Google's swanky new office building located on the Alphabet's Mountain View, California headquarters has been "plagued for months by inoperable, or, at best, spotty Wi-Fi," reports Reuters citing six people familiar with the matter. "Its recliner-laden collaborative workspaces do not work well for teams carting around laptops, since workers must plug into ethernet cables at their desks to get consistent internet service. Some make do by using their phones as hotspots." From the report: The company promoted the new building and surrounding campus in a 229-page glossy book highlighting its cutting-edge features, such as "Googley interiors" and "an environment where everyone has the tools they need to be successful."

But, a Google spokeswoman acknowledged, "we've had Wi-Fi connectivity issues in Bay View." She said Google "made several improvements to address the issue," and the company hoped to have a fix in coming weeks. According to one AI engineer assigned to the building, which also houses members of the advertising team, the wonky Wi-Fi has been no help for Google pushing a three day per week return-to-office mandate. "You'd think the world's leading internet company would have worked this out," he said.

Managers have encouraged workers to stroll outside or sit at the adjoining cafe where the Wi-Fi signal is stronger. Some were issued new laptops recently with more powerful Wi-Fi chips. Google has not publicly disclosed the reasons for the Wi-Fi problems, but workers say the 600,000-square-foot building's swooping, wave-like rooftop swallows broadband like the Bermuda Triangle.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Liliputing: Yuzu is a free and open source emulator that makes it possible to run Nintendo Switch games on Windows, Linux, and Android devices. First released in 2018, the software has been under constant development since then (the Android port was released less than a year ago). But last week Nintendo sued the developers, claiming that the primary purpose of the software is to circumvent Nintendo Switch encryption and allow users to play pirated games. Rather than fight the case in court, Tropic Haze (the developers behind Yuzu) have agreed to a settlement which involves paying $2.4 million in damages to Nintendo and basically shutting down Yuzu.

As part of a permanent injunction, Tropic Haze has agreed to stop distributing, advertising, or promoting Yuzu or any of its source code or features or any other "software or devices that circumvent Nintendo's technical protection measures." The court is also ordering the developers to turn over the yuzu-emu.org website to Nintendo and bars them "from supporting or facilitating access" to any other related websites, social media, chatrooms, or apps. In one of the more bizarre parts of the court order, the Yuzu team is told to delete all "circumvention devices," which includes any tools used for development of Yuzu and "all copies of Yuzu."

"Reddit users have been reacting with deep gloom to the firm saying it plans to sell shares to the public..." the BBC recently reported: The company has said its plans are "exciting" and will offer the business opportunities for growth. However many users worry the move will fundamentally change the website... "When the most important customers shift from [users] to shareholders, the product always [suffers]," said one person. "It becomes 'what can we do this quarter to squeak out an additional point of revenue', instead of 'how can we make this product better'...."

[T]he company has recorded losses every year since its start, including more than $90m last year. In the filing, Reddit said it had not started trying to make money seriously until 2018. It reported $804m in revenue last year, up more than 20% from 2022. Advertising accounted for nearly all of the revenue, but in a note to prospective investors chief executive Steve Huffman said he was excited about opportunities to make the platform a venue for commerce and license its content to AI companies.

An anonymous reader quotes an excerpt from a Wired article: In 2019, a government contractor and technologist named Mike Yeagley began making the rounds in Washington, DC. He had a blunt warning for anyone in the country's national security establishment who would listen: The US government had a Grindr problem. A popular dating and hookup app, Grindr relied on the GPS capabilities of modern smartphones to connect potential partners in the same city, neighborhood, or even building. The app can show how far away a potential partner is in real time, down to the foot. But to Yeagley, Grindr was something else: one of the tens of thousands of carelessly designed mobile phone apps that leaked massive amounts of data into the opaque world of online advertisers. That data, Yeagley knew, was easily accessible by anyone with a little technical know-how. So Yeagley -- a technology consultant then in his late forties who had worked in and around government projects nearly his entire career -- made a PowerPoint presentation and went out to demonstrate precisely how that data was a serious national security risk.

As he would explain in a succession of bland government conference rooms, Yeagley was able to access the geolocation data on Grindr users through a hidden but ubiquitous entry point: the digital advertising exchanges that serve up the little digital banner ads along the top of Grindr and nearly every other ad-supported mobile app and website. This was possible because of the way online ad space is sold, through near-instantaneous auctions in a process called real-time bidding. Those auctions were rife with surveillance potential. You know that ad that seems to follow you around the internet? It's tracking you in more ways than one. In some cases, it's making your precise location available in near-real time to both advertisers and people like Mike Yeagley, who specialized in obtaining unique data sets for government agencies.

Working with Grindr data, Yeagley began drawing geofences -- creating virtual boundaries in geographical data sets -- around buildings belonging to government agencies that do national security work. That allowed Yeagley to see what phones were in certain buildings at certain times, and where they went afterwards. He was looking for phones belonging to Grindr users who spent their daytime hours at government office buildings. If the device spent most workdays at the Pentagon, the FBI headquarters, or the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency building at Fort Belvoir, for example, there was a good chance its owner worked for one of those agencies. Then he started looking at the movement of those phones through the Grindr data. When they weren't at their offices, where did they go? A small number of them had lingered at highway rest stops in the DC area at the same time and in proximity to other Grindr users -- sometimes during the workday and sometimes while in transit between government facilities. For other Grindr users, he could infer where they lived, see where they traveled, even guess at whom they were dating.

Intelligence agencies have a long and unfortunate history of trying to root out LGBTQ Americans from their workforce, but this wasn't Yeagley's intent. He didn't want anyone to get in trouble. No disciplinary actions were taken against any employee of the federal government based on Yeagley's presentation. His aim was to show that buried in the seemingly innocuous technical data that comes off every cell phone in the world is a rich story -- one that people might prefer to keep quiet. Or at the very least, not broadcast to the whole world. And that each of these intelligence and national security agencies had employees who were recklessly, if obliviously, broadcasting intimate details of their lives to anyone who knew where to look. As Yeagley showed, all that information was available for sale, for cheap. And it wasn't just Grindr, but rather any app that had access to a user's precise location -- other dating apps, weather apps, games. Yeagley chose Grindr because it happened to generate a particularly rich set of data and its user base might be uniquely vulnerable. The report goes into great detail about how intelligence and data analysis techniques, notably through a program called Locomotive developed by PlanetRisk, enabled the tracking of mobile devices associated with Russian President Vladimir Putin's entourage. By analyzing commercial adtech data, including precise geolocation information collected from mobile advertising bid requests, analysts were able to monitor the movements of phones that frequently accompanied Putin, indicating the locations and movements of his security personnel, aides, and support staff.

This capability underscored the surveillance potential of commercially available data, providing insights into the activities and security arrangements of high-profile individuals without directly compromising their personal devices.

Emanuel Maiberg reports via 404 Media: Dozens of Ghost kitchens, restaurants that serve food exclusively by delivery on apps like DoorDash and Grubhub, are selling food that they promote to customers with AI-generated images. It's common for advertisements to stage or edit pictures of food to make it look more enticing, but in these cases the ghost kitchens are showing people pictures of food that literally doesn't exist, and looks nothing like the actual items they're selling, sometimes because the faulty AI is producing physically impossible food items. [...] Some ghost kitchens exist as unmarked commercial kitchens with no actual restaurant you can visit that simply fulfill orders for a variety of brands that only exist on the food delivery services. Other ghost kitchens piggyback on existing, real restaurant kitchens to fulfill orders for those brands that exist only on food delivery apps.

[The food from a business on DoorDash called Pasta Lovers] actually comes from Tony's Pizzeria in North Brooklyn, which also fulfills orders for a cheesesteak brand called Philly Cheez, a hero sandwich brand called Hero Mania, and a wrap brand called That's A Wrap. All of these brands deliver food from different ghost kitchens across the country, and all of them feature the same type of AI-generated images to promote their food, some of which looks ridiculous. [...]

"We don't allow the use of AI-generated images and if we find a merchant is using any, we will remove those images from their menu," Grubhub, which also operates Seamless, told me in an email. However, at the time of writing the AI-generated images on Seamless I sent the company are still live on its site. "We know how important it is for diners to have realistic expectations of what they are ordering and should expect to receive, which is why we share image guidelines with our partners and our system reviews image submissions before they're allowed on our platform." "DoorDash is committed to showcasing realistic representations of meals that customers would receive when ordering online," DoorDash told me in an email. "Showcasing high-quality, accurate, and realistic menu images is crucial for maintaining customer trust and generating sales through DoorDash Marketplace." "This is all incredibly depressing," concludes Maiberg. "A local pizzeria can't get by unless it makes sandwiches for ghost kitchen brands, the people who make a living taking photographs of food are being displaced by AI tools, and gigantic food delivery apps are still making money by taking a cut from restaurants and screwing over gig delivery drivers."

"AI-generated images of food that people can order and eat finally brings us to a shockingly literal manifestation of Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra. Baudrillard would say the Spicy Philly Cheese from Philly Cheez is "never that which conceals the truth -- it is the truth which conceals that there is none."

Streaming revenue will overtake pay TV subscription revenue in the U.S. for the first time later in 2024, helped by the addition of ad tiers by various streamers, according to a new forecast. From a report: Total revenues from streaming, including subscription and advertising revenue, will start topping revenue from pay TV subscriptions in the third quarter of 2024, research company Ampere Analysis projects in a new study unveiled on Monday. "Streaming will continue to race ahead as traditional pay TV declines -- with the value of pay TV in 2028 expected to fall to half the value it saw at its peak in 2017," it predicts. Streaming subscribers overtook pay TV subs in the U.S. in 2016, but "streaming's lower average revenue per user (ARPU), which currently sits at around a tenth that of pay TV, means that revenue is only now catching up," Ampere explained. U.S. pay TV revenue will still be narrowly ahead of streaming revenue in the second quarter at $17.1 billion to $17 billion, followed by a $17.3 billion to $16.7 billion streaming lead in the third quarter, according to the research firm's projections.

Microsoft offered to sell its Bing search engine to Apple in 2018, Google said in a court filing earlier this month. The document, from Google's antitrust case against the U.S. Justice Department, was unsealed on Friday. From a report: In the filing earlier this month, Google argued that Microsoft pitched Apple in 2009, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2020 about making Bing the default in Apple's Safari web browser, but each time, Apple said no, citing quality issues with Bing. "In each instance, Apple took a hard look at the relative quality of Bing versus Google and concluded that Google was the superior default choice for its Safari users. That is competition," Google wrote in the filing.

The Justice Department said in its own newly unsealed filing that Microsoft has spent almost $100 billion on Bing over 20 years. The Windows and Office software maker launched Bing in 2009, following search efforts under the MSN and Windows Live brands. Today Bing has 3% global market share, according to StatCounter. In the fourth quarter, Microsoft generated $3.2 billion from search and news advertising, while Google search and other revenue totaled $48 billion. Google said in its filing that when Microsoft reached out to Apple in 2018, emphasizing gains in Bing's quality, Microsoft offered to either sell Bing to Apple or establish a Bing-related joint venture with the company.

Reddit has filed its initial public offering (IPO) with the SEC on Thursday. "The company plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol 'RDDT,'" reports CNBC. From the report: Its market debut, expected in March, will be the first major tech initial public offering of the year. It's the first social media IPO since Pinterest went public in 2019. Reddit said it had $804 million in annual sales for 2023, up 20% from the $666.7 million it brought in the previous year, according to the filing. The social networking company's core business is reliant on online advertising sales stemming from its website and mobile app.

The company, founded in 2005 by technology entrepreneurs Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, said it has incurred net losses since its inception. It reported a net loss of $90.8 million for the year ended Dec. 31, 2023, compared with a net loss of $158.6 million the year prior. [...] Reddit said it plans to use artificial intelligence to improve its ad business and that it expects to open new revenue channels by offering tools and incentives to "drive continued creation, improvements, and commerce." It's also in the early stages of developing and monetizing a data-licensing business in which third parties would be allowed to access and search data on its platform.

For example, Google on Thursday announced an expanded partnership with Reddit that will give the search giant access to the company's data to, among other uses, train its AI models. "In January 2024, we entered into certain data licensing arrangements with an aggregate contract value of $203.0 million and terms ranging from two to three years," Reddit said, regarding its data-licensing business. "We expect a minimum of $66.4 million of revenue to be recognized during the year ending December 31, 2024 and the remaining thereafter." On Wednesday, Reddit said it plans to sell a chunk of its IPO shares to 75,000 of its most loyal users.

The U.S. FTC will order Avast to pay $16.5 million and ban the company from selling the users' web browsing data or licensing it for advertising purposes. From a report: The complaint says Avast violated millions of consumers' rights by collecting, storing, and selling their browsing data without their knowledge and consent while misleading them that the products used to harvest their data would block online tracking. "While the FTC's privacy lawsuits routinely take on firms that misrepresent their data practices, Avast's decision to expressly market its products as safeguarding people's browsing records and protecting data from tracking only to then sell those records is especially galling," said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan.

"Moreover, the volume of data Avast released is staggering: the complaint alleges that by 2020 Jumpshot had amassed "more than eight petabytes of browsing information dating back to 2014." More specifically, the FTC says UK-based company Avast Limited harvested consumers' web browsing information without their knowledge or consent using Avast browser extensions and antivirus software since at least 2014.

Social media platform Reddit has struck a deal with Google to make its content available for training the search engine giant's AI models. Reuters: The contract with Alphabet-owned Google is worth about $60 million per year, according to one of the sources. The deal underscores how Reddit, which is preparing for a high-profile stock market launch, is seeking to generate new revenue amid fierce competition for advertising dollars from the likes of TikTok and Meta Platform's Facebook.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The European Union will investigate whether ByteDance's TikTok breached online content rules aimed at protecting children and ensuring transparent advertising, an official said on Monday, putting the social media platform at risk of a hefty fine. EU industry chief Thierry Breton said he took the decision after analyzing the short video app's risk assessment report and its replies to requests for information, confirming a Reuters story. "Today we open an investigation into TikTok over suspected breach of transparency & obligations to protect minors: addictive design & screen time limits, rabbit hole effect, age verification, default privacy settings," Breton said on X.

The European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA), which applies to all online platforms since Feb. 17, requires in particular very large online platforms and search engines to do more to tackle illegal online content and risks to public security. TikTok's owner, China-based ByteDance, could face fines of up to 6% of its global turnover if TikTok is found guilty of breaching DSA rules. TikTok said it would continue to work with experts and the industry to keep young people on its platform safe and that it looked forward to explaining this work in detail to the European Commission.

The European Commission said the investigation will focus on the design of TikTok's system, including algorithmic systems which may stimulate behavioral addictions and/or create so-called 'rabbit hole effects'. It will also probe whether TikTok has put in place appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of privacy, safety and security for minors. As well as the issue of protecting minors, the Commission is looking at whether TikTok provides a reliable database on advertisements on its platform so that researchers can scrutinize potential online risks.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is proposing legislation that would criminalize some deceptive and abusive uses of AI and require disclosure of AI in election campaign materials, her office told Axios. From the report: Hochul's proposed laws include establishing the crime of "unlawful dissemination or publication of a fabricated photographic, videographic, or audio record." Making unauthorized uses of a person's voice "in connection with advertising or trade" a misdemeanor offense. Such offenses are punishable by up to one year jail sentence. Expanding New York's penal law to include unauthorized uses of artificial intelligence in coercion, criminal impersonation and identity theft.

Amending existing intimate images and revenge porn statutes to include "digital images" -- ranging from realistic Photoshop-produced work to advanced AI-generated content. Codifying the right to sue over digitally manipulated false images. Requiring disclosures of AI use in all forms of political communication "including video recording, motion picture, film, audio recording, electronic image, photograph, text, or any technological representation of speech or conduct" within 60 days of an election.

"A lot of that AI chatbots that you spend days talking to push hard on getting more and more private information from you," writes longtime Slashdot reader michelcultivo, sharing a report from Gizmodo.

"To be perfectly blunt, AI girlfriends and boyfriends are not your friends," says Misha Rykov, a Mozilla Researcher from the company's *Privacy Not Included project. "Although they are marketed as something that will enhance your mental health and well-being, they specialize in delivering dependency, loneliness, and toxicity, all while prying as much data as possible from you." Gizmodo reports: Mozilla dug into 11 different AI romance chatbots, including popular apps such as Replika, Chai, Romantic AI, EVA AI Chat Bot & Soulmate, and CrushOn.AI. Every single one earned the Privacy Not Included label, putting these chatbots among the worst categories of products Mozilla has ever reviewed. You've heard stories about data problems before, but according to Mozilla, AI girlfriends violate your privacy in "disturbing new ways." For example, CrushOn.AI collects details including information about sexual health, use of medication, and gender-affirming care. 90% of the apps may sell or share user data for targeted ads and other purposes, and more than half won't let you delete the data they collect. Security was also a problem. Only one app, Genesia AI Friend & Partner, met Mozilla's minimum security standards.

One of the more striking findings came when Mozilla counted the trackers in these apps, little bits of code that collect data and share them with other companies for advertising and other purposes. Mozilla found the AI girlfriend apps used an average of 2,663 trackers per minute, though that number was driven up by Romantic AI, which called a whopping 24,354 trackers in just one minute of using the app. The privacy mess is even more troubling because the apps actively encourage you to share details that are far more personal than the kind of thing you might enter into a typical app. EVA AI Chat Bot & Soulmate pushes users to "share all your secrets and desires," and specifically asks for photos and voice recordings. It's worth noting that EVA was the only chatbot that didn't get dinged for how it uses that data, though the app did have security issues. [...]

Amazon faces a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of false advertising and deceptive practices because Prime Video now serves commercials by default. Variety reports: "For years, people purchased and renewed their Amazon Prime subscriptions believing that they would include ad-free streaming," the lawsuit says. "But last month, Amazon changed the deal. To stream movies and TV shows without ads, Amazon customers must now pay an additional $2.99 per month ... This is not fair, because these subscribers already paid for the ad-free version; these subscribers should not have to pay an additional $2.99/month for something that they already paid for."

The case was filed on behalf of Wilbert Napoleon, a resident of Eastvale, Calif., who says he's a Prime member. "Plaintiff brings this case for himself and for other Amazon Prime customers," the suit said. The complain alleged that Amazon violates Washington State and California state consumer protection laws that prohibit unfair competition and deceptive business acts and practices. Amazon's conduct, as alleged, "was immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous and substantially injurious to consumers,â according to the lawsuit. The suit seeks unspecific monetary damages, including punitive damages, as well as an injunction to block Amazon's alleged deceptive conduct.

The suit was filed Feb. 9, after Amazon starting on Jan. 29 began running ads in Prime Video content in major markets including the United States unless users opt to pay extra ($2.99/month in the U.S.) to have an ad-free experience. Some analysts have forecast Prime Video ads generating more than $3 billion in revenue in 2024.

The U.S. Navy has ramped up efforts to recruit young gamers and esports fans to meet recruitment goals, allocating up to $4.3 million this year for esports marketing. This includes hosting video game tournaments and having sailors compete as the esports team "Goats & Glory." Critics argue targeting minors for military marketing normalizes war and raises ethical concerns, The Guardian reports. While the military cannot formally recruit those under 17, advertising and direct interaction with minors for recruitment purposes is permitted. Veterans groups oppose this, noting the military relies on gaming's appeal to young teens, whose brains are still developing, to influence future decisions about military service, the report adds.

Technology made its mark on the Super Bowl ads this year. Microsoft purchased a long inspirational ad for Copilot, ending with the tagline "Your everyday AI companion." (Although another message made the opposite point. "With artificial intelligence, the future is in good hands," an announcer says ironically -- while the ad shows the minions from Despicable Me 4.)

Google's ad showed how its Pixel 8 smartphone helps people with vision problems take photos. T-Mobile touted its internet service.

And for some reason CrowdStrike's ad about its endpoint security software took place in the Old West...

VW ended an ad looking at its history with a shot of its new electric vehicle, the ID.Buzz minivan, while Kia had its own heart-tugging ad touting their electric EV9.

And Pfizer ran a minute-long ad showing the history of medical progress, culminating with a pointer to their new domain, LetsOutdoCancer.com.

Even NASA got into the action, releasing a video showing an astronaut catching a pass in zero gravity. ("Including its solar panels, the Space Station is the same size as a regulation football field.")

And some people even tried watching the Super Bowl on their new Apple Vision Pro...

Quora "used to be a thriving community that worked to answer our most specific questions," writes Slate. "But users are fleeing," while the site hosts "a never-ending avalanche of meaningless, repetitive sludge, filled with bizarre, nonsensical, straight-up hateful, and A.I.-generated entries..."

The site has faced moderation issues, spam, trolls, and bots re-posting questions from Reddit (plus competition for ad revenue from sites like Facebook and Google which forced cuts in Quora's support and moderation teams). But automating its moderation "did not improve the situation...

"Now Quora is even offering A.I.-generated images to accompany users' answers, even though the spawned illustrations make little sense." To top it all off, after Quora began using A.I. to "generate machine answers on a number of selected question pages," the site made clear the possibility that human-crafted answers could be used for training A.I. This meant that the detailed writing Quorans provided mostly for free would be ingested into a custom large language model. Updated terms of service and privacy policies went into effect at the site last summer. As angel investor and Quoran David S. Rose paraphrased them: "You grant all other Quora users the unlimited right to reuse and adapt your answers," "You grant Quora the right to use your answers to train an LLM unless you specifically opt out," and "You completely give up your right to be any part of any class action suit brought against Quora," among others. (Quora's Help Center claims that "as of now, we do not use answers, posts, or comments added to Quora to train LLMs used for generating content on Quora. However, this may change in the future." The site offers an opt-out setting, although it admits that "opting out does not cover everything.")

This raised the issue of consent and ownership, as Quorans had to decide whether to consent to the new terms or take their work and flee. High-profile users, like fantasy author Mercedes R. Lackey, are removing their work from their profiles and writing notes explaining why. "The A.I. thing, the terms of service issue, has been a massive drain of top talent on Quora, just based on how many people have said, Downloaded my stuff and I'm out of there," Lackey told me. It's not that all Quorans want to leave, but it's hard for them to choose to remain on a website where they now have to constantly fight off errors, spam, trolls, and even account impersonators....

The tragedy of Quora is not just that it crushed the flourishing communities it once built up. It's that it took all of that goodwill, community, expertise, and curiosity and assumed that it could automate a system that equated it, apparently without much thought to how pale the comparison is. [Nelson McKeeby, an author who joined Quora in 2013] has a grim prediction for the future: "Eventually Quora will be robot questions, robot answers, and nothing else." I wonder how the site will answer the question of why Quora died, if anyone even bothers to ask.
The article notes that Andreessen Horowitz gave Quora "a much-needed $75 million investment — but only for the sake of developing its on-site generative-text chatbot, Poe."

Spotify has reached a new deal with star podcaster Joe Rogan that will allow his hit show to be distributed broadly. From a report: Rogan's fresh deal, estimated to be worth as much as $250 million over its multiyear term, involves an upfront minimum guarantee, plus a revenue sharing agreement based on ad sales. Under the new licensing agreement, Spotify will sell ads for and distribute "The Joe Rogan Experience" across several podcast platforms, including in a video format on YouTube, the company said Friday. Under his previous deal, the show was exclusive to Spotify. The new deal is emblematic of shifting economics in podcasting, which has matured in both audience reach and advertising spending since Rogan's last deal. Spotify is working to revise the terms of its deals with top talent so that shows are distributed on several platforms to maximize their audience and ad sales, rather than requiring exclusivity.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast has reluctantly agreed to discontinue its "Xfinity 10G Network" brand name after losing an appeal of a ruling that found the marketing term was misleading. It will keep using the term 10G in other ways, however. Verizon and T-Mobile both challenged Comcast's advertising of 10G, a term used by cable companies since it was unveiled in January 2019 by industry lobby group NCTA-The Internet & Television Association. We wrote in 2019 that the cable industry's 10G marketing was likely to confuse consumers and seemed to be a way of countering 5G hype generated by wireless companies.

10G doesn't refer to the 10th generation of a technology. It is a reference to potential 10Gbps broadband connections, which would be much faster than the actual speeds on standard cable networks today. The challenges lodged against Comcast marketing were filed with the advertising industry's self-regulatory system run by BBB National Programs. BBB's National Advertising Division (NAD) ruled against Comcast in October 2023, but Comcast appealed to the National Advertising Review Board (NARB). The NARB announced its ruling today, agreeing with the NAD that "Comcast should discontinue use of the term 10G, both when used in the name of the service itself ('Xfinity 10G Network') as well as when used to describe the Xfinity network. The use of 10G in a manner that is not false or misleading and is consistent with the panel decision is not precluded by the panel recommendations."

Comcast agreed to make the change in an advertiser's statement that it provided to the NARB. "Although Comcast strongly disagrees with NARB's analysis and approach, Comcast will discontinue use of the brand name 'Xfinity 10G Network' and will not use the term '10G' in a manner that misleadingly describes the Xfinity network itself," Comcast said. Comcast said it disagrees with "the recommendation to discontinue the brand name" because the company "makes available 10Gbps of Internet speed to 98 percent of its subscribers upon request." But those 10Gbps speeds aren't available in Comcast's typical service plans and require a fiber-to-the-home connection instead of a standard cable installation. Comcast said it may still use 10G in ways that are less likely to confuse consumers. "Consistent with the panel's recommendation... Comcast reserves the right to use the term '10G' or 'Xfinity 10G' in a manner that does not misleadingly describe the Xfinity network itself," the company said.

A wide-spanning investigation by 404 Media reveals more details about a secretive spy tool that can tracks billions of phone profiles through the advertising industry called Patternz. From the report: Hundreds of thousands of ordinary apps, including popular ones such as 9gag, Kik, and a series of caller ID apps, are part of a global surveillance capability that starts with ads inside each app, and ends with the apps' users being swept up into a powerful mass monitoring tool advertised to national security agencies that can track the physical location, hobbies, and family members of people to build billions of profiles, according to a 404 Media investigation.

404 Media's investigation, based on now deleted marketing materials and videos, technical forensic analysis, and research from privacy activists, provides one of the clearest examinations yet of how advertisements in ordinary mobile apps can ultimately lead to surveillance by spy firms and their government clients through the real time bidding data supply chain. The pipeline involves smaller, obscure advertising firms and advertising industry giants like Google. In response to queries from 404 Media, Google and PubMatic, another ad firm, have already cut-off a company linked to the surveillance firm.