Tech Digest daily roundup: Google sued for over £20 billion by publishers
Google is being sued for up to €25bn (£21.6bn) over claims it has deprived newspapers and internet bloggers of billions of pounds in advertising revenues. The Big Tech giant is facing class action complaints in the UK and the Netherlands that it used its advertising technology to unfairly sideline publishers while hoovering up ad revenues. The claim is being brought on behalf of all websites and publishers that carry online banner advertising, including newspapers, magazines, blogs and other digital media sites. Toby Starr, a partner at the law firm Humphries Kerstetter, said alleged UK victims may have potentially lost up to £7bn in revenues since 2014. Telegraph
The rocket company owned by the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has suffered its first launch failure – with an escape system flinging the crew capsule to safety. Pictures show flames shooting from the engine about a minute into flight and the capsule firing off from the rocket’s nose. It later landed in the Texan desert supported by three parachutes. The mission on Monday was crewless and contained dozens of experiments, but is the same system used for launching people to the edge of space. Sky News
Booster failure on today’s uncrewed flight. Escape system performed as designed. pic.twitter.com/xFDsUMONTh
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) September 12, 2022
Apple has released a large package of security fixes for various bugs in iOS and iPadOS including four code-execution flaws and one serious zero-day. The most significant of the 11 total security issues was the zero-day vulnerability that allowed hackers to potentially execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges – the most serious kind. Apple said it is aware of a report that the issue may have been actively exploited in the wild. A zero-day vulnerability is characterised as a security flaw that was previously unknown to the affected vendor but not patched. IT Pro
Google has dissolved its Pixelbook team and cancelled the product, reports say. With the flagship Chromebook supposedly set to debut next year, it was far into the development process, and the news comes as a bit of a surprise. Google‘s CEO, Sundar Pichai, previously stated that he plans to slow down hiring and cut some projects, it would appear that the Pixelbook team was one of the first to go….The Pixelbook line consisted of high-end Chromebooks that showed the operating system running at its best. Pocket Lint
Revolutions in art are nothing new, but this one, some think, may be terminal. “Art is dead Dude”, Jason M Allen told the New York Times. Mr Allen is the winner of the Colorado State Art Fair’s competition in the category of “emerging digital artists”. His winning entry “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial” was made using Midjourney, an artificial intelligence system that enables images to be created simply by inputting a few text prompts – for example “an astronaut riding a horse”. Many artists were furious, but Mr Allen was unmoved: “It’s over. A.I. won. Humans lost”, he told the paper. Mr Allen earned just $300 (£262) from the contest, but the news struck a tender nerve. BBC
