AT&T lost an astounding 900,000 cable subscribers in the first quarter of 2020, and now, Comcast has reported that it lost 477,000 pay-TV subscribers of its own for Q2. TechSpot reports: In Q1 2020, roughly 409,000 subscribers pulled the plug on their Comcast-provided cable subscriptions -- this last quarter, the corporate giant managed to lose substantially more. If these losses continue to grow at this rate, Comcast may be on track to lose twice as many cable subscribers this year as it did last year. For reference, the company took a hit of around 733,000 cable subscribers in 2019, and it has already dropped significantly more than that (around 886,000 customers) in 2020.

There are plenty of reasons for these mass subscriber losses, but Covid-19 is likely chief among them. Thousands of Americans have lost their jobs due to coronavirus complications (including business shutdowns). Even many who haven't are now working from home, giving them more free time to explore alternatives to cable TV, such as Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and others. What it lost in cable-TV subscribers it gained in internet customers. The report notes that Comcast "managed to snag around 323,000 additional broadband customers in Q2 2020: the 'best second quarter high-speed internet net adds in 13 years,' according to the company."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Wehner said on Thursday that upcoming changes to Apple's iOS 14 operating system could hurt the social network's ability to target ads to users. With the update to its mobile devices, Apple will ask users if they want to let app developers track their activity across other apps and websites. Apple has not said when iOS 14 will launch, but it's expected to roll out this year. "We're still trying to understand what these changes will look like and how they will impact us and the rest of the industry, but at the very least, it's going to make it harder for app developers and others to grow using ads on Facebook and elsewhere," Wehner said.

Until now, advertisers could use a device ID number called the IDFA to better target ads and estimate their effectiveness. In iOS 14, each app that wants to use these identifiers will ask users to opt-in to tracking when the app is first launched. The change is expected to start impacting Facebook's advertising in the third quarter but it will have a more pronounced effect in the fourth quarter, Wehner said.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Quidsi's (parent company of Diapers.com) founders didn't want to sell their company, but Amazon's diaper price war was starting to hurt Quidsi. Growth was slowing, and Quidsi was having trouble raising additional capital to continue expanding. On September 14, the founders of Quidsi flew to Seattle to meet with Amazon and discuss a possible acquisition. As Quidsi's founders were sitting in a meeting with Amazon brass, Amazon hit Quidsi in the gut. It announced a new program called "Amazon Mom" that offered free Prime service and an additional 30-percent discount on diapers if users signed up to get them through Amazon's monthly "subscribe and save" program. This was a larger discount than Amazon offered on most other Subscribe and Save items.

This put Quidsi in an untenable situation, as Stone writes: "That month, Diapers.com listed a case of Pampers at $45; Amazon priced it at $39, and Amazon Mom customers with Subscribe and Save could get a case for less than $30. At one point, Quidsi executives took what they knew about shipping rates, factored in Proctor and Gamble's wholesale prices, and calculated that Amazon was on track to lose $100 million over three months in the diapers category alone." Amazon's losses may have actually been even larger. During Wednesday's hearing, Scanlon said that internal documents obtained by the committee showed Amazon losing $200 million in a single month from diaper products."

Twitter said on Friday it has permanently banned white supremacist David Duke from its platform for violating the platform's rules on hate speech. From a report: Duke's account "has been permanently suspended for Twitter Rules on hateful conduct," a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. Twitter's policy, revised in March, prohibits posts that promote violence or threats of violence against people based on their religion, race or ethnic origin. It wasn't immediately clear what specific post or posts by Duke led to the account's ban. The verified account for Duke, the founder and former Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was blank Thursday, replaced with a message that the account had been "permanently suspended."

Australia will force U.S. tech giants Facebook and Google to pay Australian media outlets for news content in a landmark move to protect independent journalism that will be watched around the world. From a report: Australia will become the first country to require Facebook and Google to pay for news content provided by media companies under a royalty-style system that will become law this year, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said. "It's about a fair go for Australian news media businesses. It's about ensuring that we have increased competition, increased consumer protection, and a sustainable media landscape," Frydenberg told reporters in Melbourne. "Nothing less than the future of the Australian media landscape is at stake." The move comes as the tech giants fend off calls around the world for greater regulation, and a day after Google and Facebook took a battering for alleged abuse of market power from U.S. lawmakers in a congressional hearing.

Twitter said Thursday night that it has "significantly limited" access to its internal tools after it learned that the high-profile hack earlier this month affecting dozens of major accounts was the result of a phishing attack targeting the phones of a "small number of employees." From a report: "This attack relied on a significant and concerted attempt to mislead certain employees and exploit human vulnerabilities to gain access to our internal systems," Twitter said in a tweet. A phishing attack is a type of cyberattack in which hackers try to trick victims into opening malicious emails or links disguised as legitimate web content. In addition to clamping down on access to administrative systems, Twitter said it was also accelerating the rollout of "security work streams" that had already been in progress.

Nvidia is in advanced talks to acquire Arm, the chip designer that SoftBank Group bought for $32 billion four years ago, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter. From the report: The two parties aim to reach a deal in the next few weeks, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Nvidia is the only suitor in concrete discussions with SoftBank, according to the people. A deal for Arm could be the largest ever in the semiconductor industry, which has been consolidating in recent years as companies seek to diversify and add scale. Cambridge, England-based Arm's technology underpins chips in products including Apple Inc. devices and connected appliances. Financial Times, which has also independently reported about the deal talks today, adds: Buying Arm would further consolidate Nvidia's position at the centre of the semiconductor industry, at just the moment when the British chip designer's technology is finding broader applications beyond mobile devices, in data centres and personal computers including Apple's Macs. Arm would transform Nvidia's product line-up, which until now has largely focused on the high end of the chips market. Its powerful graphics processors -- which are designed to handle focused, data-intensive tasks -- are typically sold to PC gamers, scientific researchers and developers of artificial intelligence and self-driving cars, as well as cryptocurrency miners. The deal could alarm Arm's other big licensees, including Apple, Broadcom and Qualcomm, which may fear a unique asset being taken over by a potential competitor such as Nvidia.

A sale would mark a stunning reversal for SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, who declared that Arm would be the linchpin for the future of the technology investment conglomerate. The company has failed to thrive under SoftBank, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Neil Campling, an analyst at Mirabaud, noted that Arm's annual revenues had risen from $1.2bn to $1.9bn since SoftBank bought it in 2016, while Nvidia's have roughly tripled in the same timeframe.

schwit1 shares a report from CNBC: A new wave of urban flight is reshaping real estate markets from New York to Chicago and Los Angeles to San Francisco. As part of this shift, Lake Tahoe is seeing unprecedented bidding wars, buying activity and price increases. Brokers say the inventory of homes for sale has shrunk to about one-fifth to one-tenth of the usual levels. "People are writing all-cash offers for houses, sight unseen," said Sabrina Belleci, a Lake Tahoe broker with Re/Max. "They just want to get out of the city." Historically, properties in the Tahoe area took three to four months to sell, Overall said. Now, it's more like four days.

Lake Tahoe has long been a bucolic escape for Californians looking for a getaway and, on the Nevada side, lower taxes. But the latest buying surge is larger than any the market has seen, brokers say. They say tech workers and investors in the Bay Area, as well as media types from Los Angeles, are coming to the Tahoe area in search of larger homes with home offices, more land for the kids to play, and access to outdoor activities such as swimming and bike riding. The flight from the city got another push this week after Google announced it's keeping workers at home until July 2021. Private schools in the Bay Area also recently announced they will likely shift to all online classes in the fall, which gave families another reason to remain outside of San Francisco.

The Federal Communications Commission has approved Amazon's plans for its ambitious Kuiper constellation, which entails sending 3,236 satellites into orbit to beam internet coverage down to Earth. Amazon claims that Kuiper will "provide broadband services to unserved and underserved consumers, businesses in the United States, and global customers by employing advanced satellite and earth station technologies." The Verge reports: The company plans to send the satellites to three different altitudes, and it claims it needs just 578 satellites in orbit to begin service, according to an FCC document announcing the approval. Amazon has not announced which launch provider it plans to use to fly the satellites into orbit yet. While Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos also owns the rocket company Blue Origin, the launch provider will have to compete to launch the satellites along with other companies.

There are few caveats to Amazon's FCC approval. The company must launch half of the constellation by 2026 to retain its FCC license, and then the remaining satellites by 2029. Amazon also must submit to the FCC a finalized plan for how it will mitigate orbital debris, since the design of its satellites aren't finalized yet. Amazon claims it will take its satellites out of orbit within 355 days, but the FCC argues the company didn't "present specific information concerning some required elements" for its debris plan. A big concern of a constellation of this size is that the influx of satellites will lead to more collisions in space, creating pieces of debris that could threaten other satellites. Amazon claims that Kuiper will "provide broadband services to unserved and underserved consumers, businesses in the United States, and global customers by employing advanced satellite and earth station technologies," according to the FCC's approval document.

The U.S. military has for years been using streaming channels and video gaming to recruit people. "Several branches of the military -- with the exception of the Marines -- have had esports teams since 2018," reports The Verge. "And according to Military.com, the Army's esports efforts alone generated 3,500 recruiting leads in fiscal year 2019."

But the question is... should they be recruiting on these platforms? According to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the answer is no. She is proposing an amendment that would ban the U.S. military from recruiting on Twitch. The Verge reports: "Children should not be targeted in general for many marketing purposes in addition to military service. Right now, currently, children on platforms such as Twitch are bombarded with banner ads linked to recruitment signup forms that can be submitted by children as young as 12 years old," Ocasio-Cortez said on the House floor Thursday. "These are not education outreach programs for the military."

Last week, the Army paused its use of Twitch for recruitment after its channel was criticized for banning viewers who asked about war crimes. The Army told GameSpot: "The team has paused streaming to review internal policies and procedures, as well as all platform-specific policies, to ensure those participating in the space are clear before streaming resumes." And earlier this month, Twitch told the Army to stop sharing phony prize giveaways on its channel that promised an Xbox Elite Series 2 controller, only for users to be directed to a recruitment page when they clicked through. The language of Ocasio-Cortez's draft would make that pause permanent, banning US military organizations from using funds to "maintain a presence on Twitch.com or any video game, e-sports, or live-streaming platform." You can watch the congresswoman's impassioned floor speech here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VICE News: We all have trouble with our email sometimes. We don't typically get to harangue the CEO of Google about why, say, Dad's Gmail is acting up, though. You have to be a member of Congress to pull that. Rep. Greg Steube, Republican from Florida, went there during Wednesday's high-profile congressional hearing about tech giants' market dominance and anti-competitive behavior. Handed the chance to throw any question at some of the most powerful people in the world, Steube pressed Google CEO Sundar Pichai to troubleshoot his parents' recent email issues. Specifically, they weren't getting his campaign emails, which Steube seemed to think was because of an anti-conservative bias among Silicon Valley titans. Pichai responded by implying that Steube and his dad don't understand how Gmail tabs work.

"Suddenly, I get elected to Congress, and I'm now up here in Washington, D.C., and my parents, who have a Gmail account, aren't getting my campaign emails," Steube said. "Why is this only happening to Republicans?" Pichai responded by talking about how Gmail automatically sorts emails by their source, breaking out messages from personal contacts into a folder separate from those sent by self-promoting groups like a congressional campaign. "We have a tabbed organization," Pichai said, veering into tech-support mode. "The primary tab has emails from friends and family, and the secondary tab has other notifications, and so on." Steube interrupted to point out that it was his dad who complained that the campaign emails weren't showing up. And that meant Pichai's statement that the Primary tab should feature all emails from family members didn't make any sense to him. "Clearly, that familial thing that you're talking about didn't apply to my emails," Steube said, glossing over the fact that the emails were coming from his campaign, not from his personal account. "Our systems, probably, are not able to understand that it's your father," Pichai deadpanned.

According to CNBC sources, Google's $2.1 billion bid for fitness tracker maker Fitbit will face a full-scale EU antitrust investigation next week. From the report: Alphabet unit Google this month offered not to use Fitbit's health data to help it target ads in an attempt to address EU antitrust concerns. The opening of a full-scale investigation suggests that this is not sufficient. The deal, announced last November, would see Google compete with market leader Apple and Samsung in the fitness-tracking and smart-watch market, alongside others including Huawei and Xiaomi.

The European Commission, which will launch the probe following the end of its preliminary review on Aug. 4, is expected to make use of the four-month long investigation to explore in depth the use of data in healthcare, one of the people said. Google reiterated previous comments, saying the deal is about devices and not data. "The wearables space is crowded, and we believe the combination of Google and Fitbit's hardware efforts will increase competition in the sector, benefiting consumers and making the next generation of devices better and more affordable," a spokeswoman said.

For more than four centuries, archaeologists and geologists have sought to determine the geographical origins of the stones used to build Stonehenge thousands of years ago. Pinning down the source of the large blocks known as sarsens that form the bulk of the monument has proved especially elusive. From a report: Now researchers have resolved the mystery: 50 of the 52 extant sarsens at Stonehenge came from the West Woods site in the English county of Wiltshire, located 25 kilometers to the north of Stonehenge. The findings were published on Wednesday in Science Advances. Geologists can often use macroscopic and microscopic features of rocks to match them to the outcropping from which they were taken. Such techniques have allowed researchers to determine that many of Stonehenge's smaller "bluestones" were brought from southwestern Wales. But "the trouble with sarsen stone is that it's all the same," says study co-author Katy Whitaker, a graduate student at the University of Reading in England and an assistant listing adviser at Historic England. "When you look at it under the microscope, you see quartz sand grains stuck together with more quartz."

So the team turned to x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, a nondestructive technique that bombards a sample with x-rays and analyzes the wavelengths of light that sample emits in response, which can show its chemical makeup. The technique revealed the presence of trace elements, or those found in minute quantities, on the surface of Stonehenge's sarsens. Almost all of those stones shared a remarkably similar chemical composition, indicating that they originated together. The data were insufficient to pinpoint where that source was, however. The team's breakthrough came unexpectedly in 2018, when a sample core that had been drilled from one of Stonehenge's sarsens during a 1958 restoration project was returned to England after it spent 60 years in a private collection. The researchers were granted permission to destroy part of the core for a more detailed analysis. "We quietly jumped up and down with excitement," says lead author David Nash, a physical geographer at the University of Brighton in England. Using two types of mass spectrometry, the team determined the levels of 22 trace elements in the core and compared them with the levels in sarsen samples from 20 different sites dotting southern England. The chemical signature of the core exactly matched that of one of the sites -- West Woods, which encompasses about six square kilometers.

According to a new report from Pew Research, U.S. adults who get their news largely from social media platforms tend to fllow the news less closely and end up less informed on several key subjects when compared to those who use other sources, like TV, radio, and news publications. TechCrunch reports: The firm first asked people how they most commonly get their news. About one-in-five (18%) said they mostly use social media to stay current. That's close the percentages of those who say they use local TV (16%) or cable TV (16%) news, but fewer than those who say they go directly to a news website or app (25%). Another 13% said they use network TV and only 3% said they read a newspaper. To be clear, any study that asks users to self-report how they do something isn't going to be as useful as those that collect hard data on what the consumers actually do. In other words, people who think they're getting most of their news from TV may be, in reality, undercounting the time they spent on social media â" or vice versa.

That said, among this group of "primarily" social media news consumers, only 8% said they were following the key news story of the 2020 U.S. election "every closely," compared with 37% of cable TV viewers who said the same, or the 33% of print users who also said this. The social media group, on this topic, was closer to the local TV group (11%). On the topic of the coronavirus outbreak, only around a quarter (23%) of the primarily social media news consumers said they were following news of COVID-19 "very closely." All other groups again reported a higher percentage, including those who primarily used cable TV (50%), national network TV (50%), news websites and apps (44%), and local TV (32%) for news.

Related to this finding, the survey respondents were also asked 29 different fact-based questions about news topics from recent days, including those on Trump's impeachment, the COVID-19 outbreak, and others. Those who scored the lowest on these topics were the consumers who said they primarily used social media to get their news. Across 9 questions related to foundational political knowledge, only 17% of primarily social media news consumers scored "high political knowledge," meaning they got 8 to 9 of the questions right. 27% scored "middle political knowledge" (6-7 right) and 57% scored "low political knowledge" (5 or fewer right.) The only group that did worse were those who primarily relied on local TV. 45% of who got their news from news primarily via websites and apps, meanwhile, had "high political knowledge," compared with 42% for radio, 41% for print, 35% for cable TV, and 29% for network TV. The social media group of news consumers was also more exposed to fringe conspiracies, like the idea that the pandemic was intentionally planned.

Google parent-company Alphabet beat expectations for its second quarter earnings Thursday, marking its first revenue decline in the company's history. CNBC reports: Here's how it did against Refinitiv consensus estimates:

EPS: $10.13 (non-GAAP), vs. $8.21 estimated.
Revenue: $38.30 billion vs. $37.37 billion estimated.

Although the company reported its first annual revenue decline in history (a drop of 2%), the stock rose slightly after-hours. As a result of the customer pullbacks and the general maturing ad market, Alphabet itself cut marketing spending by half and instituted hiring freezes for the second half of the year in anticipation of a slowdown, CNBC reported. Around that time, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said Google would be pulling back on some of its investments for the rest of the year amid the Covid-19 crisis, starting with hiring.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple agreed in 2016 to halve its App Store fee for Amazon as part of a deal to put the e-commerce giant's Prime Video app on Apple's mobile devices and TV set-top box. Eddy Cue, an Apple senior vice president, and Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos negotiated directly on the deal, according to emails released Wednesday as part of a congressional hearing on anticompetitive behavior. The companies agreed to a 15% revenue share for customers who signed up through the app and no revenue share for users who already subscribed via Amazon or elsewhere, the emails showed.

The deal, announced in December 2017, also allowed Amazon's video service to integrate with Apple's voice-activated digital assistant, Siri, and the iPhone maker's TV app, which launched in 2016. In addition, the agreement gave Apple a 15% cut of subscriptions to Amazon Prime partners like Showtime for users who signed up originally through Apple. Apple generally receives a 30% cut for the first year of an app's subscriptions made through the platform. That fee drops to 15% after the first year. The agreement with Amazon is similar to a program Apple announced earlier this year letting select developers avoid the 30% fee in exchange for integrating with certain features. Amazon is part of that program. The report also reveals that Apple once considered taking a 40 percent cut from some subscription apps, according to documents shared today by the House Judiciary Committee.

An anonymous reader shares a report: On March 20, 2019, a Microsoft employee who had been at the company for three years sent an email to a collection of listservs for women at the company, asking how to move up in the organization. She had worked for years without a promotion, and said that her career had been limited because she was a woman. It was a spark to a tinderbox. In the next few days, dozens and dozens of other women replied to the message, each sharing frustration and stories of discrimination and harassment at the company. Some said they had been subject to overt abuse, like being called a "bitch" during business functions, and others said they had been sexually harassed with no ramifications to the harassers. Microsoft's top executives, including CEO Satya Nadella and top Human Resources (HR) exec Kathleen Hogan, were quickly CC'd on the chain. "This thread has pulled the scab off a festering wound. The collective anger and frustration is palpable. A wide audience is now listening. And you know what? I'm good with that," a Microsoft employee wrote in the email chain at the time.

On April 15, 2019, Nadella responded with an email to the entire company, promising reforms to HR that would better serve employees, as well as an annual transparency report that would tell employees how many cases were investigated and how they were resolved. More than a year later, Microsoft has not released this transparency report, and a company spokesperson would not commit to Microsoft doing so when directly asked by OneZero. It's also unclear how much better life is for employees who have faced discrimination and harassment. Five former and current employees who have interacted with Microsoft's human resources department in the last year say there hasn't been a noticeable difference in the way cases have been handled since last March. Two of the former employees left the company during the last year, and told OneZero that a lack of HR action was a primary reason for leaving.

Google and Apple, which already battle over mobile operating systems, are opening a new front in their fight. How that plays out may determine the future of the web. From a report: Google was born on the web, and its business reflects its origin. The company depends on the web for search and advertising revenue. So it isn't a surprise that Google sees the web as key to the future of software. Front and center are web apps, interactive websites with the same power as conventional apps that run natively on operating systems like Windows, Android, MacOS and iOS. Apple has a different vision of the future, one that plays to its strengths. The company revolutionized mobile computing with its iPhone line. Its profits depend on those products and the millions of apps that run on them. Apple, unsurprisingly, appears less excited about developments, like web apps, that could cut into its earnings.

The two camps aren't simply protecting their businesses. Google and Apple have philosophical differences, too. Google, working to pack its dominant Chrome browser with web programming abilities, sees the web as an open place of shared standards. Apple, whose Safari browser lacks some of those abilities, believes its restraint will keep the web healthy. It wants a web that isn't plagued by security risks, privacy invasion and annoyances like unwanted notifications and permission pop-ups. Google leads a collection of heavy-hitting allies, including Microsoft and Intel, trying to craft new technology called progressive web apps, which look and feel like native apps but are powered by the web. PWAs work even when you have no network connection. You can launch PWAs from an icon on your phone home screen or PC start menu, and they can prod you with push notifications and synchronize data in the background for fast startup. PWA fans include Uber, travel site Trivago and India e-commerce site Flipkart. Starbucks saw its website usage double after it rolled out a PWA.

The split over native apps and web apps is more than just a squabble between tech giants trying to convert our lives online into their profits. How it plays out will shape what kind of a digital world we live in. Choosing native apps steers us to a world where we're locked into either iOS or Android, limited to software approved by the companies' app stores and their rules. Web apps, on the other hand, reinforce the web's strength as a software foundation controlled by no single company. A web app will work anywhere, making it easier to swap out a Windows laptop for an iPad. "What you're seeing is the tension between what is good for the user, which is to have a flexible experience, and what's good for the platform, which is to keep you in the platform as much as possible," said Mozilla Chief Technology Officer Eric Rescorla.

Microsoft announced this week plans to remove all Windows-related file downloads from the Microsoft Download Center that are cryptographically signed with the Secure Hash Algorithm 1 (SHA-1). From a report: The files will be removed next Monday, on August 3, the company said on Tuesday. The OS maker cited the security of the SHA-1 algorithm for the move. "SHA-1 is a legacy cryptographic hash that many in the security community believe is no longer secure. Using the SHA-1 hashing algorithm in digital certificates could allow an attacker to spoof content, perform phishing attacks, or perform man-in-the-middle attacks," it said. Most software companies have recently begun abandoning the SHA-1 algorithm after a team of academics broke the SHA-1 hashing function at a theoretical level in February 2016.

Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), who ended Wednesday's hearing by saying some Big Tech companies need to be broken up, says that Facebook in particular lacks significant competitors and should not have been allowed to buy Instagram and WhatsApp. From a report: Cicilline chairs the antitrust subcommittee, which has been looking into competition issues in the digital space. "Mr. Zuckerberg acknowledged in this hearing that his acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram were part of a plan to both buy a competitor and also maintain his money, power, or his dominance. That's classic monopoly behavior," Cicilline said on the "Axios Re:Cap" podcast. Cicilline's criticisms weren't limited to Facebook, pointing to the power Google and Amazon also hold in their respective markets. "I think what we saw today was confirmation that these large technology platforms have enduring monopoly power," he said in the interview with Axios' Dan Primack. A key issue remains whether existing antitrust law is broad enough to address the modern tech industry, especially companies that provide their products at no direct charge to consumers. "Congress is going to have to 'think outside the box' in a comprehensive way about what antitrust laws should look like in the 21st century," Neguse told Axios' Ashley Gold after the hearing.