European police busted an illegal streaming ring that provided service to 2 million people and was so sophisticated that it had its own customer-service team. From a report: The criminal network operated for over five years and offered more than 40,000 channels, movies, documentaries and other content, according to European police coordination agency Europol. The scale of the operation shows how the big streaming platforms still struggle to deal with content theft as criminals find new ways to hack their anti-piracy systems. The group offered a technical assistance service and high standards of quality control, earning an estimated 15 million euros ($17 million) through PayPal payments, bank transfers and cryptocurrencies, the agency said. The threat to legal streaming may grow if Netflix, Walt Disney Co. and others gradually raise prices in coming years to capitalize on their fast-growing subscriber bases and viewers seek out cheaper, illegal alternatives.

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The U.S. video-conferencing company Zoom closed the account of a group of prominent U.S.-based Chinese activists after they held a Zoom event commemorating the 31st anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen Square Massacre, Axios has learned. From the report: Zhou Fengsuo, founder of the U.S. nonprofit Humanitarian China and former student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen protests, organized the May 31 event held through a paid Zoom account associated with Humanitarian China. About 250 people attended the event. Speakers included mothers of students killed during the 1989 crackdown, organizers of Hong Kong's Tiananmen candlelight vigil, and others. On June 7th, the Zoom account displayed a message that it had been shut down, in a screenshot viewed by Axios. Zhou has not been able to access the account since then, and Zoom has not responded to his emails, he told Axios. A second Zoom account belonging to a pro-democracy activist, Lee Cheuk Yan, a former Hong Kong politician and pro-democracy activist, was also closed in late May. Lee has also received no response from Zoom. "We are outraged by this act from Zoom, a U.S company," Zhou and other organizers told Axios in a statement. "As the most commercially popular meeting software worldwide, Zoom is essential as an unbanned outreach to Chinese audiences remembering and commemorating Tiananmen Massacre during the coronavirus pandemic."

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Apple's stock price hit a record high of $1.53 trillion, making it the first U.S. company to reach that mark. MacRumors reports: Market capitalization is simply the share price multiplied by the number of outstanding shares of the company's stock, yielding the company's overall stock market value. At a current price of around $352 per share and with roughly 4.3 billion shares outstanding, Apple's market capitalization is now at around $1.53 trillion. After hitting an all-time high share price in late January, Apple's stock slid along with the rest of the market amid the global health crisis, with Apple's share price falling 35% from its peak by late March. A strong and steady recovery brought Apple back up to a fresh all-time high last Friday, and it has continued to gain in recent days.

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Apple, Google, Microsoft and other Big Tech companies have stepped up their comments on the need for racial justice amid the Black Lives Matter protests that have gripped the US for the past two weeks. Now, a growing group of technologists say the language of the industry itself needs to change in order to fight racism. From a report: The terms "master" and "slave," used to describe the relationships between two computer hard drives and or between two camera flashes, have come under scrutiny because of their association with America's history of slavery. Similarly, "whitelist" and "blacklist," terms for allowing and denying access to a service, are being revisited because of their potentially racial overtones. "I refuse to use 'whitelist'/'blacklist' or 'master'/'slave' terminology for computers. Join me. Words matter," tweeted Leah Culver, co-founder of the Breaker podcast app and a co-author of the widely used OAuth signon technology. More than 16,000 people liked her tweet. Photographer Theresa Bear expressed a similar sentiment on the PetaPixel photo site, writing that it's time to "make way for our black community" by banishing the use of "master" and "slave" to refer to how flashes are controlled. "Can you imagine being on set with a black human and the photographer yells to the assistant, 'Hey, can you put it on slave mode?'" Bear asked. Other terms proposed for sunsetting include "white hat" and "black hat," with "ethical" and "unethical" suggested as replacements.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The remote-sensing firm Planet operates more than one hundred satellites that constantly orbit the earth, collecting imagery of the world's entire landmass each day. Now, to offer more clarity to its customers, it has flown a handful of its satellites 50 km closer to the Earth. This literal zoom-in effort will allow the firm to offer imagery with a resolution of 50 cm of earth per pixel, an increase from 80 cm. In one example, that means that as well as seeing the shape of a car, analysts will also be able to clearly discern the position of its windshield. By the end of the summer, the company plans to add six new satellites to its constellation, allowing it to take those higher resolution pictures of the same area twelve times a day. "We felt like 50 centimeters was an important threshold, but where we are really pushing the envelope is on that revisit," Jim Thomason, a Planet vice president, told Quartz. The ability to view the same area repeatedly means customers will get their imagery sooner after they request it, and they may be able to see what is changing on the ground. That also means a higher chance of dodging the bane of optical space imagery: clouds.

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A few weeks ago, news broke that Google was allegedly disappointed with the Google Pixel 4, even prior to that device's launch. However disappointing it may have been, it doesn't appear to have stopped Google Pixel sales from hitting a record high in 2019. From a report: According to third-party analyst firm International Data Corporation (IDC), Google Pixel sales hit 7.2 million units in 2019. Although the numbers don't get broken down by device, it's likely most of those sales come from the two 2019 phones launched -- the Google Pixel 3a and Google Pixel 4. At least some of the shipments are probably made up of Google Pixel 3 sales, too. However, it's estimated that the Google Pixel 4 only sold around 2 million units over its first six months, which would mean a portion of that number wouldn't count towards the 2019 total. Therefore, it's basically a guarantee that the bulk of the Google Pixel sales in 2019 came from the Pixel 3a line.

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Poll: The Repubs want to have a virus-free convention, no masks, no social distancing, the place packed with Trump supporters yelling Lock Everybody Up Except Our Beloved Trump. Now the question. Will this event actually happen?

With 2.5 billion users worldwide, Google has a responsibility to make its Android operating system as secure as possible. But the company has at times struggled to adequately vet apps in the Google Play Store, allowing malicious programs through that thousands or millions of users go on to download. With Google's release of the Android 11 Beta on Wednesday, though, the company is taking steps to make it even more difficult for rogue apps to grab your data even when they do slip by. From a report: Google has worked for years to incrementally tighten Android security under the hood. And the release of Android 11 is particularly focused on expanding privacy improvements to give you more control over what your apps can access and giving more ways to distribute software updates across Android's fragmented and disjointed device population. Android 10 addressed some of this as well, requiring that app developers request permissions and then reaffirm user choices more often. Android 11 adds a feature that allows developer to request one-time permissions for things like the microphone, camera, or location as an alternative to all or nothing. You can share your location with a friend through a chat app once, for example, without granting indefinite location access, or having to remember to wade back into settings to revoke the permission later. "We can see that people are actually leveraging these features from Android 10 and thinking about their choices when they're giving apps access to permissions," says Charmaine D'Silva, an Android product manager who works on privacy. "So building on that this time we've added even more controls." Android 11 will also rein in apps that you don't use very often, automatically revoking permissions if you don't open it for a still undetermined period of time. If you start using the app again you can always reinstate its access, but the permission won't be lurking forgotten. Google plans to experiment with different cutoffs after 60-90 days, with the goal of eliminating stray permissions without breaking functionality.

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Researchers around the world are developing more than 135 vaccines against the coronavirus. Vaccines typically require years of research and testing before reaching the clinic, but scientists are racing to produce a safe and effective vaccine by next year. The New York Times: Work began in January with the deciphering of the SARS-CoV-2 genome. The first vaccine safety trials in humans started in March, but the road ahead remains uncertain. Some trials will fail, and others may end without a clear result. But a few may succeed in stimulating the immune system to produce effective antibodies against the virus. The story outlines the status of all the vaccines that have reached trials in humans, along with a selection of promising vaccines still being tested in cells or animals. The closest to developing the vaccine currently is a joint collaboration between the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, and their vaccine is based on a chimpanzee adenovirus called ChAdOx1. The vaccine has gone through Phase I testing and is beginning Phase II/III testing in England and Brazil. Supported by Operation Warp Speed, the project may deliver emergency vaccines by October.

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SoftBank Group's Arm and its Chinese venture clashed publicly over whether the venture's CEO had been fired, a dispute that threatens to disrupt a Western company central to the global semiconductor industry. From a report: The conflict erupted after the British firm told Bloomberg News the board of Arm China -- jointly owned by Arm and investors including China's sovereign wealth fund -- voted to oust Chief Executive Officer Allen Wu. Hours later, Arm China posted a statement to its official WeChat account asserting he was still in charge, a stance repeated across domestic social media. The U.K. firm then fired back to say Wu had been dismissed after an investigation uncovered undisclosed conflicts of interest and violations of employee rules. "Following a whistleblower complaint and several other current and former employee complaints, an investigation was undertaken by Arm Limited," the company said in its latest statement, jointly issued with shareholder Hopu Investment. "Evidence received from multiple sources found serious irregularities, including failing to disclose conflicts of interest and violations of the employee handbook." The spat comes at a sensitive time for Arm and its 49%-owned Chinese affiliate, when Western companies are struggling to navigate an escalating clash between Washington and Beijing over technology leadership. Any prolonged conflict could also have ramifications for Arm, whose semiconductor architecture underpins the majority of the world's mobile devices. The British firm relies on Chinese names like Huawei for a large portion of its global revenue, and leans on Arm China to help it conduct business in the world's biggest smartphone market.

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A group of U.S. lawmakers preparing to fight a legislative attack on encrypted communications is trying to establish what happened when encryption was subverted at a Silicon Valley maker of networking gear. From a report: Democrat Ron Wyden, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the 2015 incident at Sunnyvale-based Juniper Networks could shed light on the risks of compromised encryption before an expected hearing on the proposed legislation. The EARN IT Act could penalize companies that offer security that law enforcement can't easily penetrate. "Attorney General (William) Barr is demanding that companies like Facebook weaken their encryption to allow the Department of Justice to monitor users' conversations," Wyden told Reuters. ""Congress and the American people must understand the serious national security risks associated with weakening the encryption that protects Americans' personal data, as well as government and corporate systems." In a letter to Juniper Chief Executive Rami Rahim sent late Tuesday, Wyden, Republican Senator Mike Lee of the Judiciary Committee, and the chairmen of the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees asked what had happened to an investigation Juniper announced after it found "unauthorized code" inside its widely used NetScreen security software in 2015.

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Under the withering microscope of government watchdogs, tech giants including Amazon, Facebook and Google have funded a bevy of political groups that have helped push positive polling and engaged in other fingerprint-free tactics designed to deter regulators who are seeking to break up or penalize the industry. The approach reflects the growing threats they now face from the Justice Department and the country's top attorneys general, who have been investigating them on antitrust grounds. From a report: The Connected Commerce Council, for example, is a Washington-based nonprofit that bills itself as a voice for small businesses. But it counts Amazon, Facebook and Google as "partners," and in recent months the group known as 3C has put its muscle to work arguing that Silicon Valley giants do not threaten competition, stifle smaller rivals and harm consumers in the process. Espinoza, a bootmaker by profession, said he was approached by 3C last year after he participated in a Google seminar meant to help small businesses better use digital tools. The advocacy group then wrote the opinion piece largely on his behalf, which appeared online just days after state attorneys general announced their antitrust probe of the company. The opinion piece did not indicate that 3C largely penned it. Espinoza said he still supported Google, whose technology, including its ad tools now under government investigation, have helped his company reach new customers across the country. But he also said he didn't know about Google's relationship with 3C, a group of which he is a member, before being contacted by The Post this week. Jake Ward, the president of 3C, said his organization represents thousands of small businesses, not Silicon Valley's largest players. The organization often seeks to encourage corporate founders to share their views publicly, he added. "It is our responsibility, on behalf of our small business members, to protect the existing model and promote the market, which is working exceedingly well" Ward said, later adding: "We are not, and will not work for, Big Tech." Amazon and Facebook declined to comment. Julie Tarallo McAlister, a spokeswoman for Google, said in a statement that the company supports "a range of organizations like the Connected Commerce Council that are working to help small businesses grow and prosper online." Silicon Valley tech giants -- and companies across a range of industries -- often back a wide array of advocacy groups to boost their political fortunes. They aren't required to disclose how much they spend on these organizations and exactly how involved they are in their day-to-day decisions, but ethics watchdogs say their participation alone is important.

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The mobile technology industry's trade body is cutting about a fifth of its workforce after being forced to cancel a conference that generated most of its revenue. From a report: The decision by the GSMA follows the cancellation of February's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona -- an early major industry casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic -- which accounts for as much as 80% of the trade group's annual revenue. The company has around 1,000 staff. Stephanie Lynch-Habib, the group's chief marketing officer, confirmed the cuts and workforce size reported by Bloomberg earlier on Wednesday, and said those affected had been informed. "We think this is at least a three-year recovery scenario," she said in an interview, and added that the staff reductions were part of a wider cost-cutting plan. The GSMA has also slashed bonus payouts to eligible individuals and pared budgets and non-staff spending by about 40% for the current year.

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If you want to lead, you have to give away a lot of your ideas.