schwit1 shares a report from The Wall Street Journal: The Justice Department is opening a broad antitrust review into whether dominant technology firms are unlawfully stifling competition (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), according to department officials, adding a new Washington threat for companies such as Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. The review is geared toward examining the practices of online platforms that dominate internet search, social media and retail services, the officials said. The new antitrust inquiry is the strongest signal yet of Attorney General William Barr's deep interest in the tech sector, and it could ratchet up the already considerable regulatory pressures facing the top U.S. tech firms. The review is designed to go above and beyond recent plans for scrutinizing the tech sector that were crafted by the department and the Federal Trade Commission. Justice Department officials said they would use the new antitrust review to seek extensive input and information from industry participants, and eventually from the dominant tech firms themselves. It isn't yet known whether much of the information-gathering will be done on a voluntary basis or if companies eventually could be compelled by the government to turn over materials. "There is no defined end-goal yet for the Big Tech review other than to understand whether there are antitrust problems that need addressing, but a broad range of options are on the table," the report adds. "The department's inquiry could eventually lead to more focused investigations of specific company conduct."

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Alleged foreign-intelligence recording suggested Doha's 'interest' in Somalia attack, but Qatar rejected the accusation.

An anonymous reader shares a report: "There's no justice in air travel," an airline industry insider once told me. A third of passengers on planes get stuck with a middle seat, getting smushed for hours at a time in a chair that costs exactly the same ticket price as a window or aisle. That just stinks. But what if we could rethink the middle seat to be more comfortable? In 2017, we wrote about a landmark airplane seat called the S1. Its design is unique in that it staggers the typical three-seat arrangement, so that middle-seat passengers sit slightly behind others in their row. Last month, the S1 received FAA approval to be installed on planes; an undisclosed U.S .airline will be putting them on 50 planes by the end of 2020. The S1 has been in development for five years, and the team behind it at Molon Labe Seating is a mere six people, including sales and operations staff. Designed for commuter flights of only a few hours max, the S1 moves the middle seat a few inches lower than, and back from, the aisle and window seat. It also widens the seat by about three inches. This allows your arms, shoulders, thighs, and elbows to spread just a bit more than they otherwise could, without giving the seat more legroom or reducing a plane's seating capacity (which translates to profit margins for airlines). "We have discovered that what looks like a small stagger actually makes a huge difference. The trick is to actually sit in the seat. In fact our main sales tool is to ship seats to airlines so they can sit in them," says Molon Labe founder Hank Scott. "I have watched this several times -- airline executives see the seat, nod their head and then say they get it. Then we ask them to actually sit down, next to a big fella like our head sales guy Thomas [6-foot-6, 250 pounds]. Within a few seconds they [really] get it -- they stop being an airline executive and switch into passenger modes."

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Senate overwhelmingly backs Mark Esper, a US Army secretary and former lobbyist for weapons maker Raytheon Co.

The Federal Trade Commission plans to allege that Facebook misled users' about its handling of their phone numbers as part of a wide-ranging complaint that accompanies a settlement ending the government's privacy probe, Washington Post reported Tuesday, citing two people familiar with the matter. From the report: In the complaint, which has not yet been released, federal regulators take issue with Facebook's earlier implementation of a security feature called two-factor authentication. It allows users to request one-time password, sent by text message, each time they log onto the social-networking site. But some advertisers managed to target Facebook users who uploaded those contact details, perhaps without the full knowledge of those who provided them, the two sources said. The misuse of the phone numbers was first identified in media reports and by academics last year [PDF]. The FTC also plans to allege that Facebook had provided insufficient information to users -- roughly 30 million -- about their ability to turn off a tool that would identify and offer tag suggestions for photos, the sources added. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity. The facial recognition issue appears to have first been publicized earlier this year by Consumer Reports.

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Brussels rallies amid elevation of Brexiteer Boris Johnson to UK's highest office, warning of 'challenging times ahead'.

Shocking data from Uttarakhand state prompts suspicions of sex-selective abortions and investigation into the matter.

Boris Johnson will be the UK's new prime minister after winning the Conservative Party leadership.

Judge issues warrants for phones of officials involved in obscenity-laden chat as protests continue into 11th day.

Widespread electricity outages could become the new normal in Venezuela, experts have warned, as the country struggled to restore power after a massive blackout that left millions without power or access to the internet. From a report: The energy minister, Freddy Brito, said on Tuesday morning that power had been restored in Caracas and at least five states after the outage which the government blamed on an "electromagnetic attack" at hydroelectric dams in the south of the country. About 80% of Venezuela's grid is served by hydropower. But energy analysts were deeply suspicious of government claims, arguing instead that years of corruption and mismanagement have eroded Venezuela's energy capacity. "This blackout is the result of negligent mis-operation of the power grid," said Jose Aguilar, a Venezuelan energy and risk consultant based in the US. "These will keep happening and it will get worse before it gets better." Other analysts express similar incredulity. "It's hard to believe that it was an electromagnetic attack, when you've seen years of theft and corruption in the energy sector," said Geoff Ramsey, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America. "This blackout shows government doesn't have the tools to return to normalcy." Some supporters of Nicolas Maduro have claimed that US sanctions aimed at Venezuela's oil industry have hampered his government's ability to keep the lights on, but many of those sanctions target individuals accused corruption.

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What questions will be asked? What will he say? Six things to know before Mueller's highly-anticipated testimony.

Trump says he's considering 'ban', tariffs and remittance fees after Guatemala dropped plans for safe third country deal

His promise to deliver a no-deal Brexit on October 31 is popular among his supporters but worries his opponents.

Apple's mobile apps routinely appear first in search results ahead of competitors in its App Store, a powerful advantage that skirts some of the company's rules on such rankings, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. From the report: The company's apps ranked first in more than 60% of basic searches, such as for "maps," [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source] the analysis showed. Apple apps that generate revenue through subscriptions or sales, like Music or Books, showed up first in 95% of searches related to those apps. This dominance gives the company an upper hand in a marketplace that generates $50 billion in annual spending. Services revenue linked to the performance of apps is at the center of Apple's strategy to diversify its profits as iPhone sales wane. While many of Apple's products are undoubtedly popular, they are held to a different standard by the App Store. Apple tells developers that downloads, user reviews and ratings are factors that influence search results. Yet more than two dozen of Apple's apps come pre-installed on iPhones and are shielded from reviews and ratings. [...] Audiobooks.com, an RBmedia company, largely held the No. 1 ranking in "audiobooks" searches in the App Store for nearly two years. Then last September it was unseated by Apple Books. The Apple app had only recently begun marketing audiobooks directly for the first time. "It was literally overnight," said Ian Small, Audiobooks.com's general manager. He said the change triggered a 25% decline in Audiobooks.com's daily app downloads. [...] Apple's role as both the creator of the App Store's search engine and the beneficiary of its results has rankled developers. They contend Apple is essentially pinning its apps No. 1, compelling anyone seeking alternatives to consider Apple apps first. [...] Phillip Shoemaker, who led the App Store review process until 2016, said Apple executives were aware of Podcasts' poor ratings. Around 2015, his team proposed to senior executives that it purge all apps rated lower than two stars to ensure overall quality. "That would kill our Podcasts app," an Apple executive said, according to Mr. Shoemaker, who has advised some independent apps on the App Store review process since leaving Apple. The proposal was eventually rejected, Mr. Shoemaker said.

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An anonymous reader writes: LinkedIn today announced it is swapping out its data centers for the public cloud. The Microsoft-owned company is moving its infrastructure to Azure as part of a multi-year migration. VentureBeat sat down with Mohak Shroff, LinkedIn's SVP of engineering, to discuss one of the biggest technological transformations in the company's history. LinkedIn plans to migrate its 645 million members over several years so as not to compromise the site's accessibility, reliability, and performance. "We think probably at least three years till we're done, possibly longer than that," Shroff confirmed. "It will be a gradual migration. We'll see increasing workloads on Azure over time, with a pretty significant inflection point, about a year and a half, two years out from now. And then kind of an accelerated migration post that."

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