Tech Roundup: Confidential Computing Consortium, Google Anti-Tracking Policy & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

1. Google follows Apple with an anti-tracking policy of its own for the web; announces a "privacy sandbox" that leverages differential privacy to anonymise tracking information used by ad tech vendors.
2. Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, Baidu, IBM, ARM, Intel, Red Hat, and others form the Confidential Computing Consortium to promote better data security practices; to develop hardware and software-based technical solutions for isolating user data inside a computer's memory while it's being processed in order to avoid exposing it to other applications.
3. Apple's most recent iOS update — 12.4 — reopens a vulnerability that was previously patched, making it the first time an up-to-date firmware has been jailbroken in years.
4. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube take down hundreds of accounts and channels from their respective platforms to block what they describe as a state-backed information operation originating from China; Twitter to longer accept advertising from state-controlled news media entities.
• From the standpoint of social media, however, this sort of covert campaign is emblematic of a wider problem in which platforms built to connect people have turned out to be potent tools for dividing them — not just in Hong Kong but also in the United States and around the world. These networks built to connect the world are engineered to spread lies and hate just as effectively as the truth, if not more so. Whereas many of the problems of social media mirror societal problems that long predated them, the ability for government operatives in authoritarian countries to systematically poison the information environment in democracies with minimal effort is largely new. It's a product of a media world that has been effectively disrupted by tech companies that were so busy disrupting that they didn't stop to think about the consequences.
5. U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joseph Simons cautions Facebook's plan to integrate Instagram and WhatsApp more closely could hinder any attempts to break up the social media giant.
6. Researchers from Northeastern University and University of Massachusetts Amherst find that from early 2018 to early 2019, AT&T throttled Netflix 70 percent of the time and Google's YouTube service 74 percent of the time, but didn't slow down Amazon’s Prime Video at all; T-Mobile throttled Amazon Prime Video in about 51 percent of the tests, but didn't throttle Skype and barely touched Vimeo.
7. Facebook's Clear History privacy tool, announced in May 2018 at its annual developers conferences, finally begins rolling out in Ireland, South Korea, and Spain; the setting Off-Facebook Activity to make it possible for users to dissociate (note: not 'delete') their Facebook profiles from the data shared by third-party apps and websites.
• The important thing to note here is that Facebook will still continue to collect the data, only it will be anonymised within a period of 48 hours during which time "it may be used for measurement purposes and to make improvements to our ads systems." Facebook's 'clear history' tool is a classic case of pulling the wool over your eyes. If anything, it shows the extent of Facebook tracking apparatus across the web, with no option to actually delete your data collected by the company.
8. Facebook's Libra digital currency, set for launch next year other than India, faces further roadblocks; E.U. antitrust watchdog — the European Commission — said to be"currently investigating potential anti-competitive behaviour" related to Libra amid concerns that the proposed payment system would unfairly shut out rivals.
9. Google, Mozilla, and Apple to block root certificate issued by Kazakhstan that could be used to intercept users' HTTPS traffic in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari; Microsoft says certificate not in its Trusted Root Program.
10. Google to shut down built-in messaging feature (announced mid-2017) in YouTube on September 18; delays Hangouts to Hangouts Chat/Meet transition plan for enterprise users to June 2020 in what continues to be the most muddled and confusing shutdowns from Google yet. (Google was initially planning to wind classic Hangouts in October 2019.)
11. Netflix begins testing "Collections" on iOS that are curated by experts on the company's creative teams (as opposed to algorithms) based on factors like genre, tone, and story line.
12. Chinese handset maker Xiaomi tests financial waters with a new consumer lending business in India; to debut Mi Credit service in the country, offering loans of up to 100,000 rupees (US$ 1,451) with interest rates starting at 1.8 percent, in the coming weeks.
13. Google Photos rolls out new feature that allows users to search for text in images, then copy and paste it; rolls out dark mode for Google Pay app, lightweight (a size of just 7MB), fast variant of its search app worldwide for all Android devices (running Lollipop and above), and brings face-recognition based grouping feature in Google Photos, first introduced in 2015, across Europe.
14. Virtual machine giant VMware announces plans to acquire cloud-based endpoint security vendor Carbon Black for US$ 2.1 billion in major cloud security push.
15. Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo reportedly working on an AirDrop-style wireless file transfer protocol that will work between their devices with speeds of up to 20MB/s.
16. Apple said to be planning to roll out Apple TV+ subscription service by November for a monthly price of US$ 9.99 after a free trial; rival Disney+ to launch in Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand along with the U.S. in November, and will stream on all major platforms except Amazon Fire TV.
• Just as music has moved from bundled (albums), to unbundled (single songs, iTunes), to centrally bundled (Spotify, Apple Music), news and magazines have moved from bundled (print subscriptions), to unbundled (free digital access), and are currently transitioning back to digital subscription bundles (Apple News+, Bundle, Scroll), video streaming also needs to evolve into bundled, subscription models as opposed to single-transaction businesses.
• In this shifting media landscape, consumers are increasingly coming to terms with the possibility that they'll need to subscribe to more and more services for entertainment, whether be it music, video on demand, news, audiobooks, podcasts, books, and cloud-gaming services. It wouldn't be a surprise if Apple offered Music, News, Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade as a discounted bundle, just like Amazon does with Amazon Prime.
17. TikTok launches a new e-commerce feature that allows users to shop for products associated with a sponsored Hashtag Challenge without leaving its app.
18. Amazon buys 49 percent stake in Future Coupons — worth US$ 104 million — and would give the retail giant 3.58 percent stake in India's No. 2 retail chain Future Retail.
19. Apple updates its iCloud.com beta site with a fresh look and a new Reminders app ahead of iOS 13 release next month; features a plain white interface with smaller icons and an "Account Settings" section in place of the Settings app.
20. Food delivery platform Doordash revamps its controversial tipping model after outcry; announces a new tipping policy that will let drivers keep 100 percent of tips with a base pay betweenUS$ 2 and US$ 10 depending on delivery distance and duration.
21. News Corp, the mass media company which owns publications like The Wall Street Journal and The Times, is reportedly releasing 'Knewz,' a Google News-like news aggregation site that it hopes will help readers find news stories from more and different sources, regardless of political leanings, as it tries to break Facebook and Google’s digital duopoly.
22. Box unveils Box Shield, a set of native security controls with machine learning-powered threat detection to secure customers' cloud content.
23. Amazon opens new office in Hyderabad, India, which will house over 15,000 employees, making it the company's biggest campus in the world.
24. Social aggregation platform Reddit to test live video streaming for users, from 9am to 5pm through the end of this week, that will be entirely moderated by Reddit employees.
25. YouTube revises its exclusivity policy on original programming (including series, movies and live events); says it will no longer be exclusive to Premium customers after September 24th, 2019, and will be offered to all YouTube viewers for free, supported by ads, whereas Premium members can watch the content ad-free.
26. Google to introduce improved spelling and grammar correction tools in Gmail that uses AI to make real-time spell-check suggestions while detecting potential grammar issues.
27. Facebook-owned WhatsApp in WhatsApp is in talks with multiple Indonesian digital payment firms to integrate their mobile transaction services into the platform, as it awaits Indian regulator's approval to launch a custom peer-to-peer payment service like Google Pay, Paytm and PhonePe within the chat app.
28. Chipmaker Intel unveils Nervana neural network processors (already in use by Facebook) to scale and accelerate development and training of complex AI applications.
29. Adult website Luscious suffers a data breach after data of 1 million users is exposed, including email addresses, location data, the content they uploaded, liked, and shared.
30. Apple leverages Shazam, the music recognition app it acquired in 2018 for US$ 400 million, for a new chart —the Shazam Discovery Top 50 — to feature songs trending in the U.S. and other countries.
31. Ugandan government partners with Huawei to debut a facial recognition, AI-powered surveillance system, as part of Huawei's Safe City program; supposedly deployed in over 200 cities.
32. YouTube is finalising plans to end targeted advertisements on videos kids are likely to watch, as it comes under criticism for serving "behavioural" ads (that often rely on collecting information about the viewer) to children under 13 without parental permission.
33. Microsoft debuts a new, more stable Edge beta, available for Windows 7, Windows 10, and macOS; says more than 1 million people have tried the Chromium-based Edge browser so far.
34. Facebook to hire a small team of journalists to curate a Top News section as part of its new efforts to relaunch news on the platform, which it plans to release as a test before the year-end.
35. Apple's game subscription service Arcade to launch next month for a monthly price of US$ 4.99; lets gamers play over 100 new and exclusive titles across platforms like the iPhone and iPad, Apple TV, and Mac.
36. Spotify reportedly testing Stories (after Snapchat, Instagram/ FB/ WhatsApp, Netflix, and YouTube) in its apps as a means to let artists connect with their audience.
37. Automation platform IFTTT warns Nest home security users to not migrate from a Nest account to a Google account; says it "will cause IFTTT and other Works with Nest integrations to be disconnected."