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Google has filed an antitrust complaint in Brussels against Microsoft, alleging its Big Tech rival engages in unfair cloud computing practices that has led to a reduction in choice and an increase in prices.

The US search giant has accused Microsoft of leveraging its Windows software to lock customers into its Azure cloud services, preventing them from easily switching to alternatives.

In a complaint sent to the European Commission, a summary of which was seen by the Financial Times, Google said Microsoft is “exploiting” its customers’ reliance on products such as its Windows software by imposing “steep penalties” on using rival cloud providers.

Following a monthslong battle over CEO Anne Wojcicki’s plans to take 23andMe private, all seven independent members of its board resigned en masse Tuesday.

The move is almost certainly the final nail in the coffin for the embattled company known for its mail-order DNA-testing kit. Since going public via merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in 2021, 23andMe has never turned a profit. Its price on IPO day was $10; so far in 2024, it has yet to reach a $1 valuation. Following the resignation of all its independent directors Tuesday, the stock fell to its rock bottom: $0.30. (As of midday Wednesday, it’s back to $0.36.)

The following Macs are now classified as vintage:

MacBook Air (Retina, 13-inch, 2018) MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, 2 Thunderbolt 3 Ports) MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2018, 4 Thunderbolt 3 Ports) The following Macs are now classified as obsolete:

MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2016) MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2015) MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, 2 Thunderbolt 3 Ports) MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, 4 Thunderbolt 3 Ports) MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016) MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2015) iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, Late 2015) iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015) Apple considers a device to be "vintage" once more than five years have passed since the company stopped distributing it for sale. Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers can continue to offer repairs for vintage products for up to two additional years, but only if Apple still has repair parts available for the device.

Every time one of these fake-news jerks gets caught posting phony AI-generated “best lists,” Uncle Sam is free to slap them with a bill for $51,744 per violation.

And lest the wanna-be bullies of public relations (like those called out in a 2021 Mother Jones’ barnburner Amazon exposé) feel left out, the FTC now has a little section of rules just for them, barring product review suppression.

Per the ruling, that means it’s a violation for “anyone to use an unfounded or groundless legal threat, a physical threat, intimidation, or a public false accusation in response to a consumer review… to (1) prevent a review or any portion thereof from being written or created, or (2) cause a review or any portion thereof to be removed, whether or not that review or a portion thereof is replaced with other content.”

Finally, in case any slimeballs out there forgot, the FTC reminded them that independent consumer advocacy journalism isn’t for sale. The rule makes it a violation for a business to “provide compensation or other incentives in exchange for, or conditioned expressly or by implication on, the writing or creation of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment, whether positive or negative, regarding the product, service or business.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation on Monday giving California school districts two years to begin banning or restricting cellphone use during school hours, an initiative that is intended to address rising concerns over social media and children’s mental health.

The Phone-Free Schools Act, which will require schools in the nation’s most populous state to restrict cellphones by July 1, 2026, is the latest statewide effort to curb phone use by children in classrooms. More than a dozen states in a little more than a year already have passed restrictions, including Louisiana, Indiana and Florida.

in an important sense, society itself is a form of advanced intelligence. Our grandparents – and the generations that came before them – built and achieved great things. They contributed to the scaffolding of human progress that we all benefit from. AI will give people tools to solve hard problems and help us add new struts to that scaffolding that we couldn’t have figured out on our own. The story of progress will continue, and our children will be able to do things we can’t.

It won’t happen all at once, but we’ll soon be able to work with AI that helps us accomplish much more than we ever could without AI; eventually we can each have a personal AI team, full of virtual experts in different areas, working together to create almost anything we can imagine. Our children will have virtual tutors who can provide personalized instruction in any subject, in any language, and at whatever pace they need. We can imagine similar ideas for better healthcare, the ability to create any kind of software someone can imagine, and much more.

In fact, Chipzilla may not be worth much to Qualcomm unless it can renegotiate the x86/x86-64 cross-licensing patent agreement between Intel and AMD, which dates back to 2009. That agreement is terminated if a change in control happens at either Intel or AMD. There are also prior pacts between AMD and Intel.

While a number of the aforementioned patents expired in 2021, it's our understanding that agreement is still in force and Qualcomm would be subject to change of control rules. In other words, Qualcomm wouldn't be able to produce Intel-designed x86-64 chips unless AMD gave the green light. It's also likely one of the reasons why no one bought AMD when it was on the ropes; whoever took over it would have to deal with Intel.

The epitome of this is blue zones, which are regions where people supposedly reach age 100 at a remarkable rate. For almost 20 years, they have been marketed to the public. They’re the subject of tons of scientific work, a popular Netflix documentary, tons of cookbooks about things like the Mediterranean diet, and so on.

Okinawa in Japan is one of these zones. There was a Japanese government review in 2010, which found that 82% of the people aged over 100 in Japan turned out to be dead. The secret to living to 110 was, don’t register your death.

A senior Google executive sought to refute the US Justice Department’s antitrust case over its display advertising technology business, testifying that it faces “fierce competition” from the likes of Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc.

But the federal judge overseeing the trial in Virginia called the testimony “highly questionable” and potentially “tainted” given that Google officials had known about antitrust concerns over the ad tools since the US opened its probe in 2019.

The bill, which will take effect Jan. 1, 2027, with Newsom’s signature, prohibits internet service and applications from providing “addictive feeds,” defined as media curated based on information gathered on or provided by the user, to minors without parental consent. SB 976 also bans companies from sending notifications to users identified as minors between midnight and 6 a.m. or during the school day from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. unless parents give the OK.

The bill will effectively require companies to make posts from people children know and follow appear in chronological order on their social media feeds instead of in an arrangement to maximize engagement. Proponents of the bill point to warnings from U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and others about a mental health crisis among youths, which studies show is exacerbated by the use of social media.

“As a mother, I’m proud of California’s continued leadership in holding technology companies accountable for their products and ensuring those products are not harmful to children. Thank you to the Governor and Senator Skinner for taking a critical step in protecting children and ensuring their safety is prioritized over companies’ profits,” Siebel Newsom said.

The industry has argued that it’s false to assume that feeds curated by an algorithm are harmful but that a chronological feed is safe. The ACLU also argued that age verification creates potential privacy concerns because it could require the collection of additional user data that could be at risk in a security breach and because it could threaten the 1st Amendment rights of people who cannot verify their age.

Mr. Ive’s city block model offered part of the answer. Over the past four years, the British designer, whose wealth is estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars, has quietly accumulated nearly $90 million worth of real estate on a single city block. The purchases began early in the pandemic, at a time when many tech luminaries were fleeing San Francisco. Mr. Ive found the exodus noxious.

“I owe the city so much,” said Mr. Ive, who moved to San Francisco in the 1990s. “The area had attracted so many people because of its talent, but as soon as things stopped working out, people were leaving.”

Chip giant Qualcomm made a takeover approach to rival Intel INTC 3.31%increase; green up pointing triangle in recent days, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be one of the largest and most consequential deals in recent years.

A deal for Intel, which has a market value of roughly $90 billion, would come as the chip maker has been suffering through one of the most significant crises in its five-decade history.

A deal is far from certain, the people cautioned. Even if Intel is receptive, a deal of that size is all but certain to attract antitrust scrutiny, though it is also possible it could be seen as an opportunity to strengthen the U.S.’s competitive edge in chips. To get the deal done, Qualcomm could intend to sell assets or parts of Intel to other buyers.

In his complaint, Christopher Kohls—who is known as "Mr Reagan" on YouTube and X (formerly Twitter)—said that he was suing "to defend all Americans’ right to satirize politicians." He claimed that California laws, AB 2655 and AB 2839, were urgently passed after X owner Elon Musk shared a partly AI-generated parody video on the social media platform that Kohls created to "lampoon" presidential hopeful Kamala Harris.

AB 2655, known as the "Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act," prohibits creating "with actual malice" any "materially deceptive audio or visual media of a candidate for elective office with the intent to injure the candidate’s reputation or to deceive a voter into voting for or against the candidate, within 60 days of the election." It requires social media platforms to block or remove any reported deceptive material and label "certain additional content" deemed "inauthentic, fake, or false" to prevent election interference.

The other law at issue, AB 2839, titled "Elections: deceptive media in advertisements," bans anyone from "knowingly distributing an advertisement or other election communication" with "malice" that "contains certain materially deceptive content" within 120 days of an election in California and, in some cases, within 60 days after an election.

Both bills were signed into law on September 17, and Kohls filed his complaint that day, alleging that both must be permanently blocked as unconstitutional.

ngineers at NASA have successfully fired up a set of thrusters Voyager 1 hasn’t used in decades to solve an issue that could keep the 47-year-old spacecraft from communicating with Earth from billions of miles away.

When Voyager 1 lifted off to space on September 5, 1977, no one expected that the probe would still be operating today.

As a result of its exceptionally long-lived mission, Voyager 1 experiences issues as its parts age in the frigid outer reaches beyond our solar system. When an issue crops up, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have to get creative while still being careful of how the spacecraft will react to any changes.

Currently the farthest spacecraft from Earth, Voyager 1 is about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away. The probe operates beyond the heliosphere — the sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends well beyond Pluto’s orbit — where its instruments directly sample interstellar space.

Earlier this year, engineers spotted an issue when the fuel tube inside one of Voyager’s thrusters became clogged. If the thrusters are clogged, they can’t generate as much force to keep the spacecraft steady. Voyager’s thrusters keep the spacecraft oriented in a way that it can communicate with Earth.

If Voyager 1 isn’t positioned in such a way so that its antenna is pointed at Earth, the spacecraft can’t “hear” commands from mission control or send back data, according to Calla Cofield, media relations specialist at JPL.

“If the thrusters that keep the antenna pointed at Earth get clogged, that would be end of mission,” she said.

On Monday, Apple released its latest computer operating system update called macOS 15, or Sequoia. And, somehow, the software update has broken the functionality of several security tools made by CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Microsoft, and others, according to posts on social media, as well as messages posted in a Mac-focused Slack channel.

At this point, it’s unclear exactly what is the issue, but appears to affect several products made by companies that provide software for macOS users and enterprises, which has caused frustration among people who work on and with macOS-focused security tools.

Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered Elon Musk’s X to restore a block on its site in the country or face daily fines after the social media network managed to evade restrictions through a software update.

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has been sparring with Musk for months, ordered the platform pay a financial penalty of 5 million reais ($922,250) per day that X remained accessible in Brazil, accusing it in an order published Thursday of attempting to “disobey” the court’s decision to ban the site.