Google, Facebook, Telegram, LinkedIn and Tiger Global-backed Indian startups ShareChat and Koo have either fully or partially complied with the South Asian nation's new IT rules, TechCrunch reported Friday, citing two people familiar with the matter and a government note. From a report: India's new IT rules, unveiled in February this year, require firms to appoint and share contact details of representatives tasked with compliance, nodal point of reference and grievance redressals to address on-ground concerns. The aforementioned firms have complied with this requirement, the government note and a person familiar with the matter said. The firms were required to comply with the new IT rules by this week. Twitter has yet to comply with the rules. "Twitter sent a communication late last night, sharing details of a lawyer working in a law firm in India as their Nodal Contact Person and Grievance Officer," a note prepared by New Delhi said, adding that the rules require the aforementioned officials to be direct employees.

Alphabet's Google is nearing a settlement of an antitrust case in France alleging the company has abused its power in online advertising, and is likely to pay a fine and make operational changes, WSJ reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter said. From the report: The French case is one of the most advanced in the world looking at Google's dominance as a provider of tools for buying and selling ads across the web. As part of the case, France's Competition Authority alleged that the company's advertising server -- historically known as DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) and used by most large online publishers to sell ad space -- gave Google's online ad auction house, AdX, an advantage against other auction operators, the people said.

The authority also alleged other forms of self-preferencing between Google's advertising technology tools, they added. To settle the French charges, Google has offered to improve the interoperability of AdX with advertising servers run by other companies, as well as to remove some other obstacles faced by competitors, some of the people said. The settlement still must be approved by the authority's board, which could reject the deal, the people said. If approved, the settlement could be announced in coming weeks, they said.

The global shortage of semiconductor chips could last three to six months, Logitech Chief Executive Bracken Darrell told Swiss newspaper Finanz und Wirtschaft, with some industries facing shortages of up to a year. From a report: "Like others we have felt the shortages, but we have been able to cushion them well," Darrell said in an article published on Friday. "It takes time to ramp up production but in the meantime, prices have also adjusted."

Google has shipped a new JavaScript compiler for its V8 JavaScript engine in Chrome called Sparkplug that promises a much faster web experience -- and it does it by 'cheating', according to the engineers on the project. From a report: Sparkplug is part of Chrome 91, which Google released on Tuesday with security updates but also some key changes under the hood that improve its powerful JavaScript engine, V8. Microsoft relies on V8 these days too after ditching its Chakra JavaScript engine from legacy Edge and moving to Chromium for the new Edge browser and switching to V8. Google says Chrome 91 has 23% faster performance thanks to Sparkplug's integration into V8's JavaScript pipeline.

The hackers behind one of the worst data breaches ever to hit the US government have launched a new global cyberattack on more than 150 government agencies, think tanks and other organizations, according to Microsoft. ytene shares a report: The group, which Microsoft calls "Nobelium," targeted 3,000 email accounts at various organizations this week -- most of which were in the United States, the company said in a blog post Thursday. It believes the hackers are part of the same Russian group behind last year's devastating attack on SolarWinds -- a software vendor -- that targeted at least nine US federal agencies and 100 companies.

Cybersecurity has been a major focus for the US government following the revelations that hackers had put malicious code into a tool published by SolarWinds. A ransomware attack that shut down one of America's most important pieces of energy infrastructure -- the Colonial Pipeline -- earlier this month has only heightened the sense of alarm. That attack was carried out by a criminal group originating in Russia, according to the FBI. Microsoft said that at least a quarter of the targets of this week's attacks were involved in international development, humanitarian, and human rights work, across at least 24 countries. It said Nobelium launched the attack by gaining access to a Constant Contact email marketing account used by the US Agency for International Development.

Australian security researcher Troy Hunt announced today that he granted the US Federal Bureau of Investigation a direct line to upload new content into Have I Been Pwned, a website that indexes data from security breaches. From a report: The HIBP creator said that when the FBI discovers password collections during their investigations, they will upload the data into a section of the site called Pwned Passwords. The FBI will provide passwords as SHA-1 and NTLM hashes and not in plain text. No user personal details will be provided, but only the password hashes. The passwords will be added to Pwned Passwords, a collection of more than 613 million leaked passwords. While the main HIBP website allows users to search if their emails, names, or usernames have been leaked online in past security breaches, Pwned Passwords is a smaller and more specialized component of the HIBP site that tells users if a password string has ever been leaked online, without attaching the password to any user details.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: [According to an article yesterday by Stop the Gap] Charter charges $20 more per month for slower speeds on the street where it faces no serious competition. When customers in two areas purchase the same speeds, the customer on the street without competition could have to pay $40 more per month and would have their promotional rates expire after only one year instead of two. [...] "Charter's offers are address-sensitive," Stop the Cap founder Phillip Dampier wrote. "The cable company knows its competition and almost exactly where those competitors offer service. That is why the company asks for your service address before it quotes you pricing."

Dampier found that Charter offers 200Mbps service for $50 a month "[i]n neighborhoods where Spectrum enjoys a broadband monopoly." Charter charges $70 for 400Mbps service in those same competition-free neighborhoods. But "[j]ust one street away, where Greenlight offers customers the option of gigabit speed over a fiber-to-the-home network, Spectrum's promotional prices are quite different," Dampier wrote. On the competitive street, Charter charges only $30 a month for the same 400Mbps service that costs $70 nearby. As previously noted, customers on the noncompetitive street have to pay $50 for 200Mbps. "Spectrum does not even bother offering new customers its entry-level 200Mbps plan in areas where it has significant fiber competition," Dampier noted, referring to the promotional offers that pop up when you type in an address. "For $20 less per month, you get double that speed." For gigabit-download service, Charter charges $90 a month on the competitive street versus $110 on the noncompetitive street. These are the base prices without fees and taxes.

Charter also offers to lock in the monthly rate for two years in the competitive area, compared to just one year in the noncompetitive area. And that's not all. Charter "charges a hefty $199.99 compulsory installation fee for gigabit service in noncompetitive neighborhoods. Where fiber competition exists, sometimes just a street away, that installation fee plummets to just $49.99," Dampier wrote. He added: "Note similar pricing variability exists in Spectrum service areas around the country, with the most aggressively priced offers reserved for addresses also served by a fiber-to-the-home provider or multiple competitors (e.g., cable company, phone company, Google Fiber or other [competitor]). Current customers typically have to cancel existing service and sign up as a new customer to get these prices." In a statement to Ars, Charter said that "Spectrum Internet retail prices, speeds, and features are consistent in each market -- regardless of the competitive environment." But, as Ars notes, "retail prices" are the standard rates customers pay after promotional rates expire. Stop the Cap showed that Charter's promotional rates vary between competitive and noncompetitive areas.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The wearables category of consumer devices -- which includes smartwatches, fitness trackers, and augmented reality glasses -- shipped more than 100 million units in the first quarter for the first time, according to research firm IDC. Q2 2021 saw a 34.4 percent increase in sales over the same quarter in 2020. To be clear: wearables have sold that many (and more) units in a quarter before, but never in the first quarter, which tends to be a slow period following a spree of holiday-related buying in Q4.

According to IDC's data, Apple leads the market by a significant margin, presumably thanks to the Apple Watch. In Q1 2021, Apple had a market share of 28.8 percent. Samsung sat in a distant second at 11.3 percent, followed by Xiaomi at 9.7 percent and Huawei at 8.2. From there, it's a steep drop to the smaller players -- like BoAt, which has a market share of just 2.9 percent. However, analysts say upstarts or smaller companies like BoAt are driving the significant year-over-year growth for wearables. IDC's report says that the fastest growth comes from form factors besides smartwatches, such as digitally connected rings, audio glasses, and wearable patches. This grab-bag subcategory within wearables, which the IDC simply classifies as "other," actually grew 55 percent year-over-year.

Rei_is_a_dumbass shares a report from The Verge: Elon Musk's Boring Company started shuttling passengers through the twin tunnels it built underneath the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) this week, as part of a test to get the system ready for its full debut in June. Videos, images, and accounts shared around the internet by the people who showed up for the test offer the most coherent glimpse yet at Musk's solution for traversing the LVCC campus. It is quite literally just Teslas being driven through two 0.8-mile tunnels -- a far cry from the autonomous sled-and-shuttle ideas that Musk once proposed for The Boring Company.

The Boring Company says the Loop will ultimately turn a 45-minute walk into a two-minute ride, though it's not down to that level of efficiency yet (hence the test). In one video, one of the test riders said they had to wait about three to five minutes for a few of the rides, though even with a top speed of around 40 miles per hour, trips between stations appear to have taken about a minute to a minute-and-a-half. One of the things increasing that total travel time was the underground station. There were times when test riders pulled into the station only to run into some congestion. The drivers have to maneuver around other parked Teslas, people getting in and out, and cars queueing up to reenter the tunnels. It's a tight fit. There was also just some general confusion as people got used to how the system worked.

A coalition of internet accountability groups is warning the Biden administration against including liability protections for tech companies in future trade agreements, saying that could hamstring efforts to hold platforms responsible for user content. From a report: In a letter sent to President Joe Biden on Thursday, the organizations said including a legal shield in trade deals like the 2018 U.S.-Mexico-Canada accord "reflects a broad effort by the big tech platforms to use 'trade negotiations' to limit domestic policy options."

The letter was signed by 16 public interest groups focused on issues such as civil rights, democracy and the market power of tech platforms, including Public Citizen, Color of Change and the Center for Digital Democracy. The coalition came together as the advocates observed how a ratified trade deal could bake in -- and export -- increasingly controversial legal protections for internet companies, said Morgan Harper, a policy director at the American Economic Liberties Project, which also signed the letter. The groups are "sounding the alarm about this tactic by Big Tech to undermine the inevitability of domestic regulation that's coming their way," Harper said. "We expect that this will be a priority for the Biden administration."

Late 2019, Internet provider Cox Communications lost its legal battle against a group of major record labels. Now it's appealing it. From a report: Following a two-week trial, a Virginia jury held Cox liable for its pirating subscribers. The ISP failed to disconnect repeat infringers and was ordered to pay $1 billion in damages. Heavily disappointed by the decision, Cox later asked the court to set the jury verdict aside and decide the issue directly. In addition, the company argued that the "shockingly excessive" damages should be lowered. Both requests were denied by the court, which upheld the original damages award.

Despite the setbacks, Cox isn't giving up. The company believes that the district court's ruling isn't just a disaster for Internet providers. If it stands, the verdict will have dramatic consequences for the general public as well. This week the ISP submitted its opening brief at the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, hoping to reverse the lower court's judgment. The filing begins by placing the lawsuit in a historical context. "The music industry is waging war on the internet," Cox's lawyers write. First, the music companies went after thousands of file-sharers and software companies such as Napster. When those tactics didn't deliver the desired result, Internet providers became a target.

Two tech industry organizations are suing Florida over its newly passed rules for social networks, claiming it violates private companies' constitutional rights. The Verge reports: SB 7072, which Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed earlier this week, restricts how large social apps and websites can moderate user-generated content. It makes banning any Florida political candidate or "journalistic enterprise" unlawful, lets users sue if they believe they were banned without sufficient reason, requires an option to "opt out" of sorting algorithms, and places companies that break the law on an "antitrust violator blacklist" that bars them from doing business with public entities in Florida. Notably, it includes an exception for companies that operate a theme park.

NetChoice and the CCIA say SB 7072 conflicts with both constitutional protections and federal Section 230 rules. "As private businesses, Plaintiffs' members have the right to decide what content is appropriate for their sites and platforms," their complaint says. "The Act requires members to display and prioritize user-generated content that runs counter to their terms, policies, and business practices; content that will likely offend and repel their users and advertisers; and even content that is unlawful, dangerous to public health and national security, and grossly inappropriate for younger audiences." The lawsuit claims Florida lawmakers and DeSantis specifically tailored the law to punish services whose moderation policies they disagreed with, while adding the arbitrary theme park exception to pacify Disney, Comcast NBCUniversal, and a handful of other big companies.

The Indonesian government has blocked access inside its borders to Raid Forums, a well-known cybercrime hub, in an attempt to limit the spread of a sensitive data leak. From a report: The ban, which the government wants internet service providers to implement, comes after a threat actor claimed in a Raid Forums post on May 12 to be in possession and selling the personal data of 279 million Indonesians. The threat actor, an individual known as Kotz, leaked a sample of one million citizens' details to prove their claims. The leaked data included citizen names, national ID numbers, tax registration information, mobile phone numbers, and for some citizens also came with headshots and salary-related information.

Twitter called the visit by police to its Indian offices on Monday a form of intimidation in its first public comments on the matter. From a report: The social network reiterated its commitment to India as a vital market, but signaled its growing concern about the government's recent actions and potential threats to freedom of expression that may result. The company also joined other international businesses and organizations in criticizing new IT rules and regulations that it said "inhibit free, open public conversation." Twitter will continue its dialog with the Indian government for a collaborative approach, while also advocating for change to the regulations.

The San Francisco-based company has disagreed with local government officials on a number of fronts, deeming some enforcement orders to be improper curbs on free speech. Most recently, Twitter marked several posts by accounts associated with India's ruling party as containing manipulated media -- they purported to show a strategy document from the opposition party whose authenticity has been disputed -- which prompted the police visit to its offices late Monday.

A team of Google security researchers said they discovered a new way to perform Rowhammer attacks against computer memory (RAM) cards that broaden the attack's initial impact. From a report: First detailed in 2014, Rowhammer was a ground-breaking attack that exploited the design of modern RAM cards, where memory cells are stored in grid-like arrangements. The basic principle behind Rowhammer was that a malicious app could perform rapid read/write operations on a row of memory cells. As the cells would shift their values from 0 to 1 and vice versa in a very small time window, this would generate small electromagnetic fields inside the row of "hammered" memory cells. The result of these fields were errors in nearby memory rows that sometimes flipped bits and altered adjacent data. [...] In a research paper published this week, a team of five Google security researchers took Rowhammer attacks to a new level. In a new attack variation named Half-Double, researchers said they managed to carry out a Rowhammer attack that caused bit flips at a distance of two rows from the âoehammeredâ row instead of just one.

Facebook has ended its ban on posts asserting Covid-19 was man-made or manufactured, a policy shift that reflects a deepening debate over the origins of the pandemic that was first identified in Wuhan, China, almost 18 months ago. An anonymous reader shares a report: The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that three researchers from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report. "In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps," Facebook said in a statement on its website Wednesday. President Biden on Wednesday ordered a U.S. intelligence inquiry into the origins of the virus. The White House has come under pressure to conduct its own investigation after China told the World Health Organization that it considered Beijing's part of the investigation complete, calling for efforts to trace the virus's origins to shift into other countries.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the San Francisco Chronicle: After more than three years of negotiations, San Jose officials voted late Tuesday to approve Google's plan for a sprawling downtown campus with thousands of new homes, millions of square feet of office space and a first-of-its kind $200 million community benefit agreement. It's a deal that business, labor and community groups say could signal a shift in Bay Area development politics -- particularly as San Jose, long overshadowed by neighboring San Francisco, looks to rebound from the pandemic with more active public spaces near transit. But in a region long accustomed to isolated suburban tech campuses and big-dollar affordable housing commitments, some still questioned how exactly a $155 million community fund will be spent, and whether it will be enough to offset familiar concerns about gentrification, homelessness and daily issues like parking.

With the vote on Tuesday, Google can move forward with an80-acre development plan near San Jose's central rail hub at Diridon Station, including 4,000 new homes, more than 7 million square feet of office space, 15 acres of parks and 500,000 square feet of retail and other space. Under a community benefit deal approved earlier this year, the company also agreed to create a $155 million community stabilization fund for job training, homelessness and affordable housing. It's unprecedented for a Bay Area tech campus -- and a stark contrast to tech peers like Amazon and Tesla, which have at times asked governments to compete for business by cutting costs -- as well as developers from other industries where community concessions are not the norm. Before the coronavirus upended daily commutes, Google planned for up to 25,000 workers to occupy the new San Jose office. The company has since announced that some of its global workforce will shift to remote roles, but the city hopes that the proposed "Downtown West" neighborhood around the new offices will help buoy lively public spaces. "A Google spokesman said the company will soon transfer land to the city for planned affordable housing development," the report says. "It aims to start construction work in 2022 and plans to transfer an initial $3 million to the city within 30 days of approval of the project, the spokesman said. In the meantime, the San Jose City Council will be tasked with appointing a new committee to oversee the $155 million community fund."

Facebook rejected two proposals intended to diminish Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg's control over the company, an expected though disappointing outcome for those worried about the CEO's power. From a report: The board Wednesday turned down a proposal to replace Zuckerberg as chairman with an independent representative. Zuckerberg, who has served as chairman since 2012, controls about 58% of the voting shares, according to a regulatory filing. During Facebook's annual meeting, the board also rejected a proposal to eliminate the special class of super-voting shares that gives Zuckerberg a controlling stake in the company. Under the plan, investors would have been awarded one vote per share. The Zuckerberg-controlled board has rejected similar motions in years past. While not surprising, the votes are likely to frustrate shareholders who argue Zuckerberg has too much power at a time Facebook needs more independent oversight to address its regulatory threats, privacy scandals and public controversies.

The EU is said to be on the brink of opening a formal antitrust investigation into Facebook following complaints from rivals about the platform's classified ads business. From a report: Regulators have already sent questions to Facebook and its competitors asking whether the social media site distorted the classified ads market by promoting its Marketplace services for free to its 2bn users. Facebook Marketplace, which launched in 2016, allows users to buy and sell goods to each other without fees. It is used by 800m Facebook users in 70 countries. The European Commission first started looking at the platform in 2019, asking companies whether they considered Marketplace as a close rival and how many visits to their sites came from ads placed on Facebook's platform. Classified ads rivals are said to have complained that Facebook used its market power to gain an advantage.

New stricter European Union guidelines will push Facebook, Google and other big tech companies to commit not to make money from advertising linked to disinformation. From a report: The European Commission said on Wednesday that its strengthened non-binding guidelines, which confirmed a May 19 Reuters report, set out a robust monitoring framework and clear performance indicators for firms to comply with. read more Concerns about the impact of disinformation have intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic and after claims about election fraud in the United States, with some critics pointing to the role of social media and tech giants in spreading it.

"Disinformation cannot remain a source of revenue. We need to see stronger commitments by online platforms, the entire advertising ecosystem and networks of fact-checkers," EU industry chief Thierry Breton said in a statement. "We need online platforms and other players to address the systemic risks of their services and algorithmic amplification, stop policing themselves alone and stop allowing to make money on disinformation, while fully preserving the freedom of speech," she said. Signatories to the code, which was introduced in 2018, include Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Mozilla, TikTok and some advertising and tech lobbying groups.