Italy's telecoms regulator AGCOM has summoned Google and Cloudflare to a September meeting to discuss strategies for combating online piracy, six months after launching its Piracy Shield blocking system. The move comes as IPTV piracy remains resilient despite new anti-piracy legislation passed in the country last year. The law introduced harsher penalties for providers and consumers of pirated content, including fines for watching pirate streams. It also granted more aggressive site-blocking powers.

Major stream suppliers appear minimally affected by overseas laws. however. AGCOM chief Massimiliano Capitanio seeks commitments from Google to limit pirate services in search results, according to TorrentFreak. The regulator also wants Cloudflare to address IPTV providers using its services to evade blocking.

Facebook's AI-generated content problem is being fueled by its own creator bonus program, according to an investigation by 404 Media. The program incentivizes users, particularly from developing countries, to flood the platform with AI-generated images for financial gain. The outlet found that influencers in India and Southeast Asia are teaching followers how to exploit Facebook's algorithms and content moderation systems to go viral with AI-generated images. Many use Microsoft's Bing Image Creator to produce bizarre, often emotive content that garners high engagement.

"The post you are seeing now is of a poor man that is being used to generate revenue," said Indian YouTuber Gyan Abhishek in a video, pointing to an AI image of an emaciated elderly man. He claimed users could earn "$100 for 1,000 likes" through Facebook's bonus program. While exact payment rates vary, 404 Media verified that consistent viral posting can lead to significant earnings for users in countries like India. Meta has defended the program to 404 Media, stating it works as intended if content meets community standards and engagement is authentic.

theodp writes: After issuing mea culpas over diversity and compensation equity issues, tech companies began to promote their K-12 CS education philanthropy initiatives as corrective measures as they sought to deflect criticism and defeat shareholder calls for greater transparency into hiring and compensation practices. In 2016, for instance, Amazon argued it was already working with tech-backed nonprofits such as Code.org, the Anita Borg Institute, and Girls Who Code to increase women's and minorities' involvement in tech as it sought the SEC's permission to block a shareholder vote on a proposal on gender pay equality. As such, it wasn't terribly surprising to see the nation's tech giants again remind the public of their K-12 CS philanthropy efforts as they recently announced quarterly earnings.

In the Addressing Racial Injustice and Inequity section of its most recent 10-K Annual Report SEC filing, Microsoft boasted, "We also expanded our Technology Education and Learning Support ("TEALS") program to reach nearly 550 high schools across 21 racial equity expansion regions with the support of nearly 1,500 volunteers, 12% of whom identify as Black or African American."

An Amazon press release claimed the company is inspiring Girl Scouts to explore the future of STEM by awarding girls aged 7-and-up a co-branded Girl Scouts and Amazon patch for attending in-person or virtual Amazon warehouse tours. "As humanity looks to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) for new ideas and discoveries," Amazon explained, "it is more important than ever to harness the unique insights, skills, and potential of girls. [..] That's why Amazon partnered with Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) to host exclusive tours [of Amazon fulfillment centers] for troops around the nation to showcase the importance and diversity of careers in STEM."

Most recently, a press release celebrated the move of Google's Code Next high school program into a lab located in the newly-rehabbed Michigan Central Station, which has thus far enrolled approximately 100 students. "Google has called Michigan home for over 15 years with offices in Detroit and Ann Arbor. We're dedicated to investing in the city and providing its students with the resources and inspiration they need to excel," said Shanika Hope, Director, Google Education and Social Impact. "We're excited to bring our Code Next program to Michigan Central, empowering Detroit's youth with computer science education to help them reach their full potential in the classroom and beyond."

Intel has announced significant progress on its 18A process technology, with lead products successfully powering on and booting operating systems. The company's Panther Lake client processor and Clearwater Forest server chip, both built on 18A, achieved these milestones less than two quarters after tape-out. The 18A node, featuring RibbonFET gate-all-around transistors and PowerVia backside power delivery, is on track for production in 2025.

Intel released the 18A Process Design Kit 1.0 in July, enabling foundry customers to leverage these advanced technologies in their designs. "Intel is out ahead of everyone else in the industry with these innovations," Kevin O'Buckley, Intel's new head of Foundry Services stated, highlighting the node's potential to drive next-generation AI solutions. Clearwater Forest will be the industry's first mass-produced, high-performance chip combining RibbonFET, PowerVia, and Foveros Direct 3D packaging technology. It also utilizes Intel's 3-T base-die technology, showcasing the company's systems foundry approach. Intel expects its first external customer to tape out on 18A in the first half of 2025. EDA and IP partners are updating their tools to support customer designs on the new node. The success of 18A is crucial for Intel's ambitions to regain process leadership and grow its foundry business.

Speaking of Google launching a new TV streaming device, the company says it's "ending production of Chromecast" after 11 years of selling the streaming dongles. From a report: Even though Chromecast devices will now be available "while supplies last," Google says it will continue to push software and security updates to its newer devices without specifying which ones. The most recent update to the lineup was the Chromecast with Google TV released in 2022.

But now, Google says "technology has evolved dramatically" since the launch of the original Chromecast in 2013. "We invested heavily in embedding Google Cast technology into millions of TV devices, including Android TV," Google writes. "We are taking the next step in evolving how streaming TV devices can add even more capabilities to your smart TV, built on top of the same Chromecast technology."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google has revealed technical details of its in-house data transfer tool, called Effingo, and bragged that it uses the project to move an average of 1.2 exabytes every day. As explained in a paper [PDF] and video to be presented on Thursday at the SIGCOMM 2024 conference in Sydney, bandwidth constraints and the stubbornly steady speed of light mean that not even Google is immune to the need to replicate data so it is located close to where it is processed or served.

Indeed, the paper describes managed data transfer as "an unsung hero of large-scale, globally-distributed systems" because it "reduces the network latency from across-globe hundreds to in-continent dozens of milliseconds." The paper also points out that data transfer tools are not hard to find, and asks why a management layer like Effingo is needed. The answer is that the tools Google could find either optimized for transfer time or handled point-to-point data streams -- and weren't up to the job of handling the 1.2 exabytes Effingo moves on an average day, at 14 terabytes per second. To shift all those bits, Effingo "balances infrastructure efficiency and users' needs" and recognizes that "some users and some transfers are more important than the others: eg, disaster recovery for a serving database, compared to migrating data from a cluster with maintenance scheduled a week from now."

Microsoft said Delta Air Lines turned down repeated offers for assistance following last month's catastrophic system outage, echoing claims by CrowdStrike in an increasingly contentious conflict between the carrier and its technology partners. From a report: Microsoft employees reached out to Delta to give technical support every day from July 19 through July 23, and "each time Delta turned down Microsoft's offers to help," according to a letter Tuesday from the technology giant's attorneys to Delta's representatives. Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella also personally emailed Delta CEO Ed Bastian and never heard back. "Even though Microsoft's software had not caused the CrowdStrike incident, Microsoft immediately jumped in and offered to assist Delta at no charge," according to the letter, which was signed by Mark Cheffo of Dechert LLP. The claims, in response to Delta's hiring of attorney David Boies, heighten the tension after Delta suggested it would try to seek compensation for a breakdown it expects to cost it $500 million this quarter. The airline was slower to recover than competitors after an errant software update from CrowdStrike affected Microsoft systems, creating a cascading effect that led Delta to cancel thousands of flights over several days.

Google today unveiled its new Google TV Streamer, a $99.99 set-top box replacing the Chromecast. The device, shipping September 24, boasts improved performance with a 22% faster processor (over its predecessor), doubled RAM, and 32GB storage. It integrates Thread and Matter for smart home control, featuring a side-panel accessible via the remote. The Streamer supports Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos and includes an Ethernet port. Design changes include a low-profile form factor in two colors and a redesigned remote with a finder function. Software enhancements use Gemini AI for content summaries and custom screensavers.

Mainframe computers, stalwarts of high-speed data processing, are finding new relevance in the age of AI. Banks, insurers, and airlines continue to rely on these industrial-strength machines for mission-critical operations, with some now exploring AI applications directly on the hardware, WSJ reported in a feature story. IBM, commanding over 96% of the mainframe market, reported 6% growth in its mainframe business last quarter. The company's latest zSystem can process up to 30,000 transactions per second and hold 40 terabytes of data. WSJ adds: Globally, the mainframe market was valued at $3.05 billion in 2023, but new mainframe sales are expected to decline through 2028, IDC said. Of existing mainframes, however, 54% of enterprise leaders in a 2023 Forrester survey said they would increase their usage over the next two years.

Mainframes do have limitations. They are constrained by the computing power within their boxes, unlike the cloud, which can scale up by drawing on computing power distributed across many locations and servers. They are also unwieldy -- with years of old code tacked on -- and don't integrate well with new applications. That makes them costly to manage and difficult to use as a platform for developing new applications.

Mozilla, the non-profit behind the Firefox browser, faces an uncertain future following Monday's landmark antitrust ruling against Google. The decision, which found Google illegally maintained its search monopoly, puts Mozilla's primary funding source at risk. In 2021-2022, Mozilla received $510 million from Google out of $593 million total revenue, according to its latest financial report. Fortune adds: You can be sure that critics of the judge's ruling will highlight the potentially devastating impact on Mozilla to make the case that the antitrust ruling will have unintended consequences on smaller tech industry players. Others might argue that Mozilla hasn't done enough with those spoils to differentiate its Firefox browser, or that it could cut a deal with another search engine like Bing if its Google deal goes away completely. Either way, Google will appeal the suit so a long battle may ensue. And there's another big domino to fall: the judge will rule on the remedy or remedies -- essentially, the business-model penalties -- that Google will face. Apple also stands to lose more than $20 billion a year that Google pays the iPhone-maker to be the default search engine on Safari. But as Fortune notes, "Apple is a large, diversified company with many sources of revenue."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Hackers delivered malware to Windows and Mac users by compromising their Internet service provider and then tampering with software updates delivered over unsecure connections, researchers said. The attack, researchers from security firm Volexity said, worked by hacking routers or similar types of device infrastructure of an unnamed ISP. The attackers then used their control of the devices to poison domain name system responses for legitimate hostnames providing updates for at least six different apps written for Windows or macOS. The apps affected were the 5KPlayer, Quick Heal, Rainmeter, Partition Wizard, and those from Corel and Sogou.

Because the update mechanisms didn't use TLS or cryptographic signatures to authenticate the connections or downloaded software, the threat actors were able to use their control of the ISP infrastructure to successfully perform machine-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks that directed targeted users to hostile servers rather than the ones operated by the affected software makers. These redirections worked even when users employed non-encrypted public DNS services such as Google's 8.8.8.8 or Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 rather than the authoritative DNS server provided by the ISP. "That is the fun/scary part -- this was not the hack of the ISPs DNS servers," Volexity CEO Steven Adair wrote in an online interview. "This was a compromise of network infrastructure for Internet traffic. The DNS queries, for example, would go to Google's DNS servers destined for 8.8.8.8. The traffic was being intercepted to respond to the DNS queries with the IP address of the attacker's servers."

In other words, the DNS responses returned by any DNS server would be changed once it reached the infrastructure of the hacked ISP. The only way an end user could have thwarted the attack was to use DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS to ensure lookup results haven't been tampered with or to avoid all use of apps that deliver unsigned updates over unencrypted connections. As an example, the 5KPlayer app uses an unsecure HTTP connection rather than an encrypted HTTPS one to check if an update is available and, if so, to download a configuration file named Youtube.config. StormBamboo, the name used in the industry to track the hacking group responsible, used DNS poisoning to deliver a malicious version of the Youtube.config file from a malicious server. This file, in turn, downloaded a next-stage payload that was disguised as a PNG image. In fact, it was an executable file that installed malware tracked under the names MACMA for macOS devices or POCOSTICK for Windows devices. As for the hacked ISP, the security firm said "it's not a huge one or one you'd likely know."

"In our case the incident is contained but we see other servers that are actively serving malicious updates but we do not know where they are being served from. We suspect there are other active attacks around the world we do not have purview into. This could be from an ISP compromise or a localized compromise to an organization such as on their firewall."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Distracted driving isn't only a result of drivers using their phones when they should be paying attention. But it is a significant cause of the problem, accounting for at least 13 percent of distracted driving deaths and rising to 1 in 5 for young drivers. Now, a study conducted with customers of the Progressive insurance company has tested different strategies to get those drivers to put their phones down in the car, and it found two that significantly reduced handheld use, with the effect persisting after the end of the study. The study recruited 1,653 customers already enrolled in its Progressive Snapshot program, which involves the use of a smartphone app that detects phone use while driving. Before the start of the trial, the participants all averaged more than 6.4 minutes per hour of handheld use while driving -- Progressive says its safest customers have handheld usage of less than 1 minute per hour while driving. [...] Paying drivers on top of competitive gamification was the most effective way to get them to put down their phones. This group reduced its handheld usage by 27.6 percent, or 89 seconds/hour, compared to the control. That reduction was maintained at the same level throughout the post-intervention period for this arm.

With Windows 10's end-of-life update coming next October, it appears that users are finally making the jump to its successor. As spotted by Neowin, Windows 11 crossed the 30% market share mark for the first time since its release. From the report: According to Statcounter's latest findings, last month, Windows 11 reached a new all-time high of 30.83%, gaining 1.08 points in just one month or 7.17 points year-over-year (it was at 23.66% in July 2023). Just as Windows 11 climbs, Windows 10 loses its market share. It is now below 65%, or 64.99%, to be precise, or -1.06 points in one month. Year-over-year change is 11.15 points (it was at 71.14% in July 2023). [...]

Other Windows versions, which are now long unsupported, still have a fair share of customers who refuse to jump-ship. Windows 7, for one, is the third most popular Windows with a 3.04% market share (+0.08 points). Windows 8.1 is fourth with 0.42% (+0.02 points), and Windows XP is fifth with 0.38% (-0.01 points).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: On July 19, Yelp informed select indie developers that they would have to switch to paid accounts, due to high API usage. Developers were given four days to make the change, in a move that echoes recent communication bungles by Reddit and Twitter. When the developers replied to the July 19 email, Yelp sent a deck of pricing tiers with base pricing starting from $229 per month for a limit of 1,000 API calls per day. Developers were concerned that other, more affordable options weren't mentioned in the deck. Yelp said the pricing is equivalent and simply presented in different ways. The method of communication and lack of transparency has angered developers, some of whom shuttered their services, even after Yelp gave them a 90-day leeway and apologized. While the company has issued an apology email to developers and extended their free usage by 90 days, it may not be enough to keep these frustrated developers from moving to new platforms.

"We apologize for last week's abbreviated transition that impacted a small percentage of developers and have extended access to these users," a company spokesperson told TechCrunch. "Yelp sunsetted free, commercial, unlimited use of the Yelp Fusion API in 2019 and has been in the process of migrating developers to a paid program over the last several years. The developer community is important to Yelp, and we've heard their feedback about the transition period from the free Yelp Fusion API to our paid program."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Indonesia said it has banned the privacy-oriented search engine DuckDuckGo, citing concerns that it could be used to access pornography and online gambling websites which are illegal in the country, the communications ministry said on Friday. Indonesia, with the world's biggest Muslim population, has strict rules that ban the sharing online of content deemed obscene. Social media platform Reddit and video-hosting platform Vimeo are blocked.

Usman Kansong, a communications ministry official, told Reuters that DuckDuckGo had been blocked "because of the many complaints made to us about the rampant online gambling and pornography content in its search results." The ministry did not say how DuckDuckGo differs from other search engines such as Alphabet's Google but on its website, DuckDuckGo said it offered several products intended to "help people protect their online privacy" including the search engine, which it said has been praised by privacy advocates.

Google's payments to make its search engine the default on smartphone web browsers violates US antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Monday, handing a key victory to the Justice Department. From a report: Judge Amit Mehta in Washington said that the Alphabet unit's $26 billion in payments effectively blocked any other competitor from succeeding in the market. Antitrust enforcers alleged that Google has illegally maintained a monopoly over online search and related advertising. The government said that Google has paid Apple, Samsung and others billions over decades for prime placement on smartphones and web browsers. This default position has allowed Google to build up the most-used search engine in the world, and fueled more than $300 billion in annual revenue largely generated by search ads.

Nvidia scraped videos from YouTube, Netflix and other online platforms to compile training data for its AI products, 404 Media reported Monday, citing internal documents. The tech giant used this content to develop various AI projects, including its Omniverse 3D world generator and self-driving car systems, the report said. Some employees expressed concerns about potential legal issues surrounding the use of such content, the report said, adding that the management assured them of executive-level approval. Nvidia defended its actions, asserting they were "in full compliance with the letter and the spirit of copyright law" and emphasizing that copyright protects specific expressions rather than facts or ideas.

CrowdStrike says that it isn't to blame for Delta Air Lines' dayslong meltdown following the tech outage caused by the cybersecurity company, and that it isn't responsible for all of the money that the carrier says it lost. From a report: In a letter responding to the airline's recent public comments and hiring of a prominent lawyer, CrowdStrike said Delta's threats of a lawsuit have contributed to a "misleading narrative" that the cybersecurity company was responsible for the airline's tech decisions and response to the outage. "Should Delta pursue this path, Delta will have to explain to the public, its shareholders, and ultimately a jury why CrowdStrike took responsibility for its actions -- swiftly, transparently, and constructively -- while Delta did not," wrote Michael Carlinsky, an attorney at law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.

The letter to Delta's legal team Sunday evening is the latest move in a growing conflict between the cybersecurity firm and the airline, which was thrown into several days of disarray following the outage. Delta Chief Executive Ed Bastian said in an interview on CNBC last week that the outage cost the airline about $500 million, including lost revenue and compensation costs. The airline has alerted CrowdStrike and Microsoft that it is planning to pursue legal claims to recover its losses, and has hired litigation firm Boies Schiller Flexner to assist, according to a memo Bastian sent to Delta employees last week. CrowdStrike said Sunday that its liability is contractually capped at an amount in the "single-digit millions."

Charles Schwab and other retail brokerage users reported outages as a global stocks selloff surged when trading in the US market opened on Monday. From a report: More than 14,000 users reported an outage at Schwab at 9:50 a.m. in New York, according to the website Downdetector. The outage comes at a time when global financial markets are experiencing a significant downturn as a widespread sell-off intensified following Friday's disappointing US employment data, which heightened concerns about a potential recession in the world's largest economy. The turbulence was particularly pronounced in Asian markets, with Japanese stocks leading the decline, while cryptocurrencies, oil prices, and European equities also suffered losses. The volatility spread to the US, where stocks plummeted at the opening bell, and the yield curve briefly inverted as investors increased their bets on imminent Federal Reserve interest rate cuts.

OpenAI has developed a sophisticated anticheating tool for detecting AI-generated content, particularly essays and research papers, but has refrained from releasing it due to internal debates and ethical considerations, according to WSJ.

This tool, which has been ready for deployment for approximately a year, utilizes a watermarking technique that subtly alters token selection in ChatGPT's output, creating an imperceptible pattern detectable only by OpenAI's technology. While boasting a 99.9% effectiveness rate for substantial AI-generated text, concerns persist regarding potential workarounds and the challenge of determining appropriate access to the detection tool, as well as its potential impact on non-native English speakers and the broader AI ecosystem.