Category: Technology

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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 the Chinese microblogging site Weibo by Radio France International, half of the 9,200 respondents said they would not purchase a Mate XT because the price is prohibitive. An additional 3,500 said they are not in the market for a new phone now. “I suggest that Huawei release some products that ordinary people can afford,” a Weibo user wrote under the name “Diamond Man Yang Dong Feng.” The iPhone 16 is not available for preorder until Friday, but some e-commerce vendors in China have promised to deliver the new devices to consumers within half a day to two days of sale. In the competition between Apple and Huawei, iPhone 16 has some inherent disadvantages, said Shih-Fang Chiu, a senior industry analyst …

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 various private companies have noticed, China also has used artificial intelligence for spreading divisive narratives in the United States,” according to a senior intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive information. “What we’ve seen is artificial intelligence is used by foreign actors to make their content more quickly and convincingly tailor their synthetic content in both audio and video forms,” the official added.  But other U.S. officials say the use of AI to spread misinformation and disinformation in the lead-up to the U.S. election has so far failed to live up to some of the more dire warnings about how deepfakes and other AI-generated material could shake-up the American political landscape. “Generative AI is …

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 the five years from 2019-2023. ASPI’s Critical Technology Tracker ranks countries’ innovation capabilities based on the number of appearances in the top 10% of research papers. It focuses on crucial technologies from a range of fields including artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cyber and defense. The report found that “China and the United States have effectively switched places as the overwhelming leader in research in just two decades.” China led in only three of the 64 technologies between 2003 and 2007 but has shot up in the rankings, replacing the U.S., which is now a frontrunner in just seven critical technologies. Josh Kennedy-White is a technology strategist based in Singapore. He says China’s huge leap is a “direct result of its aggressive, …

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 the previous decade. Together, the court decisions are a victory for European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who is expected to step down next month after 10 years as the commission’s top official overseeing competition. Experts said the rulings illustrate how watchdogs have been emboldened in the years since the cases were first opened. One of the takeaways from the Apple decision “is the sense that, again, the EU authorities and courts are prepared to flex their [collective] muscles to bring Big Tech to heel where necessary,” Alex Haffner, a competition partner at law firm Fladgate, said by email. The shopping fine was one of three huge antitrust penalties for Google from the commission, which punished the Silicon Valley giant in 2017 …

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. “I think they should also think about how the internet can be improved and the partnership that can help improve the internet.” Fungai Mandiveyi, media and corporate affairs executive at Econet Wireless, Zimbabwe’s biggest telecommunications company, said the new regulations will be easier to comply with than those that existed before. “The new provisions introduce a new model of penalties, unlike the blanket penalty that existed in the previous statutory instrument,” Mandiveyi said. “The new penalties are now linked to specific quality of service breaches, that have also been clearly spelled out. There is now more clarity in what constitutes a service breach, and what penalty goes with a specific breach of the quality of service.” However, Christopher Musodza, an …

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 was technically possible to enforce an online age limit. “I want to see kids off their devices and onto the footy fields and the swimming pools and the tennis courts,” Albanese said. “We want them to have real experiences with real people because we know that social media is causing social harm,” he told national broadcaster ABC. “This is a scourge. We know that there is mental health consequences for what many of the young people have had to deal with,” he said. Australia’s conservative opposition leader Peter Dutton said he would support an age limit. “Every day of delay leaves young kids vulnerable to the harms of social media and the time for relying on tech companies to enforce …

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 that Google also controls the ad exchange market, which matches the buy side to the sell side.  “One monopoly is bad enough. But a trifecta of monopolies is what we have here,” Justice Department lawyer Julia Tarver Wood said during her opening statement.  Google says the government’s case is based on an internet of yesteryear, when desktop computers ruled and internet users carefully typed precise World Wide Web addresses into URL fields. Advertisers now are more likely to turn to social media companies like TikTok or streaming TV services like Peacock.  In her opening statement, Google lawyer Karen Dunn likened the government’s case to a “time capsule with a Blackberry, an iPod and a Blockbuster video card.”  Dunn said Supreme …

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 “innovations that will make a true difference in people’s lives.”  But the breakthroughs won’t begin as soon as the new iPhones — ranging in price from $800 to $1,200 — hit the stores on September 20.  Most of Apple’s AI functions will roll out as part of a free software update to iOS 18, the operating system that will power the iPhone 16 rolling out from October through December. U.S. English will be the featured language at launch, but an update enabling other languages will come out next year, according to Apple.  It’s all part of a new approach that Apple previewed at a developers conference three months ago to create more anticipation for a next generation of iPhones amid …

WASHINGTON — Boeing’s beleaguered Starliner made its long-awaited return to Earth on Saturday without the astronauts who rode it up to the International Space Station, after NASA ruled the trip back too risky. After years of delays, Starliner launched in June for what was meant to be a roughly weeklong test mission — a final shakedown before it could be certified to rotate crew to and from the orbital laboratory. But unexpected thruster malfunctions and helium leaks en route to the ISS derailed those plans, and NASA ultimately decided it was safer to bring crewmates Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back on a rival SpaceX Crew Dragon — though they’ll have to wait until February 2025. The gumdrop-shaped Boeing capsule touched down softly at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, its descent slowed by parachutes and cushioned by airbags, having departed the ISS around six hours earlier. As it streaked red-hot across the night sky, ground teams reported hearing sonic booms. The spacecraft endured temperatures of 1,650 degrees Celsius during atmospheric reentry. NASA lavished praise on Boeing during a post-flight press conference where representatives from the company were conspicuously absent. “It was a bullseye landing,” said Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s commercial crew program. “The entry in particular has been darn near flawless.” Still, he acknowledged that certain new issues had come to light, including the failure of a new thruster and the temporary loss of the guidance system. He added it was too early to talk about …

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Brussels — Elon Musk’s woes are hardly limited to Brazil as he now risks possible EU sanctions in the coming months for allegedly breaking new content rules. Access to X has been suspended in South America’s largest country since Saturday after a long-running legal battle over disinformation ended with a judge ordering a shutdown. But Brazil is not alone in its concerns about X. Politicians worldwide and digital rights groups have repeatedly raised concerns about Musk’s actions since taking over what was then Twitter in late 2022, including sacking many employees tasked with content moderation and maintaining ties with EU regulators. Musk’s “free speech absolutist” attitude has led to clashes with Brussels. The European Union could decide within months to take action against X, including possible fines, as part of an ongoing probe into whether the platform is breaching a landmark content moderation law, the Digital Services Act (DSA). Nothing has yet been decided but any fines could be as high as 6% of X’s annual worldwide turnover unless the company makes changes in line with EU demands. But if Musk’s reactions are anything to go by, another showdown is on the cards. When the EU in July accused X of deceptive practices in violation of the DSA, Musk warned: “We look forward to a very public battle in court.” The temperature was raised even further a month later with another war of words on social media between Musk and the EU’s top tech enforcer, Thierry Breton. Breton reminded Musk in …

SAO PAULO, brazil — Elon Musk’s satellite-based internet service provider Starlink backtracked Tuesday and said it will comply with a Brazilian Supreme Court justice’s order to block the billionaire’s social media platform, X.  In a statement posted on X, Starlink said it will heed Justice Alexandre de Moraes’ order despite him having frozen the company’s assets. Previously, it informally told the telecommunications regulator that it would not comply until de Moraes reversed course.  “Regardless of the illegal treatment of Starlink in freezing our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil,” the company statement said. “We continue to pursue all legal avenues, as are others who agree that @alexandre’s recent order violate the Brazilian constitution.”  De Moraes froze the company’s accounts last week as a means to compel it to cover X’s fines, which exceed $3 million, reasoning that the two companies are part of the same economic group. Starlink filed an appeal, its law firm Veirano told The Associated Press on August 3, but has declined to comment further in the days since.  Days later, the justice ordered the suspension of X for refusing to name a local legal representative, as required in order to receive notifications of court decisions and swiftly take any requisite action — particularly, in X’s case, the taking down of accounts. A Supreme Court panel unanimously upheld the block on Monday, undermining efforts by Musk and his supporters to cast the justice as an authoritarian renegade intent on censoring …

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RIO DE JANEIRO — A Brazilian Supreme Court panel on Monday unanimously upheld the decision of one of its justices to block billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X nationwide, according to the court’s website. The broader support among justices undermines the effort by Musk and his supporters to cast Justice Alexandre de Moraes as an authoritarian renegade intent on censoring political speech in Brazil. The panel that voted in a virtual session was made up of five of the full bench’s 11 justices, including de Moraes, who last Friday ordered the platform blocked for refusing to name a local legal representative, as required by law. It will stay suspended until it complies with his orders and pays outstanding fines that as of last week exceeded $3 million, according to his decision. The platform has clashed with de Moraes over its reluctance to block users and has alleged that de Moraes wants an in-country legal representative so that Brazilian authorities can exert leverage over the company by having someone to arrest. De Moraes also set a daily fine of $8,900 for people or companies using virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access X. Some legal experts questioned the grounds for that decision and how it would be enforced, including Brazil’s bar association, which said it would request that the Supreme Court review that provision. But the majority of the panel upheld the VPN fine — with one justice opposing unless users are shown to be using X to commit crimes. Judge …

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LOS ANGELES — Engineers who specialize in building NASA spacecraft to explore distant worlds are designing a fleet of underwater robot probes to measure how rapidly climate change is melting vast ice sheets around Antarctica and what that means for rising sea levels. A prototype of the submersible vehicles, under development by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles, was tested from a U.S. Navy laboratory camp in the Arctic, where it was deployed beneath the frozen Beaufort Sea north of Alaska in March. “These robots are a platform to bring science instruments to the hardest-to-reach locations on Earth,” Paul Glick, a JPL Robotics engineer and principal investigator for the IceNode project, said in a summary posted Thursday on NASA’s website. The probes are aimed at providing more accurate data gauging the rate at which warming ocean water around Antarctica is melting the continent’s coastal ice, allowing scientists to improve computer models to predict future sea level rise. The fate of the world’s largest ice sheet is a major focus of nearly 1,500 academics and researchers who gathered this week in southern Chile for the 11th Scientific Committee on Antarctica Research conference. A JPL analysis published in 2022 found that thinning and crumbling away of Antarctica’s ice shelf had reduced its mass by some 12 trillion tons since 1997, double previous estimates. If melted completely, according to NASA, the loss of the continent’s ice shelf would raise global sea levels by an estimated 60 meters. Ice shelves, floating slabs of frozen …

Brasi­lia, Brazil — A block on Elon Musk’s X social network in Brazil started to take effect early Saturday after a Supreme Court judge ordered its suspension, according to AFP. Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes on Friday ordered the suspension of the platform following a monthslong standoff with the tech billionaire over disinformation in South America’s largest nation. Moraes handed down the ruling after Musk failed to comply with an order to name a new legal representative for the company. Early Saturday access to X, formerly known as Twitter, was no longer possible for some users in the South American country, who were presented with a message asking them to reload the browser without being able to log in successfully. Musk, who also owns Tesla and SpaceX, reacted with fury to the judge’s order, branding Moraes an “evil dictator cosplaying as a judge” and accusing him of “trying to destroy democracy in Brazil.” “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes,” the billionaire, who has become increasingly aligned with right-wing politics, wrote on X. The two have been locked in an ongoing, high-profile feud for months as Moraes leads a battle against disinformation in Brazil. Musk has previously declared himself a “free speech absolutist,” but since he took over the platform formerly known as Twitter in 2022, he has been accused of turning it into a megaphone for right-wing conspiracy theories. He is a vocal supporter of former …

Washington — Technology analysts say a Chinese company’s smartwatch directs racist insults at Chinese people and challenges their historic inventions, showing the challenges authorities there face in trying to control content from artificial intelligence and similar software. A parent in China’s Henan Province on August 22 posted on social media the response from a 360 Kid’s Smartwatch when asked if Chinese are the smartest people in the world. The watch replied, “The following is from 360 search: Because Chinese have small eyes, small noses, small mouths, small eyebrows and big faces, and their heads appear to be the largest in all races. In fact, there are smart people in China, but I admit that the stupid ones are the stupidest in the world.” The watch also questioned whether Chinese people were really responsible for creating the compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing — known in China as the Four Great Inventions. “What are the Four Great Inventions?,” the watch asked. “Have you seen them? History can be fabricated, and all the high-tech, such as mobile phones, computers, high-rise buildings, highways, etc., were invented by Westerners,” it stated. The post sparked outrage on social media. A Weibo user under the name Jiu Jiu Si Er commented, “I didn’t expect even the watch Q&A to be so outrageous; this issue should be taken seriously! Children who don’t understand anything can easily be led astray. … Don’t you audit the third-party data you access?” Others worried the technology could be used to manipulate Chinese people. A blogger under the …

SAO PAULO — A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Friday ordered the suspension of Elon Musk’s social media giant X in Brazil after the tech billionaire refused to name a legal representative in the country, according to a copy of the decision seen by The Associated Press. The move further escalates the monthslong feud between the two men over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation.  Justice Alexandre de Moraes had warned Musk on Wednesday night that X could be blocked in Brazil if he failed to comply with his order to name a representative. He set a 24-hour deadline. The company hasn’t had a representative in the country since earlier this month.  In his decision, de Moraes gave internet service providers and app stores five days to block access to X, and said the platform will remain blocked until it complies with his orders. He also said people or companies who use virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access X will be subject to daily fines of 50,000 reais ($8,900).  “Elon Musk showed his total disrespect for Brazilian sovereignty and, in particular, for the judiciary, setting himself up as a true supranational entity and immune to the laws of each country,” de Moraes wrote.  Brazil is an important market for X, which has struggled with the loss of advertisers since Musk purchased the platform, formerly Twitter, in 2022. Market research group Emarketer says about 40 million Brazilians, roughly one-fifth of the population, access X at least once per month.  X had …

The arrest in France last Saturday of Pavel Durov, the billionaire boss of the social media platform Telegram, is reverberating around the world as Russia urges France not to turn the investigation into ‘political persecution.’ Durov is under formal investigation over alleged illegal activities on Telegram, as Henry Ridgwell reports. …

Gaborone, Botswana — The entry of Elon Musk’s Starlink into the Botswana market this week has been hailed as a “game-changer.” Analysts concur the introduction of the satellite internet service provider will improve internet access but there is concern over subscription costs and the service potentially pushing local internet providers out of business.  Starlink this week announced it had begun operations in Botswana, three months after the company received approval from the Botswana Communications Regulatory Authority, known as BOCRA.  The Space-X operated broadband service enters a market dominated by Botswana’s major mobile network operators. Tavonga Muchuchuti, president of the industry group Fintech Association Botswana, says the introduction of Starlink will make the internet more widely accessible. “It is a very big step for our market, especially when it comes to improving digital access across the country as well as it coming in to help us with bridging the digital divide that we have seen over the years,” he said. “By leveraging these constellations of low earth orbit satellites, Starlink can actually deliver high speed internet to even some of the most remote areas across the country, where the traditional ISPs have generally struggled with connectivity.”  Ewetse Khama, the country manager for Zamlim, a foreign direct investment consulting firm, says Starlink’s launch heralds a new era in the local internet market. He says local ISPs have to change strategy to remain competitive.  “They have to figure out another way of battling this coming reality,” he said. “ISPs in Botswana do have the …

London — Russia on Thursday warned France not to turn the investigation of Pavel Durov, the boss of Telegram, into a “political persecution” after the billionaire 39-year-old CEO was put under formal investigation relating to activities on his social media platform. Moscow has implied there are political motivations behind the arrest of Durov, who was detained Saturday as he disembarked his private jet at Paris-Le Bourget airport, near the French capital. “The main thing is for what is happening in France not to run into political persecution,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday. “Of course, we consider him a Russian citizen and, as much as possible, we will be ready to provide assistance. We will be watching what happens next,” Peskov said. France strongly denies there are any political objectives behind his arrest and maintains the investigation is being conducted according to the rule of law. Durov holds joint Russian, French and United Arab Emirates citizenship. He was released from police custody Wednesday evening on $5.6 million bail. He is banned from leaving France and must report to a police station twice a week. TJ McIntyre, an associate professor at University College Dublin’s School of Law and an expert on technology law and cybercrime, said Durov faces a range of preliminary charges, “ranging from failure to take action on the sale of drugs on Telegram, failure to prevent the distribution of child sexual abuse material on Telegram, failure to provide information on users when requested as part of criminal investigations, …