Category: Technology

new york — Caroline Ellison, a former top executive in Sam Bankman-Fried's fallen FTX cryptocurrency empire, was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday after she apologized repeatedly to everyone hurt by a fraud that stole billions of dollars from investors, lenders and customers.  U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said Ellison's cooperation was "very, very substantial" and "remarkable."  But he said a prison sentence was necessary because she had participated in what might be the "greatest financial fraud ever perpetrated in this country and probably anywhere else" or at least close to it.  He said in such a serious case, he could not let cooperation be a get-out-of-jail-free card, even when it was clear that Bankman-Fried had become "your kryptonite."  "I've seen a lot of cooperators in 30 years…

Washington — The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday proposed prohibiting key Chinese software and hardware in connected vehicles on American roads due to national security concerns — a move that would effectively bar nearly all Chinese cars from entering the U.S. market. The planned regulation, first reported by Reuters, would also force American and other major automakers in the coming years to remove key Chinese software and hardware from vehicles in the United States. The Biden administration has raised serious concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on U.S. drivers and infrastructure through connected vehicles as well as about potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the internet and navigation systems. The White House ordered an investigation into the potential dangers in February. The prohibitions would prevent testing of self-driving…

Washington — The U.S. Commerce Department is expected on Monday to propose prohibiting Chinese software and hardware in connected and autonomous vehicles on American roads due to national security concerns, two sources told Reuters. The Biden administration has raised serious concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on U.S. drivers and infrastructure as well as the potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the internet and navigation systems. The proposed regulation would ban the import and sale of vehicles from China with key communications or automated driving system software or hardware, said the two sources, who declined to be identified because the decision had not been publicly disclosed. The move is a significant escalation in the United States' ongoing restrictions on Chinese vehicles, software and components. Last week, the…

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SACRAMENTO, California — California will make it illegal for social media platforms to knowingly provide addictive feeds to children without parental consent beginning in 2027 under a new law Governor Gavin Newsom signed Friday.  California follows New York state, which passed a law earlier this year allowing parents to block their kids from getting social media posts suggested by a platform's algorithm. Utah has passed laws in recent years aimed at limiting children's access to social media, but those have faced challenges in court.  The California law will take effect in a state home to some of the largest technology companies in the world. Similar proposals have failed to pass in recent years, but Newsom signed a first-in-the-nation law in 2022 barring online platforms from using users' personal information in ways…

Washington — Based on the posts of an X account that bears the name of Dutch cartoonist Bart van Leeuwen, a profile picture of his face and short professional bio, one would think the Amsterdam-based artist is a staunch supporter of China and fierce critic of the United States. In one post, the account blasts what it calls Washington’s “fallacies against the Chinese economy,” accompanied by a cartoon from the Global Times — a Beijing-controlled media outlet — showing Uncle Sam aiming but failing to hit a target emblazoned with the words “China’s economy.” In another, the account reposts a Chinese propaganda video about the country’s rubber-stamp legislature, writing “today’s China is closely connected with the world, blending with each other, and achieving mutual success.” But Van Leeuwen didn’t make the…

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Washington — The United States has identified and taken down a botnet campaign by China-directed hackers to further infiltrate American infrastructure as well as a variety of internet-connected devices. FBI Director Christopher Wray announced the disruption of what he called Flax Typhoon during a cyber summit Wednesday in Washington, describing it as part of a much larger campaign by Beijing. “Flax Typhoon hijacked Internet-of-Things devices like cameras, video recorders and storage devices — things typically found across both big and small organizations,” Wray said. “And about half of those hijacked devices were located here in the U.S.” Wray said the hackers, working under the guise of an information security company called the Integrity Technology Group, collected information from corporations, media organizations, universities and government agencies. “They used internet-connected devices — this…

Ratcliffe on Soar, United Kingdom — Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station has dominated the landscape of the English East Midlands for nearly 60 years, looming over the small town of the same name and a landmark on the M1 motorway bisecting Derby and Nottingham.   At the mainline railway station serving the nearby East Midlands Airport, its giant cooling towers rise up seemingly within touching distance of the track and platform.   But at the end of this month, the site in central England will close its doors, signaling the end to polluting coal-powered electricity in the UK, in a landmark first for any G7 nation.    "It'll seem very strange because it has always been there," said David Reynolds, a 74-year-old retiree who saw the site being built as a child before it…

brussels — Europe's second-top court largely confirmed on Wednesday an EU antitrust fine imposed on U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm, revising it down slightly to $265.5 million from an initial $2.7 million. The European Commission imposed the fine in 2019, saying that Qualcomm sold its chipsets below cost between 2009 and 2011, in a practice known as predatory pricing, to thwart British phone software maker Icera, which is now part of Nvidia Corp. Qualcomm had argued that the 3G baseband chipsets singled out in the case accounted for just 0.7% of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) market and so it was not possible for it to exclude rivals from the chipset market. The Court made "a detailed examination of all the pleas put forward by Qualcomm, rejecting them all in their entirety,…

BRUSSELS — Alphabet unit Google won its challenge on Wednesday against a $1.66 billion antitrust fine imposed five years ago for hindering rivals in online search advertising, a week after it lost a much bigger case. The European Commission, in its 2019 decision, said Google had abused its dominance to prevent websites from using brokers other than its AdSense platform that provided search adverts. The practices it said were illegal took place from 2006 to 2016. The Luxembourg-based General Court mostly agreed with the European Union competition enforcer's assessments of the case, but annulled the fine. "The court (...) upheld most of the commission's assessments, but annulled the decision imposing a fine of almost 1.5 billion euros ($1.66 billion) on Google, on the grounds in particular that it had failed to…

Brussels — Teresa Ribera will have to square up to Big Tech, banks and airlines if confirmed as Europe's new antitrust chief, while juggling calls for looser rules to help create EU champions. Nominated Tuesday by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for the high-profile antitrust post, Ribera has been Spain's minister for ecological transition since 2018. The 55-year-old Spanish socialist, one of Europe's most ambitious policymakers on climate change, will have to secure European Parliament approval before taking up her post. As competition commissioner, she will be able to approve or veto multi-billion euro mergers or slap hefty fines on companies seeking to bolster their market power by throttling smaller rivals or illegally teaming up to fix prices. One of her biggest challenges will be to ensure that Amazon,…

PARIS — When French prosecutors took aim at Telegram boss Pavel Durov, they had a trump card to wield - a tough new law with no international equivalent that criminalizes tech titans whose platforms allow illegal products or activities. The so-called LOPMI law, enacted in January 2023, has placed France at the forefront of a group of nations taking a sterner stance on crime-ridden websites. But the law is so recent that prosecutors have yet to secure a conviction. With the law still untested in court, France's pioneering push to prosecute figures like Durov could backfire if its judges balk at penalizing tech bosses for alleged criminality on their platforms. A French judge placed Durov under formal investigation last month, charging him with various crimes, including the 2023 offence: "Complicity in…

WASHINGTON — “I love you, China. My dear mother,” former U.S. President Donald Trump, standing in front of a mic at a lectern, appears to sing in perfect Mandarin. “I cry for you, and I also feel proud for you,” Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent in this year’s election, appears to respond, also in perfect Mandarin. Trump lets out a smile as he listens to the lyric. The video has received thousands of likes and tens of thousands of reposts on Douyin, China’s variation of TikTok. “These two are almost as Chinese as it gets,” one comment says. Neither Trump nor Harris knows Mandarin. And the duet shown in the video has never happened. But recently, deepfake videos, frequently featuring top U.S. leaders, including President Joe Biden, singing Chinese…

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tokyo — A long robot entered a damaged reactor at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant on Tuesday, beginning a two-week, high-stakes mission to retrieve for the first time a tiny amount of melted fuel debris from the bottom. The robot's trip into the Unit 2 reactor is a crucial initial step for what comes next — a daunting, decades-long process to decommission the plant and deal with large amounts of highly radioactive melted fuel inside three reactors that were damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Specialists hope the robot will help them learn more about the status of the cores and the fuel debris. Here is an explanation of how the robot works, its mission, significance and what lies ahead as the most challenging phase of the reactor…

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Taipei, Taiwan — The U.S.-China technology war is playing out in the smartphone market in China, where global rivals Apple and Huawei released new phones this week. Industry experts say Apple, which lacks home-field advantage, faces many challenges in defending its market share in the country. The biggest highlight of the iPhone 16 is its artificial intelligence system, dubbed Apple Intelligence, while the Huawei Mate XT features innovative tri-fold screen technology.  But at a starting price of RMB 19,999, about $2,810, the Mate XT will cost about three times as much as the iPhone 16. According to data from VMall, Huawei's official shopping site, nearly 5.74 million people in China preordered the Mate XT as of late Thursday, 5½ days after Huawei began accepting preorders. But in a survey conducted on…

Washington — When the U.S. announced the seizure of 32 internet domains tied to Russian efforts to ply American voters with disinformation ahead of November’s presidential election, prosecutors were quick to note the use of artificial intelligence, or AI. The Russian operation, known as Doppelganger, drove internet and social media users to the fake news using a variety of methods, the charging documents said, including advertisements that were “in some cases created using artificial intelligence.” AI tools were also used to “generate content, including images and videos, for use in negative advertisements about U.S. politicians,” the indictment added. And Russia is far from alone in turning to AI in the hopes of swaying U.S. voters. “The primary actors we've seen for election use of this are Iran and Russia, although as…

SINGAPORE — An Australian think tank that tracks tech competitiveness says China is now the world leader in research on almost 90% of critical technologies. In a newly released report, the research group adds there is also a high risk of Beijing securing a monopoly on defense-related tech, including drones, satellites and collaborative robots — those that can work safely alongside humans. Analysts say the huge leap forward for China is the result of heavy state investment over the past two decades. They add that despite the progress, Beijing is still dependent on other countries for key tech components and lacks self-sufficiency. The report from the government-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute, or ASPI, released last Thursday, says China led the way in research into 57 out of 64 advanced technologies in…

LONDON — Google lost its last bid to overturn a European Union antitrust penalty, after the bloc's top court ruled against it Tuesday in a case that came with a whopping fine and helped jumpstart an era of intensifying scrutiny for Big Tech companies. The European Union's top court rejected Google's appeal against the $2.7 billion penalty from the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc's top antitrust enforcer, for violating antitrust rules with its comparison shopping service. Also Tuesday, Apple lost its challenge against an order to repay $14.34 billion in back taxes to Ireland, after the European Court of Justice issued a separate decision siding with the commission in a case targeting unlawful state aid for global corporations. Both companies have now exhausted their appeals in the cases that date to…

Harare, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe’s government has introduced hefty fines of up to $5,000 for poor service in the country's telecommunications industry. In a statement Tuesday, Zimbabwe’s ICT Minister Tatenda Mavetera said the government will levy fines of between $200 and $5,000 per infringement for telecommunications companies and internet providers who fail to give reliable service. Willard Shoko, an independent high-speed internet consultant, said the new fines could result in a solid telecom industry that can compete in the entire southern African region. “The motive behind that is to improve internet for the end user. But I think they should also consider improving the infrastructure sharing and also collaboration to improve internet, not only for the region but also for Zimbabwe, because this is the foundation of the digital economy,” Shoko said.…

SYDNEY — Australia will ban children from using social media with a minimum age limit as high as 16, the prime minister said Tuesday, vowing to get kids off their devices and "onto the footy fields." Federal legislation to keep children off social media will be introduced this year, Anthony Albanese said, describing the impact of the sites on young people as a "scourge." The minimum age for children to log into sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok has not been decided but is expected to be between 14 and 16 years, Albanese said. The prime minister said his own preference would be a block on users aged below 16. Age verification trials are being held over the coming months, the center-left leader said, though analysts said they doubted it…

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — One month after a judge declared Google's search engine an illegal monopoly, the tech giant faces another antitrust lawsuit that threatens to break up the company, this time over its advertising technology.  The Justice Department, joined by a coalition of states, and Google each made opening statements Monday to a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, who will decide whether Google holds a monopoly over online advertising technology.  The regulators contend that Google built, acquired and maintains a monopoly over the technology that matches online publishers to advertisers. Dominance over the software on both the buy side and the sell side of the transaction enables Google to keep as much as 36 cents on the dollar when it brokers sales between publishers and advertisers, the government contends.  They allege…

CUPERTINO, California — Apple on Monday charged into the artificial intelligence craze with a new iPhone lineup that marks the company's latest attempt to latch onto a technology trend and transform it into a cultural phenomenon.  The four different iPhone 16 models will all come equipped with special chips needed to power a suite of AI tools that Apple hopes will make its marquee product even more indispensable and reverse a recent sales slump.  Apple's AI features are designed to turn its often-blundering virtual assistant Siri into a smarter and more versatile sidekick, automate a wide range of tedious tasks, and pull off other crowd-pleasing tricks such as creating customized emojis within seconds.  After receiving a standing ovation for Monday's event, Apple CEO Tim Cook promised the AI package would unleash…