iOS 14’s Upcoming Anti-Tracking Prompt Sparks Antitrust Complaint In France

tsa shares a report from MacRumors: Starting early next year, iOS 14 will require apps to get opt-in permission from users to collect their random advertising identifier, which advertisers use to deliver personalized ads and track how effective their campaigns were. Ahead of this change, The Wall Street Journal reports that advertising companies and publishers have filed a complaint against Apple…

Google Search Rivals Urge EU To Revisit Android Antitrust Case

A group of search engines from around the world are banding together to demand European Union regulators address Google’s dominance in the online search market. They are also urging the EU to take a closer look at Google’s controversial auction process. From a report: The news comes hot on the heels of the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) antitrust case, which…

America and France Reach New All-Time Highs For COVID-19 Infections

An anonymous reader quotes Time: The United States has reached a new record high in the number of daily COVID-19 infections, surpassing the peak in mid-July during the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic’s domestic toll. As of Oct. 24, there was a weekly average of 23.0 infections per 100,000 residents, up from 20.5 on July 19 and ticking rapidly upward….

Activists Turn Facial Recognition Tools Against the Police

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: In early September, the City Council in Portland, Ore., met virtually to consider sweeping legislation outlawing the use of facial recognition technology. The bills would not only bar the police from using it to unmask protesters and individuals captured in surveillance imagery; they would also prevent companies and a variety…

NGC 1624-2 has a complex magnetospheric structure, observations reveal

Using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), astronomers have investigated a magnetized O-type star known as NGC 1624-2. Results of the study, presented in a paper published October 15 on the arXiv pre-print server, indicate that the star has a complex magnetospheric structure, what could have implications for our understanding of origin and evolution of magnetic fields in…

France and the Netherlands Call For Tough EU Powers To Curb Big Tech

France and the Netherlands have proposed stricter EU rules to oversee large technology firms, such as Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon. From a report: In a joint document, seen by CNBC and due to be sent to the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, the two countries suggested that an EU authority should be able to control the market position of these…

Pluto’s snowcapped mountains are unlike any on Earth

A new study shows how methane snow accumulates on Pluto’s mountain peaks. These snowcaps – first seen by New Horizons in 2015 – look a lot like ones on Earth, but form in a very alien environment. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/methane-snowcapped-mountains-on-pluto-new-horizons…

New M92 stellar stream discovered

A team of astronomers using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope discovered a new stellar stream emanating from the M92 globular cluster. This new stream suggests that M92 is actively being disrupted by tidal forces caused by our Milky Way Galaxy. This discovery utilized high quality data obtained as part of the Canada-France-Imaging-Survey (CFIS) using MegaCam at CFHT and from the Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1)…

Ancient microbial life used arsenic to thrive in a world without oxygen

Today, most life on Earth is supported by oxygen. But ancient microbial mats existed for a billion years before oxygen was present in the atmosphere. So what did life use instead? Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/ancient-microbial-life-arsenic…

Many Amazon Returns Are Just Destroyed or Sent to Landfills

What happens when we return items to Amazon? “Perfectly good items are being liquidated by the truckload — and even destroyed or sent to landfill,” according to Marketplace, an investigative consumer program on Canada’s public TV:
Experts say hundreds of thousands of returns don’t end up back on the e-commerce giant’s website for resale, as customers might think. Marketplace journalists posing as…