Big changes are coming to Android apps, but they’re not the changes Google wanted. The settlement between Google and Epic that aimed to put to rest the companies’ long-running antitrust battle is being withdrawn, and that means third-party app stores are coming to the Play Store. Google has confirmed that it will begin distributing rival app stores next week, setting the stage for competing platforms to take a bite out of Google’s Android revenue stream.

This case has the potential to upend software distribution on Android, and it’s all because of V-Bucks. In 2020, Epic Games was frustrated that it had to pay a 30 percent cut to Apple and Google every time someone bought a bundle of V-Bucks in a mobile version of Fortnite. The publisher added a direct purchase option to the game in violation of both Apple’s and Google’s rules. Naturally, Fortnite was pulled from the App Store and Google Play, kicking off the antitrust lawsuit that is only now reaching its conclusion.

While Apple suffered little penalty in its Epic case, Google was tripped up by its anti-competitive management of the supposedly open Android ecosystem. Google used its market position to discourage device makers from promoting or pre-loading non-Google app stores and attempted to hide that conduct. The remedies set by Judge James Donato included lower fees, mirroring Google Play apps in other stores, and most vitally, placement of alternative app stores in Google Play.

The Los Angeles Police Department is ending its agreement with Flock Safety, a company that operates surveillance cameras throughout the city.

LAPD announced that it will allow its agreement with the company to expire Saturday, ending the department’s three-year relationship with the security firm - at least for now.

Flock cameras capture images of vehicles and license plates on roadways. LAPD says the cameras can help track down suspects involved in crimes.

Patreon announced on Thursday that it’s partnering with Cloudflare to block crawlers from stealing creators’ work to train AI models.

“I HAVE A KICKASS PRODUCT UPDATE FOR YOU ALL!” Jack Conte, the founder and CEO of Patreon, wrote in a post on Instagram with the superimposed text, “POV: you’re CEO of one of these fucking tech companies, so you do what you want.”

“Patreon has partnered with an internet infrastructure company called Cloudflare to block Al training crawlers from using the work you publish on your Patreon to train their Al models,” Conte wrote. “This is live and happening at the network level on all posts published on Patreon.”

The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources has just awarded 10 grants to nonprofit organizations in the state for more rooftop solar power deployment. This is the third round of grants from the department’s Low-Income Services Solar Program (LISSP).

This round of grants totals $2.4 million. The rooftop solar systems will help these nonprofit organizations lower their electricity bills by 70% to 100%. The solar systems will reach 612.3 kW of capacity in total.

“We are thrilled to award grants to this latest group of nonprofit organizations and add more than 600 kW of new solar energy to Massachusetts,” said Energy Resources Commissioner Elizabeth Mahony. “Together, these organizations will pay almost $275,000 less in electricity costs each year, providing more financial resources for their important missions. The solar systems LISSP enables benefit communities by helping local organizations reach more people, and with cleaner air and improved public health.”

A group of companies that specialize in tracking international shipments of sensitive technologies is backing a Capitol Hill bill that would require America’s most powerful AI chips to incorporate stronger security mechanisms aimed at preventing the chips from reaching China and other adversaries.

The letter, signed by six companies, says the Chip Security Act (CSA) would increase American chip companies’ competitiveness and close key loopholes in the U.S. export control regime. The move clashes with claims from semiconductor lobbying groups that the requirements would constrain America’s booming chip industry.

Sent to congressional leadership Thursday morning and seen by NBC News, the dispatch instead argues that more robust security verification would assure chip customers and manufacturers that they are abiding by sensitive restrictions on chip sales. The companies argue that the boosted confidence will “lead to increased sales, faster export approvals, larger transactions, greater access to new markets, and more expansive chip deals.”

The FBI has been unable to access a Washington Post reporter’s seized iPhone because it was in Lockdown Mode, a sometimes overlooked feature that makes iPhones broadly more secure, according to recently filed court records.

The court record shows what devices and data the FBI was able to ultimately access, and which devices it could not, after raiding the home of the reporter, Hannah Natanson, in January as part of an investigation into leaks of classified information. It also provides rare insight into the apparent effectiveness of Lockdown Mode, or at least how effective it might be before the FBI may try other techniques to access the device.

“Because the iPhone was in Lockdown mode, CART could not extract that device,” the court record reads, referring to the FBI’s Computer Analysis Response Team, a unit focused on performing forensic analyses of seized devices. The document is written by the government, and is opposing the return of Natanson’s devices.

Archive: http://archive.today/gfTg9

Alarmed by what companies are building with artificial intelligence models, a handful of industry insiders are calling for those opposed to the current state of affairs to undertake a mass data poisoning effort to undermine the technology.

Their initiative, dubbed Poison Fountain, asks website operators to add links to their websites that feed AI crawlers poisoned training data. It’s been up and running for about a week.

AI crawlers visit websites and scrape data that ends up being used to train AI models, a parasitic relationship that has prompted pushback from publishers. When scaped data is accurate, it helps AI models offer quality responses to questions; when it’s inaccurate, it has the opposite effect.

Paywall bypass: https://archive.is/oWcIr