Category: Technology

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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 time, hundreds of thousands of them — to create a botnet that helped them compromise systems and exfiltrate confidential data,” he said. But Flax Typhoon’s operations were disrupted last week when the FBI, working with allies and under court orders, took control of the botnet and pursued the hackers when they tried to switch to a backup system. “We think the bad guys finally realized that it was the FBI and our partners that they were up against,” Wray said. “And with that realization, they essentially burned down their new infrastructure and abandoned their botnet.” Wray said Flax Typhoon appeared to build on the exploits and tactics of another China-linked hacking group, known as Volt Typhoon, which was identified by …

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 began operations in 1967.   “When I was younger you could go down certain parts and you saw nothing but coal pits,” he told AFP.    Energy transition  Coal has played a vital part in British economic history, powering the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries that made the country a global superpower, and creating London’s infamous choking smog.   Even into the 1980s, it still represented 70% of the country’s electricity mix before its share declined in the 1990s.    In the last decade the fall has been even sharper, slumping to 38% in 2013, 5.0% in 2018 then just 1.0% last year.     In 2015, the then Conservative government said that it intended to shut all coal-fired …

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, with the exception of a plea concerning the calculation of the amount of the fine, which it finds to be well founded in part,” the Luxembourg-based General Court said. Qualcomm can appeal on points of law to the EU Court of Justice, Europe’s highest. The chipmaker did not immediately reply to an emailed Reuters request for comment. The company convinced the same court two years ago to throw out a $1.1 billion antitrust fine handed down in 2018 for paying billions of dollars to Apple from 2011 to 2016 to use only its chips in all its iPhones and iPads in order to block out rivals such as Intel Corp. The EU watchdog subsequently declined to appeal the judgment. …

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 take into account all the relevant circumstances in its assessment of the duration of the contractual clauses that it had found to be unfair,” the judges said. The AdSense fine, one of a trio of fines that have cost Google a total of some $9 billion, was triggered by a complaint from Microsoft in 2010. Google has said it changed the targeted contracts in 2016 before the Commission’s decision. The company last week lost its final fight against a $2.6 billion fine levied for using its price comparison shopping service to gain an unfair advantage over smaller European rivals. …

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, Apple, Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft and Meta comply with landmark rules aimed at reining in their power and giving consumers more choice. Apple, Google and Meta are firmly in outgoing EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager’s crosshairs for falling short of complying with the Digital Markets Act. Another challenge will be how to deal with the increasing popularity of artificial intelligence amid concerns about Big Tech leveraging its existing dominance. Ribera may ramp up a crackdown on non-EU state subsidies begun by Vestager aimed at preventing foreign companies from acquiring EU businesses or taking part in EU public tenders with unfair state support. Recent rulings from Europe’s highest court, which backed the Commission’s $14.5 billion tax order to Apple, and its $2.7 …

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 the administration of an online platform to allow an illicit transaction, in an organized gang,” which carries a maximum 10-year sentence and a $556,300 fine. Being under formal investigation does not imply guilt or necessarily lead to trial, but indicates judges think there’s enough evidence to proceed with the probe. Investigations can last years before being sent to trial or dropped. Durov, out on bail, denies Telegram was an “anarchic paradise.” Telegram has said it “abides by EU laws,” and that it’s “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.” In a radio interview last week, Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau hailed the 2023 law as a powerful tool for battling organized crime …

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 pop songs, have gone viral on the Chinese internet. Some of the videos have found their way to social media platforms not available in China, such as Instagram, TikTok and X. U.S. intelligence officials and experts have long warned about how China and other foreign adversaries have been implementing generative AI in their disinformation effort to disrupt and influence the 2024 presidential election. “There has been an increased use of Chinese AI-generated content in recent months, attempting to influence and sow division in the U.S. and elsewhere,” a Microsoft report on China’s disinformation threat said in April. Few of the people who saw the videos of the American leaders singing in Chinese, however, were convinced that they were real, based …

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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 cleanup begins. What is the fuel debris? Nuclear fuel in the reactor cores melted after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant’s cooling systems to fail. The melted fuel dripped down from the cores and mixed with internal reactor materials such as zirconium, stainless steel, electrical cables, broken grates and concrete around the supporting structure and at the bottom of the primary containment vessels. The reactor meltdowns caused the highly radioactive, lava-like material to spatter in all directions, greatly complicating the cleanup. The condition of the debris also differs in each reactor. Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, or TEPCO, which manages the plant, says an estimated 880 tons of molten fuel debris …

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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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