The Washingon Post reports that a regulatory dispute in Ohio may help answer a big question about America's power grid: who will pay for the huge upgrades needed to meet soaring energy demand "from the data centers powering the modern internet and artificial intelligence revolution?" Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta are fighting a proposal by an Ohio power company to significantly increase the upfront energy costs they'll pay for their data centers, a move the companies dubbed "unfair" and "discriminatory" in documents filed with Ohio's Public Utility Commission last month. American Electric Power Ohio said in filings that the tariff increase was needed to prevent new infrastructure costs from being passed on to other customers such as households and businesses if the tech industry should fail to follow through on its ambitious, energy-intensive plans. The case could set a national precedent that helps determine whether and how other states force tech firms to be accountable for the costs of their growing energy consumption... The energy demands of data centers have created similar concerns in other hot spots such as Northern Virginia, Atlanta and Maricopa County, Arizona, leaving experts concerned that the U.S. power grid may not be capable of dealing with the combined needs of the green energy transition and the computing boom that artificial intelligence companies say is coming...

Energy customers must sometimes make a monthly payment to a utility that is a percentage of the maximum amount of electricity they predict that they could need. In Ohio, data center companies had agreed to pay 60 percent of the projected amount. But in May, the power company proposed a new, 10-year fee structure raising the charges to 90 percent of the expected load, even if they don't end up using that much. The major tech companies — all of whom are increasing spending on data center infrastructure to compete in AI — strenuously opposed the proposed contract in documents filed last month... According to testimony from AEP Ohio Vice President Lisa Kelso, there are 50 pending requests from data center customers seeking electric service at more than 90 sites, a potential 30,000 megawatts of additional load — enough to power more than 20 million households. That additional demand would more than triple the utility's previous peak load in 2023, she said. Between 2020 and 2024, the data center energy load in central Ohio increased sixfold, from 100 to 600 megawatts, her testimony reads. By 2030, that amount will reach 5,000 megawatts, according to the utility's signed agreements, she testified...

Meeting that demand will require AEP Ohio to build new transmission lines, an expensive and time-consuming process... Chief among the power company's concerns, according to the documents, is what will happen if it invests billions of dollars into new grid infrastructure only for the data centers to leave for greener pastures, or for the AI bubble to burst and the facilities to need much less power than initially projected. If the power company spends big on new infrastructure but the power demand it was built to serve doesn't materialize, other customers — including business and residential payers — will be stuck with the bill, the utility said... AEP Ohio's testimony in the case also questions whether data centers bring as much to local communities as factories or other high-energy-load businesses. Since 2019, non-data center businesses have created approximately 25 jobs for every megawatt of power requested, while data centers have created less than one job per megawatt, according to Kelso's testimony.

The tech companies rejected this criticism, saying the number of jobs they create is not relevant to how much power they have a right to purchase, and highlighted their other contributions to local economies... Amazon said in filings that it pays fees as high as 75 percent of projected demand in some states but that Ohio's proposal to bill it 90 percent goes too far.
"Should the Ohio tariff be approved, Microsoft and Google both threatened in their testimony to leave Ohio." (Although at the same time, "pressure on the electric grid is mounting all over the country...")

And the article points out that on Thursday, "the White House announced measures intended to speed up data center construction for AI projects, including by accelerating permitting."

Gemini Live is rolling out its Live Voice Mode for all Android users, allowing them to hold real-time, interactive voice conversations with Gemini. "Previously locked into conventional text-based input and responses, Gemini Live Voice Mode gives hands-free ways to explore ideas, brainstorm, and talk through topics in real-time," reports Tom's Guide. From the report: This new voice feature is integrated into the Android Gemini app, so users need to update their app or download it from the Google Play Store if they haven't already done so. Once installed, users can turn on Live Voice Mode and start talking directly to Gemini. Do you want to get your thoughts sorted out or chat? It's fast and interactive, and no typing is required in this mode.

Users can have voice conversations on virtually anything. Suppose one is stuck with a complex project and needs a fresh perspective or researching a new hobby or course of study and wants to flesh out the subject by talking it out with Gemini. It promises to offer rich insight and ideas through conversation so that one's productivity and creativity are enhanced in ways that, up until now, have been possible only with human dialogue. [...]

The main advantage of Gemini Live Voice Mode is that it is interactive. A voice assistant would respond to a question you pose in voice, while with the live voice mode in Gemini, the dialogue sounds and feels more natural, with a tone that takes on that of the discussion and facilitates a back-and-forth interaction style. You can ask follow-up questions, clarify misunderstandings, or refine your ideas as you speak, making it more like a collaboration than a simple Q&A.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers still don't know the cause of a recently discovered malware infection affecting almost 1.3 million streaming devices running an open source version of Android in almost 200 countries. Security firm Doctor Web reported Thursday that malware named Android.Vo1d has backdoored the Android-based boxes by putting malicious components in their system storage area, where they can be updated with additional malware at any time by command-and-control servers. Google representatives said the infected devices are running operating systems based on the Android Open Source Project, a version overseen by Google but distinct from Android TV, a proprietary version restricted to licensed device makers.

Although Doctor Web has a thorough understanding of Vo1d and the exceptional reach it has achieved, company researchers say they have yet to determine the attack vector that has led to the infections. "At the moment, the source of the TV boxes' backdoor infection remains unknown," Thursday's post stated. "One possible infection vector could be an attack by an intermediate malware that exploits operating system vulnerabilities to gain root privileges. Another possible vector could be the use of unofficial firmware versions with built-in root access." The following device models infected by Vo1d are: [R4, TV BOX, KJ-SMART4KVIP].

One possible cause of the infections is that the devices are running outdated versions that are vulnerable to exploits that remotely execute malicious code on them. Versions 7.1, 10.1, and 12.1, for example, were released in 2016, 2019, and 2022, respectively. What's more, Doctor Web said it's not unusual for budget device manufacturers to install older OS versions in streaming boxes and make them appear more attractive by passing them off as more up-to-date models. Further, while only licensed device makers are permitted to modify Google's AndroidTV, any device maker is free to make changes to open source versions. That leaves open the possibility that the devices were infected in the supply chain and were already compromised by the time they were purchased by the end user. "These off-brand devices discovered to be infected were not Play Protect certified Android devices," Google said in a statement. "If a device isn't Play Protect certified, Google doesn't have a record of security and compatibility test results. Play Protect certified Android devices undergo extensive testing to ensure quality and user safety."

Users can confirm if their device runs Android TV OS via this link and following the steps here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: You can tell a lot about someone from their eyes. They can indicate how tired you are, the type of mood you're in, and potentially provide clues about health problems. But your eyes could also leak more secretive information: your passwords, PINs, and messages you type. Today, a group of six computer scientists are revealing a new attack against Apple's Vision Pro mixed reality headset where exposed eye-tracking data allowed them to decipher what people entered on the device's virtual keyboard. The attack, dubbed GAZEploit and shared exclusively with WIRED, allowed the researchers to successfully reconstruct passwords, PINs, and messages people typed with their eyes. "Based on the direction of the eye movement, the hacker can determine which key the victim is now typing," says Hanqiu Wang, one of the leading researchers involved in the work. They identified the correct letters people typed in passwords 77 percent of the time within five guesses and 92 percent of the time in messages.

To be clear, the researchers did not gain access to Apple's headset to see what they were viewing. Instead, they worked out what people were typing by remotely analyzing the eye movements of a virtual avatar created by the Vision Pro. This avatar can be used in Zoom calls, Teams, Slack, Reddit, Tinder, Twitter, Skype, and FaceTime. The researchers alerted Apple to the vulnerability in April, and the company issued a patch to stop the potential for data to leak at the end of July. It is the first attack to exploit people's "gaze" data in this way, the researchers say. The findings underline how people's biometric data -- information and measurements about your body -- can expose sensitive information and beused as part of the burgeoning surveillance industry.

The GAZEploit attack consists of two parts, says Zhan, one of the lead researchers. First, the researchers created a way to identify when someone wearing the Vision Pro is typing by analyzing the 3D avatar they are sharing. For this, they trained a recurrent neural network, a type of deep learning model, with recordings of 30 people's avatars while they completed a variety of typing tasks. When someone is typing using the Vision Pro, their gaze fixates on the key they are likely to press, the researchers say, before quickly moving to the next key. "When we are typing our gaze will show some regular patterns," Zhan says. Wang says these patterns are more common during typing than if someone is browsing a website or watching a video while wearing the headset. "During tasks like gaze typing, the frequency of your eye blinking decreases because you are more focused," Wang says. In short: Looking at a QWERTY keyboard and moving between the letters is a pretty distinct behavior.

The second part of the research, Zhan explains, uses geometric calculations to work out where someone has positioned the keyboard and the size they've made it. "The only requirement is that as long as we get enough gaze information that can accurately recover the keyboard, then all following keystrokes can be detected." Combining these two elements, they were able to predict the keys someone was likely to be typing. In a series of lab tests, they didn't have any knowledge of the victim's typing habits, speed, or know where the keyboard was placed. However, the researchers could predict the correct letters typed, in a maximum of five guesses, with 92.1 percent accuracy in messages, 77 percent of the time for passwords, 73 percent of the time for PINs, and 86.1 percent of occasions for emails, URLs, and webpages. (On the first guess, the letters would be right between 35 and 59 percent of the time, depending on what kind of information they were trying to work out.) Duplicate letters and typos add extra challenges.

Google is testing a "desktop windowing" feature for Android tablets that "will let you resize apps freely and arrange them on your screen at will," reports The Verge. It's currently available as a developer preview. From the report: Currently, apps on Android tablets open in full-screen by default. When the new mode is enabled, each app will appear in a window with controls that allow you to reposition, maximize, or close the app. You'll also see a taskbar at the bottom of your screen with your running apps. [...] Once the feature is rolled out to everyone, you can turn it on by pressing and holding the window handle at the top of an app's screen. If you have a keyboard attached, you can also use the shortcut meta key (Windows, Command, or Search) + Ctrl + Down to activate desktop mode. (You can exit the mode by closing all your active apps or by dragging a window and dragging it to the top of your screen.)

Google notes that apps locked to portrait orientation are still resizable, which might make things look a bit weird if certain apps aren't optimized. However, Google plans to address this in a future update by scaling the UI of non-resizable apps while maintaining their aspect ratio.

In a statement today, the White House said it has received commitments from several AI companies to curb the creation and distribution of deepfake porn, also known as image-based sexual abuse material. Engadget reports: The participating businesses have laid out the steps they are taking to prevent their platforms from being used to generate non-consensual intimate images (NCII) of adults and child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Specifically, Adobe, Anthropic, Cohere, Common Crawl, Microsoft and OpenAI said they'll be: "responsibly sourcing their datasets and safeguarding them from image-based sexual abuse."

All of the aforementioned except Common Crawl also agreed they'd be: "incorporating feedback loops and iterative stress-testing strategies in their development processes, to guard against AI models outputting image-based sexual abuse" and "removing nude images from AI training datasets" when appropriate. [...] The notable absences from today's White House release are Apple, Amazon, Google and Meta.

A Google executive told colleagues the goal for the company's then-nascent online advertising business in 2009 was to "crush" rival advertising networks, according to evidence prosecutors presented at the tech titan's antitrust trial on Wednesday. From a report: The statements underscored the U.S. Department of Justice's claim that Google has sought to monopolize markets for publisher ad servers and advertiser ad networks, and tried to dominate the market for ad exchanges which sit in the middle. On the third day of the trial, prosecutors began to introduce evidence of how Google employees thought about the company's products at the time when the government alleges it set out to dominate the ad tech market.

"We'll be able to crush the other networks and that's our goal," David Rosenblatt, Google's former president of display advertising, said of the company's strategy in late 2008 or early 2009, according to notes shown in court. Google denies the allegations, saying it faces fierce competition from rival digital advertising companies. Rosenblatt came to Google in 2008 when it acquired his former ad tech company, DoubleClick, and left the following year. The notes of his talk showed him discussing the advantages of owning technology on both sides and the middle of the market. "We're both Goldman and NYSE," he said, he said, according to the notes, referring to one of the world's biggest stock exchanges at the time and one of its biggest market makers. "Google has created what's comparable to the NYSE or London Stock Exchange; in other words, we'll do to display what Google did to search," Rosenblatt said.

Mobile video game phenomenon Flappy Bird is set to return 10 years after its creator pulled it offline. From a report: In 2014, Vietnam-based developer Dong Nguyen shocked the gaming world when he pulled viral hit Flappy Bird from the App Store and the Google Play Store at a time when it was making tens of thousands of dollars a day. He went on to say: "I can call Flappy Bird a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it."

Now, Flappy Bird is set to return, with an expanded version aiming for launch by the end of October across multiple platforms including web browsers, and an iOS and Android version planned for release in 2025. But this new Flappy Bird isn't from Nguyen, it's from 'The Flappy Bird Foundation,' which is described as "a new team of passionate fans committed to sharing the game with the world."
UPDATE (9/15/2024): The original creator of Flappy Bird returned to social media after a seven-year silence just to disavow the resurrected game -- and its possible ties to cryptocurrency. PC Gamer also digs into exactly how the Flappy Bird trademark was acquired.

Android Authority's Mishaal Rahman reports: There are many reasons why you may want to sideload apps on your Android phone, but there are also good reasons why developers would want to block sideloading. A sideloaded app won't contribute to the developer's Play Store metrics, for one, but it also prevents the developer from curating which devices can use their app. Improperly sideloaded apps can also crash due to missing assets or code, or they might be missing certain features because you installed the wrong version for your device. Whatever the reason may be, developers who want to stop you from sideloading their apps now have an easier way to do so thanks to the Play Integrity API.

The Google Play Integrity API is an interface that helps developers "check that interactions and server requests are coming from [their] genuine app binary running on a genuine Android device." It looks for evidence that the app has been tampered with, that the app is running in an "untrustworthy" software environment, that the device has Google Play Protect enabled, and more. If you've heard of or dealt with SafetyNet Attestation before on a rooted phone, then you're probably already familiar with Play Integrity, even if not by that name. Play Integrity is the successor to SafetyNet Attestation, only it comes with even more features for developers.

As is the case with SafetyNet Attestation, developers call the Play Integrity API at any point in their app, receive what's called an integrity verdict, and then decide what they want to do from there. Some apps call the Play Integrity API when they launch and block access entirely depending on what the verdict is, while others only call the API when you're about to perform a sensitive action, so they can warn you that you shouldn't proceed. The Play Integrity API makes it easy for apps to offload the determination of whether the device and its software environment are "genuine," and with the latest update to the API, apps can now easily determine whether the person who installed them is "genuine" as well. "As Google continues to bolster Play Integrity's detection mechanisms and add new features, it's going to become harder and harder for power users to justify rooting Android," concludes Rahman. "At the same time, regular users will be better protected from potentially risky and fraudulent interactions, so it's clear that Play Integrity will continue to be adopted by more and more apps."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Rolling out starting today, Google Search results will now directly link to The Internet Archive to add historical context for the links in your results. [...] Google has partnered with The Internet Archive, a non-profit research library that, in part, stores and preserves massive portions of the web to be easily referenced later. This is done through the "Wayback Machine" which can show a website or specific page as it existed on a previous date. Through this new partnership, Google will link directly to The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine for pages that you find in Search.

To access The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine links through Google Search you'll need to click the three-dots menu button that appears alongside all search results and then tap on "More about this page." This new feature is still actively rolling out, but Google was able to provide an image to show what the integration looks like. In a post regarding the announcement, The Internet Archive said that this partnership "underscores the importance of web archiving."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google co-founder and ex-Alphabet president Sergey Brin said he's back working at Google "pretty much every day" because he hasn't seen anything as exciting as the recent progress in AI -- and doesn't want to miss out. "It's a big, fast-moving field," Brin said at All-In Summit of AI, adding that there is "tremendous value to humanity," before explaining why he doesn't think training more capable AI will require massively scaling up compute.

"I've read some articles that extrapolate [compute] ... and I don't know if I'm quite a believer," he said, "partly because the algorithmic improvements that have come over the last few years maybe are actually even outpacing the increased compute that's being put into these models."

Google is adding some new features to Chrome that aim to help users organize and keep track of their browser tabs across both desktop and mobile devices. From a report: The search giant announced in a new blog post that tab groups -- which enable Android and desktop Chrome users to keep related pages together in custom-labeled groups -- will start rolling out to Chrome for iOS starting today. Once Chrome is updated, iPhone and iPad users can access the feature by opening the tab grid, long-pressing on a tab, and selecting "Add Tab to New Group." Custom names and colors can then be assigned to the created tab groups to help keep them organized and easily identifiable. Another feature that's rolling out across Android and desktop Chrome apps is the ability to sync those saved tab groups across multiple devices.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A group of Democratic senators is urging the FTC and Justice Department to investigate whether AI tools that summarize and regurgitate online content like news and recipes may amount to anticompetitive practices. In a letter to the agencies, the senators, led by Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), explained their position that the latest AI features are hitting creators and publishers while they're down. As journalistic outlets experience unprecedented consolidation and layoffs, "dominant online platforms, such as Google and Meta, generate billions of dollars per year in advertising revenue from news and other original content created by others. New generative AI features threaten to exacerbate these problems."

The letter continues: "While a traditional search result or news feed links may lead users to the publisher's website, an AI-generated summary keeps the users on the original search platform, where that platform alone can profit from the user's attention through advertising and data collection. [] Moreover, some generative AI features misappropriate third-party content and pass it off as novel content generated by the platform's AI. Publishers who wish to avoid having their content summarized in the form of AI-generated search results can only do so if they opt out of being indexed for search completely, which would result in a materially significant drop in referral traffic. In short, these tools may pit content creators against themselves without any recourse to profit from AI-generated content that was composed using their original content. This raises significant competitive concerns in the online marketplace for content and advertising revenues."

Essentially, the senators are saying that a handful of major companies control the market for monetizing original content via advertising, and that those companies are rigging that market in their favor. Either you consent to having your articles, recipes, stories, and podcast transcripts indexed and used as raw material for an AI, or you're cut out of the loop. The letter goes on to ask the FTC and DOJ to investigate whether these new methods are "a form of exclusionary conduct or an unfair method of competition in violation of the antitrust laws." [...] The letter was co-signed by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Tina Smith (D-MN).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Data Center Dynamics: Google has signed a $10 million deal to pull 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide out of the air. The company will buy direct air capture (DAC) credits from startup Holocene, to be delivered in the early 2030s. The deal is the lowest price on record for DAC, at $100 per ton -- a price the Department of Energy previously said was needed to make carbon capture mainstream. Google will provide the funds up front, but there is no guarantee that Holocene will hit that goal. Running Tide, a carbon removal company that Microsoft paid to capture 12,000 tons of CO2 in 2023, shut down in 2024. The $100 price was also made possible thanks to the US government's 45Q tax credit, which provides DAC suppliers $180 per ton of carbon removed.

Holocene passes air through a waterfall with an amino acid added to it which binds CO2. This is then mixed with guanidine to form a solid crystal mass. Next, the amino acid is sent back to the beginning of the loop, while the solid is lightly heated to release pure CO2 -- which can then be stored. The company plans to capture and store 100,000 tons of CO2 by the early 2030s. "The structure of this partnership -- providing immediate funding to achieve an ambitious but important price in the medium term -- is just one way to support carbon removal as it scales," Randy Spock, carbon credits and removals lead, said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Within the next several months, Nevada plans to launch a generative AI system powered by Google that will analyze transcripts of unemployment appeals hearings and issue recommendations to human referees about whether or not claimants should receive benefits. The system will be the first of its kind in the country and represents a significant experiment by state officials and Google in allowing generative AI to influence a high-stakes government decision -- one that could put thousands of dollars in unemployed Nevadans' pockets or take it away. Nevada officials say the Google system will speed up the appeals process -- cutting the time it takes referees to write a determination from several hours to just five minutes, in some cases -- helping the state work through a stubborn backlog of cases that have been pending since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The tool will generate recommendations based on hearing transcripts and evidentiary documents, supplying its own analysis of whether a person's unemployment claim should be approved, denied, or modified. At least one human referee will then review each recommendation, said Christopher Sewell, director of the Nevada Department of Employment, Training, and Rehabilitation (DETR). If the referee agrees with the recommendation, they will sign and issue the decision. If they don't agree, the referee will revise the document and DETR will investigate the discrepancy. "There's no AI [written decisions] that are going out without having human interaction and that human review," Sewell said. "We can get decisions out quicker so that it actually helps the claimant."

Judicial scholars, a former U.S. Department of Labor official, and lawyers who represent Nevadans in appeal hearings told Gizmodo they worry the emphasis on speed could undermine any human guardrails Nevada puts in place. "The time savings they're looking for only happens if the review is very cursory," said Morgan Shah, director of community engagement for Nevada Legal Services. "If someone is reviewing something thoroughly and properly, they're really not saving that much time. At what point are you creating an environment where people are sort of being encouraged to take a shortcut?" Michele Evermore, a former deputy director for unemployment modernization policy at the Department of Labor, shared similar concerns. "If a robot's just handed you a recommendation and you just have to check a box and there's pressure to clear out a backlog, that's a little bit concerning," she said. In response to those fears about automation bias Google spokesperson Ashley Simms said "we work with our customers to identify and address any potential bias, and help them comply with federal and state requirements." "There's a level of risk we have to be willing to accept with humans and with AI," added Amy Perez, who oversaw unemployment modernization efforts in Colorado and at the U.S. Department of Labor. "We should only be putting these tools out into production if we've established it's as good as or better than a human."

Oracle missed the tech industry's move to cloud computing last decade and ended up an also-ran. Now the AI boom has given it another shot. WSJ: The 47-year-old company that made its name on relational database software has emerged as an attractive cloud-computing provider for AI developers such as OpenAI, sending its long-stagnant stock to new heights. Oracle shares are up 34% since January, well outpacing the Nasdaq's 14% rise and those of bigger competitors Microsoft, Amazon.com and Google.

It is a surprising revitalization for a company many in the tech industry had dismissed as a dinosaur of a bygone, precloud era. Oracle appears to be successfully making a case to investors that it has become a strong fourth-place player in a cloud market surging thanks to AI. Its lateness to the game may have played to its advantage, as a number of its 162 data centers were built in recent years and are designed for the development of AI models, known as training.

In addition, Oracle isn't developing its own large AI models that compete with potential clients. The company is considered such a neutral and unthreatening player that it now has partnerships with Microsoft, Google and Amazon, all of which let Oracle's databases run in their clouds. Microsoft is also running its Bing AI chatbot on Oracle's servers.

Europe's top court on Tuesday upheld a 2.4 billion euro ($2.65 billion) fine imposed on Google for abusing its dominant position by favoring its own shopping comparison service. From a report: The fine stems from an antitrust investigation by the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, which concluded in 2017. The commission said at the time that Google had favored its own shopping comparison service over those of its rivals. Google appealed the decision with the General Court, the EU's second-highest court, which also upheld the fine. Google then brought the case before the European Court of Justice, the EU's top court.

The ECJ on Tuesday dismissed the appeal and upheld the commission's fine. "We are disappointed with the decision of the Court," a Google spokesperson told CNBC on Tuesday. "This judgment relates to a very specific set of facts. We made changes back in 2017 to comply with the European Commission's decision. Our approach has worked successfully for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping services."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: For years, Google has faced complaints about how it dominates the online advertising market. Many of the concerns stem from the internet giant's suite of software known as Google Ad Manager, which websites around the world use to sell ads on their sites. The technology conducts split-second auctions to place ads each time a user loads a page. The dominance of that technology has landed Google in federal court. On Monday, Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia will preside over the start of a trial in which the Department of Justice accuses the company of abusing control of its ad technology and violating antitrust law (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source).

It would be Google's second antitrust trial in less than a year. In August, a federal judge ruled in a separate case that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in online search, a major victory for the Justice Department. The new trial is the latest salvo by federal antitrust regulators against Big Tech, testing a century-old competition law against companies that have reshaped the way people shop, communicate and consume information. Federal regulators have also filed antitrust lawsuits against Apple,Amazon and Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, saying those companies have also abused their power. Google's vice president for regulatory affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland, said in a blog post on Sunday that the Justice Department was "picking winners and losers in a highly competitive industry."

"With the cost of ads going down and the number of ads sold going up, the market is working," she said. "The DOJ's case risks inefficiencies and higher prices -- the last thing that America's economy or our small businesses need right now."

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC: Britain's competition watchdog on Friday issued a statement of objections over Google's ad tech practices, which the regulator provisionally found are impacting competition in the U.K. In a statement, the Competition and Markets Authority alleged that the U.S. internet search titan "has harmed competition by using its dominance in online display advertising to favour its own ad tech services." The "vast majority" of the U.K.'s thousands of publishers and advertisers use Google's technology in order to bid for and sell space to display ads in a market where players were spending £1.8 billion annually as of a 2019 study, according to the CMA.

The regulator added that it is also "concerned that Google is actively using its dominance in this sector to preference its own services." So-called "self-preferencing" of services by technology giants is a key concern for regulators scrutinizing these companies. The CMA further noted that Google disadvantages ad technology competitors, preventing them from competing on a "level playing field...." In the CMA's decision Friday, the watchdog said that, since 2015, Google has abused its dominant position as the operator of both ad buying tools "Google Ads" and "DV360," and of a publisher ad server known as "DoubleClick For Publishers," in order to strengthen the market position of its advertising exchange, AdX...

AdX, on which Google charges its highest fees to advertisers, is the "centre of the ad tech stack" for the company, the CMA said, with Google taking roughly 20% of the amount for each bid that's processed on its platform.

The Register reports that Google "recently rewrote the firmware for protected virtual machines in its Android Virtualization Framework using the Rust programming language." And they add that Google "wants you to do the same, assuming you deal with firmware."

A post on Google's security blog by Android engineers Ivan Lozano and Dominik Maier promises to show "how to gradually introduce Rust into your existing firmware," adding "You'll see how easy it is to boost security with drop-in Rust replacements, and we'll even demonstrate how the Rust toolchain can handle specialized bare-metal targets."

This prompts the Register to quip that easy "is not a term commonly heard with regard to a programming language known for its steep learning curve." Citing the lack of high-level security mechanisms in firmware, which is often written in memory-unsafe languages such as C or C++, Lozano and Maier argue that Rust provides a way to avoid the memory safety bugs like buffer overflows and use-after-free that account for the majority of significant vulnerabilities in large codebases. "Rust provides a memory-safe alternative to C and C++ with comparable performance and code size," they note. "Additionally it supports interoperability with C with no overhead."
At one point the blog post explains that "You can replace existing C functionality by writing a thin Rust shim that translates between an existing Rust API and the C API the codebase expects." But their ultimate motivation is greater security. "Android's use of safe-by-design principles drives our adoption of memory-safe languages like Rust, making exploitation of the OS increasingly difficult with every release."

And the Register also got this quote from Lars Bergstrom, Google's director of engineering for Android Programming Languages (and chair of the Rust Foundation's board of directors). "At Google, we're increasing Rust's use across Android, Chromium, and more to reduce memory safety vulnerabilities. We're dedicated to collaborating with the Rust ecosystem to drive its adoption and provide developers with the resources and training they need to succeed.

"This work on bringing Rust to embedded and firmware addresses another critical part of the stack."