Joe Silver

In a ruling, the European Union’s General Court rejected Intel’s appeal of a €1.06 billion ($1.44 billion) penalty for antitrust violations. Instead, the EU General Court upheld the record-breaking penalty against the US computer chip giant, which had been issued in 2009 by the EU Commission.

Intel had been seeking annulment of the large penalty for what the EU Commission previously ruled to have been the company's antitrust infringement actions. But the General Court determined that Intel, the predominant player in the computer microchip market -- holding a market share of roughly 70 percent or more -- had acted anticompetitively in attempting to squeeze out AMD, its main rival, between 2002 and 2007.

Specifically, the Court explained that Intel paid bribes to a large German retail chain called Media-Saturn, so that it only stocked computers with Intel chips, rather than those using AMD’s microprocessors. This, the Court argued, constituted clear antitrust abuse. “The General Court finds that those payments were capable of making access to the mark more difficult for AMD,” and that Intel strategically chose this approach to achieve such an effect.

Cable companies that stand to benefit the most from an end to net neutrality have been bankrolling so-called “consumer advocacy” groups that aim to kill it.

Such non-profits like Broadband for America and the American Consumer Institute (ACI), both of which claim to be “independent consumer advocacy groups” and have been fighting against classifying Internet service providers (ISPs) as a utility (a move that would make it easier to enact net neutrality rules in the future), have been shown to be heavily funded by the cable industry.

According to a disclosure obtained by Vice from the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA), an ISP-supported trade group, most of Broadband for America’s recent $3.5 million budget comes from a $2 million donation from NCTA. Vice further uncovered that, based on its tax return filings, Broadband for America has retained the DCI Group, an "infamous lobbying firm," that Vice argues specializes in building fake consumer interest groups that actually serve corporate interests.

What's more, Vice found that the American Consumer Institute, which similarly opposes reclassification of ISPs, has been bankrolled by an ISP lobby group called Mywireless.com that has been a consistent financial contributor to ACI since 2010. "This kind of funding has been very common since the beginning of the net neutrality debate," Tim Karr, director of strategy at the advocacy organization Free Press, said.

In addition, according to Todd O’Boyle, media and democracy program director at Common Cause, such industry-funded groups can be quite effective if not called out for their conflicts of interest. "The problem that we see is that the media will quote these people without identifying those conflicts," O'Boyle said. "They have been very good at infiltrating grassroots causes without properly disclosing sources of funding."

Twitter has a 200-million-strong and ever-growing user base that broadcasts 500 million updates daily. It has been lauded for its ability to unsettle repressive political regimes, bring much-needed accountability to corporations that mistreat their customers, and combat other societal ills (whether such characterizations are, in fact, accurate).

In April, Twitter announced that, after reviewing the more than 1,300 proposals submitted from more than 60 different countries, it had selected six institutions to provide with data access. Projects approved included a study of foodborne gastrointestinal illnesses, a study measuring happiness levels in cities based on images shared on Twitter, and a study using geosocial intelligence to model urban flooding in Jakarta, Indonesia. There's even a project exploring the relationship between tweets and sports team performance.

Now, the company has taken aim at disrupting another important sphere of human society: the scientific research community. In its privacy policy, Twitter explains that most user information is intended to be broadcast widely. As a result, the company likely believes that sharing such information with scientific researchers is well within its rights, as its services "are primarily designed to help you share information with the world," Twitter says. "Most of the information you provide us is information you are asking us to make public."

With all of the talk of Facebook’s efforts to blanket the planet with drones that the company promises will provide global Wi-Fi accessibility, another technology leader, the US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has also entered the drone Wi-Fi game.

Through DARPA’s new “Mobile Hotspots Program,” the agency has planned to retrofit a fleet of aging RQ-7 shadow drones that were once deployed for various surveillance missions by the US military in Iraq. The repurposed drones will now be used to help the military carry out operations in remote locations that lack Internet connectivity.

The hotspot program aims to provide a 1Gbps communications backbone to deployed units. In order to establish a secure connection from ground stations without requiring large antennas, each drone will be equipped with a lightweight, low-power pod, holding low-noise amplifiers, which DARPA claims can boost signals while minimizing background noise. The drones can apparently run for nine-hour shifts to provide continual coverage as needed.

[Commentary] Are cyberattacks, security breaches, and mounting distrust between the US and Chinese governments ushering in a new Cold War era?

Given US officials’ rhetoric and actions in recent months, it might appear that such a sustained state of political and military tensions between the two superpowers is a serious threat.

A number of events have likely precipitated Cold War fears. The disclosures by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden of dragnet government surveillance, including a revelation that the US has infiltrated the networks of China-based telecommunications company Huawei, have understandably upset the Chinese. Additionally, the increasing number of cyberattacks and security breaches in both the US and China appear to have strained relations. And considering the “mounting tensions over China’s expanding claims of control over what it argues are exclusive territories in the East and South China Seas, and over a new air defense zone,” diplomatic relations between the two countries appear further strained, according to a report from The New York Times.

While US officials are trying to fend off threats of a new Cold War, Harvard Law School scholar Noah Feldman described his belief that rather than entering a new Cold War period, the US and China are instead enmeshed in what he calls a “cool war.”

“What the US and China have in common is that each is a global superpower in a contest for geopolitical supremacy,” Feldman told Ars. “What makes it 'cool' and not cold is that we still have a strong economic partnership with China. While both sides would like to reduce their dependence on the other, neither side wants escalation.”