An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Most industries covered by the European Union's carbon market would see free credits cut by the highest possible rate over the next five years under draft plans, potentially costing some of the biggest polluters millions of euros. The carbon market is the EU's main policy for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, by forcing power plants and factories to buy credits to cover their emissions. These credits are trading near record highs as speculators have bought into the idea that tougher EU climate targets will boost demand, while analysts predict further rises.

Although industry gets some free credits, to help avoid "carbon leakage," when companies relocate outside the EU to avoid carbon costs, the bloc has agreed to reduce them over the next decade to curb pollution and meet climate goals. EU industry emitted around 570 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent under the carbon market regime last year. Buying enough credits to cover those emissions would cost roughly 16 billion euros at today's EU carbon price. Of 52 industrial products deemed to be at risk of "carbon leakage," 43 will face the maximum possible reduction in the benchmark which determines their free credits over the next five years, a European Commission draft seen by Reuters shows.

Those sectors would receive 24% fewer free credits on average over the period 2021-2025, per tonne of product produced, compared with the amount they would currently get. Industries whose free credit benchmarks would be cut at the maximum rate include producers of refinery products, coke, iron casting, lime, ammonia, and pulp and paper products. Other sectors would face smaller curbs. Free credits for primary aluminum and hot metal used in steelmaking would be cut by 3% over 2021-2025, the minimum possible reduction rate.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The dominance of major U.S. tech stocks in recent years has pushed the sector past another milestone as it is now more valuable than the entire European stock market, according to Bank of America Global Research. The firm said in a note that this is the first time the market cap of the U.S. tech sector, at $9.1 trillion, exceeds Europe, which including the U.K. and Switzerland is now at $8.9 trillion. For reference, the firm said that in 2007, Europe was four times the size of U.S. technology stocks.

Tech pulling ahead of the European continent comes as the U.S. market has become increasingly concentrated in mega-cap tech stocks, worrying some market strategists. The five biggest tech names -- Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook -- accounted for 17.5% of the S&P 500 in January, and the rotation into tech during the coronavirus pandemic has pushed that number well above 20%. Consumer tech goliath Apple is worth more than $2 trillion by itself. The run for Amazon might be the most stunning of the group. The company has been growing into a dominant force in e-commerce since the 1990s, but the explosion of the cloud computing industry has helped its stock surge over the past decade. Its share price was about 20 times higher on Thursday than it was in August 2010.

An anonymous reader shares a report from Coywolf News, written by Jon Henshaw: For several years, it's been reported that Google pays billions of dollars to Apple to remain the default search engine on Safari for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. The deal ensures that iPhone, iPad, and Mac users search with Google when they use Safari. That is unless they manually change the default search engine in Safari's preferences. The deal between Apple and Google may be coming to an end soon. In July 2020, Reuters reported that the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority was taking aim at the deal. If the U.K. regulators take action, there may be a ripple effect from the European Union, which has a history of going after Google for anti-competitive behavior. Regulators in Europe may force Apple to remove Google as the default search engine and have users choose which search engine they want to use when they first launch Safari.

Regulatory pressure, a contentious relationship with Google, and the maturation of Apple's Siri and iCloud are presenting an opportunity for Apple to create and launch a search engine. There are several signs right now that indicate Apple may be doing just that:

- Apple doesn't need Google's money: Apple is now the world's most valuable company. They may want the money Google gives them, but they don't need it.
- Apple is pouring resources and money into search: Apple is investing heavily in search, as shown in their job postings for search engineers. The job listings reveal they incorporate AI, ML, NLP, and more into all of their services and apps.
- iOS and iPadOS 14 beta bypasses Google Search with Spotlight Search: It's not clear if Apple uses Bing anymore, as results are labeled only as Siri Suggestions. It is clear that Apple has started to return search results within Spotlight Search and is completely bypassing Google altogether.
- Apple recently updated its Applebot web crawler page: In July 2020, Apple published a significant update to its About Applebot support page. The additions are very similar to the details Google provides to webmasters and SEOs. Here are the changes they made to the Applebot support page: Added how to verify traffic from Applebot; Expanded details on the Applebot user agent, including differences between its desktop and mobile version; Expanded robots.txt rules; Added a section stating that they don't just crawl HTML, but also render pages similar to Google; and Added a section on search rankings and the factors that affect how it ranks web search results.
- Applebot has been busy crawling sites: Checking my server logs on WP Engine revealed that Applebot had been regularly crawling my sites daily, something I haven't noticed until now.

Two patients were reinfected with the coronavirus in Europe, according to local broadcasters who confirmed the incidents with virologists. The Hill reports: The patients, one from Belgium and the other from the Netherlands, were confirmed to have been reinfected with COVID-19, Reuters reported. Marian Koopmans, a Dutch virologist, confirmed to broadcaster NOS that the patient from the Netherlands was elderly with a compromised immune system, but did not provide more details about the infection. Koopmans told NOS that in order for reinfection, a virus must change its genetic code. She added during the interview with the broadcaster that, given the veracity of the virus, recurrence of infection was to be expected.

The second patient in Belgium was a woman who had contracted COVID-19 first in March and then a second time in June, Reuters reported. The woman, who was reported to be in her 50s, had a low level of coronavirus antibodies in her system, Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst told broadcaster VRT. Like Koopmans, Van Ranst cited a genetic mutation of the virus that may have been the cause for reinfection. And whether or not the recurrence of infection will be more rampant in the community is still uncertain. Yesterday, researchers in Hong Kong reported the area's first confirmed reinfection of the virus, 4 1/2 months after the patient's initial infection.

It was rumored last week and now it's official: the European Commission announced it is launching an in-depth antitrust investigation into Google's $2.1 billion bid for Fitbit. CNN reports: The European Union's top antitrust regulator said it is concerned that the takeover would further strengthen Google's market position in online advertising by "increasing the already vast amount of data that Google could use for personalization of the ads it serves and displays." Google announced it was buying Fitbit, the world's leading maker of wearable fitness activity trackers, in November. The deal, worth about $2.1 billion, is one of Google's largest acquisitions and represents an important step for the company into smartwatches and other wearable devices.

The Commission had already launched a preliminary investigation into the transaction. It said a commitment by Google not to use Fitbit data for advertising purposes was insufficient to address the concerns identified in the initial probe. The Commission's top antitrust official, Margrethe Vestager, said in a statement that the use of wearable devices by European consumers, as well as the data generated by them, is expected to grow significantly. "Our investigation aims to ensure that control by Google over data collected through wearable devices as a result of the transaction does not distort competition," Vestager said. In a blog post, Google Senior Vice President for Devices and Services Rick Osterloh said the deal "is about devices, not data," a market he said is full of competition. "We've been clear from the beginning that we will not use Fitbit health and wellness data for Google ads," Osterloh said. "We recently offered to make a legally binding commitment to the European Commission regarding our use of Fitbit data. As we do with all our products, we will give Fitbit users the choice to review, move or delete their data."

Germany's top court handed down its first ruling since the EU's GDPR laws went into effect in mid-2018. The court "sided with Google and rejected requests to wipe entries from search results," reports German public broadcaster DW (in an article shared by long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo): The cases hinged on whether the right to be forgotten outweighed the public's right to know...

In the first case, a former managing director of a charity had demanded Google remove links to certain news articles that appeared in searches of his name. The articles from 2011 reported that the charity was in financial trouble and that the manager had called in sick. He later argued in court that information on his personal health issues should not be divulged to the public years later. The court ruled that whether links to critical articles have to be removed from the search list always depends on a comprehensive consideration of fundamental rights in the individual case.

A second case was referred to the European Court of Justice. It concerned two leaders of a financial services company that sought to have links to negative reports about their investment model removed. The couple had argued that the US-based websites, which came up in the searches for their names, were full of fake news and sought to market other financial services providers.

This is the first ruling by Germany's top court since the EU's general data protection regulation came into effect in 2018. It gives EU citizens extensive rights to demand corporations immediately delete personal data.

According to CNBC sources, Google's $2.1 billion bid for fitness tracker maker Fitbit will face a full-scale EU antitrust investigation next week. From the report: Alphabet unit Google this month offered not to use Fitbit's health data to help it target ads in an attempt to address EU antitrust concerns. The opening of a full-scale investigation suggests that this is not sufficient. The deal, announced last November, would see Google compete with market leader Apple and Samsung in the fitness-tracking and smart-watch market, alongside others including Huawei and Xiaomi.

The European Commission, which will launch the probe following the end of its preliminary review on Aug. 4, is expected to make use of the four-month long investigation to explore in depth the use of data in healthcare, one of the people said. Google reiterated previous comments, saying the deal is about devices and not data. "The wearables space is crowded, and we believe the combination of Google and Fitbit's hardware efforts will increase competition in the sector, benefiting consumers and making the next generation of devices better and more affordable," a spokeswoman said.

Apple has another antitrust charge on its plate. Messaging app Telegram has joined Spotify in filing a formal complaint against the iOS App Store in Europe -- adding its voice to a growing number of developers willing to publicly rail against what they decry as Apple's app "tax." From a report: A spokesperson for Telegram confirmed the complaint to TechCrunch, pointing us to this public Telegram post where founder, Pavel Durov, sets out seven reasons why he thinks iPhone users should be concerned about the company's behavior. These range from the contention that Apple's 30% fee on app developers leads to higher prices for iPhone users; to censorship concerns, given Apple controls what's allowed (and not allowed) on its store; to criticism of delays to app updates that flow from Apple's app review process; to the claim that the app store structure is inherently hostile to user privacy, given that Apple gets full visibility of which apps users are downloading and engaging with. This week Durov also published a blog post in which he takes aim at a number of "myths" he says Apple uses to try to justify the 30% app fee -- such as a claim that iOS faces plenty of competition for developers; or that developers can choose not to develop for iOS and instead only publish apps for Android.

A disinfo operation broke into the content management systems of Eastern European media outlets in a campaign to spread misinformation about NATO. Wired reports: On Wednesday, security firm FireEye released a report on a disinformation-focused group it's calling Ghostwriter. The propagandists have created and disseminated disinformation since at least March 2017, with a focus on undermining NATO and the US troops in Poland and the Baltics; they've posted fake content on everything from social media to pro-Russian news websites. In some cases, FireEye says, Ghostwriter has deployed a bolder tactic: hacking the content management systems of news websites to post their own stories. They then disseminate their literal fake news with spoofed emails, social media, and even op-eds the propagandists write on other sites that accept user-generated content. That hacking campaign, targeting media sites from Poland to Lithuania, has spread false stories about US military aggression, NATO soldiers spreading coronavirus, NATO planning a full-on invasion of Belarus, and more.

"They're spreading these stories that NATO is a danger, that they resent the locals, that they're infected, that they're car thieves," says John Hultquist, director of intelligence at FireEye. "And they're pushing these stories out with a variety of means, the most interesting of which is hacking local media websites and planting them. These fictional stories are suddenly bona fide by the sites that they're on, and then they go in and spread the link to the story."

FireEye itself did not conduct incident response analyses on these incidents and concedes that it doesn't know exactly how the hackers are stealing credentials that give them access to the content management systems that allow posting and altering news stories. Nor does it know who is behind the string of website compromises, or for that matter the larger disinformation campaign that the fake stories are a part of. But the company's analysts have found that the news site compromises and the online accounts used to spread links to those fabricated stories, as well as the more traditional creation of fake news on social media, blogs, and websites with an anti-US and anti-NATO bent, all tie back to a distinct set of personas, indicating one unified disinformation effort. FireEye's Hultquist points out that the campaign doesn't seem financially motivated, indicating a political or state backer, and notes that the focus on driving a wedge between NATO and citizens of Eastern Europe hints at possible Russian involvement.

AmiMoJo shares a report from Ars Technica: Once renewable sources of electricity meet or beat the costs of fossil fuel generation, everything changes. With the immediate financial benefit just as clear as the long-term environmental benefit, utilities turn their attention to how to make it work rather than debating whether it's worth the investment. Solar and onshore wind technologies have hit this point in recent years, but the unique challenges presented by offshore wind have required different solutions that have taken time to mature. Governments have provided some subsidies to encourage that progress, and global capacity grew to 28 gigawatts last year. But those subsidies make it trickier to calculate how close to cost-competitive offshore wind has become. A team led by Imperial College London's Malte Jansen worked to compare 41 offshore wind projects in Europe going back to 2005. The researchers' analysis suggests offshore wind, at least in Europe, is on the cusp of dropping below the price of more traditional generating plants.

Bids to provide electricity in these auctions have ranged from 0 euros to 150 euros per megawatt-hour, with that value setting the minimum guaranteed price. The 0-euro bids came in recent auctions in Germany and the Netherlands, and they represent utilities that were confident in their unsubsidized revenue selling at wholesale market prices. The researchers' estimates for actual revenue at these wind farms came in at 50-150 euros per megawatt-hour. But the interesting thing is the downward trend over time -- dropping about 6 percent per year over the whole time period, and more like 12 percent per year if you start with 2015. For wind farms that won't start operating until after this year, the range drops to 50-70 euros per megawatt-hour. And 50 euros, the researchers say, is at the "lower end of [cost] estimates for fossil fuel generators." That means subsidies have also been declining over time. In fact, the average is on track to hit zero by 2025. And if electricity prices rise at all in the coming years, a few wind farms that have already been bid will turn out to be subsidy-free in the final accounting. The researchers paint this as a success story. The researchers report their findings in the journal Nature Energy.

Facebook has taken the EU to court for invading the privacy of its employees, Financial Times reported [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source] Monday citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter. From the report: The social media company claims EU regulators have asked broad questions beyond the scope of two ongoing antitrust probes, and it has requested that the General Court in Luxembourg intervene. The EU is investigating both how Facebook collects and makes money from data and whether its Marketplace business has an unfair advantage over rivals in classified advertising. Since March, Facebook has provided the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, with 1.7m pages of documents, including internal emails, in response to multiple requests for information. The EU has made further requests for all documents containing key words and phrases such as "big question," "for free," "not good for us" and "shutdown," according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

An anonymous reader shares a reporrt: Apple last month introduced the new "Find My" Network Accessory Program, built to allow third-party products to work with Apple's own Find My app. While Apple's AirTags have yet to be formally announced, this program was seen as a way for Apple to level the playing field with competing Bluetooth location trackers, like Tile, and avoid accusations of Apple monopolizing the market. n a new report today by The Washington Post, there are more aspects to this program that haven't been previously detailed, including far stricter rules for third-party companies using the Find My app. According to an anonymous developer who shared a secret 50-page PDF from Apple about Find My, customers who use Apple's app to locate a device will be barred from using third-party services simultaneously.

Although the details remain sparse, this suggests that while you will be able to link a Tile tracker to Find My and use Apple's app to locate a lost wallet, for example, you would then be prevented from using Tile's own app to do the same. Additionally, because of Apple's restrictions to "always allow" location access, every outside company will have to ask each Apple user for permission to obtain their location, which is a notable hindrance for item location apps. Another issue pointed out by developers is their limited access to the iPhone's Bluetooth antenna and other Apple hardware. While the Find My app can use these pieces of hardware whenever it needs to, third-party software can only use the Bluetooth antenna within certain thresholds, and if the developers go beyond that Apple cuts their access off and prevents the software from working. Notably, according to these developers, Apple does not inform them what the specific threshold is.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Japan Times: Renewable power for the first time contributed a bigger share in the European generation mix than fossil fuels as the fallout from the pandemic cut energy demand. About 40 percent of the electricity in the first half in the 27 EU countries came from renewable sources, compared with 34 percent from plants burning fossil fuels, according to environmental group Ember in London. As a result, carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector fell 23 percent. While power demand slumped, output from wind and solar farms increased because more plants came online in breezy and sunny weather. At the same time, wet conditions boosted hydro power in Iberia and the Nordic markets.

Electricity demand in the EU fell 7 percent overall. Fossil-fuel power generation plunged 18 percent in the first half compared with a year earlier. Renewable generation grew by 11 percent, according to Ember. Coal was by far the biggest loser in 2020. It's one of the most-polluting sources of power and its share is slumping in Europe as the price of carbon increases and governments move to cut emissions. Power from coal fell 32 percent across the EU.

The EU has demanded that Google make major concessions relating to its $2.1 billion acquisition of fitness-tracking company Fitbit if the deal is to be allowed to proceed imminently, according to people with direct knowledge of the discussions. Ars Technica reports: EU regulators now want the company to pledge that it will not use that information to "further enhance its search advantage" and that it will grant third parties equal access to it, these people said. Brussels insiders said that a refusal by Google to comply with the new demands would probably result in a protracted investigation, adding that such a scenario could ultimately leave the EU at a disadvantage. "It is like a poker game," said a person following the case closely. "In a lengthy probe, the commission risks having fewer or no pledges and still having to clear the deal." They added that the discussions over the acquisition were "intense," and there was no guarantee that any agreement between Brussels and Google would be reached.

Google had previously promised it would not use Fitbit's health data to improve its own advertising, but according to Brussels insiders, the commitment was not sufficient to assuage the EU's concerns nor those of US regulators also examining the deal. Google declined to comment on the specifics of its latest discussions with the European Commission but pointed to an earlier statement saying, "Throughout this process we have been clear about our commitment not to use Fitbit health and wellness data for Google ads and our responsibility to provide people with choice and control with their data. "Similar to our other products, with wearables, we will be transparent about the data we collect and why. And we do not sell personal information to anyone."

Microsoft is undeniably one of the Big Tech elite, given its size, wealth and stock market value. But the software giant has stood apart from Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple in one important respect: Microsoft, once the bully of the tech world, has escaped antitrust scrutiny so far. Now Slack, whose popular chat and collaboration software has become embedded in the daily routines of millions of workers at thousands of companies, is hoping to change that. From a report: Slack said on Wednesday that it had filed a complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission, accusing the tech giant of using its market power to try to crush the upstart rival. In its filing, Slack claims that Microsoft has illegally tied its collaboration software, Microsoft Teams, to its dominant suite of productivity programs, Microsoft Office, which includes Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. "Slack threatens Microsoft's hold on business email, the cornerstone of Office, which means Slack threatens Microsoft's lock on enterprise software," Jonathan Prince, vice president of communications and policy at Slack, said in a statement. Slack's complaint is just a first step. The European Commission must assess the complaint to see if a formal investigation is warranted. In recent years, European regulators have more aggressively pursued antitrust actions against large tech companies than American regulators. But the complaint threatens Microsoft's recent ability to largely avoid regulatory scrutiny. Federal and state regulators in the United States are investigating whether the other tech giants have broken antitrust laws. On Monday, the chief executives of Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook will testify before Congress, which is also looking into them.

European Union leaders agreed on an unprecedented stimulus package worth 750 billion euros ($860 billion) to pull their economies out of the worst recession in memory and tighten the financial bonds holding their 27 nations together. From a report: The agreement, in the early hours of Tuesday after more than four days of acrimonious negotiations in Brussels, required the unanimous approval of the member states and represents a victory for German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, who drafted an early outline for the proposal in May. The emergency fund will give out 390 billion euros of grants and 360 billion euros of low-interest loans. Almost a third of the funds are earmarked for fighting climate change and, together with the bloc's next 1 trillion-euro, seven-year budget, will constitute the biggest green stimulus package in history. All expenditure must be consistent with the Paris Agreement's goal of cutting greenhouse gases.

The European Court of Justice has ruled that the "Privacy Shield" data transfer agreement, which had allowed tech companies to transfer EU user data to the US, failed to adequately protect Europeans' data from US surveillance and security laws and was therefore invalid. What this means is companies like Facebook "could be prevented from sending data back to the US," reports The Guardian. From the report: The ruling of the court of justice of the European Union (CJEU) does not immediately end such transfers, but requires data protection authorities (DPAs) in individual member states to vet the sending of any new data to make sure people's personal information remains protected according to the EU's data protection laws (GDPR). The complaint, which goes back to October 2014, was lodged by Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems. He argued, following the Snowden revelations, that the privacy of European citizens could not be guaranteed if their data was sent to the US, given the evidence of widespread eavesdropping by the country's National Security Agency (NSA), and the fact that the US legal system only protected the rights of US citizens. Schrems' initial complaint led to the overturning of the EU/US "safe harbor," which had governed data transfer between the two countries, and the creation of a new treaty, the EU/US "privacy shield." This latest ruling has overturned that policy too. [...]

The ruling is not a total halt on data transfers between the EU and US, said Lisa Peets, a partner at Covington, which represented the UK's software industry in the case. The court upheld the use of "standard contractual clauses" (SCCs) to transfer personal data between Europe and US, allowing companies to seek specific consent from users for data to be exported. "Data flows between Europe and the United States are an integral part of the European economy and of the day-to-day lives of millions of European consumers, and the SCCs are the backbone for many of those data transfers," Peets said. "As for the privacy shield, the European commission will be highly focused on finding a resolution and will be actively working work with the US government to identify a path forward."

The French Parliament unanimously agreed this week to introduce a nationwide age verification system for pornography websites, months after President Emmanuel Macron pledged to protect children against such content. From a report: Macron made the protection of children against adult content online a high-profile issue well before the coronavirus crisis hit. In January, tech companies, internet services providers and the adult movies industry signed a voluntary charter, pledging to roll out tools to help ensure minors don't have access to pornographic content. Within a broader law on domestic violence, the Senate decided in June to introduce an amendment requiring pornography websites to implement an age verification mechanism.

In order to enforce the law, the French audiovisual regulator CSA will be granted new powers to audit and sanction companies that do not comply -- sanctions could go as far as blocking access to the websites in France with a court order. The choice of verification mechanisms will be left up to the platforms. But lawmakers have suggested using credit card verification -- a system first adopted by the U.K., which mulled similar plans to control access to pornography but had to drop them in late 2019 because of technical difficulties and privacy concerns. Italy also approved a similar bill in late June, which raised the same concerns over its feasibility and compliance with the EU laws.

The EU is questioning whether Google's proposed takeover of Fitbit will harm competition, or give it access to too much personal data. From a report: Fitbit makes fitness-tracking watches that monitor the wearer's heart rate and activity levels. A group of 20 consumer groups and privacy advocates have called for Google's takeover to be blocked. Google said it would not use Fitbit data to target advertising and would be "transparent" about the data gathered. It announced it was buying loss-making Fitbit for $2.1bn in November 2019. The move would help Google expand its wearables business and offer its own-brand smart watches to rival the Apple Watch. But some are concerned that Google already has a wealth of personal information about many people who use its products. As part of its campaign opposing the takeover, Privacy International said: "We don't think any company should be allowed to accumulate this much intimate information about you."

The Apple executive in charge of the App Store in Europe said that the company's policies ensure a level playing field for developers and ease-of-use for customers as regulatory scrutiny over the platform mounts. From a report: "Our efforts to help developers succeed are broad, deep and ongoing, and they extend to apps -- in music, email, or a variety of other categories -- that compete with some aspect of our business," Daniel Matray, the iPhone maker's head of App Store and media services in Europe, said in a speech Tuesday at a four-day virtual conference hosted by Forum Europe. The speech comes as Apple faces antitrust probes in the European Union and U.S. over rules it imposes on developers. In particular, regulators are taking aim at the requirement that apps use the company's in-house payment service, which takes a cut of 15% to 30% of most subscriptions and in-app purchases. Matray said that about 85% of apps it hosts don't pay Apple a commission because they're free or earn revenue through other means. Further reading: How Apple Stacked the App Store With Its Own Products.