Google is exploring an alternative to Apple's new anti-tracking feature, the latest sign that the internet industry is slowly embracing user privacy, Bloomberg is reporting, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: Internally, the search giant is discussing how it can limit data collection and cross-app tracking on the Android operating system in a way that is less stringent than Apple's solution, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private plans. Google is trying to balance the rising demands of privacy-conscious consumers with the financial needs of developers and advertisers. The Alphabet unit is seeking input from these stakeholders, similar to how it's slowly developing a new privacy standard for web browsing called the Privacy Sandbox. With more than $100 billion in annual digital ad sales, Google has a vested interest in helping partners to continue generating revenue by targeting ads to Android device users and measuring the performance of those marketing spots. "We're always looking for ways to work with developers to raise the bar on privacy while enabling a healthy, ad-supported app ecosystem," a Google spokesman said in a statement.

[...] A Google solution is likely to be less strict and won't require a prompt to opt in to data tracking like Apple's, the people said. The exploration into an Android alternative to Apple's feature is still in the early stages, and Google hasn't decided when, or if, it will go ahead with the changes. On the iPhone, Google offers developers a framework so they can monetize their apps using Google ads. In a recent blog post, Google said Apple's ad-tracking update means developers "may see a significant impact" on their ad revenue. To keep advertisers happy while improving privacy, the discussions around Google's Android solution indicate that it could be similar to its planned Chrome web browser changes, the people said. Further reading: Google's iOS Apps Haven't Been Updated in Weeks. Could Apple's Privacy Labels Be the Reason?
Facebook Warns Advertisers on Apple Privacy Changes
Apple's Tim Cook Criticizes Social Media Practices, Intensifying Facebook Conflict
Facebook Looks To Take its Fight With Apple To Court.

More than two dozen Dropbox employees say they've witnessed or experienced gender discrimination at the company, an investigation by news outlet VentureBeat has found. From a report: In December 2020, a source familiar with the matter sent VentureBeat a document containing anonymous interviews with 16 current and former Dropbox employees who allege gender discrimination at the cloud computing company. The report alleging discrimination began circulating internally after its author sent it to Dropbox employees throughout North America on December 9. Compiled by a former Dropbox researcher, the report was not commissioned by Dropbox executives and is strongly contested by the company. "When I first read the email, when the report was sent out, I started crying," Source 1, who said she had experienced discrimination with regard to promotion at Dropbox, told VentureBeat. "I was frustrated and almost livid that so many other people were experiencing it, too. I really hoped that my personal experience was a one-off, and it was jarring and really upsetting to see so many things that could have been my story." The subjects of the report alleging discrimination point to examples such as "changing standards for promotions, unequal compensation, being set back in their careers after maternity leave, and experiencing retribution when they take their cases to HR." The report also detailed instances of alleged harassment and demotion after employees filed a complaint with Dropbox HR or returned to work following maternity leave. Internal communications VentureBeat obtained indicate that more than a dozen Dropbox employees agreed with the report's conclusions.

Planned legislation to establish new business areas in Nevada would allow technology companies to effectively form separate local governments. From a report: Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak announced a plan to launch so-called Innovation Zones in Nevada to jumpstart the state's economy by attracting technology firms, Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Wednesday. The zones would permit companies with large areas of land to form governments carrying the same authority as counties, including the ability to impose taxes, form school districts and courts and provide government services. The measure to further economic development with the "alternative form of local government" has not yet been introduced in the Legislature. Sisolak pitched the concept in his State of the State address delivered Jan. 19. The plan would bring in new businesses at the forefront of "groundbreaking technologies" without the use of tax abatements or other publicly funded incentive packages that previously helped Nevada attract companies like Tesla. Sisolak named Blockchains, LLC as a company that had committed to developing a "smart city" in an area east of Reno after the legislation has passed.

Three Democratic U.S. senators introduced a bill that would limit Section 230, a law that shields online companies from liability over content posted by users, and make the companies more accountable when posts result in harm. From a report: Called the SAFE TECH Act, the bill would mark the latest effort to make social media companies like Alphabet's Google, Twitter and Facebook more accountable for "enabling cyber-stalking, targeted harassment, and discrimination on their platforms," Senators Mark Warner, Mazie Hirono and Amy Klobuchar said in a statement. In the wake of the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, lawmakers have been studying ways to hold Big Tech more accountable for the role they played in the spread of disinformation before the riot and about policing content on their platforms. The bill would make it clear that Section 230, which was enacted in 1996 as part of a law called the Communications Decency Act, does not apply to ads or other paid content, does not impair the enforcement of civil rights laws, and does not bar wrongful-death actions.

Threat actors have discovered they can abuse the Google Chrome sync feature to send commands to infected browsers and steal data from infected systems, bypassing traditional firewalls and other network defenses. From a report: For non-Chrome users, Chrome sync is a feature of the Chrome web browser that stores copies of a user's Chrome bookmarks, browsing history, passwords, and browser and extension settings on Google's cloud servers. The feature is used to sync these details between a user's different devices, so the user always has access to his most recent Chrome data wherever they go. Bojan Zdrnja, a Croatian security researcher, said on Thursday that during a recent incident response, he discovered that a malicious Chrome extension was abusing the Chrome sync feature as a way to communicate with a remote command and control (C&C) server and as a way to exfiltrate data from infected browsers. Zdrnja said that in the incident he investigated, attackers gained access to a victim's computer, but because the data they wanted to steal was inside an employee's portal, they downloaded a Chrome extension on the user's computer and loaded it via the browser's Developer Mode.

India is restoring 4G internet services in Jammu and Kashmir, a senior government official said Friday evening, 18 months after cutting internet access in the Muslim-majority state in an attempt to curb the spread of potential backlash over its decision to strip the region of its special status in August of 2019. From a report: Rohit Kansal, principal secretary of the Jammu and Kashmir government, said 4G internet services were being restored in the entire region. India lifted ban on internet and some social media services in two districts (of 20) of the state last year but maintained speed restrictions and time limits, after Supreme Court ruled last year that an indefinite shutdown of the internet in the state was unwarranted and demonstrated "abuse of power" by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government. The internet ban in Jammu and Kashmir was by far the longest by any democracy.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google Play Music stopped working at the start of December, but the files you uploaded to the cloud locker and other data remain available for export. That will be changing later in February when Google deletes all information associated with Play Music. Besides all the songs you've uploaded to the cloud locker since the service's inception in 2011, Play Music data includes purchases, playlists, stations, albums/songs saved to your library, and likes/dislikes.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed News: Over the last two years, the government of Pakistan has forced Google and Apple to take down apps in the country created by developers based in other nations who are part of a repressed religious minority. The move is part of a crackdown led by the country's telecommunications regulator targeting the Ahmadiyya Muslim community. Adherents, called Ahmadis, number about 4 million in Pakistan. Though Ahmadis identify as Muslim, Pakistan's government views them as heretics, and a 1984 ordinance forbids them from "posing" as Muslims, adopting Islamic religious practices, and referring to their houses of worship as mosques. Pakistan is the only country to declare that Ahmadis are not Muslim.

Ahmadis have faced persecution for decades, including an attack in 2010 that killed 93 people. But the pressure on multinational tech companies from Pakistan's telecom regulator, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), signals a new willingness to target religious minorities beyond its borders. It is also one of the first examples of governments using anti-blasphemy rules to force international tech companies to censor content. At issue are seven religious apps created by the Ahmadi community in the United States, published under the name "Ahmadiyya Muslim Community." Three of the apps contain "the exact same [Arabic] text found universally in all versions of the Holy Quran," as well as commentary from the Ahmadi perspective, according to their descriptions. They are still available on app stores in other countries. All of these have been taken down by Google in Pakistan. In addition, there are four other apps, which include an FAQ on Islam and a weekly Urdu-language news magazine, that the PTA is pressuring Google to remove, but which have not been taken down.

Google has launched a limited version of its News Showcase in Australia despite threatening to pull Search from the nation a fortnight ago. ZDNet reports: News Showcase, Google claims, provides an "enhanced view" of articles, and aims to give participating news publishers more ways to share important news to readers while having "more direct control of presentation and branding." The product will appear across Google News on Android, iOS and the mobile web, and in Discover on iOS.

As part of the initial version of News Showcase in Australia, seven local news publishers have partnered with the search giant, Google APAC news, web and publishing head Kate Beddoe said in a blog post. "The initial publishers featured in today's launch were among the first globally to sign up, providing early feedback and input on how the product could help bring their journalism to the fore for readers," she said. The Australian publications included in the initial version of Google News Showcase are The Canberra Times, The Illawarra Mercury, The Saturday Paper, Crikey, The New Daily, InDaily, and The Conversation.

Google has blocked The Great Suspender extension from the Chrome store "because it contains malware." The extension was very popular for users running Chrome with 8GB or less of RAM, as it would automatically suspend tabs you hadn't used in a while, freeing up precious memory and CPU power. It would then allow you to return to the tab and reload back to where you were. Mishaal Rahman writes via XDA Developers: For some people, this isn't news. Since November of 2020, close followers of the extension have warned that it may be running malicious code. The old maintainer of the extension sold it to an unknown party in June of 2020, and users alleged that the unknown party quietly slipped some trackers into version 7.1.8 of the extension. Although version 7.1.9 removed the tracker, many users were understandably suspicious of the extension. Then in early January of this year, multiple media outlets picked up on the news, and many, including myself, decided to ditch it. Earlier today, however, Google pulled the plug entirely on the popular Chrome extension, forcibly removing The Great Suspender from people's Chrome installations and removing the extension's listing on the Chrome Web Store. You can recover your suspended tabs by opening up your search history and searching for "klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg." If that doesn't work, you can try the other options outlined in this GitHub post.

Some alternatives to The Great Suspender, as recommended by XDA Developers community member TheMageKing, include: Tabs Outliner, Auto Tab Discard, or Session Buddy.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A new company called Metalenz, which emerges from stealth mode today, is looking to disrupt smartphone cameras with a single, flat lens system that utilizes a technology called optical metasurfaces. A camera built around this new lens tech can produce an image of the same if not better quality as traditional lenses, collect more light for brighter photos, and can even enable new forms of sensing in phones, all while taking up less space.

Instead of using plastic and glass lens elements stacked over an image sensor, Metalenz's design uses a single lens built on a glass wafer that is between 1x1 to 3x3 millimeter in size. Look very closely under a microscope and you'll see nanostructures measuring one-thousandth the width of a human hair. Those nanostructures bend light rays in a way that corrects for many of the shortcomings of single-lens camera systems. The core technology was formed through a decade of research when cofounder and CEO Robert Devlin was working on his PhD at Harvard University with acclaimed physicist and Metalenz cofounder Federico Capasso. The company was spun out of the research group in 2017.

Light passes through these patterned nanostructures, which look like millions of circles with differing diameters at the microscopic level. The resulting image quality is just as sharp as what you'd get from a multilens system, and the nanostructures do the job of reducing or eliminating many of the image-degrading aberrations common to traditional cameras. And the design doesn't just conserve space. Devlin says a Metalenz camera can deliver more light back to the image sensor, allowing for brighter and sharper images than what you'd get with traditional lens elements. Another benefit? The company has formed partnerships with two semiconductor leaders (that can currently produce a million Metalenz "chips" a day), meaning the optics are made in the same foundries that manufacture consumer and industrial devices -- an important step in simplifying the supply chain. Metalenz will go into mass production toward the end of the year. Its first application will be to serve as the lens system of a 3D sensor in a smartphone. (The company did not give the name of the phone maker.)

hcs_$reboot shares a report from The New York Times: Rupert Murdoch's Fox Corporation and three of its popular anchors are the targets of a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit filed on Thursday by Smartmatic, a company that became a prominent subject of discredited theories about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Smartmatic, an election technology company, filed the suit in New York State Supreme Court against the Fox Corporation, Fox News, and the anchors Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro. As part of the same action, the company is suing Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who made the case for election fraud as guests on Fox programs while representing President Donald J. Trump.

In its 276-page complaint, Smartmatic argues that Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell "created a story about Smartmatic" and that "Fox joined the conspiracy to defame and disparage Smartmatic and its election technology and software." Smartmatic, which provided services for the 2020 election in only one county, filed its suit in the tense aftermath of a vote that Mr. Trump and his supporters have repeatedly and falsely described as rigged or stolen. Smartmatic is seeking damages of "no less than $2.7 billion," the complaint says, and is requesting a jury trial. In a statement to CNN, Powell said: "I have not received notice or a copy of this alleged lawsuit. However, your characterization of the claims shows that this is just another political maneuver motivated by the radical left that has no basis in fact or law."

SpaceX disclosed in a public filing on Thursday that its Starlink satellite internet service now has "over 10,000 users in the United States and abroad." From a report: "Starlink's performance is not theoretical or experimental ... [and] is rapidly accelerating in real time as part of its public beta program," SpaceX wrote in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission. Elon Musk's company began a public beta program of Starlink in October, with service priced at $99 a month, in addition to a $499 upfront cost to order the Starlink Kit, which includes a user terminal and Wi-Fi router to connect to the satellites.

The Google-sponsored Chromium project has cleaned up its act, and the result is a marked decline in queries to DNS root servers. From a report: As The Register reported in August 2020, Chromium-based browsers generate a lot of DNS traffic as they try to determine if input into their omnibox is a domain name or a search query. Verisign engineers Matthew Thomas and Duane Wessels examined the resulting traffic and reached the conclusion that it accounted for up to 60 billion DNS queries every day. Wessels has since penned a new post that went unreported when it appeared on January 7 -- the day after the US Capitol riot -- but was today resurfaced by APNIC, the Regional Internet Registry for the Asia-Pacific region. In the post he says the Chromium team redesigned its code to stop junk DNS requests, and released the update in Chromium 87. The result? "Before the software release, the root server system saw peaks of ~143 billion queries per day," he wrote. "Traffic volumes have since decreased to ~84 billion queries a day. This represents more than a 41 per cent reduction of total query volume."

Google is adding heart and respiratory rate monitors to the Fit app on Pixel phones this month, and it plans to add them to other Android phones in the future. Both features rely on the smartphone camera: it measures respiratory rate by monitoring the rise and fall of a user's chest, and heart rate by tracking color change as blood moves through the fingertip. From a report: The features are only intended to let users track overall wellness and cannot evaluate or diagnose medical conditions, the company said. To measure respiratory rate (the number of breaths someone takes per minute) using the app, users point the phone's front-facing camera at their head and chest. To measure heart rate, they place their finger over the rear-facing camera. A doctor counts a patient's respiratory rate by watching their chest rise and fall, and the Google feature mimics that procedure, said Jack Po, a product manager at Google Health, in a press briefing. "The machine learning technique that we leverage basically tries to emulate that," he said.

Microsoft today launched Viva, a new "employee experience platform," or, in non-marketing terms, its new take on the intranet sites most large companies tend to offer their employees. From a report: This includes standard features like access to internal communications built on integrations with SharePoint, Yammer and other Microsoft tools. In addition, Viva also offers access to team analytics and an integration with LinkedIn Learning and other training content providers (including the likes of SAP SuccessFactors), as well as what Microsoft calls Viva Topics for knowledge sharing within a company. If you're like most employees, you know that your company spends a lot of money on internal communications and its accompanying intranet offerings -- and you then promptly ignore that in order to get actual work done. But Microsoft argues that times are changing, as remote work is here to stay for many companies, even after the pandemic (hopefully) ends. Even if a small percentage of a company's workforce remains remote or opts for a hybrid approach, those workers still need to have access to the right tools and feel like they are part of the company.

[...] Unsurprisingly, Viva is powered by Microsoft 365 and all of the tools that come with that, as well as integrations with Microsoft Teams, the company's flagship collaboration service, and even Yammer, the employee communication tool it acquired back in 2012 and continues to support. There are several parts to Viva: Viva Connections for accessing company news, policies, benefits and internal communities (powered by Yammer); Viva Learning for, you guessed it, accessing learning resources; and Viva Topics, the service's take on company-wide knowledge sharing. For the most part, that's all standard fair in any modern intranet, whether it's from a startup provider or an established player like Jive. Further reading: Microsoft CEO Nadella Bets Businesses Are Ready to Spend Big on Employee Software.

Myanmar's new military government blocked access to Facebook as resistance to Monday's coup surged amid calls for civil disobedience to protest the ousting of the elected government and its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. From a report: Facebook is especially popular in Myanmar and is how most people access the internet. The military seized power shortly before a new session of Parliament was to convene on Monday and detained Suu Kyi and other top politicians. It said it acted because the government had refused to address its complaints that last November's general election, in which Suu Kyi's party won a landslide victory, was marred by widespread voting irregularities. The state Election Commission has refuted the allegations.

[...] Facebook users said service disruptions began late Wednesday night. "Telecom providers in Myanmar have been ordered to temporarily block Facebook. We urge authorities to restore connectivity so that people in Myanmar can communicate with family and friends and access important information," Facebook said in a statement. In 2018, Facebook removed several accounts linked to Myanmar's military, including that of Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the officer who led this week's coup, following complaints that they appeared to fuel hatred toward the country's Muslim Rohingya minority. The Rohingya were targeted in a brutal 2017 army counterinsurgency campaign that drove more than 700,000 to neighboring Bangladesh. Critics say the army's actions constituted genocide. A Norway-based humanitarian group said Thursday that Myanmar's political crisis could create a humanitarian disaster affecting 1 million vulnerable people if international aid groups are restricted further.

An engineering director and a software developer have quit Alphabet's Google over the dismissal of AI researcher Timnit Gebru, a sign of the ongoing conflicts at the search giant over diversity and ethics. From a report: David Baker, a director focused on user safety, left Google last month after 16 years because Gebru's exit "extinguished my desire to continue as a Googler," he said in a letter seen by Reuters. Baker added, "We cannot say we believe in diversity, and then ignore the conspicuous absence of many voices from within our walls." Software engineer Vinesh Kannan said Wednesday on Twitter that he had left the company on Tuesday because Google mistreated Gebru and April Christina Curley, a recruiter who has said she was wrongly fired last year. Both Gebru and Curley identify as Black. "They were wronged," Kannan said. Google declined to comment, but pointed to previous statements that it is looking to restore employees' trust after Gebru's departure and that it disputes Curley's accusation.

Registered Coward v2 writes: Wall Street has decided if you can't beat them, at least watch them. They're paying for data that shows which stocks are most talked about on Reddit stock forums, ostensibly to allow them to adjust their positions or take advantage of opportunities to trade based on Reddit. Nothing could go wrong there, since Reddit would decide to seed the data with misinformation, or simply pipe the data into a filter and produce their own free list... Thinknum Alternative Data has a tool that "provides its hedge fund and investment bank clients a ranking of the most-mentioned stocks on WallStreetBets as well as the Stocks subreddit," reports CNN. The platform's pricing "starts at $16,800 per seat per year and goes up from there based on how much data is consumed. Some clients pay six-figures per year for access to the platform."

Nomura and Wolfe Research also recently launched the Wolfe Retail Red Alert basket -- a tool that "analyzes Fidelity, Reddit and other sources of retail trading flows to monitor mentions and trading activity and measure that information against statistics on how heavily shorted stocks are."

John Matze, CEO and co-founder of far-right friendly social media platform Parler, said on LinkedIn Wednesday that he has been terminated. Axios reports: Parler has been at the center of controversy since Amazon Web Services, Apple and Google unplugged the network last month for its lack of content moderation related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. In a memo obtained by Fox News, Matze said that the company's board of directors, controlled by Republican political donor Rebekah Mercer, terminated him last Friday. He did not participate in the decision, and the reason for the firing remains unknown.

"Over the past few months, I've met constant resistance to my product vision, my strong belief in free speech and my view of how the Parler site should be managed," Matze wrote. "For example, I advocated for more product stability and what I believe is a more effective approach to content moderation." "I have worked endless hours and fought constant battles to get the Parler site running but at this point, the future of Parler is no longer in my hands." Matze will take a few weeks off before looking for new opportunities, he told Parler colleagues.