Blocking

South Korea's antitrust regulator has fined Alphabet Inc's Google 42.1 billion won ($31.88 million) for blocking the release of mobile video games on a competitor's platform.The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) said on Tuesday that Google bolstered its market dominance, and hurt local app market One Store's revenue and value as a platform, by requiring video game makers to exclusively release their titles on Google Play in exchange for providing in-app exposure between June 2016 and April 2018. The KFTC said the move…

South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) has fined Alphabet’s Google 42.1 billion won (~ $32 million) for blocking developers from releasing mobile video games on a Korean competitor platform called One Store. The KFTC said on Tuesday that Google allegedly required Korean video game companies to exclusively release their new games in the Play Store from June 2016 to April 2018. That means Google banned the local game makers from releasing their content on One Store in return for offering…

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 23, 2023, amid a chorus of calls from members of Congress for the federal government to ban the Chinese-owned video social media app and reports that the Biden administration is pushing for the company's sale. The federal government, along with many state and foreign governments and some companies, has banned TikTok on work-provided phones. This type of ban can be effective for protecting data related to government work.But a full…

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis studied mice with Alzheimer’s-like brain damage caused by the protein tau and found that microglia attract powerful T cells that can kill brain cells. By blocking the entry or activation of these T cells, the researchers were able to prevent most of the neurodegeneration. These findings, published in the journal Nature, suggest that targeting T cells may be an effective way to prevent neurodegeneration and treat Alzheimer’s disease and other…

New research published in the journal New Phytologist suggests that blocking a negative regulator gene called RRS1 (Robust Root System 1) can enhance root growth in plants, leading to longer root length, longer lateral root length, and larger lateral root density. The study shows that inhibiting the expression of RRS1 may improve drought resistance in crops by promoting water absorption. This could be achieved by using natural variants of RRS1 that alter the activity of the protein.A strong root system allows crops to…

The news: The popular AI image generator Midjourney bans a wide range of words about the human reproductive system from being used as prompts, MIT Technology Review has discovered.  What’s included? The list of banned words seem to skew predominantly female, including terms such as “placenta,” “fallopian tubes,” and “mammary glands.” The company says it’s banning these words as a stopgap measure to prevent people from generating shocking or gory  content while it “improves things on the AI side.”  Why it matters:…

Photo: Dave Chan (Getty Images) Google is following the Facebook playbook and threatening to cut off access to news in Canada unless lawmakers agree to gut legislation aimed at making tech companies pay publishers for their content. This week, the tech giant began temporarily limiting access to news results in tests affecting around 4% of randomly selected users in Canada. Google’s self-imposed partial news blackout will last for five weeks and impact both web Search and the Discover featureon Android devices, according…

Alphabet Inc's Google is rolling out tests that block access to news content for some Canadian users, the company confirmed on Wednesday, in what it says is a test run of a potential response to the government's online news bill. The "Online News Act," or House of Commons bill C-18, introduced in April by Justin Trudeau's Liberal government, laid out rules to force platforms like Meta's Facebook and Google to negotiate commercial deals and pay news publishers for their content. "We're briefly testing potential product…

Apple has stopped signing iOS 16.3, meaning that it is now blocking downgrades to that version of iOS on the iPhone. This means that anyone who wants to install a version of iOS must now install iOS 16.3.1.Apple is known to stop signing older versions of iOS as it releases newer versions in order to make sure that users are running the latest version of Apple's software for the iPhone. Newer versions of each software not only include new features and bug fixes but performance improvements and security updates as…

The Flipper Zero reading the Apple Pay NFC signal from my Apple Watch Ultra. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNETRFID is everywhere, even packed into your credit and debit cards, allowing the information to be read in a "contactless" fashion.Concerns that cards could be read covertly have generated a massive industry of security devices designed to block or somehow interfere with this contactless reading of the cards. You can find wallets, and card protectors, and this amazing device can read NFC.Also: Flipper Zero: 'Can you…