Italy’s competition watchdog agency, Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM), has fined Apple € 98.6 million ($ 116 million) over the App Tracking Transparency feature. Here are the details.
A bit of background
Since Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency (ATT), the feature has been criticized by companies and media groups over how it works on third-party apps, compared to Apple’s own properties.
Chris Rea, the singer and guitarist remembered for hits including the festive classic ‘Driving Home For Christmas’, has died aged 74.
The news was confirmed by his family today (December 22), with a spokesperson for his wife and two children saying: “It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of our beloved Chris.”
“He passed away peacefully in hospital earlier today following a short illness, surrounded by his family,” they added.
The world’s largest shadow library—which is increasingly funded by AI developers—shocked the Internet this weekend by announcing it had “backed up Spotify” and started distributing 300 terabytes of metadata and music files in bulk torrents.
According to Anna’s Archive, the data grab represents more than 99 percent of listens on Spotify, making it “the largest publicly available music metadata database with 256 million tracks.” It’s also “the world’s first ‘preservation archive’ for music which is fully open,” with 86 million music files, the archive boasted.
CBS News delayed airing a documentary after the White House refused to comment, raising questions about the channel’s editorial independence.
The 60 Minutes investigation was scheduled for Sunday, and apparently documented US deportations of Venezuelans to the notorious El Salvador prison CECOT. The decision to pull the show came from new Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, The Washington Post reported.
Amid Netflix’s proposed buyout of Warner Bros. Discovery, the streaming platform has made another big business move, acquiring a gaming startup amid the company’s push further into games.
Netflix has paid an unspecified sum for Estonia-based Ready Player Me, a company that builds the technology used to create gaming assets that are available across different titles.
”Our vision has always been to enable avatars and identities to travel across many games and virtual worlds. We’ve been on an independent path to make that vision a reality for a long time. I’m now very excited for the Ready Player Me team to join Netflix to scale our tech and expertise to a global audience and contribute to the exciting vision Netflix has for gaming,” CEO Timmu Tõke said.
Alphabet-owned Waymo has resumed its driverless ride-hail service in the San Francisco Bay Area after a temporary pause during blackouts that plagued the city beginning on Saturday afternoon.
“Yesterday’s power outage was a widespread event that caused gridlock across San Francisco, with non-functioning traffic signals and transit disruptions,” a Waymo spokesperson, Suzanne Philion, told CNBC in an e-mailed statement Sunday afternoon.
“While the failure of the utility infrastructure was significant, we are committed to ensuring our technology adjusts to traffic flow during such events,” she added.
