner and you find yourself travelling between locations, you can request a temporary code to access Netflix for seven consecutive days. Alternatively, you can update your primary location if it has changed.

A startup founded by SpaceX veterans aims to realize the potential of a technology whose big promises have never quite come through. From a report: 3D printers -- which create objects by layering materials according to a plan sent by a computer -- have gained a reputation for being unwieldy, expensive and slow. There has been more progress on industrial uses, although there, too, major players have fallen into a multiyear funk. Venture capitalists continue to dedicate significant resources to startups promising innovations to fix the technology's underlying flaws. One particularly radical approach comes from Freeform Future, a five-year-old startup based in Los Angeles. The company has raised $45 million so far from investors including Founders Fund, Threshold Ventures and Valor Equity Partners. Instead of trying to build a single machine that can print three-dimensional objects, Freeform is looking to turn entire buildings into automated 3D-printing factories that would use dozens of lasers to create rocket engine chambers or car parts from metal powder.

The company, which has never before discussed its approach publicly, says the technique could allow it to make metal parts 25 to 50 times faster than is possible with current methods and at a fraction of the cost. Freeform's co-founder and chief executive officer, Erik Palitsch, spent a 10-year stint at SpaceX, Elon Musk's aerospace company. [...] Freeform, on the other hand, is creating machines that can fill a warehouse. Its current factory, in Hawthorne, California, used to serve as Keanu Reeves's motorcycle storage facility. (Freeform still ends up with some of the actor's mail.)

Inside, machines shuffle objects back and forth along rapidly moving conveyors, so the system can work on many things at once. Other companies have set up multiple printers in a single facility, but this strategy doesn't improve their speed, it just increases scale by having them work in parallel. Freeform, by contrast, is redesigning the process by which 3D printing can turn raw materials into finished products. In a sense, it's akin to the establishment of the assembly-line process pioneered by 20th century industrialists like Henry Ford. "We have to achieve a state of mass production to open this up to more industries," says Palitsch. "And you simply can't get there with a conventional machine."

Google is rushing to release its own artificial intelligence products in the wake of OpenAI's ChatGPT. From a report: The search engine pioneer is working hard and fast on a "code red" effort to respond to ChatGPT with a large language chatbot and testing new ways to incorporate that AI-powered bot into search, according to a report from CNBC. The new report backs up earlier news from the New York Times and elsewhere, which outlined a rapid re-alignment in Google's priorities in direct response to the rise of ChatGPT. CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly re-assigned employees and "upended" meetings to boost the amount of resources going towards the company's AI development.

CNBC's Tuesday account offers further details. Google's new chatbot, reportedly named "Apprentice Bard," is based on the company's pre-existing LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) technology. The application looks and functions similarly to ChatGPT: Users input a question in natural language and receive a generated text response as an answer. But Apprentice Bard seemingly has a couple of important skills beyond what ChatGPT can do. For one, it can draw on recent events and information, according to CNBC, unlike ChatGPT which is limited to online information from before 2021. And it may be better at achieving that elusive AI accuracy. For instance, LaMDA correctly responded to a math riddle that ChatGPT failed to grasp, as recorded in company documents viewed by CNBC.

A new Biden administration report describes Apple and Google as "gatekeepers" of mobile app stores and suggests legislation is needed to spur competition and give app makers and consumers more choices. From a report: The White House is pushing for tech antitrust action in the new Congress, with a new Department of Commerce report laying out what it sees as a harmful app store environment for both consumers and app makers. The report, from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, is the Biden administration's fullest effort to lay out concerns about the app store ecosystem.

There is "real potential harm for consumers" in the way Apple and Google run their app stores, with the companies "inflating prices and reducing innovation," Alan Davidson, NTIA administrator, said in a call with reporters. "We're looking forward to seeing what legislation gets introduced on Capitol Hill.... Our hope is that this analysis can inform how people are thinking about these issues," he said. "We have a real opportunity to make progress on tech and competition in this Congress," said Bharat Ramamurti, deputy director of the National Economic Council. "We're highly committed to reform in this space and we will work closely with Congress to see whatever is possible."