Apple has another antitrust charge on its plate. Messaging app Telegram has joined Spotify in filing a formal complaint against the iOS App Store in Europe -- adding its voice to a growing number of developers willing to publicly rail against what they decry as Apple's app "tax." From a report: A spokesperson for Telegram confirmed the complaint to TechCrunch, pointing us to this public Telegram post where founder, Pavel Durov, sets out seven reasons why he thinks iPhone users should be concerned about the company's behavior. These range from the contention that Apple's 30% fee on app developers leads to higher prices for iPhone users; to censorship concerns, given Apple controls what's allowed (and not allowed) on its store; to criticism of delays to app updates that flow from Apple's app review process; to the claim that the app store structure is inherently hostile to user privacy, given that Apple gets full visibility of which apps users are downloading and engaging with. This week Durov also published a blog post in which he takes aim at a number of "myths" he says Apple uses to try to justify the 30% app fee -- such as a claim that iOS faces plenty of competition for developers; or that developers can choose not to develop for iOS and instead only publish apps for Android.

Facebook in recent weeks has approached a handful of small venture capital firms to discuss becoming an investor in their funds, The Information reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The VC strategy, which also includes direct investments in startups, aims to give the social network early, valuable insight into a wider swath of companies. From a report: To run the new investing initiative, Facebook recently appointed Sunita Parasuraman, a nine-year veteran of the company who previously ran the treasury for its embattled Libra cryptocurrency project. Former Kleiner Perkins general partner Eric Feng, now a Facebook employee, is helping approach funds, sources say. The moves come as Facebook fends off antitrust scrutiny of its acquisitions and attempts to find new ways to counter growing competitive threats like TikTok. While Microsoft, Intel and others for years have taken stakes in startups through VC subsidiaries, Facebook has shied away from adopting a formal investing program until recently. Instead, it has made one-off investments, such as its recent $5.7 billion investment in Indian tech conglomerate Jio Platforms. Google, in contrast, has multiple, long-running venture arms, including GV, which has backed big-name companies like Slack and Uber.

"The U.S. wants to build nuclear power plants that will work on the moon and Mars, and on Friday put out a request for ideas from the private sector on how to do that," reports Time magazine: The U.S. Department of Energy put out the formal request to build what it calls a fission surface power system that could allow humans to live for long periods in harsh space environments.

The Idaho National Laboratory, a nuclear research facility in eastern Idaho, the Energy Department and NASA will evaluate the ideas for developing the reactor. The lab has been leading the way in the U.S. on advanced reactors, some of them micro reactors and others that can operate without water for cooling. Water-cooled nuclear reactors are the vast majority of reactors on Earth. "Small nuclear reactors can provide the power capability necessary for space exploration missions of interest to the Federal government," the Energy Department wrote in the notice published Friday...

The goal is to have a reactor, flight system and lander ready to go by the end of 2026... Officials say operating a nuclear reactor on the moon would be a first step to building a modified version to operate in the different conditions found on Mars.

Microsoft is undeniably one of the Big Tech elite, given its size, wealth and stock market value. But the software giant has stood apart from Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple in one important respect: Microsoft, once the bully of the tech world, has escaped antitrust scrutiny so far. Now Slack, whose popular chat and collaboration software has become embedded in the daily routines of millions of workers at thousands of companies, is hoping to change that. From a report: Slack said on Wednesday that it had filed a complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission, accusing the tech giant of using its market power to try to crush the upstart rival. In its filing, Slack claims that Microsoft has illegally tied its collaboration software, Microsoft Teams, to its dominant suite of productivity programs, Microsoft Office, which includes Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. "Slack threatens Microsoft's hold on business email, the cornerstone of Office, which means Slack threatens Microsoft's lock on enterprise software," Jonathan Prince, vice president of communications and policy at Slack, said in a statement. Slack's complaint is just a first step. The European Commission must assess the complaint to see if a formal investigation is warranted. In recent years, European regulators have more aggressively pursued antitrust actions against large tech companies than American regulators. But the complaint threatens Microsoft's recent ability to largely avoid regulatory scrutiny. Federal and state regulators in the United States are investigating whether the other tech giants have broken antitrust laws. On Monday, the chief executives of Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook will testify before Congress, which is also looking into them.

An anonymous reader quotes the Verge: Disney has significantly reduced its spending on Facebook and Instagram ads amid concerns about the social media platform's enforcement of its content policies, The Wall Street Journal reported. It joins a list of large companies that have cut back on Facebook ads as part of an effort to compel Facebook to change how it handles hate speech and misinformation on its platforms.

The monthlong #StopHateforProfit boycott organized by a coalition of civil rights organizations including the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Color of Change, and Sleeping Giants kicked off July 1st and includes companies like Hershey, Honda, Ben & Jerry's, and Verizon. Other companies not part of the formal boycott that have pulled ads from Facebook and other social platforms included Coca-Cola, Lego, Starbucks, and Unilever. And Microsoft suspended its advertising on Facebook and Instagram through August.

Tesla's Elon Musk said the carmaker is on the verge of developing technology to render its vehicles fully capable of driving themselves, repeating a claim he's made for years but been unable to achieve. From a report: The chief executive officer has long offered exuberant takes on the capabilities of Tesla cars, even going so far as to start charging customers thousands of dollars for a "Full Self Driving" feature in 2016. Years later, Tesla still requires users of its Autopilot system to be fully attentive and ready to take over the task of driving at any time. Tesla's mixed messages have drawn controversy and regulatory scrutiny. In 2018, the company blamed a driver who died after crashing a Model X while using Autopilot for not paying attention to the road. Documents made public last year showed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had issued multiple subpoenas for information about crashes involving Tesla vehicles, suggesting the agency may have been preparing a formal investigation of Autopilot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: The White House has officially moved to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO), a senior administration official confirmed Tuesday, breaking ties with a global public health body in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. has submitted its withdrawal notification to the United Nations secretary-general, the official said. Withdrawal requires a year's notice, so it will not go into effect until July 6, 2021, raising the possibility the decision could be reversed.

The formal notification of withdrawal concludes months of threats from the Trump administration to pull the United States out of the WHO, which is affiliated with the United Nations. President Trump has repeatedly assailed the organization for alleged bias toward China and its slow response to the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. But public health experts and Democrats have raised alarms that the decision may be short-sighted and could undercut the global response to the pandemic, which has infected 11.6 million people worldwide. The U.S. has the highest number of reported cases in the world at nearly 3 million. They have also argued that some of the WHO's initial missteps can be attributed to China's lack of transparency in the early stages of the outbreak.

Facebook and Twitter have confirmed they have suspended processing demands for user data from Hong Kong authorities following the introduction of a new Beijing-imposed national security law. From a report: A spokesperson for Facebook told TechCrunch it will "pause" the processing of data demands until it can better understand the new national security law, "including formal human rights due diligence and consultations with human rights experts." The spokesperson added: "We believe freedom of expression is a fundamental human right and support the right of people to express themselves without fear for their safety or other repercussions." Facebook said its suspension will also apply to WhatsApp, which it owns.

Soon after, Twitter also confirmed it followed suit. "Given the rapid pace at which the new National Security Law in China has been passed and that it was only published in its entirety for the first time last week, our teams are reviewing the law to assess its implications, particularly as some of the terms of the law are vague and without clear definition," said a Twitter spokesperson. "Like many public interest organizations, civil society leaders and entities, and industry peers, we have grave concerns regarding both the developing process and the full intention of this law," the spokesperson said.

The European Commission announced Tuesday that it's launching two antitrust investigations into Apple's App Store rules and the Apple Pay platform. From a report: The Commission, the executive arm of the EU, said it will assess whether Apple's rules for app developers on the distribution of apps via the App Store breach EU competition rules. While companies can place their apps on the App Store at no cost, Apple charges companies 30% from in-app purchases and 30% on subscriptions for the first year, then 15% thereafter. Spotify, which competes directly with Apple Music, feels this is unfair and filed a formal complaint in March 2019. Kobo, an e-reader company that competes with Apple Books, has also filed a complaint. Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said in a statement: "Mobile applications have fundamentally changed the way we access content. Apple sets the rules for the distribution of apps to users of iPhones and iPads. It appears that Apple obtained a 'gatekeeper' role when it comes to the distribution of apps and content to users of Apple's popular devices. We need to ensure that Apple's rules do not distort competition in markets where Apple is competing with other app developers, for example with its music streaming service Apple Music or with Apple Books. I have therefore decided to take a close look at Apple's App Store rules and their compliance with EU competition rules."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On May 29, President Trump said his administration would take immediate action to withdraw the U.S. from the World Health Organization. "Because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms, we will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization, and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving, urgent global public health needs," Trump said at the time, while criticizing the WHO's response to the coronavirus pandemic and claiming that "China has total control" over the United Nations agency.

But now, two weeks later, there's nothing to indicate that Trump has followed through on his plan. In an article yesterday titled "U.S. hasn't taken action to withdraw from WHO despite Trump pledge," The Hill wrote that "no steps toward a formal withdrawal have been taken," and that "a WHO spokesman told The Hill that the agency had received no formal notification that the United States would withdraw." Another article yesterday in Stat, a health news website, said that "none of the levers that would need to be pulled to follow through on [Trump's WHO] decision has been pulled." For example, the Trump administration has "not paid outstanding financial obligations to the WHO, a step that would be required before the United States could pull out under a joint resolution signed by Congress," the article said. These reports follow a Vanity Fair article published Monday that describes "the secret plan to unwithdraw from the WHO after Trump's 'bizarre,' 'ruinous' exit." The article continued:

"Now, Vanity Fair has learned, secret negotiations aimed at reversing Trump's decision have begun between [U.S.] Ambassador [Andrew] Bremberg and the WHO's director general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. A phone call Saturday between the two men resulted in a possible framework agreement to restore the relationship, which the U.S. diplomatic corps views as essential to the global fight against coronavirus and myriad other public health issues.

"The framework would allow for both increased scrutiny of China's conduct and an independent review of the WHO's performance in the first six months of the outbreak. And discussions continue over whether the WHO would exert pressure on China to turn over original samples of the live virus and allow its scientists to be interviewed regarding the virus's origins. 'It's fair to say the US is not out of WHO, and negotiations are ongoing to address concerns and hopefully walk back from this decision,' said an official who participated in a call with G7 partners, an alliance of countries with advanced economies, where this information was shared."

Last month Techcrunch reported that Mozilla had gone "full incubator" by holding a startup lab called Fix the Internet, followed by "a formal program dangling $75,000 investments in front of early-stage companies..."

Fix the Internet had many key themes, including collaboration and decentralization (as well as user-controlled data and privacy-protecting social networks). That event "drew the interest of some 1,500 people in 520 projects, and 25 were chosen to receive the full package and stipend during the development of their minimum viable product (MVP). Below that, as far as pecuniary commitment goes, is the 'MVP Lab,' similar to the spring program but offering a total of $16,000 per team."

And one of those MVP Lab teams is Meething, a new video conferencing and collaboration platform from the innovation lab ERA. Meething "aims to be more secure than existing video conferencing tools and run on a decentralized database engine and leverage peer-to-peer networking" according to ZDNet.

In their video interview with CEO Mark Nadal, he outlined the following selling points:

• Browser based video conferencing gives customers better options for security as well as branding.
• Open source architecture is a win and the peer-to-peer networking is more efficient on compute costs.
• Meething doesn't require downloads or apps that increase the security attack surface.
  
  The total addressable market for video conferencing is large and can support multiple players.

Their press release quotes Mark Mayo, a former Chief Product Officer at Mozilla who served as Meething's mentor, arguing that video conferencing on the web "has long promised to enable a whole new world of online collaboration. Frankly, it hasn't delivered. It's been way too hard to build cool products with video and Meething aims to be the zero-barrier-to-entry platform that realizes this future. Soon, video conferencing won't suck!"

AndroidPolice: Dropbox just unceremoniously dumped a brand new app on the Play Store with no fanfare or formal announcement. The new Dropbox Passwords app, according to its listing, is a password manager available exclusively in an invite-only private beta for some Dropbox customers. Based on screenshots and description, the app seems pretty barebones -- or "minimal," depending on your tastes. Dropbox seems to intentionally avoid calling it a "password manager," though its functionality otherwise appears about the same as other solutions. Like other password managers, Dropbox Password can generate passwords for new accounts as required and sync them remotely so you can access all your passwords on multiple devices. It also uses zero-knowledge encryption to store those passwords remotely.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), in a letter Friday to the Justice and Treasury departments, is calling for a criminal investigation of Twitter over allegations the company is violating U.S. sanctions against Iran. Twitter is already under fire from President Trump for adding fact checks and a warning label, respectively, to misleading and incendiary tweets he made in recent days. Cruz's letter adds another dimension to the tech company's woes in Washington.

Twitter allows Iranian leaders to maintain accounts on its service, and Cruz is asking Attorney General Bill Barr and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to probe whether that violates U.S. sanctions prohibiting American companies from providing goods or services to the country's top officials. "I believe that the primary goal of (the International Emergency Economic Powers Act) and sanctions law should be to change the behavior of designated individuals and regimes, not American companies," Cruz wrote."But when a company willfully and openly violates the law after receiving formal notice that it is unlawfully supporting designated individuals, the federal government should take action." In February, Cruz led a letter from Republican senators to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, calling on the company to ban Iranian leaders from the site for the same reasons. Twitter responded in April, arguing that its service is exempt from the sanctions, and that the public conversation on the platform is critically important during the coronavirus pandemic.

"Fundamental values of openness, free expression, public accountability, and mutual understanding matter now more than ever," Vijaya Gadde, Twitter's legal, public policy & trust and safety lead, wrote. "Regardless of the political agenda of a particular nation state, to deny our service to their leaders at a time like this would be antithetical to the purpose of our company, which is to serve the global public conversation."

President Donald Trump threatened to permanently cut U.S. funding to the World Health Organization and "reconsider" membership of the global health body if the WHO does not adopt "major substantive improvements" within 30 days. From a report: Trump's demands, made in a letter Tuesday to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, are an escalation of his attacks on the organization. He accused the WHO of "repeated missteps" during the coronavirus pandemic and demanded it "demonstrate independence" from China. "My administration has already started discussions with you on how to reform the organization. But action is needed quickly. We do not have time to waste," Trump wrote in his ultimatum, which comes about a month after he froze WHO funding pending a formal investigation into the international health body and its coronavirus response. The letter lists Trump's allegations that the United Nations agency missed warning signs of the virus' spread and then blithely accepted China's lack of transparency over the outbreak, such as whether the coronavirus could be transmitted between humans. The WHO initially circulated preliminary Chinese claims that there was no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus.

After testing the waters this spring with its incubator-esque MVP Lab, Mozilla is doubling down on the effort with a formal program dangling $75,000 investments in front of early-stage companies. From a report: The focus on "a better society" and the company's open-source clout should help differentiate it from the other options out there. Spurred on by the success of a college hackathon using a whole four Apple Watches in February, Mozilla decided to try a more structured program in the spring. The first test batch of companies is underway, having started in April an 8-week program offering $2,500 per team member and $40,000 in prizes to give away at the end. Developers in a variety of domains were invited to apply, as long as they fit the themes of empowerment, privacy, decentralization, community and so on. It drew the interest of some 1,500 people in 520 projects, and 25 were chosen to receive the full package and stipend during the development of their MVP. The rest were invited to an "Open Lab" with access to some of Mozilla's resources.

Annual Las Vegas hacker gathering DEF CON has officially called off its physical conference for this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Register reports: In what was pretty much a foregone conclusion, the organizing team today said the in-person event would not be held in 2020. It had been slated to take place in August. This comes after the more formal Black Hat USA event, usually scheduled to run the same week as DEF CON in Sin City, was shelved as an in-person shindig, due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic forcing everyone to stay home where possible. Both shows will tentatively take place as web streaming affairs this summer. For DEF CON 28, this means a 'Safe Mode' online gathering, with video streams and a Discord server, between August 6 and 9. "Even if a vaccine were to be discovered tomorrow it would not be soon enough to test, manufacture, distribute and administer in time for people to safely to travel by August," explained Jeff "The Dark Tangent" Moss.

"Too many states have stayed open or are reopening, people partied for far too long, and the lack of federal coordination gives me no hope that things will get back to normal this year. I also worry that the conferences that postponed to later this year will be caught up in the 'second wave' after restrictions start to ease and they will end up having to cancel. Because of this, postponing for DEF CON was not an option."

Over the course of the last month, Nintendo users have been increasingly reporting that their accounts have been getting hacked and accessed from remote locations around the globe, with some users losing money as a result of the unauthorized intrusion. From a report: The account hijackings appear to have started mid-March and have reached a peak over the weekend when more and more users started receiving email alerts that unknown IP addresses have been seen accessing their Nintendo profiles. The way accounts are getting hacked is currently unknown. It is unclear if hackers are using passwords leaked in data breaches at other sites to also gain access to Nintendo accounts. Some users reported using complex passwords generated through a password manager, passwords that were unique to their accounts, and not used anywhere else. This suggests hackers might be using more than the classic credential stuffing, password spraying, or brute-force attacks. Nintendo has yet to release a formal statement about the attacks; however, the company has advised users earlier month on Twitter and Reddit to enable two-step verification (2SV) for their accounts, suggesting that this might prevent intrusions.

Epic Games: The engine maker, the game maker, the storefront handler... and now the games publisher. DarkRookie2 shares a report: Epic Games Publishing came into formal existence on Wednesday by announcing plans to fund, launch, and promote new multi-platform video games. The announcement hinged on two key points: which studios had already signed to EGP and what financial terms EGP games developers can expect. While most game publishing deals aren't typically laid bare for the public, Epic has already chosen to confirm some of EGP's financial nitty-gritty. In addition to letting studios retain "100%" control of their intellectual property (an increasingly popular term for game-publishing contracts), EGP also promises to fund "up to 100%" of all game development costs. "Once costs are recouped," Epic says, developers will earn "at least 50% of profits." (That mix of "up to" and "at least" in the last two points may imply that those figures vary as a pair -- meaning, if a developer pays for more of its dev costs, it might stand to claim more profit-sharing in the long term. Epic has not clarified that point.)

Unsurprisingly, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney described these terms as "the publishing model we always wanted for ourselves when we worked with publishers [as an independent game studio]," but we're still left with some questions, all of which Epic has declined to answer as of press time. EGP is touted as a "multi-platform" effort, but will EGP games ever be available outside of Epic Games Store on PC, and/or will those games' console versions launch later than their PC versions to give Epic Games Store any form of timed exclusivity? Can EGP partners develop separate games as indie efforts or for other publishers while they're part of an EGP deal? And will each game include a Fortnite outfit-and-dance tie-in? (The last question is a joke, but considering that Epic made a Fortnite skin for the Mixer game-streamer Ninja, anything's possible at this point.)

Brave has filed a formal complaint against Google with the lead GDPR enforcer in Europe. The complaint comes after Dr. Johnny Ryan, Brave's chief policy and industry relations officer, promised to take Google to court if it didn't stop abusing its power by sharing user data collected by dozens of its distinct services, and creating a "free for all" data warehouse. Cointelegraph reports: Now, the complaint is with the Irish Data Protection Commission. It accuses Google of violating Article 5(1)b of the GDPR. Dublin is Google's European headquarters and, as Dr. Ryan explained to Cointelegraph, the Commission "is responsible for regulating Google's data protection across the European Economic Area." Article 5(1)b of the GDPR requires that data be "collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes." According to Dr. Ryan: "Enforcement of Brave's GDPR 'purpose limitation' complaint against Google would be tantamount to a functional separation, giving everyone the power to decide what parts of Google they chose to reward with their data."

In addition to filing a formal complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission, Brave has reportedly written to the European Commission, German Bundeskartellamt, UK Competition & Markets Authority, and French Autorite de la concurrence. If none of these regulatory bodies take action against Google, Brave has suggested that it may take the tech giant to court itself.

A judge ordered Thursday a temporary block on the JEDI cloud contract in response to a suit filed by Amazon. From a report: A court notice announcing the injunction was filed on Thursday, but wasn't public. It's unclear why the documents were sealed. In April, the Defense Department announced that Amazon and Microsoft were the two finalists to provide the contract, ruling out other contenders like IBM and Oracle. Then in July, President Donald Trump said he was looking into the contract after IBM and other companies protested the bidding process. Microsoft was awarded the contract on Oct. 25. Amazon has been protesting the move, saying that it was driven in part by President Trump's bias against the company. Trump often criticizes Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, claiming the newspaper unfairly covers his administration. Last month, Amazon's cloud-computing arm AWS filed a formal motion asking the court to pause Microsoft's work on the JEDI cloud contract, claiming the evaluation process included "clear deficiencies, errors and unmistakable bias." The court granted that motion on Thursday.