175369399
submission
Hope Thelps writes:
The BBC is reporting that Russia has fined Google more money than the entire world's GDP:
A Russian court has fined Google two undecillion roubles — a two followed by 36 zeroes — for restricting Russian state media channels on YouTube.
In dollar terms that means the tech giant has been told to pay $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Despite being one of the world's wealthiest companies, that is considerably more than the $2 trillion Google is worth.
In fact, it is far greater than the world’s total GDP, which is estimated by the International Monetary Fund to be $110 trillion.
The fine has reached such a gargantuan level because — as state news agency Tass has highlighted, external — it is rapidly increasing all the time.
According to Tass, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted he "cannot even pronounce this number" but urged "Google management to pay attention."
The company has not commented publicly or responded to a BBC request for a statement.
Russia media outlet RBC reports, external the fine on Google relates to the restriction of content of 17 Russian media channels on YouTube.
While this started in 2020, it escalated after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years later.
That saw most Western companies pull out of Russia, with doing business there also tightly restricted by sanctions.
Russian media outlets were also banned in Europe — prompting retaliatory measures from Moscow.
172640119
submission
Hope Thelps writes:
A number of films including the earliest ones featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse finally enterd the public domain today.
The BBC reports:Steamboat Willie, a 1928 short film featuring early non-speaking versions of Mickey and Minnie, is widely seen as the moment that transformed Disney's fortunes and made cinema history.
Their images are now available to the public in the US, after Disney's copyright expired.
It means creatives like cartoonists can now rework and use the earliest versions of Mickey and Minnie.
In fact, anyone can use those versions without permission or cost.
But Disney warned that more modern versions of Mickey are still covered by copyright.
"We will, of course, continue to protect our rights in the more modern versions of Mickey Mouse and other works that remain subject to copyright," the company said.
US copyright law says the rights to characters can be held for 95 years, which means the characters in Steamboat Willie entered the public domain on Monday, 1 January 2024.
Those works can now legally be shared, performed, reused, repurposed or sampled.
The early versions of Mickey and Minnie are just two of the works entering the public domain in the US on New Year's Day.
Other famous films, books, music and characters from 1928 are now also available to the American public.
They include Charlie Chaplin's silent romantic comedy The Circus; English author AA Milne's book The House at Pooh Corner, which introduced the character Tigger; Virginia Woolf's Orlando; and DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover.
158049979
submission
Hope Thelps writes:
The law commisions of England and Wales and of Scotland (statutory bodies which keep the laws in those countries under review) are recommending a shift in accident liability away from 'drivers' when autonomous cars become a reality.
Human drivers should not be legally accountable for road safety in the era of autonomous cars, a report says.
In these cars, the driver should be redefined as a "user-in-charge", with very different legal responsibilities, according to the law commissions for England and Wales, and Scotland.
If anything goes wrong, the company behind the driving system would be responsible, rather than the driver.
And a new regime should define whether a vehicle qualifies as self-driving.
In the inteim, carmakers must be extremely clear about the difference between self-drive and driver-assist features.
There should be no sliding scale of driverless capabilities — a car is either autonomous or not.
And if any sort of monitoring is required — in extreme weather conditions, for example — it should not be considered autonomous and current driving rules should apply.
153937921
submission
Hope Thelps writes:
The BBC is reporting that Facebook has been fined a record £50 million by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority for deliberately failing to provide required information.The £50m fine the CMA handed Facebook is more than 150 times higher than the previous record handed down for similar offences, at £325,000.
Speaking about its decision to fine the social media giant, the CMA said in a statement: "This is the first time a company has been found by the CMA to have breached an [order] by consciously refusing to report all the required information."
Giphy is widely used by Facebook's competitors to power animated Gif images used in social media apps, on mobile keyboards, and elsewhere online. That led to potential competition concerns.
The CMA issued something called an "initial enforcement order", which limits how companies that are merging, but under investigation, operate. It is designed to keep the entities semi-separate and in competition with each other until the investigation is over.
Facebook is obliged to provide updates and information to make clear how it is complying with the order.
"Given the multiple warnings it gave Facebook, the CMA considers that Facebook's failure to comply was deliberate," the CMA said.
That "fundamentally undermined its ability to prevent, monitor and put right any issues".
The fine for that offence is £50m. Separately, the CMA announced a £500,000 fine for Facebook changing its chief compliance officer — twice — "without seeking consent first".
Facebook refutes the allegation that it deliberately broke rules, saying it had complied with the main obligations, and the row is instead about the details of how it did so.
150277309
submission
Hope Thelps writes:
The BBC reports on the results of a study of the metabolism of 6,400 people from eight days old up to age 95 across 29 countries.
The study, published in the journal Science, found four phases of metabolic life:
- birth to age one, when the metabolism shifts from being the same as the mother's to a lifetime high 50% above that of adults
- a gentle slowdown until the age of 20, with no spike during all the changes of puberty
- no change at all between the ages of 20 and 60
- a permanent decline, with yearly falls that, by 90, leave metabolism 26% lower than in mid-life
"It is a picture we've never really seen before and there is a lot of surprises in it," one of the researchers, Prof John Speakman, from the University of Aberdeen, said.
"The most surprising thing for me is there is no change throughout adulthood — if you are experiencing mid-life spread you can no longer blame it on a declining metabolic rate."
149679089
submission
Hope Thelps writes:
YouTube has barred Sky News Australia from uploading new content for a week, saying it has breached rules on spreading Covid-19 misinformation.
139369226
submission
Hope Thelps writes:
The BBC is reporting that the UK has approved the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for roll-out next week, with 40 million doses (enough for 20 million people) already ordered and 800,000 expected in the next few days. Approvals in other parts of the world should be imminent.
