An anonymous reader shares a report: On the eve of Google's acquisition of YouTube in 2006, the video site's cofounder Chad Hurley discovered that a Google ad manager had snooped on YouTube's revenue figures. Hurley was so irked by the invasion of YouTube's business that he threatened to walk away from the deal, a new book about YouTube's founding reveals. Google's CEO at the time, Eric Schmidt, was able to calm Hurley down enough to close the $1.65 billion deal -- a deal that became a pivot point in the development of the modern internet. The previously unreported episode comes from the book "Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination" by the Bloomberg reporter Mark Bergen.

Microsoft has promised to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for three years beyond the current agreement between Activision and Sony, says PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan. In a statement provided to GamesIndustry.biz, Ryan says the offer was "inadequate on many levels." From a report: The disagreement between the two companies follows Microsoft's offer to buy Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard in a deal worth nearly $69 billion. [...] Last week, Xbox revealed that it had "provided a signed agreement to Sony to guarantee Call of Duty on PlayStation, with feature and content parity, for at least several more years" beyond Sony's existing contract with Activision. Xbox chief said this offer "goes well beyond typical gaming industry agreements."

The current deal between Sony and Activision Blizzard around Call of Duty is believed to cover the next three releases, including this year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. However, Sony says the offer fails to consider the impact on PlayStation gamers. "I hadn't intended to comment on what I understood to be a private business discussion, but I feel the need to set the record straight because Phil Spencer brought this into the public forum," Ryan stated. "Microsoft has only offered for Call of Duty to remain on PlayStation for three years after the current agreement between Activision and Sony ends. After almost 20 years of Call of Duty on PlayStation, their proposal was inadequate on many levels and failed to take account of the impact on our gamers. We want to guarantee PlayStation gamers continue to have the highest quality Call of Duty experience, and Microsoft's proposal undermines this principle."

The rise of fintech services and digital banking could spur financial risks and potentially a crisis over the long term, Michael Hsu, Acting Comptroller of the Currency, a major U.S. bank regulator, warned on Wednesday. From a report: "I believe fintechs and big techs are having a large impact and warrant much more of our attention," Hsu told a New York conference, noting the encroachment of fintech companies into the traditional financial sector, including via partnerships with banks, was creating more complexity and "de-integration" across the banking sector. "My strong sense is that this process, left to its own devices, is likely to accelerate and expand until there is a severe problem, or even a crisis," Hsu said. Banks and tech firms, in an effort to provide a seamless customer experience, are teaming up in ways that make it more difficult for regulators to distinguish between where the bank stops and where the tech firm starts, said Hsu. And with fintech valuations falling as financing costs rise, bank partnerships with fintechs are increasing, he said.

Joe Sullivan, Uber's former chief of security, faces criminal charges for his handling of a 2016 security breach. His trial this week has divided the security industry. From a report: Joe Sullivan was a rock star in the information security world. One of the first federal prosecutors to work on cybercrime cases in the late 1990s, he jumped into the corporate security world in 2002, eventually taking on high-profile roles as chief of security at Facebook and Uber. When the security community made its annual summer pilgrimage to Las Vegas for two conferences, Mr. Sullivan was an easily recognizable figure: tall with shaggy hair, wearing sneakers and a hoodie. "Everyone knew him; I was in awe, frankly," said Renee Guttmann, who was the chief information security officer for Coca-Cola and Campbell Soup. "He was an industry leader." So it came as a shock to many in the community when Mr. Sullivan was fired by Uber in 2017, accused of mishandling a security incident the year before. Despite the scandal, Mr. Sullivan got a new job as chief of security at Cloudflare, an internet infrastructure company.

But the investigation into the incident at Uber continued, and in 2020, the same prosecutor's office where Mr. Sullivan had worked decades earlier charged him with two felonies, in what is believed to be the first time a company executive has faced potential criminal liability for an alleged data breach. Mr. Sullivan has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Mr. Sullivan stepped down from his job at Cloudflare in July, in preparation for his trial, which begins this week in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Other chief security officers are following the case closely, worried about what it means for them. [...] At the very least, security executives are worried about being on the hook for potential legal bills. Charles Blauner, a retired CISO and cybersecurity adviser, said security chiefs had taken a strong interest in directors and officers insurance, which covers the legal costs of executives who are sued as a result of their work with a company. "A lot of sitting chief information security officers are going to their bosses and asking if they have D.&O. insurance and, if not, can I have it?" Mr. Blauner said. "They are saying, 'If I'm going to be held liable for something our company does, I want legal coverage.'" After being charged, Mr. Sullivan sued Uber to force it to pay his legal fees in the criminal case, and they reached a private settlement.

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Google parent Alphabet, defended the internet-search giant against claims that it is anticompetitive, citing established rivals in the digital advertising market and upstart mobile app TikTok as examples of robust competition in technology. From a report: Pichai made the remarks late Tuesday at the Code Conference in Los Angeles. He said the company is "pro-competitive" and named companies including Apple and Microsoft as competitors in the advertising business and TikTok as a rival in the video space. He said that YouTube Shorts, Google's TikTok competitor, is off to a "great start."

"Competition in tech is hyper-intense," Pichai said. The rise of TikTok "shows there is competition in the space" and "how vibrant this market is" compared to years past. The US Justice Department sued Google in 2020, alleging the company dominates the search market in violation of antitrust laws. The company is the most popular search engine and only has limited competition in that business from Microsoft Bing and Yahoo Search. The DOJ is also preparing to sue Google on claims it illegally dominates the digital advertising market, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg last month. "Do I wake up and worry about all the stuff that's coming down?" Pichai said Tuesday. "Absolutely." Still, he said, "my guidance to our teams is to be respectful and engage the way we have in Europe" and "engage constructively through the process."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: One of the strictest internet privacy laws in the United States has withstood a legal challenge, as a group of telecommunication providers has dropped its bid to overturn the Maine standard. Maine created one of the toughest rules in the nation for internet service providers in 2020 when it began enforcing an "opt-in" web privacy standard. The law stops the service providers from using, disclosing, selling or providing access to customers' personal information without permission.

Industry associations swiftly sued with a claim that the new law violated their First Amendment rights. A federal judge rejected that challenge, but legal wrangling continued. The groups, which include the country's biggest telecommunications providers, filed to dismiss the lawsuit on Sept. 2, said Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey. Frey said the state's privacy law held up despite the efforts of an "army of industry lawyers organized against us," and now other states can follow Maine's lead. "Maine's Legislature wisely sought to protect Maine residents by restricting the disclosure and use of their most private and personal information," Frey said.

The Maine Legislature passed the bill, proposed by former Democratic state Sen. Shenna Bellows, who is now Maine's secretary of state, in 2019. Internet service providers then sued in February 2020, and attorneys for Maine have been in court defending the law since. The proposal stemmed from a Maine effort to bring back rules implemented during President Barack Obama's tenure that were repealed by Congress during President Donald Trump's term. Industry plaintiffs agreed to reimburse Maine for more than $55,000 in costs incurred defending the law, Frey said. Maine is also home to the strictest facial recognition law of its kind. It was passed last July and "prohibits government use of facial recognition except in specifically outlined situations, with the most broad exception being if police have probable cause that an unidentified person in an image committed a serious crime, or for proactive fraud prevention," reports Motherboard.

"Crucially, the law plugs loopholes that police have used in the past to gain access to the technology, like informally asking other agencies or third parties to run backchannel searches for them. Logs of all facial recognition searches by the BMV must be created and are designated as public records."

Google has started sending out invites for its fall hardware event, which is set to take place on Thursday, October 6th, at 10AM ET. The Verge reports: The event will launch the upcoming Pixel 7 phones, as well as the Pixel Watch -- the company showed off both devices at its I/O event earlier this year, announcing they're coming in the fall. Since Google's last event, purported leaks have revealed even more about the devices, with both the Watch and phones seemingly making their way into people's hands.

The Pixel 7 seems like it'll be a pretty straightforward continuation of the previous generation of phones, but there's a bit of pressure with the Watch as the "first smartwatch built by Google, inside and out," as its product page on Google's online store says. Google's competitors (namely Samsung and Apple) have been making wearables for years, so the company's entry has to be competent and at least somewhat competitive right out of the gate. So far, details about it are scant -- we don't even know what chip it'll use -- but we should get a clearer picture come October 6th.

The Federal Communications Commission has collected precise broadband availability information from Internet service providers for the first time and aims to release a first draft of a new broadband map in November, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wrote Friday. From a report: The FCC last week "completed the first filing window for submitting data on where broadband service is and is not available," a milestone in the years-long process of creating an accurate US broadband map, she wrote. "For the first time ever, we have collected extensive location-by-location data on precisely where broadband services are available, and now we are ready to get to work and start developing new and improved broadband maps."

The resulting map should show whether fixed broadband service is available at each residence or business location. The FCC's inaccurate broadband maps have long made it difficult to distribute deployment grants where they're needed most. Current maps are based on the Form 477 data-collection program in which ISPs report whether they offer service in each census block, which essentially lets ISPs count an entire census block as served even if it can serve just one home in the area. The new, more accurate maps will be used to help distribute $42.45 billion from the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program created by Congress in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is trying to clean up the messy state of crypto copyright. From a report: Last week, the company introduced what it dubs "Can't Be Evil" licenses: a series of agreements that let creators grant non-fungible token owners partial or near-complete rights to NFT art. It's fighting a problem many experts have called out -- one that's persistently undercut claims that NFTs let you "own" a work. The "Can't Be Evil" licenses (named after a common claim about blockchain businesses) are based on the Creative Commons (CC) copyright framework. But unlike Creative Commons, which provides blanket licenses to wide swathes of people, a16z's licenses lay out the relationship between an NFT buyer and the person who created the original art it's linked with. As explained in a blog post, the licenses are meant as a relatively simple but legally sound framework for setting the rights of NFT holders, open to modification by individual projects. It's something many NFT projects -- including some massive brands like Bored Ape Yacht Club -- fail to do consistently. There are already attempts at making a standardized NFT license, but so far, none have seen the kind of success Creative Commons has in the non-crypto world. And a16z, which has invested a huge amount in the crypto ecosystem, has a vested interest in solving the problem.

Proposed E.U. rules could limit the type of research that produces cutting-edge AI tools like GPT-3, experts warn in a new study. From a report: The nonpartisan think tank Brookings this week published a piece decrying the bloc's regulation of open source AI, arguing it would create legal liability for general-purpose AI systems while simultaneously undermining their development. Under the E.U.'s draft AI Act, open source developers would have to adhere to guidelines for risk management, data governance, technical documentation and transparency, as well as standards of accuracy and cybersecurity. If a company were to deploy an open source AI system that led to some disastrous outcome, the author asserts, it's not inconceivable the company could attempt to deflect responsibility by suing the open source developers on which they built their product.

"This could further concentrate power over the future of AI in large technology companies and prevent research that is critical to the public's understanding of AI," Alex Engler, the analyst at Brookings who published the piece, wrote. "In the end, the [E.U.'s] attempt to regulate open-source could create a convoluted set of requirements that endangers open-source AI contributors, likely without improving use of general-purpose AI." In 2021, the European Commission -- the E.U.'s politically independent executive arm -- released the text of the AI Act, which aims to promote "trustworthy AI" deployment in the E.U. As they solicit input from industry ahead of a vote this fall, E.U. institutions are seeking to make amendments to the regulations that attempt to balance innovation with accountability. But according to some experts, the AI Act as written would impose onerous requirements on open efforts to develop AI systems. The legislation contains carve-outs for some categories of open source AI, like those exclusively used for research and with controls to prevent misuse. But as Engler notes, it'd be difficult -- if not impossible -- to prevent these projects from making their way into commercial systems, where they could be abused by malicious actors.

High-profile universities and state-run research institutes in China have been relying on a U.S. computing chip to power their artificial intelligence (AI) technology but whose export to the country Washington has now restricted, a Reuters review showed. From the report: U.S. chip designer Nvidia last week said U.S. government officials have ordered it to stop exporting its A100 and H100 chips to China. Local peer Advanced Micro Devices also said new licence requirements now prevent export to China of its advanced AI chip MI250. The development signalled a major escalation of a U.S. campaign to stymie China's technological capability as tension bubbles over the fate of Taiwan, where chips for Nvidia and almost every other major chip firm are manufactured.

China views Taiwan as a rogue province and has not ruled out force to bring the democratically governed island under its control. Responding to the restrictions, China branded them a futile attempt to impose a technology blockade on a rival. A Reuters review of more than a dozen publicly available government tenders over the past two years indicated that among some of China's most strategically important research institutes, there is high demand - and need - for Nvidia's signature A100 chips. Tsinghua University, China's highest-ranked higher education institution globally, spent over $400,000 last October on two Nvidia AI supercomputers, each powered by four A100 chips, one of the tenders showed. In the same month, the Institute of Computing Technology, part of top research group, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), spent around $250,000 on A100 chips. The school of artificial intelligence at a CAS university in July this year also spent about $200,000 on high-tech equipment including a server partly powered by A100 chips. In November, the cybersecurity college of Guangdong-based Jinan University spent over $93,000 on an Nvidia AI supercomputer, while its school of intelligent systems science and engineering spent almost $100,000 on eight A100 chips just last month. Less well-known institutes and universities supported by municipal and provincial governments, such as in Shandong, Henan and Chongqing, also bought A100 chips, the tenders showed.

TikTok is denying reports that it was breached after a hacking group posted images of what they claim is a TikTok database that contains the platform's source code and user information. In response to these allegations, TikTok said its team "found no evidence of a security breach." From a report: According to Bleeping Computer, hackers shared the images of the alleged database to a hacking forum, saying they obtained the data on a server used by TikTok. It claims the server stores over 2 billion records and 790GB worth of user data, platform statistics, code, and more. "We have confirmed that the data samples in question are all publicly accessible and are not due to any compromise of TikTok systems, networks, or databases," TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said in a statement to The Verge. "We do not believe users need to take any proactive actions, and we remain committed to the safety and security of our global community."

Cloudflare blocked Kiwi Farms on Saturday, days after hinting it will continue working with the controversial discussion forum despite weeks of pressure. From a report: The company has blocked Kiwi Farms content from being accessed through its infrastructure after an escalation in rhetoric and "specific, targeted threats" over the past 48 hours, Chief Executive Officer Matthew Prince said in a blog post. "This is an extraordinary decision for us to make and, given Cloudflare's role as an internet infrastructure provider, a dangerous one that we are not comfortable with," Prince said. While we believe "it would have been appropriate as an infrastructure provider for us to wait for legal process, in this case the imminent and emergency threat to human life which continues to escalate causes us to take this action." Previously, Cloudflare offered security services to Kiwi Farms. Visitors to Kiwi Farms sites that use any of its services will now see a Cloudflare block page and a link to Prince's post.

Poolin, one of the world's biggest crypto mining pools, is suspending bitcoin and ether withdrawals from its wallet service due to "liquidity problems." From a report: "As you may have known, Poolin Wallet is currently facing some liquidity problems due to recent increasing demands on withdrawals. But please be assured, all user assets are safe and the company's net worth is positive," the firm said in an announcement Monday. Poolin said that it would "make a snapshot of the remaining BTC and ETH balances on pool on September 6th to work out the balances." "The daily mined coins after September 6th will be normally paid out per day. Other coins are not affected. The details of payout schedule for remaining balances will be released when details are set," the post continued. The Beijing-based company is among the latest industry firms to suspend withdrawals due to liquidity problems amid this year's decline in crypto asset prices. Lenders Voyager Digital and Vauld both halted withdrawals in July. Voyager has since begun restoring some access to customers.

Ireland's data privacy regulator has agreed to levy a record fine of 405 million euros ($402 million) against social network Instagram following an investigation into its handling of children's data, a spokesperson for the watchdog said. From a report: Instagram plans to appeal against the fine, a spokesperson for parent Meta Platforms said in an emailed statement. The investigation, which started in 2020, focused on child users between the ages of 13 and 17 who were allowed to operate business accounts, which facilitated the publication of the user's phone number and/or email address. "We adopted our final decision last Friday and it does contain a fine of 405 million euro," said the spokesperson for Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), the lead regulator of Instagram's parent company Meta Platforms.

India has summoned executives of Wikipedia after a cricketer's page on the online encyclopedia was edited with links to a separatist movement. The country's IT ministry made the order on Monday to seek clarification from Wikipedia executives over the incident. From a report: A key IT minister publicly expressed his concern about the edits to the page of cricketer Arshdeep Singh, suggesting that some people from Pakistan were behind the act and were attempting to disrupt peace in the South Asian market. The Wikipedia page of Singh, who had several lapses in a game between India and Pakistan on Sunday, was edited to incorrectly say that he had been selected to play for Khalistan, a fictitious independent homeland sought by some separatists groups. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India's Junior IT Minister, said in a tweet that no intermediary, a service with over 5 million users, can permit deliberate misinformation campaign of this kind. Such acts "violates our govt's expectation of safe & trusted internet," he tweeted.

A simple digital card praising Islamist militants for an attack on a Taliban position in Afghanistan last month is the first known nonfungible token created and disseminated by a terrorist sympathizer, according to former senior U.S. intelligence officials. From a report: It is a sign that Islamic State and other terror groups may be preparing to use the emerging financial technology to sidestep Western efforts to eradicate their online fundraising and messaging, they said. The NFT, visible on at least one NFT trading website and titled "IS-NEWS #01," bears Islamic State's emblem. It was created by a supporter of the group, likely as an experiment to test a new outreach and funding strategy for ISIS, the former officials said.

Regulators and national-security officials have expressed concern about the potential for terrorists to exploit new financial technologies and markets, including NFTs. "It was only a matter of time," said Yaya Fanusie, a former economic and counterterrorism analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. An NFT is a unit of data stored on a blockchain -- a database of transactions organized without the need for a central trusted authority. The technology first emerged as a means of tracking, valuing and trading digital assets, but developers say that it has much broader applications, such as digital concert tickets and branded collectibles like digital trading cards.

In 2021, 9% of the world's auto sales were electric vehicles, reports CNBC (citing statistics from the International Energy Agency). Yet CNBC also notes that electric vehicles "require 30% fewer parts and components manufacturing than conventional cars," according to researchers for an Industrial Heartland case study."

So will that create problems in America's heartland? "Large swaths of the Midwest have economies based around the auto parts manufacturing trade..." "When we look carefully at what goes on on the factory floor, it won't be less workers," Keith Cooley, former head of Michigan's Labor Department, told CNBC. "There will be different people building the cars." Researchers believe modern factory jobs will require more education and could be less available than they were in the past. They estimate that electric vehicles could require 30% less manufacturing labor when compared with conventional cars. "The lines that run to drive oil or gas around an internal combustion engine aren't going to be there," said Cooley.

This change could hit the parts suppliers in the auto industry.

The Financial Times tells how the head of a Ukrainian cybersecurity company recruited dozens of "high-level Ukrainian hackers" and borrowed a Starlink internet satellite for "the large-scale infiltration of internet-connected security cameras to surveil Russian-occupied territory, and honey-trapping Russian soldiers into revealing their bases." [T]hey hacked thousands of security and traffic cameras in Belarus and parts of Ukraine that Russia had occupied. To filter the information, the team wrote machine-learning code that helped them separate military movements from ordinary traffic, and they funnelled the information to the military via a public portal.

In one example, described to the Financial Times with photographs and locations, they identified a remote Russian base near occupied Melitopol in southern Ukraine. Then, using fake profiles of attractive women on Facebook and Russian social media websites, they tricked soldiers into sending photos that they geolocated, and shared with the Ukrainian military....

A few days later, they watched on TV as the base was blown up by Ukrainian artillery.

Windows' "Defender" software is supposed to detect malware. But its Microsoft team is now investigating reports that it's mistakenly flagging Electron-based or Chromium-based applications — as malware.

"It's a false positive, and your computer is OK," wites the blog Windows Central: This morning, many people worldwide experienced Microsoft Defender warning them of a recurring virus threat.... People on Reddit are "freaking out" over not just a reported threat from Microsoft Defender but one that keeps popping up and recurring despite the alleged threat being blocked.

The threat is revealed in a pop-up message noting that "Behavior:Win32/Hive.ZY" has been detected and is listed as "severe." However, after taking action to rectify the issue, it does not go away, and the user will keep receiving the same prompt. The reminder may return after 20 seconds, with the cycle repeating endlessly.

This detection appears to be a false positive, according to a Microsoft Support forum... From DaveM121, an Independent Advisor: [I]t is a bug currently being reported by hundreds of people at the moment, it seems to be related to all Chromium based web browsers and Electron based apps like Whatsapp, Discord, Spotify, etc....
Also affected are Google Chrome and even Microsoft Edge, as well as "anything that runs Visual Studio Code," according to the article.

"The problem seems to originate from Defender's Definition/Update Version 1.373.1508.0, meaning Microsoft needs to update that file, and the issue should be resolved."