Microsoft is likely to offer remedies to EU antitrust regulators in the coming weeks to stave off formal objections to its $69 billion bid for "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard, Reuters reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The U.S. software giant and Xbox maker announced the deal in January to help it compete better with leaders Tencent and Sony. It has since then faced regulatory headwinds in the European Union, Britain and in the United States, with Sony criticising the deal and even calling for a regulatory veto.

The deadline for the European Commission, which is investigating the deal, to set out a formal list of competition concerns known as a statement of objection is in January. Offering remedies before such a document is issued could shorten the regulatory process. [...] Microsoft's remedy would consist mainly of a 10-year licensing deal to Playstation owner Sony, another person with direct knowledge said.

In a series of tweets Monday, Elon Musk said Apple had mostly stopped advertising on Twitter and had threatened to withhold the Twitter app from the App Store. Musk said the iPhone-maker won't disclose why it is making the threat.

Google announced today that it has licensed its AI research model for breast cancer screening to medical technology company iCAD. This is the first time Google is licensing the technology, with the hopes that it will eventually lead to more accurate breast cancer detection and risk assessment. From a report: The two companies aim to eventually deploy the technology in real-world clinical settings -- targeting a "2024 release," Google communications manager Nicole Linton told The Verge in an email. Commercial deployment, however, still depends on how successful continued research and testing are. "We will move deliberately and test things as we go," Linton said in the email.

The partnership builds on Google's prior work to improve breast cancer detection. Back in 2020, Google researchers published a paper in the journal Nature that found that its AI system outperformed several radiologists in identifying signs of breast cancer. The model reduced false negatives by up to 9.4 percent and reduced false positives by up to 5.7 percent among thousands of mammograms studied. iCAD plans to incorporate Google's mammography AI research model into iCAD's existing tools. The first is its "ProFound AI" tool that analyzes images from digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT), an advanced imaging technique sometimes called "3D mammography." The tool scans DBT images to look for malignant soft tissue densities and calcifications. iCAD also plans to use Google's model with its risk evaluation tool, which the company says provides personalized breast cancer risk estimation tailored to each person.

Singapore is obsessed with trees. The island nation, population 5.45 million people, is home to around seven million trees -- and manages many of them with an enormous Internet of Things monitoring scheme. From a report: Which is a very Singaporean thing to do, because another local obsession is tracking everything. The city-state's goal of becoming a Smart Nation includes an increasingly comprehensive masterplan that uses tech to manage, link and track as many aspects of life as possible. Singapore's National Parks Board (NParks) therefore tracks trees -- around six million of them -- once they reach a certain size, so that arborists can manage them with an app. NParks CEO Tan Chong Lee told The Register the agency's team visits every one of the urban trees to check their stability on a regular basis, but the remote tree system -- combined with other digital assessments -- allows many other tree management tasks to be done from the comfort of an air conditioned office.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Fifteen years after the release of the iPhone, it's easy to overlook the role early innovators like Palm played in popularizing the smartphone. By the time HP unceremoniously shut down the company in 2011, Palm had struggled for a few years to carve out a niche for itself among Apple and Google. But ask anyone who had a chance to use a Palm PDA in the late '90s or early 2000s and they'll tell you how fondly they remember the hardware and software that made the company's vision possible. Now, it's easier than ever to see what made Palm OS so special back in its day.

Last week, archivist Jason Scott uploaded a database of Palm OS apps to the Internet Archive. In all, there are about 560 programs to check out, including old favorites like DopeWars and SpaceTrader. Even if you don't have any nostalgia for Palm, it's well worth spending a few minutes with the collection to see how much -- or, in some cases, little -- things have changed since Palm OS was a dominant player in the market. For instance, there's an entire section devoted to shareware and it's interesting to see just how much some developers thought it was appropriate to pay for their software. Want to use the full version of StockCalc? Just send $15 by post to DDT Investments in Plaistow, New Hampshire.

Meta Platforms was slapped with a $277 million fine for failing to prevent the leak of the personal data of more than half a billion users of its Facebook service. From a report: The Irish Data Protection Commission, the main privacy watchdog for Meta in the European Union, levied the fine following a probe that found the social-media company had failed to apply strict safeguards required under the bloc's sweeping General Data Protection Regulation.

On top of the fine -- the third-biggest under GDPR -- the watchdog ordered Meta's Irish unit to make sure its processing complies with the law, according to an emailed statement on Monday. The Irish authority is the lead watchdog for some of Silicon Valley's biggest tech firms that have set up an EU base in the country, including Meta. It opened its probe following revelations that "a collated dataset of Facebook personal data" had been published on the internet. Personal information on 533 million Facebook users worldwide reemerged on a hacker website last year, including their phone numbers and email addresses.

BlockFi, a cryptocurrency lender and financial services firm, filed for bankruptcy on Monday, becoming the latest company in the crypto industry hobbled by the implosion of the embattled exchange FTX. From a report: BlockFi had been reeling since the spring, when the collapse of several influential crypto firms pushed the market into a panic, sending the value of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin plunging. In June, FTX agreed to provide the company with a $400 million credit line, which BlockFi's chief executive, Zac Prince, said would provide "access to capital that further bolsters our balance sheet." The deal also gave FTX the option to buy BlockFi.

But that agreement meant that BlockFi was financially entangled with FTX, and its stability was thrust into uncertainty this month after a series of revelations about corporate missteps and suspicious management at FTX. A few days after the exchange collapsed, BlockFi suspended withdrawals, explaining that it had "significant exposure" to FTX, including undrawn amounts from the credit line and assets held on the FTX platform. BlockFi is not the first crypto lender to collapse in a devastating year for the industry. After the spring crash, in which Bitcoin fell 20 percent in a week, two other lenders, Celsius Network and Voyager Digital, filed for bankruptcy. BlockFi, which is based in Jersey City, N.J., was created in 2017 and, as of last year, claimed more than 450,000 retail clients who can obtain loans in minutes, without credit checks. "We are just at the beginning of this story," Flori Marquez, a co-founder of BlockFi, told The New York Times in September. But its business has attracted close scrutiny from regulators.

AmiMoJo writes: A hundred UK companies have signed up for a permanent four-day working week for all their employees with no loss of pay, a milestone in the campaign to fundamentally change Britain's approach to work. The 100 companies employ 2,600 staff -- a tiny fraction of the UK's working population -- but the 4 Day Week Campaign group is hoping they will be the vanguard of a major shift.

Proponents of the four-day week say that the five-day pattern is a hangover from an earlier economic age. They argue that a four-day week would drive companies to improve their productivity, meaning they can create the same output using fewer hours. For some early adopters the policy has also proven a useful way of attracting and retaining employees. The two biggest companies that have signed up are Atom Bank and global marketing company Awin, who each have about 450 staff in the UK. They have been accredited by the four-day week campaign, meaning they have demonstrated that they have genuinely reduced hours for workers rather than forcing them into longer days.

Say goodbye to the airline call center -- at least at Frontier Airlines. From a report: The budget carrier has completed its transition to online, mobile and text support, which enables it to ensure that customers get "the information they need as expeditiously and efficiently as possible," spokeswoman Jennifer de la Cruz told CNBC in an e-mailed statement. Passengers who call the customer service number Frontier lists on its website now get the message: "At Frontier, we offer the lowest fares in the industry by operating our airline as efficiently as possible. We want our customers to be able to operate efficiently as well, which is why we make it easy to find what you need at Flyfrontier.com or on our mobile app." Those who want to text with the carrier can get a link to do so sent to their phone. Most major carriers still offer customer service lines. But Frontier, which charges fees for everything from advanced seat assignments to carry-on luggage and snacks, is often looking for ways to cut expenses. During its investor day earlier this month, Frontier hinted that it would stop offering customer service by phone, a change that travel site Travel Noire reported earlier this week. Further reading: US Fines Airlines More Than $7 Million for Not Providing Refunds.

Huawei "is giving up on Europe," writes Politico, saying the Chinese telecommunications company is "retrenching its European operations and putting its ambitions for global leadership on ice."

"The reasons for doing this have little to do with the company's commercial potential — Huawei is still able to offer cutting-edge technology at lower costs than its competitors — and everything to do with politics, according to interviews with more than 20 current and former staff and strategic advisers to the company." Pressed by the United States and increasingly shunned on a Continent it once considered its most strategic overseas market, Huawei is pivoting back toward the Chinese market, focusing its remaining European attention on the few countries — Germany and Spain, but also Hungary — still willing to play host to a company widely viewed in the West as a security risk.

"It's no longer a company floating on globalization," said one Huawei official. "It's a company saving its ass on the domestic market...."

Huawei's predicament was summed up by the company's founder Ren Zhengfei in a speech to executives at the company's Shenzhen headquarters in July. He laid out the trifecta of challenges the company has faced over the last three years: hostility from Washington; disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic; and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which upended global supply chains and heightened European concerns about over-dependence on countries like China. "The environment we faced in 2019 was different from the one we face today," Ren said in his speech, which wasn't made public but was seen by POLITICO. "Don't assume that we will have a brighter future."

"We previously had an ideal for globalization striving to serve all humanity," he added. "What is our ideal today? Survival....!"

The company is also retrenching elsewhere, according to Ren. "We will give up markets in some countries," the firm's founder said in his speech this summer. "For example, we will give up markets in the Five Eyes countries and India." The "Five Eyes" refers to an intelligence-sharing arrangement between the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. All five countries have banned or are in the process of banning Huawei and other Chinese companies from their critical infrastructure because of security concerns.
Thanks to Slashdot reader fbobraga for submitting the article.

From the BBC: "Individuals associated with the U.S. military" are linked to an online propaganda campaign, Meta's latest adversarial-threat report says....

On Facebook, 39 accounts, 16 pages, and two groups were removed, as well as 26 accounts on Instagram, for violating the platforms' policy against "coordinated inauthentic behaviour". "This network originated in the United States," Meta wrote. It focused on countries including Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Somalia, Syria, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Yemen — and mirrored tactics commonly used in propaganda campaigns against the West...

Some of those supporting the U.S. had posed as independent media outlets and some had tried to pass off content from legitimate outlets, such as BBC News Russian, as their own. The operation ran across many internet services, including Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, according to Meta. "Although the people behind this operation attempted to conceal their identities and coordination, our investigation found links to individuals associated with the US military," its report says.
The article adds that experts believe the campaign "was largely ineffective."

This month Road & Track looked at "increased cybersecurity measures" automakers are adding to car systems — and how it's affecting the vendors of "aftermarket" enhancements: As our vehicles start to integrate more complex systems such as Advanced Driver Assist Systems and over-the-air updates, automakers are growing wary of what potential bad actors could gain access to by way of hacking. Whether those hacks come in an attempt to retrieve personal customer data, or to take control of certain aspects of these integrated vehicles, automakers want to leave no part of that equation unchecked. "I think there are very specific reasons why the OEMs are taking encryption more seriously," HP Tuners director of marketing Eddie Xu told R&T. "There's personal identifiable data on vehicles, there's more considerations now than just engine control modules controlling the engine. It's everything involved."

In order to prevent this from becoming a potential safety or legal issue, companies like Ford have moved to heavily encrypt their vehicle's software. S650 Mustang chief engineer Ed Krenz specifically noted that the new FNV architecture can detect when someone attempts to modify any of the vehicle's coding, and that it can respond by shutting down an individual vehicle system or the vehicle entirely if that's what is required.

That sort of total lockout presents an interesting challenge for [car performance] tuners who rely on access to things like engine and transmission control modules to create their products.
Last month Ford acknowledged tuners would find the S650 Mustang "much more difficult," the article points out. And they add that Dodge also "intends to lock down the Engine Control Units of its upcoming electric muscle car offerings, though it will offer performance upgrades via its own over-the-air network."

"We don't want to lock the cars and say you can't modify them," Dodge CEO Kuniskis told Carscoops. "We just want to lock them and say modify them through us so that we know it's done right."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for submitting the article.

Somewhere in Silicon Valley is a man "standing up to internet giants Comcast and AT&T," reports the Mercury News. (Alternate URL here.)

"Comcast told him it would cost $17,000 to speed up his internet. He rallied 41 South Bay neighbors to build their own lightning-fast fiber-optic network instead " Tech-rich but internet-poor, residents of the Silicon Valley neighborhood were fed up with sluggish broadband speeds of less than 25 Megabits-per-second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload — the federal definition of a home unserved by adequate internet. Frustrated by the take-it-or-leave-it attitude of internet providers, they created their own solution — and now this tony enclave has one of the fastest residential speeds in the nation.

Scott Vanderlip, a software engineer, said Comcast gave him a $17,000 estimate to connect his home to the faster internet service at a neighbor's home. "You got to be kidding me — I can see it on the pole from my driveway," Vanderlip said, remembering his reaction to Comcast's quote.

So the self-described "town rebel" jumped at the chance to partner with a startup internet service provider called Next Level Networks. If Vanderlip could rally a few neighbors willing to invest a couple thousand dollars, Next Level would get them very fast internet. That was in 2017. Now, Vanderlip is president of the Los Altos Hills Community Fiber Association, which provides super-fast speeds — up to 10 Gigabits-per-second upload and download — to its over 40 association members, letting them transfer huge files and load webpages in the click of a computer mouse, Vanderlip said.

That's 125 times faster than the median download speed in Santa Clara County.
It helped that his home "also happened to sit near a local school with a spare fiber optic internet connection," the article points out.

But a startup internet service provider called Next Level Networks also handled "the infrastructure procurement, contracts, logistics and retail — essentially providing the residents a turnkey fiber optic internet service — while Vanderlip and two of his neighbors, who joined with an investment of $5,000 each, bought the fiber optic infrastructure, crowdsourced new members and mapped out an initial fiber route to their houses."

Thanks to Slashdot reader k6mfw for sharing the story!

The Washington Post reports: China is already a huge manufacturer of electric vehicles for its own market, and it is increasingly making EVs for overseas buyers, too. Made-in-China EVs are hitting U.S. dealerships and European auto shows, providing new competition to Western and Japanese automakers that have long dominated the global vehicle market.
Examples from the article:

• Polestar 2, from "an automaker headquartered in Sweden and controlled by Chinese billionaire Li Shufu... The company says it will start manufacturing its next model, the Polestar 3, in the United States in 2024."
• Nio ET7, "an EV company founded in Shanghai by entrepreneur William Li. The company is selling its ET7 sedan in the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and has said it aims to enter the U.S. market in 2025."
• China's largest automaker, the state-owned SAIC, "bought the British MG brand in the early 2000s and is now selling several electric MG models in Europe."

"People just seem to really enjoy coming together to pretend fake things are real," writes the Guardian.

"Thousands of Tumblr users have been making posters, soundtracks, drawings and fan fiction for a 1973 Scorsese film starring Robert De Niro — but it never existed." Released in 1973, the little-seen Scorsese flick starred Robert De Niro as Goncharov, "a former discotheque owner who comes to Naples after the fall of the Soviet Union" with the goal of becoming a mob boss. Harvey Keitel plays the eye-patched Andrey (or Andrei) "The Banker" Daddano; Gene Hackman plays Valery Michailov; Al Pacino appears as Mario Ambrosini and Cybill Shepherd plays Goncharov's wife, Katya. Apparently, it was really good and was added to the Criterion Collection.

And you've never heard of it because it doesn't actually exist....

A few years ago, a Tumblr user posted a photo of some "knockoff boots" they had ordered online that had a very strange tag on the tongue: "The greatest mafia movie ever made. Martin Scorsese presents GONCHAROV. Domenico Proccacci production. A film by Matteo JWHJ0715. About the Naples Mafia." This mostly went ignored until 2020, when another Tumblr user reblogged a comment made on the original post, reading: "this idiot hasn't seen goncharov...."

The internet works in mysterious ways; earlier this month, Tumblr user beelzeebub made a fake poster for the film, tens of thousands of people were suddenly sharing it and lo: a new Scorsese film was born... [L]ike all of the best jokes, people have really committed to the bit. There's the film's poster, which has the tagline "greatest mafia movie (n)ever made". A music teacher in Indiana composed a theme song for Goncharov, inspired by The Godfather. There is also a cash-in video game, with an accompanying soundtrack, and a fake VHS.

"Academics" wrote essays analysing the film, which were published in (fake) film journals. A representative for the movie reviewing platform Letterboxd even told the New York Times that they had had to remove multiple reviews for the film that had been submitted by users.

The U.S. government "has banned approvals of new telecommunications equipment from China's Huawei Technologies and ZTE," reports CNN, "because they pose 'an unacceptable risk' to US national security." The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said on Friday it had adopted the final rules, which also bar the sale or import of equipment made by China's surveillance equipment maker Dahua Technology, video surveillance firm Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology and telecoms firm Hytera Communications.

The move represents Washington's latest crackdown on the Chinese tech giants amid fears that Beijing could use Chinese tech companies to spy on Americans.

"These new rules are an important part of our ongoing actions to protect the American people from national security threats involving telecommunications," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement.

South Korea's capital launched its first self-driving bus route on Friday, part of an experiment which engineers said aims to make people feel more comfortable with driverless vehicles on the roads. From a report: The new vehicle does not look like a regular bus and has rounded edges along with large windows that make it appear more like a toy than a technological breakthrough. This design is intentional, said Jeong Seong-gyun, head of autonomous driving at 42dot, the start-up responsible for the self-driving technology that is now owned by auto giant Hyundai. "This is the future," he told AFP, adding that the bus required "a considerable new type of design." The bus looks a bit "like Lego" and is made of composite parts to help keep costs down and make it easy to replicate, he said. It uses cameras and lasers to navigate the way instead of expensive sensors, Seong-gyun added. The company's goal was to make the technology low-cost, safe and easily transferable to many types of vehicle in the future, for example delivery trucks.

Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan won interim protection of his personality and celebrity rights from the Delhi High Court Friday. From a report: The court barred not just identified entities from using Bachchan's persona, without his consent, but also passed a John Doe order, or an order against world-at-large, from infringing his personality rights. The lawsuit before the court flagged Bachchan's name, voice, images, pictures, likeness and his "unique style of dialogue delivery" among the traits which fall under legal protection. Counsel for the actor told the court that mobile applications, telephone numbers and websites had mushroomed that monetized his images or likeness without permission. "Personality right is a strong right to enforce for persons with high level of identifiability and strength of association," said Eashan Ghosh, a lawyer specializing in intellectual property rights. "Both these factors hold true for Amitabh Bachchan."

Within the European Union, airlines will be able to install the latest 5G technology on their aircraft, allowing passengers to use their smartphones and other connected devices just as they do on the ground. From a report: The European Commission has adapted the legislation on mobile communications to the most modern standards. As a result, 5G coverage can also be made available on aircraft. "The sky is no longer the limit when it comes to high-speed, high-capacity connections," said EU Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton. "5G will enable innovative services for people and growth opportunities for European companies." The 5G coverage will be made possible by installing a so-called "pico-cell" in the aircraft.

Google says "60% of the internet is duplicate." Gary Illyes from Google posted this slide at the Google Search Central Live in Singapore the other day.