Policy

Workers in more than 20 countries including the US, India, Germany, Japan, and Brazil are currently on strike or protesting, coinciding with Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Amazon workers have planned similar strike actions in the past around the shopping weekend. The “Make Amazon Pay” movement is demanding better wages and working conditions, and that Amazon allows workers to join unions.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the difficult work of repairing subsea cables and their increasing geopolitical importance.

Today, The Wall Street Journal reports investigators believe a Chinese freighter deliberately dragged its anchor for 100 miles along the Baltic seabed last week, severing two cables: one between Sweden and Lithuania and another linking Finland and Germany. They are looking into whether it is linked to Russia, which has denied involvement.

The repair ship Cable Vigilance has already begun work on the Germany-Finland cable, according to Finnish broadcaster YLE. 

That’s what the Federal Trade Commission found in a review of product sites for 184 connected devices. Nearly 89 percent failed to disclose how long they’d keep getting software updates. The FTC says that for products with written warranties, this could potentially violate the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act, which governs what warranties need to disclose to prospective buyers.

As 404 Media and others note, Elon Musk’s X has inserted itself into The Onion’s acquisition of Infowars, arguing that neither Alex Jones nor the estate handling his bankruptcy owns the associated social media accounts.

Since X simply grants a license for their use, the lawyers say that can’t be transferred without permission.

Bluesky spokesperson Emily Liu confirmed in an email to The Verge that the platform is “actively working” with its lawyers to ensure Bluesky’s compliance with the EU’s Digital Services Act’s information disclosure rules, as Bloomberg reports.

Yesterday, the European Commission called out that Bluesky has no page listing “how many users they have in the EU and where they are legally established,” as required by the DSA.

Update November 26th: Updated with confirmation from Bluesky spokesperson Emily Liu.

Brazilian antitrust regulator Cade said it will fine Apple 250,000 real (about $43,000 USD) per day if it doesn’t meet the 20-day deadline, reports Reuters. The company must let developers link to outside payments and offer alternative in-app payment options to comply.

The ruling follows a 2022 complaint by Latin American e-commerce firm MercadoLibre, Reuters writes.

Hotel-related search results in Germany, Belgium, and Estonia are temporarily stripping out the map, property info and other clutter as shown in the gallery below. After the test, Google will look at how the change impacted “both the user experience and traffic to websites.”

It’s part of a series of changes meant to appease the EU’s DMA police and travel sites that have lost traffic as Google’s search results became worse, according to users, but more helpful, according to the advertising giant.

Update, November 26th: Added before and after images.

Prospects of an acquisition have cooled, according to sources speaking to Bloomberg:

The complexities associated with acquiring all of Intel has made a deal less attractive to Qualcomm, said some of the people, asking not to be identified discussing confidential matters. It’s always possible Qualcomm looks at pieces of Intel instead or rekindles its interest later, they added.

Qualcomm first approached Intel with the idea of a takeover in September.

Filed in 2020, the FTC’s antitrust case against Meta accuses the social networking giant of stifling competition through its acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram. The trial will take place on April 14th — just days before a judge will hear the proposed remedies in Google’s antitrust case.

The BEAD program — which my colleague Sean wrote about last year — is coming under fire as Donald Trump’s inauguration approaches:

Cruz sent a letter yesterday to NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson in which he asked the agency to halt the program rollout until Trump takes over. Cruz also accused the NTIA of “technology bias” because the agency decided that fiber networks should be prioritized over other types of technology.

Negotiations at the United Nations climate summit ended with a deal that falls well short of what vulnerable nations fought for — $1.3 trillion in climate funding that economists estimate is needed to help less affluent countries adapt to disasters and deploy clean energy.

Tesla notified a California judge that it had reached a conditional settlement with Rivian, reports Bloomberg, four years after accusing Rivian in a lawsuit of intentionally poaching Tesla employees and stealing trade secrets.

Conditions of the settlement weren’t revealed in the filing, and Tesla expects that a request to dismiss the suit will be filed by December 24th, Bloomberg notes.

A US Chamber of Commerce email to members sent on Thursday indicated that the government is preparing to announce the new export restrictions “prior to the Thanksgiving break,” reports Reuters.

That’s not all, the outlet writes:

Another set of rules curbing shipments of high-bandwidth memory chips to China is expected to be unveiled next month as part of a broader artificial intelligence package, the email continues.

A federal judge said Friday that sanctioning Musk was unnecessary “because he already agreed to reimburse the SEC $2,923 to cover airfare for the trio of agency lawyers he stood up in Los Angeles in September,” Bloomberg writes.

The agency sought to sanction him after he ditched a testimony over his Twitter acquisition to watch a SpaceX launch.