An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google's parent company, Alphabet, is launching a new company called "Renew Home." The new company will pull in some other projects from Nest and the rest of Alphabet to become a supposed one-stop shop for power savings and clean energy usage. The core concept is partnering with power companies to obtain data about the current condition of the power grid and using that data to change consumer habits. The new company is bankrolled by Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP), an Alphabet venture capital firm.

The first existing service getting pulled into Renew Home is Nest Renew. This service for Nest Thermostats uses power company data to tell consumers how their electricity is being generated and what it costs. That data lets your thermostat do things like automatically shift heating and cooling to times of day when energy is cheaper or cleaner, and shows various reports about the cleanness of the energy you've been using. (Nest's feature that lets utility companies remotely take control of your thermostat, Rush Hour Rewards, does not seem to be part of Renew Home.)

Another Alphabet service being pulled into Renew Home is OhmConnect, which is the same basic idea as Nest's grid data-power thermostat adjustments but for more than just your thermostat. OhmConnect is compatible with a very small list of smart devices, like Nest-rival Ecobee and Honeywell thermostats, TL-Link's "Kasa" smart home system, and Tesla vehicles. The backbone of the service appears to be the in-house "OhmPlug" smart outlet, which can monitor the energy usage of anything that plugs into the wall. By seeing that you've turned these smart devices during peak usage times, OhmConnect offers people rewards like gift cards or cash for not using power when the grid is at capacity.

Google is about to launch its grand plan to block third-party cookies in Chrome that many websites use to track your activity across the web for profit. From a report: Starting on January 4th, Google will start testing its new Tracking Protection feature that will eventually restrict website access to third-party cookies by default. It will come to a very small subset of Chrome users at the start, specifically to one percent of users globally. Afterward, Google plans to phase out the use of third-party cookies for all users in the second half of 2024.

If you're randomly selected to try Tracking Protection, Google will notify you when opening Chrome on desktop or Android. If there are issues detected by Chrome while you're browsing, a prompt will appear asking if you'd like to temporarily re-enable third-party cookies for the site.

The Information: In the future, [Google] plans to use Gemini across nearly its entire line of products, from its search engine to its productivity applications and an AI assistant called Pixie that will be exclusive to its Pixel devices, two people familiar with the matter said. [...] The rollout of Pixie, an AI assistant exclusively for Pixel devices, could boost Google's hardware business at a time when tech companies are racing to integrate their hardware with new AI capabilities. Pixie will use the information on a customer's phone -- including data from Google products like Maps and Gmail -- to evolve into a far more personalized version of the Google Assistant, according to one of the people with knowledge of the project. The feature could launch as soon as next year with the Pixel 9 and the 9 Pro, this person said.

Google Maps will soon give you the option to store your location data on your device instead of in the cloud. Android Police reports: In the coming year, Google is planning to switch things up by defaulting to saving your Timeline directly on your device instead of the cloud. You'll also have the option to wipe out bits or the whole information dossier whenever you want and disable location history completely. When you're jumping ship to a new device and want to keep your data close, you always have the option to back it up in the cloud. Google assures you that it'll lock it up with encryption.

Another significant update is the shorter default amount of time before your location history is auto-deleted. Soon, when you turn on location history, the default auto-delete time shrinks to three months. In the past, it used to hang around for 18 months by default. If you're the sentimental type, you can extend the Timeline's lifespan or turn off the auto-delete option. Google Maps has another nifty trick up its sleeve: soon, you can erase all traces of your trips with just a few taps. Say you've got a favorite hangout spot and you want to keep it to yourself. You can wipe the slate clean right from the app, whether it's searches, directions, visits, or shares. This handy feature is making its debut on Maps for Android and iOS in the next few weeks.

Finally, you will soon be able to click on the blue dot on the map to view your Location History and Timeline at a glance. It allows you to tweak what you share and store on Maps, all without having to dive into the settings. Currently, the blue dot only gives you some neat shortcuts for parking saves and location sharing.

Earlier this year, General Motors announced plans to phase out Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, shifting instead to built-in infotainment systems developed with Google. Now, the company has explained why it made that decision to MotorTrend: Tim Babbitt, GM's head of product for infotainment, gave MT a better explanation at a press event for the new Chevrolet Blazer EV, the flagship vehicle in the no CarPlay or Android Auto strategy. According to him, there's an important factor that didn't make it into the fact sheet: safety. Specifically, he cited driver distraction caused by cell phone usage behind the wheel. According to Babbitt, CarPlay and Android Auto have stability issues that manifest themselves as bad connections, poor rendering, slow responses, and dropped connections. And when CarPlay and Android Auto have issues, drivers pick up their phones again, taking their eyes off the road and totally defeating the purpose of these phone-mirroring programs. Solving those issues can sometimes be beyond the control of the automaker. You can start to see GM's frustration. Babbitt's thesis is that if drivers were to do everything through the vehicle's built-in systems, they'd be less likely to pick up their phones and therefore less distracted and safer behind the wheel. He admits, though, GM hasn't tested this thesis in the lab or real world yet but believes it has potential, if customers go for it.

The issues Babbitt cited with CarPlay and Android Auto seem like they'd be mostly linked to using those programs wirelessly, and while he says that's true, just plugging the phone into a USB data port doesn't solve all the problems. Babbitt says even when using a physical connection, Android phones are prone to compatibility issues between the vehicle and all the various phone manufacturers running Android. iPhones, meanwhile, suffer from backwards compatibility issues that cause older iPhone models to have trouble running CarPlay consistently. He points to J.D. Power data that shows issues with CarPlay and Android Auto are common owner complaints, and that customers tend to blame the automaker rather than the phone manufacturer or phone software. In that way, eliminating CarPlay and Android Auto potentially relieves GM of a key customer complaint dragging down their perceived quality scores. After MotorTrend's story was published, GM issued the following statement: "We wanted to reach out to clarify that comments about GM's position on phone projection were misrepresented and to reinforce our valued partnerships with Apple and Google and each company's commitment to driver safety. GM's embedded infotainment strategy is driven by the benefits of having a system that allows for greater integration with the larger GM ecosystem and vehicles."

Apple has said it now requires a judge's order to hand over information about its customers' push notification to law enforcement, putting the iPhone maker's policy in line with rival Google and raising the hurdle officials must clear to get app data about users. From a report: The new policy was not formally announced but appeared sometime over the past few days on Apple's publicly available law enforcement guidelines. It follows the revelation from Oregon Senator Ron Wyden that officials were requesting such data from Apple as well as from Google, the unit of Alphabet that makes the operating system for Android phones.

Apps of all kinds rely on push notifications to alert smartphone users to incoming messages, breaking news, and other updates. These are the audible "dings" or visual indicators users get when they receive an email or their sports team wins a game. What users often do not realize is that almost all such notifications travel over Google and Apple's servers. In a letter first disclosed by Reuters last week, Wyden said the practice gave the two companies unique insight into traffic flowing from those apps to users, putting them "in a unique position to facilitate government surveillance of how users are using particular apps."

Google's making the second generation of Imagen, its AI model that can create and edit images given a text prompt, more widely available -- at least to Google Cloud customers using Vertex AI who've been approved for access. From a report: But the company isn't disclosing which data it used to train the new model -- nor introducing a way for creators who might've inadvertently contributed to the data set to opt out or apply for compensation.

Called Imagen 2, Google's enhanced model -- which was quietly launched in preview at the tech giant's I/O conference in May -- was developed using technology from Google DeepMind, Google's flagship AI lab. Compared to the first-gen Imagen, it's "significantly" improved in terms of image quality, Google claims (the company bizarrely refused to share image samples prior to this morning), and introduces new capabilities including the ability to render text and logos. "If you want to create images with a text overlay -- for example, advertising -- you can do that," Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said during a press briefing on Tuesday.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A document detailing technical requirements of Italy's Piracy Shield anti-piracy system confirms that ISPs are not alone in being required to block pirate IPTV services. All VPN and open DNS services must also comply with blocking orders, including through accreditation to the Piracy Shield platform. [...] Italy's Piracy Shield anti-piracy system reportedly launched last week, albeit in limited fashion. Whether the platform had any impact on pirate IPTV providers offering the big game last Friday is unclear but plans supporting a full-on assault are pressing ahead.

When lawmakers gave Italy's new blocking regime the green light during the summer, the text made it clear that blocking instructions would not be limited to regular ISPs. The document issued by AGCOM [...] specifically highlights that VPN and DNS providers are no exception. "[A]ll parties in any capacity involved in the accessibility of illegally disseminated content -- and therefore also, by way of example and not limitation -- VPN and open DNS service providers, will have to execute the blocks requested by the Authority [AGCOM] including through accreditation to the Piracy Shield platform or otherwise implementing measures that prevent the user from reaching that content," the notice reads. [...]

The relevant section of the new law is in some ways even more broad when it comes to search engines such as Google. Whether they are directly involved in accessibility or not, they're still required to take action. AGCOM suggests that Google understands its obligations and is also prepared to take things further. The company says it will deindex offending platforms from search and also remove their ability to advertise. "Since this is a dynamic blocking, the search engine therefore undertakes to perform de-indexing of all websites/telematic addresses that are the subject of subsequent reports that can also be communicated by rights holders accredited to the platform," AGCOM writes. "Google has shared a procedural mode for the communication of the blocking list, and the Company has also committed to the timely removal of all advertisements that do not comply with the company's policies, having particular regard to those that invest the promotion of pirate sites referring to protected sporting events."

Nearly 1 in 5 teenagers in the U.S. say they use YouTube and TikTok "almost constantly," according to a Pew Research Center survey. CNBC reports: The survey showed that YouTube was the most "widely used platform" for U.S.-based teenagers, with 93% of survey respondents saying they regularly use Google's video-streaming service. Of that 93% figure, about 16% of the teenage respondents said they "almost constantly visit or use" YouTube, underscoring the video app's immense popularity with the youth market. TikTok was the second-most popular app, with 63% of teens saying they use the ByteDance-owned short-video service, followed by Snapchat and Meta's Instagram, which had 60% and 59%, respectively. About 17% of the 63% of respondents who said they use TikTok indicated they access the short-video service "almost constantly," the report noted.

Meanwhile, Facebook and Twitter, now known as X, are not as popular with U.S.-based teenagers as they were a decade ago, the Pew Research study detailed. Regarding Facebook in particular, the Pew Research authors wrote that the share of teens who use the Meta-owned social media app "has dropped from 71% in 2014-2015 to 33% today." During the same period, Meta-owned Instagram's usage has not made up the difference in share, increasing from 52% in 2014-15 to a peak of 62% last year, then dropping to 59% in 2023, according to the firm.

A jury in San Francisco unanimously found (PDF) that Google violated California and federal antitrust laws through deals that stifled competition for its mobile app store. "The verdict delivers the first significant US courtroom loss for big tech in the years-long campaign by rivals, regulators, and prosecutors to tame the power of internet gatekeepers," reports Wired. From the report: The lawsuit next moves to a remedies phase, meaning a judge as soon as the coming weeks will hear arguments about and decide whether to order changes to Google's business practices. Users of devices powered by Google's Android operating system could find more app options to choose from, at lower prices, if Google is forced to allow downloads of rival app stores from Play or share a greater portion of sales with developers selling digital items inside their apps.

The ruling came in a case first filed in 2020 by Epic Games, known for its blockbuster game Fortnite and tools for developers, and argued before a jury since early November. The jury of nine -- a 10th juror dropped out early in the trial -- deliberated for three hours before reaching its verdict. They faced 11 questions such as defining product and geographic markets and whether Google engaged in anticompetitive conduct in those areas. Epic had accused Google of restricting smartphone makers, wireless carriers, and app developers from providing any competition to the Play store, which accounts for over 95 percent of all downloads onto Android phones in the US. Google had denied any wrongdoing, saying that its sole aim was to provide a safe and attractive experience to users, especially as it faced competition from Apple, its iPhone, and its App Store.

According to Bloomberg, Wendy's is expanding its test of an AI-powered chatbot that takes orders at the drive-thru. From the report: Franchisees will get the chance to test the product in 2024, the Dublin, Ohio-based chain said Monday. The tool, powered by Google Cloud's AI software, is currently active in four company-operated restaurants near Columbus. More locations are slated to start using it soon. Wendy's announced the pilot in May, joining the AI race as fast-food joints contended with elevated labor costs and the enduring popularity of drive-thrus.

In writing for the chain, Matt Spessard, senior vice president and global chief technology officer, said Monday the software could on average take 86% of orders without intervention from restaurant staff, just exceeding the 85% target outlined earlier this year. The system, called Wendy's FreshAI, uses generative AI to create responses and adapt to customers in real time, Wendy's said. In one location, service times were 22 seconds faster than the average for Columbus.

Google Play Movies & TV will be replaced with Google TV on January 17, 2024. 9to5Google reports: Since the 2020 launch of the Google TV platform, that branding has replaced Play Movies & TV in areas such as mobile apps, but that's also led to the choice to do away with Play Movies & TV branding basically everywhere else. In October, that decision also made its way to Android TV, and the app has not been working ever since. Despite some confusion over the past few days, the app currently just redirects to Android TV's "Shop" tab, which has been widely available for months.

In a new post, Google explains that it will do away with the last parts of Google Play Movies & TV in January 2024: "With these changes, Google Play Movies & TV will no longer be available on Android TV devices or the Google Play website.* However, you'll still be able to access all of your previously purchased titles (including active rentals) on Android TV devices, Google TV devices, the Google TV mobile app (Android and iOS), and YouTube."

On January 17, Play Movies & TV will officially cease for good on Android TV. For anyone who does still have the app working -- again, most users cannot use the app already -- the "Shop" tab will become the only option. Similarly, Google says that Play Movies & TV will cease on other remaining platforms that same date. Any cable boxes with the app integrated will also lose it, and in turn pushed to the YouTube app for continued access to purchased content. Web access via play.google.com/movies will also go away, with youtube.com/movies becoming the alternative.

Slow load times? Choppy videos? The real problem is latency, writes the Verge — but the good news is "there's a plan to almost eliminate latency, and big companies like Apple, Google, Comcast, Charter, Nvidia, Valve, Nokia, Ericsson, T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom, and more have shown an interest." It's a new internet standard called L4S that was finalized and published in January, and it could put a serious dent in the amount of time we spend waiting around for webpages or streams to load and cut down on glitches in video calls. It could also help change the way we think about internet speed and help developers create applications that just aren't possible with the current realities of the internet... L4S stands for Low Latency, Low Loss, Scalable Throughput, and its goal is to make sure your packets spend as little time needlessly waiting in line as possible by reducing the need for queuing. To do this, it works on making the latency feedback loop shorter; when congestion starts happening, L4S means your devices find out about it almost immediately and can start doing something to fix the problem. Usually, that means backing off slightly on how much data they're sending... [L4S] makes it easier to maintain a good amount of data throughput without adding latency that increases the amount of time it takes for data to be transferred...

If you really want to get into it (and you know a lot about networking), you can read the specification paper on the Internet Engineering Task Force's website... The L4S standard adds an indicator to packets, which says whether they experienced congestion on their journey from one device to another. If they sail right on through, there's no problem, and nothing happens. But if they have to wait in a queue for more than a specified amount of time, they get marked as having experienced congestion. That way, the devices can start making adjustments immediately to keep the congestion from getting worse and to potentially eliminate it altogether... In terms of reducing latency on the internet, L4S or something like it is "a pretty necessary thing," according to Greg White, a technologist at research and development firm CableLabs who helped work on the standard. "This buffering delay typically has been hundreds of milliseconds to even thousands of milliseconds in some cases. Some of the earlier fixes to buffer bloat brought that down into the tens of milliseconds, but L4S brings that down to single-digit milliseconds...."

Here's the bad news: for the most part, L4S isn't in use in the wild yet. However, there are some big names involved with developing it... When we spoke to Greg White from CableLabs, he said there were already around 20 cable modems that support it today and that several ISPs like Comcast, Charter, and Virgin Media have participated in events meant to test how prerelease hardware and software work with L4S. Companies like Nokia, Vodafone, and Google have also attended, so there definitely seems to be some interest. Apple put an even bigger spotlight on L4S at WWDC 2023 after including beta support for it in iOS 16 and macOS Ventura... At around the same time as WWDC, Comcast announced the industry's first L4S field trials in collaboration with Apple, Nvidia, and Valve. That way, content providers can mark their traffic (like Nvidia's GeForce Now game streaming), and customers in the trial markets with compatible hardware like the Xfinity 10G Gateway XB7 / XB8, Arris S33, or Netgear CM1000v2 gateway can experience it right now...

The other factor helping L4S is that it's broadly compatible with the congestion control systems in use today...

"Over the years, Austin has seen a huge migration of tech companies moving to the city, from billionaire owners of Twitter (X) to the largest search engine in the world," according to a local news site in Texas.

"But many startups are now choosing to leave the capital city they once flocked to because of the rising cost of living, low funding, and lack of diversity, according to TechCrunch. " On Thursday, December 7, the cloud computing company VMWare announced it was laying off 577 employees in Austin as part of a nationwide job reduction to cut costs, according to the Austin American-Statesman. TechCrunch is reporting that startup founders, like Techstars Managing Director Amos Schwartzfarb, are announcing their decisions to leave Austin's "lackluster" startup scene... In 2022, Meta abandoned plans to move into the biggest skyscraper in Austin, and Google froze plans to move into 35 floors of a different downtown building, despite paying rent to the developer, according to the Washington Post...

In January, CEO Don Ward of Laundris, a B2B enterprise industrial software platform, announced he would be relocating his company to Tulsa because it reminded him "of where Austin was 10 years ago in terms of the tech ecosystem being built," according to Tulsa World. Last month, startup unicorn Cart, an e-commerce business, announced it was moving its headquarters back to Houston after relocating to Austin in late 2021, according to TechCrunch.

The Gemini LLMs developed by Google Deepmind can process more than text, including images, video and audio. So a team at Google has proposed using AI to create a "bird's-eye" view of users' lives, reports CNBC, "using mobile phone data such as photographs and searches." Dubbed "Project Ellmann," after biographer and literary critic Richard David Ellmann, the idea would be to use LLMs like Gemini to ingest search results, spot patterns in a user's photos, create a chatbot and "answer previously impossible questions," according to a copy of a presentation viewed by CNBC. Ellmann's aim, it states, is to be "Your Life Story Teller."

It's unclear if the company has plans to produce these capabilities within Google Photos, or any other product. Google Photos has more than 1 billion users and 4 trillion photos and videos, according to a company blog post... A product manager for Google Photos presented Project Ellman alongside Gemini teams at a recent internal summit, according to documents viewed by CNBC. They wrote that the teams spent the past few months determining that large language models are the ideal tech to make this bird's-eye approach to one's life story a reality. Ellmann could pull in context using biographies, previous moments and subsequent photos to describe a user's photos more deeply than "just pixels with labels and metadata," the presentation states...

"We trawl through your photos, looking at their tags and locations to identify a meaningful moment," a presentation slide reads. "When we step back and understand your life in its entirety, your overarching story becomes clear...." The team also demonstrated "Ellmann Chat," with the description: "Imagine opening ChatGPT but it already knows everything about your life. What would you ask it?"
Reached for a comment, a Google spokesperson told CNBC that Google Photos "has always used AI to help people search their photos and videos, and we're excited about the potential of LLMs to unlock even more helpful experiences.

"This was an early internal exploration and, as always, should we decide to roll out new features, we would take the time needed to ensure they were helpful to people, and designed to protect users' privacy and safety as our top priority."

NotebookLM, Google's experimental AI-powered note-taking app unveiled at Google I/O earlier this year (formerly referred to as Project Tailwind), is now widely available in the United States. "It's also getting several new features and is 'starting' to use Google's Gemini Pro AI model 'to help with document understanding and reasoning,'" reports The Verge. From the report: NotebookLM can already do things like summarize the documents you import into the app, come up with key points, and even answer questions about your note-taking sources. But now, Google is adding a way to transform your notes into other types of documents, too. Once you select all the notes you want to include, NotebookLM will automatically suggest formats, such as an outline or study guide. However, Google notes that you can also tell NotebookLM to transform your notes into a format of your choosing, like an email, script outline, newsletter, and more.

Additionally, NotebookLM will now start providing suggested actions based on what you're doing in the app. As an example, Google says if you're writing a note, NotebookLM may automatically "offer tools to polish or refine your prose, or suggest related ideas from your sources based on what you've just written." Some other handy features coming to the app include a way to save helpful responses from NotebookLM as notes, share your notes with others, and focus NotebookLM's AI on select sources when chatting with it. Google is expanding some of NotebookLM's limitations as well. You can now include up to 20 sources in your notebook, each with up to 200,000 words.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: European Union negotiators clinched a deal Friday on the world's first comprehensive artificial intelligence rules, paving the way for legal oversight of technology used in popular generative AI services like ChatGPT that has promised to transform everyday life and spurred warnings of existential dangers to humanity. Negotiators from the European Parliament and the bloc's 27 member countries overcame big differences on controversial points including generative AI and police use of facial recognition surveillance to sign a tentative political agreement for the Artificial Intelligence Act.

"Deal!" tweeted European Commissioner Thierry Breton, just before midnight. "The EU becomes the very first continent to set clear rules for the use of AI." The result came after marathon closed-door talks this week, with one session lasting 22 hours before a second round kicked off Friday morning. Officials provided scant details on what exactly will make it into the eventual law, which wouldn't take effect until 2025 at the earliest. They were under the gun to secure a political victory for the flagship legislation but were expected to leave the door open to further talks to work out the fine print, likely to bring more backroom lobbying.

The AI Act was originally designed to mitigate the dangers from specific AI functions based on their level of risk, from low to unacceptable. But lawmakers pushed to expand it to foundation models, the advanced systems that underpin general purpose AI services like ChatGPT and Google's Bard chatbot. Foundation models looked set to be one of the biggest sticking points for Europe. However, negotiators managed to reach a tentative compromise early in the talks, despite opposition led by France, which called instead for self-regulation to help homegrown European generative AI companies competing with big U.S rivals including OpenAI's backer Microsoft. [...] Under the deal, the most advanced foundation models that pose the biggest "systemic risks" will get extra scrutiny, including requirements to disclose more information such as how much computing power was used to train the systems.

Google Drive recently lost user files, with some reporting missing documents since May 2023. Google said this month that it has posted a fix, but its description of a "syncing issue" doesn't seem to capture the problem based on user reports of web files disappearing, ArsTechnica notes.

The company hasn't fully explained the cause or its recovery solution, which involves desktop app options and command line file recovery, the report asserts. This opaque handling, along with Google shutting down the Drive user forum that allowed people to share fixes, adds to perception that the company prioritizes PR over assisting users, the report adds.

Speaking of early-impressions of Gemini, users' confidence in Google might be shaken further to learn that the company pretty much faked the most impressive demo of Gemini. TechCrunch: A video called "Hands-on with Gemini: Interacting with multimodal AI" hit a million views over the last day, and it's not hard to see why. The impressive demo "highlights some of our favorite interactions with Gemini," showing how the multimodal model (that is, it understands and mixes language and visual understanding) can be flexible and responsive to a variety of inputs.

To begin with, it narrates an evolving sketch of a duck from a squiggle to a completed drawing, which it says is an unrealistic color, then evinces surprise ("What the quack!") when seeing a toy blue duck. [...] Just one problem: the video isn't real. "We created the demo by capturing footage in order to test Gemini's capabilities on a wide range of challenges. Then we prompted Gemini using still image frames from the footage, and prompting via text." So although it might kind of do the things Google shows in the video, it didn't, and maybe couldn't, do them live and in the way they implied. In actuality, it was a series of carefully tuned text prompts with still images, clearly selected and shortened to misrepresent what the interaction is actually like.

Tech giants including Google and Facebook parent Meta have dramatically ramped up charitable giving to university campuses over the past several years -- giving them influence over academics studying such critical topics as artificial intelligence, social media and disinformation. From a report: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg alone has donated money to more than 100 university campuses, either through Meta or his personal philanthropy arm, according to new research by the Tech Transparency Project, a nonprofit watchdog group studying the technology industry. Other firms are helping fund academic centers, doling out grants to professors and sitting on advisory boards reserved for donors, researchers told The Post.

Silicon Valley's influence is most apparent among computer science professors at such top-tier schools as Berkeley, University of Toronto, Stanford and MIT. According to a 2021 paper by University of Toronto and Harvard researchers, most tenure-track professors in computer science at those schools whose funding sources could be determined had taken money from the technology industry, including nearly 6 of 10 scholars of AI. The proportion rose further in certain controversial subjects, the study found. Of 33 professors whose funding could be traced who wrote on AI ethics for the top journals Nature and Science, for example, all but one had taken grant money from the tech giants or had worked as their employees or contractors.