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Google won a legal challenge Wednesday against a €1.49 billion ($1.66 billion) antitrust fine from the European Union, while chipmaker Qualcomm failed to repeal a penalty.

The rulings underscore the mixed record of outgoing EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager in defending her crackdown on Big Tech in court. She scored two major wins last week: against Google in a separate case and against Apple’s tax deal with Irish authorities.

In a 2019 decision, the European Commission said Google, owned by Alphabet (GOOGL), had abused its dominance to prevent websites from using brokers other than its AdSense platform that provided search ads. The practices that it said were illegal took place from 2006 to 2016.

Apple has rolled out macOS Sequoia as its latest software updates for supported Mac computers, along with iPadOS 18, watchOS 11 and tvOS 18. These updates introduce new features and customisation options on Apple's devices, while future updates will add support for Apple Intelligence — new features that are powered by artificial intelligence (AI) on the iPhone 15 Pro models, the new iPhone 16 lineup, and select tablets and Mac models with Apple's M-series chipsets. These software updates were first shown off at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2024).

Here are some of the most notable changes on macOS Sequoia, iOS 18, watchOS 11, tvOS 18, and visionOS 2. You can update eligible devices to these software versions, but it's better to back up important data before installing major operating system updates. You can also read more about Apple's iOS 18 update that is rolling out to eligible smartphones.

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Intel (INTC.O) lost out on a contract to design and fabricate Sony’s PlayStation 6 chip in 2022, which dealt a significant blow to its effort to build its fledgling contract manufacturing business, according to three sources with knowledge of the events.

The effort by Intel to win out over Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O)in a competitive bidding process to supply the design for the forthcoming PlayStation 6 chip and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (2330.TW) as the contract manufacturer would have amounted to billions of dollars of revenue and fabricating thousands of silicon wafers a month, two sources said.

Intel and AMD were the final two contenders in the bidding process for the contract.

Winning the Sony (6758.T) PlayStation 6 chip design business would have been a victory for Intel's design segment and would have doubled as a win for the company's contract manufacturing effort, or foundry business, which was the centerpiece of Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger’s turnaround plan.

Mark Zuckberg’s Meta is to go ahead with controversial plans to use millions of UK Facebook and Instagram posts to train its artificial intelligence (AI) technology, in a practice that is effectively outlawed under EU privacy laws.

Meta said it had “engaged positively” with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) over the plan, after it paused similar proposals in June in the UK and EU. The pause came after the ICO warned tech firms to respect the privacy of users when building generative AI.

On Friday, the ICO made it clear it has not provided regulatory approval for the plan, but will instead monitor the experiment after Meta agreed changes to its approach. These include making it easier for users to opt out of allowing their posts to be processed for AI.

DNA testing giant 23andMe has agreed to pay $30 million to settle a lawsuit over a data breach that exposed the personal information of 6.4 million customers in 2023.

The proposed class action settlement, filed Thursday in a San Francisco federal court and awaiting judicial approval, includes cash payments for affected customers, which will be distributed within ten days of final approval.

"23andMe believes the settlement is fair, adequate, and reasonable," the company said in a memorandum filed Friday.

“Mystery Strikes” and Deaths

There’s a perverse insistence in Western news that the deaths of innocent children, women, disabled, and the elderly in Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gazan residential areas are casualties of ‘war’. Again and again, they acquit Israel of any wrongdoing by claiming that these killings are due to ‘war’ rather than a genocide, despite UN claims. The civilian death toll in Gaza is higher than any other conflict in the 21st century.

As I demonstrated with a 1937 newspaper headline in Part 1, the use of pro-Zionist Media to create a pro-Israel narrative is nothing new. Here’s an example from 2018, where BBC changed its headline to make sure that Israel is once again the victim.

Let’s get back to the present Israeli genocide now:

NYT protects Israel's role in enforcing illegal famine in Gaza. A NYT piece blames Gazans for not displaying orderly queue at an aid convoy. Absolves Israel of creating famine conditions by not mentioning Israel’s role, and how IDF soldiers shot Gazans looking for food. Credit: NYT

A mysterious strike has killed people in Gaza. Makes you think who attacked, could it have been Israel? Credit: Sky News

Takeaway

Headlines are viewed in a vacuum. They have the responsibility to convey the entire story. With the rise of pay-walls and subscriptions, most readers aren’t allowed to look at anything except the headlines, especially in Western news websites. These headlines thus serve to reinforce a view that Israel is fighting a ‘defensive’ war in Gaza, and not all ‘strikes’ are committed by Israel.

Google announced on Wednesday that its AI note-taking and research app, NotebookLM, is adding an “Audio Overview” feature. Audio Overview will give users another way to digest and comprehend the information in the documents they have uploaded to the app, such as course readings or legal briefs.

Since its launch, NotebookLM has used text to summarize and explain source materials, but now, it can do so out loud using audio. The feature is geared toward people who grasp materials better by listening to explanations as opposed to reading them.

In a Q&A session that Tom's Hardware attended at IFA 2024, AMD revealed that the next generation of its Ryzen handheld gaming processor, AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme, will arrive early next year. The Z2 Extreme is the successor to AMD’s current Z1 Extreme, which powers devices like the ROG Ally X and Legion Go.

One AMD representative said, “So, we’ve our Z1 Extreme and Z1 in market today, right? Z2 is in the works. We’re working with a number of partners across the OEM ecosystem on that, and it will be coming to market probably in the early part of 2025.”

Bluesky has gained a million new users in the last three days.

The platform posted about the milestone this afternoon, which it crossed after Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered a ban on Elon Musk’s X yesterday as part of an ongoing feud with the platform.

Apparently, enough are headed to Bluesky to drive its iOS app to the top of the Brazilian App Store, as TechCrunch writes.

[D.N.A] Elasticsearch and Kibana can be called Open Source again. It is hard to express how happy this statement makes me. Literally jumping up and down with excitement here. All of us at Elastic are. Open source is in my DNA. It is in Elastic DNA. Being able to call Elasticsearch Open Source again is pure joy.

[LOVE.] The tl;dr is that we will be adding AGPL as another license option next to ELv2 and SSPL in the coming weeks. We never stopped believing and behaving like an open source community after we changed the license. But being able to use the term Open Source, by using AGPL, an OSI approved license, removes any questions, or fud, people might have.

[Not Like Us] We never stopped believing in Open Source at Elastic. I never stopped believing in Open Source. I’m going on 25 years and counting as a true believer. So why the change 3 years ago? We had issues with AWS and the market confusion their offering was causing. So after trying all the other options we could think of, we changed the license, knowing it would result in a fork of Elasticsearch with a different name and a different trajectory. It’s a long story.