According to The New York Times, the Justice Department is exploring whether to open a case against Google for potential antitrust violations (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) relating to search and its other businesses, “putting renewed scrutiny on the company amid a growing chorus of criticism about the power of Big Tech.” From the report: An investigation into how Google arranges search results could revive a case closed in 2013 by another government agency, the Federal Trade Commission. The five F.T.C. commissioners voted unanimously at the time against bringing charges against the company. Google agreed to make some changes to search practices tied to advertising. But this year, with a new antitrust task force announced in February, the trade commission renewed its interest in Google. In recent weeks, the commission referred complaints about the company to the Justice Department, which also oversees antitrust regulations, according to two people familiar with the actions. The commission has also told companies and others with complaints against Google to take them to the Justice Department.

The task force had been looking into Google’s advertising practices and influence in the online advertising industry, according to two of the people. One of the people said the agency was also looking into its search practices. Most of Google’s revenue comes from advertisements tied to its search results. If the Justice Department opens a formal investigation, it will be its first major antitrust case against a big tech company during the Trump administration. Google, Facebook and Amazon have come under intense bipartisan criticism, and calls to break up the firms have become a talking point in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

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Source: Slashdot – Justice Department Is Preparing Antitrust Investigation of Google

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The male mind is rational and orderly while the female one is complicated and hormonal. It is a stereotype that has skewed decades of neuroscience research towards using almost exclusively male mice and other laboratory animals, according to a new study. Scientists have typically justified excluding female animals from experiments — even when studying conditions that are more likely to affect women — on the basis that fluctuating hormones would render the results uninterpretable. However, according to Rebecca Shansky, a neuroscientist at Northeastern University, in Boston, it is entirely unjustified by scientific evidence, which shows that, if anything, the hormones and behavior of male rodents are less stable than those of females. Shansky is calling for stricter requirements to include animals of both sexes in research, saying the failure to do so has led to the development of drugs that work less well in women. One example that the report mentions is with the sleeping drug Ambien, which had been tested in male animals and then men in clinical trials. It “was later shown to be far more potent in women because it was metabolized more slowly in the female body,” the report says. “Across all drugs, women tended to suffer more adverse side effects and overdoses.”

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Source: Slashdot – Use of Male Mice Skews Drug Research Against Women, Study Finds

samleecole writes: Apple’s AirPods are a tragedy. Ecologically, socially, economically — they’re a capitalist disaster. The opposite of AirPods, then, is this extremely punk pair of DIY wireless earbuds that someone on Reddit hacked together using an old pair of wired Apple headphones and some hot glue. “I started this project roughly two months ago when my friend got a new pair of AirPods for his birthday and I thought to myself, ‘that’s quite a lot of money for something I can make at home,'” Sam Cashbook, who is 15, told Motherboard in a Reddit message.

Cashook started watching videos of people making their own AirPods, but mostly found people chopping the wires off of Apple headphones as a joke. He decided to take his own approach. He bought a hands-free bone conduction headset from eBay, and took apart the casing to reveal the electronics. Then, he desoldered the wires from the original speaker in the headset, and connected his old Apple earbud speaker to the headset’s printed circuit board. Maybe a little uglier, but the headphones work well, he said. The set has buttons for power, pausing music, volume controls and skipping tracks, and the battery is rechargeable.

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Source: Slashdot – Teen Makes His Own AirPods For

dryriver writes: If you had asked someone doing 3D graphics seriously back in 2000 what 3D technology will look like two decades away in 2019, they might have said: “Most internet websites will have realtime 3D content embedded or will be completely in 3D. 3D Games will look as good as movies or reality. Everyone will have a cheap handheld 3D scanner to capture 3D models with. High-end VR headsets, gloves, bodysuits and haptics devices will be sold in electronics stores. Still and video cameras will be able to capture true holographic 3D images and video of the real world. TVs and broadcast TV content will be in holographic 3D. 3D stuff you create on a PC will be realtime — no more waiting for images to slowly render thanks to really advanced new 3D hardware. 3D content creation software will be incredibly advanced and fast to work with in 2019. Many new types of 3D input devices will be available that make working in 3D a snap.”
Except of course that that in the real 2019, none of this has come true at all, and the entire 3D field has been stagnating very, very badly since around 2010. It almost seems like a small army of 3D technology geniuses pushed and pushed 3D software and hardware hard during the 80s, 90s, 2000s, then retired or dropped off the face of the earth completely around 10 years ago. Why is this? Are consumers only interested in Facebook, YouTube, cartoony PlayStation graphics and smartphones anymore? Are we never going to see another major 3D technology innovation push again?

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Source: Slashdot – Ask Slashdot: Why Is 3D Technology Stagnating So Badly?

Facebook wants to dismiss a lawsuit stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal by arguing that it didn’t violate users’ privacy rights because there’s no expectation of privacy when using social media. CNET reports: “There is no invasion of privacy at all, because there is no privacy,” Facebook counsel Orin Snyder said during a pretrial hearing to dismiss a lawsuit stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, according to Law 360. The company reportedly didn’t deny that third parties accessed users’ data, but it instead told U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria that there’s no “reasonable expectation of privacy” on Facebook or any other social media site. Chhabria appears set on letting at least some of the lawsuit continue, saying in an order before the hearing (PDF) that the plaintiffs should expect the court to accept their argument that private information was disclosed without express consent.

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Source: Slashdot – Facebook Reportedly Thinks There’s No ‘Expectation of Privacy’ On Social Media

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vice News: Google has found itself under fire for plans to limit the effectiveness of popular ad blocking extensions in Chrome. While Google says the changes are necessary to protect the “user experience” and improve extension security, developers and consumer advocates say the company’s real motive is money and control. In the wake of ongoing backlash to the proposal, Chrome software security engineer Chris Palmer took to Twitter this week to claim the move was intended to help improve the end-user browsing experience, and paid enterprise users would be exempt from the changes.

Chrome security leader Justin Schuh also said the changes were driven by privacy and security concerns. Adblock developers, however, aren’t buying it. uBlock Origin developer Raymond Hill, for example, argued this week that if user experience was the goal, there were other solutions that wouldn’t hamstring existing extensions. “Web pages load slow because of bloat, not because of the blocking ability of the webRequest API — at least for well crafted extensions,” Hill said. Hill said that Google’s motivation here had little to do with the end user experience, and far more to do with protecting advertising revenues from the rising popularity of adblock extensions. The team behind the EFF’s Privacy Badger ad-blocking extension also spoke out against the changes. “Google’s claim that these new limitations are needed to improve performance is at odds with the state of the internet,” the organization said. “Sites today are bloated with trackers that consume data and slow down the user experience. Tracker blockers have improved the performance and user experience of many sites and the user experience. Why not let independent developers innovate where the Chrome team isn’t?”

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Source: Slashdot – Google Struggles To Justify Why It’s Restricting Ad Blockers In Chrome

Earlier this month, Microsoft revealed a major Windows security vulnerability that could see a widespread “wormable” attack that spreads from one vulnerable computer to the next. “While Microsoft has released patches for Windows systems, even for older server and Windows XP machines, recent reports have revealed there are at least 1 million systems connected to the internet that can be attacked,” reports The Verge.

“Microsoft is confident that an exploit exists for this vulnerability,” warns Simon Pope, director of incident response at Microsoft’s Security Response Center (MSRC). “It’s been only two weeks since the fix was released and there has been no sign of a worm yet. This does not mean that we’re out of the woods.” From the report: Pope notes that it was nearly two months after the release of patches for the previous EternalBlue exploit when WannaCry attacks began, and despite having 60 days to patch systems, a lot of machines were still infected. The EternalBlue exploit was leaked publicly, allowing hackers to create malware freely. This new BlueKeep flaw hasn’t yet been publicly disclosed, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be malware. “It is possible that we won’t see this vulnerability incorporated into malware,” says Pope. “But that’s not the way to bet.”

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Source: Slashdot – Microsoft Warns 1 Million Computers Are Still Vulnerable To Major Windows Security Exploit