How Google aims to ‘protect’ you from ads on the web

Google has detailed its objectives to respect users' privacy while maintaining a well functioning ad-funded web. "It will support the ability of publishers to generate revenue from advertising inventory and the ability of advertisers to secure value for money from advertising spend," Google said in a blog post. https://ift.tt/my7FIuC

Smartphones, headphones, TVs: What may get cheaper, expensive from April 1

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Newly unsealed court documents show IBM executives disparaged older employees as "dinobabies" and discussed phasing them out to make room for millennials (Noam Scheiber/New York Times)

Noam Scheiber / New York Times:
Newly unsealed court documents show IBM executives disparaged older employees as “dinobabies” and discussed phasing them out to make room for millennials  —  Documents released in an age-discrimination case appear to show high-level discussion about paring the ranks of older employees.

Optimism fixes a critical bug that would have allowed creation of unlimited ETH tokens in the Ethereum layer-2 scaling project's accounts, awards a $2M bounty (Tom Mitchelhill/Cointelegraph)

Tom Mitchelhill / Cointelegraph:
Optimism fixes a critical bug that would have allowed creation of unlimited ETH tokens in the Ethereum layer-2 scaling project's accounts, awards a $2M bounty  —  Ethereum scaling startup Optimism disclosed a “critical bug” fix in the project's Geth fork that would have allowed malicious hackers to create infinite ETH

European Commission says it is planning to propose a bill for a digital euro in early 2023; the ECB expects to start working on a prototype at the end of 2023 (Bjarke Smith-Meyer/Politico)

Bjarke Smith-Meyer / Politico:
European Commission says it is planning to propose a bill for a digital euro in early 2023; the ECB expects to start working on a prototype at the end of 2023  —  The European Commission announced Wednesday it's planning to propose a bill for a digital euro early next year.

Research: ModifiedElephant APT has targeted activists, journalists, lawyers, and others in India to spy on or plant digital evidence since at least 2012 (Tom Hegel/SentinelOne)

Tom Hegel / SentinelOne:
Research: ModifiedElephant APT has targeted activists, journalists, lawyers, and others in India to spy on or plant digital evidence since at least 2012  —  Executive Summary  — Our research attributes a decade of activity to a threat actor we call ModifiedElephant.

Bored Ape Yacht Club members, who have full IP rights for the ape character they own, are pursuing licensing deals to put ape characters on cannabis packaging (Mia Sato/The Verge)

Mia Sato / The Verge:
Bored Ape Yacht Club members, who have full IP rights for the ape character they own, are pursuing licensing deals to put ape characters on cannabis packaging  —  When Richard Lee first brought his business proposal to Backpack Boyz, he could sense skepticism from the California-based cannabis company.

Marketplace suspends most NFT sales, citing 'rampant' fakes and plagiarism

Sales of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, soared to around $25 billion in 2021, leaving many baffled as to why so much money is being spent on items that do not physically exist and which anyone can view online for free. https://ift.tt/IDMzv5S

Q&A with Cory Hrncirik, Microsoft's Modern Finance project lead, on flattening the company's finance head count with AI and data lakes, using Excel, and more (Nina Trentmann/Wall Street Journal)

Nina Trentmann / Wall Street Journal:
Q&A with Cory Hrncirik, Microsoft's Modern Finance project lead, on flattening the company's finance head count with AI and data lakes, using Excel, and more  —  The new tools help automate tasks.  But ‘we love Excel,’ says Cory Hrncirik, who leads Microsoft's Modern Finance project.

India, Australia reaffirm commitment to open secure, stable and interoperable cyberspace and technologies

A joint statement issued after the talks between External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and his Australian counterpart Marise Payne here said that the two ministers recognised cooperation in the areas of cyber governance, cyber security, capacity building, innovation, digital economy, and cyber and critical technologies as an essential pillar of the India-Australia relationship. https://ift.tt/1bdSxyZ

Bitcoin stages stealth rally with third-straight weekly gain

Bitcoin is on pace to post its third consecutive weekly increase, climbing almost 19 per cent during the stretch, to trade around $43,500 as of 1:06 p.m. in New York. It dropped below $33,000 on Jan. 24, a decline of more than 50 per cent from its all-time high of almost $69,000 reached in early November. https://ift.tt/9P5R1CZ

China's SMIC reports record $5.4B revenue in 2021, up 39% YoY, and $1.7B profit, up 138% YoY, as it looks to add more chip production capacity amid US sanctions (Arjun Kharpal/CNBC)

Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:
China's SMIC reports record $5.4B revenue in 2021, up 39% YoY, and $1.7B profit, up 138% YoY, as it looks to add more chip production capacity amid US sanctions  —  - China's largest chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation reported record revenue and a surge in profit last year.

UK's CMA accepts Google's plan to phase out third-party cookies and replace them with Privacy Sandbox and will closely monitor the development of the product (Jon Porter/The Verge)

Jon Porter / The Verge:
UK's CMA accepts Google's plan to phase out third-party cookies and replace them with Privacy Sandbox and will closely monitor the development of the product  —  The UK's competition regulator will keep a ‘close eye’ on development  —  Google's plan to phase out third-party cookies and replace …

PUBG developer Krafton 2021 net profit down 6.5%

PUBG developer Krafton has reported its 2021 net income of $434.5 million, which is 6.5 per cent down from the previous year. https://ift.tt/WVcS0Jq

How to backup WhatsApp chats, photos and videos on iOS

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