A California jury has ordered Google to pay $314.6 million to Android smartphone users in the state after finding the company liable for collecting data from idle devices without permission. The San Jose jury ruled Tuesday that Google sent and received information from phones while idle, creating "mandatory and unavoidable burdens shouldered by Android device users for Google's benefit." The 2019 class action represented an estimated 14 million Californians who argued Google consumed their cellular data for targeted advertising purposes.

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WordLand 0.5.16 -- Rounding out the linkblogging features.

Amazon plans to shut down its standalone Freevee app in August, according to an in-app notice to users. From a report: The free, ad-supported streaming service is directing viewers to continue watching Freevee content on Prime Video. "Prime Video is the new exclusive home for Freevee Tv show, movies, and Live TV," the notice to readers states. "The Freevee app will be accessible until August 2025. Continue watching your favorite Free Originals and our library of hit movies, shows, and live TV on Prime Video for free, no subscription needed. Download Prime Video to get started and sign-in with your Amazon account."

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China will launch digital IDs for internet use on July 15th, transferring online verification from private companies to government control. Users obtain digital IDs by submitting personal information including facial scans to police via an app. A pilot program launched one year ago enrolled 6 million people. The system currently remains voluntary, though officials and state media are pushing citizens to register for "information security." Companies will see only anonymized character strings when users log in, while police retain exclusive access to personal details. The program replaces China's existing system requiring citizens to register with companies using real names before posting comments, gaming, or making purchases. Police say they punished 47,000 people last year for spreading "rumours" online. The digital ID serves a broader government strategy to centralize data control. State planners classify data as a production factor alongside labor and capital, aiming to extract information from private companies for trading through government-operated data exchanges.

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AI-powered note-taking apps are increasingly attending workplace meetings in place of human participants, creating situations where automated transcription bots outnumber actual attendees. Major platforms including Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet now offer built-in note-taking features that record, transcribe and summarize meetings for invited participants who don't attend. The technology operates under varying legal frameworks, with most states requiring only single-party consent for recording while California, Florida, and Pennsylvania mandate all-party approval.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Law enforcement officials are investigating a former employee of a company that negotiates with hackers and facilitates cryptocurrency payments during ransomware attacks, according to a statement from the firm, DigitalMint. DigitalMint President Marc Jason Grens this week told organizations it works with that the US Justice Department is examining allegations that the then-employee struck deals with hackers to profit from extortion payments, according to a person familiar with the matter. Grens did not identify the employee by name and characterized their actions as isolated, said the person, who spoke on condition that they not be identified describing private conversations. DigitalMint is cooperating with a criminal investigation into "alleged unauthorized conduct by the employee while employed here," Grens said in an email to Bloomberg News. The Chicago-based company is not the target of the investigation and the employee "was immediately terminated," Grens said, adding that he can't provide more information because the probe is ongoing.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: From Somalia to mainland Europe, the past two years have seen some of the most ravaging droughts in recorded history, made worse by climate change, according to a UN-backed report. Describing drought as a "silent killer" which "creeps in, drains resources, and devastates lives in slow motion" the report said it had exacerbated issues like poverty and ecosystem collapse. The report highlighted impacts in Africa, the Mediterranean, Latin America and Southeast Asia, including an estimated 4.4 million people in Somalia facing crisis-level food insecurity at the beginning of this year. It recommends governments prepare for a "new normal" with measures including stronger early warning systems.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Lorde [a popular New Zealand singer and songwriter] fans are clearly struggling to play the CD version of her new album. Customers who purchased the special edition of Virgin released on a transparent plastic disc are reporting on Reddit and TikTok that many CD players, car stereos, and other sound systems they've tried are unable to play it.

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Air pollution has been linked to a swathe of lung cancer-driving DNA mutations, in a study of people diagnosed with the disease despite never having smoked tobacco. From a report: The findings from an investigation into cancer patients around the world helps explain why those who have never smoked make up a rising proportion of people developing the cancer, a trend the researchers called an "urgent and growing global problem." Prof Ludmil Alexandrov, a senior author on the study at the University of California in San Diego, said researchers had observed the "problematic trend" but had not understood the cause. "Our research shows that air pollution is strongly associated with the same types of DNA mutations we typically associate with smoking," he said. The scientists analyzed the entire genetic code of lung tumors removed from 871 never-smokers in Europe, North America, Africa and Asia as part of the Sherlock-Lung study. They found that the higher the levels of air pollution in a region, the more cancer-driving and cancer-promoting mutations were present in residents' tumors. Fine-particulate air pollution was in particular linked to mutations in the TP53 gene. These have previously been associated with tobacco smoking.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: In 2021, Google set a lofty goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030. Yet in the years since then, the company has moved in the opposite direction as it invests in energy-intensive artificial intelligence. In its latest sustainability report, Google said its carbon emissions had increased 51% between 2019 and 2024. New research aims to debunk even that enormous figure and provide context to Google's sustainability reports, painting a bleaker picture. A report authored by non-profit advocacy group Kairos Fellowship found that, between 2019 and 2024, Google's carbon emissions actually went up by 65%. What's more, between 2010, the first year there is publicly available data on Google's emissions, and 2024, Google's total greenhouse gas emissions increased 1,515%, Kairos found. The largest year-over-year jump in that window was also the most recent, 2023 to 2024, when Google saw a 26% increase in emissions just between 2023 and 2024, according to the report.

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Earth's atmosphere now has more carbon dioxide in it than it has in millions -- and possibly tens of millions -- of years, according to data released last month by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and scientists at the University of California San Diego. From a report: For the first time, global average concentrations of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas emitted as a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, exceeded 430 parts per million (ppm) in May. The new readings were a record high and represented an increase of more than 3 ppm over last year. The measurements indicate that countries are not doing enough to limit greenhouse gas emissions and reverse the steady buildup of C02, which climate scientists point to as the main culprit for global warming. "Another year, another record," Ralph Keeling, a professor of climate sciences, marine chemistry and geochemistry at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said in a statement. "It's sad."

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Software internally is mostly pipes connected to other pipes, each adding a specific quality to whatever passes through it. If you have nice standards for what you send through the pipes, you can do more of what you imagine. This is called orthogonality. Factoring is when you notice a repeating pattern, and give it a name, and a set of things you can do to it, those would be names of pipes. I have to ask ChatGPT what it thinks about this, but I am also asking my human friends. BTW I expect this seems so natural because our minds probably work that way too, internally, below our conscious awareness.

A DNA bone test on a man who lived 4,500 years ago sheds new light on the rise of Ancient Egypt.

The UK government is preparing new legislation to address undersea cable sabotage as current laws are proving inadequate for modern threats. Ministry of Defence parliamentary under-secretary Luke Pollard told lawmakers yesterday that the Submarine Telegraph Act of 1885, which imposes 1,000 pound ($1,370) fines, "does seem somewhat out of step with the modern-day risk." The government's Strategic Defence Review proposes a new defence readiness bill to cover state-sponsored cybercrime and subsea cable attacks. Chris Bryant, minister of state for data protection and telecoms, said fines could be increased to 5,000 pound ($6,850) through secondary legislation but "that just doesn't seem to meet the needs of the situation." Recent incidents include Sweden's deployment of forces to the Baltic Sea following suspected Russian attacks on underwater data cables in January. The China Strategic Risks Institute found that eight of ten identified vessels in 12 sabotage incidents between January 2021 and April 2025 were linked to China or Russia through registration or ownership.

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Microsoft is kicking off its fiscal year by firing thousands of employees in the largest round of layoffs since 2023, the company confirmed Wednesday. From a report: In an ongoing effort to streamline its workforce, Microsoft said that as much as 4%, or roughly 9,100, of the company's employees could be affected by Wednesday's layoffs. The move follows two waves of layoffs in May and June, which saw Microsoft fire more than 6,000 employees, almost 2,300 of whom were based in Washington.

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