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Google won a legal challenge Wednesday against a €1.49 billion ($1.66 billion) antitrust fine from the European Union, while chipmaker Qualcomm failed to repeal a penalty.

The rulings underscore the mixed record of outgoing EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager in defending her crackdown on Big Tech in court. She scored two major wins last week: against Google in a separate case and against Apple’s tax deal with Irish authorities.

In a 2019 decision, the European Commission said Google, owned by Alphabet (GOOGL), had abused its dominance to prevent websites from using brokers other than its AdSense platform that provided search ads. The practices that it said were illegal took place from 2006 to 2016.

Apple has rolled out macOS Sequoia as its latest software updates for supported Mac computers, along with iPadOS 18, watchOS 11 and tvOS 18. These updates introduce new features and customisation options on Apple's devices, while future updates will add support for Apple Intelligence — new features that are powered by artificial intelligence (AI) on the iPhone 15 Pro models, the new iPhone 16 lineup, and select tablets and Mac models with Apple's M-series chipsets. These software updates were first shown off at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2024).

Here are some of the most notable changes on macOS Sequoia, iOS 18, watchOS 11, tvOS 18, and visionOS 2. You can update eligible devices to these software versions, but it's better to back up important data before installing major operating system updates. You can also read more about Apple's iOS 18 update that is rolling out to eligible smartphones.

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Intel (INTC.O) lost out on a contract to design and fabricate Sony’s PlayStation 6 chip in 2022, which dealt a significant blow to its effort to build its fledgling contract manufacturing business, according to three sources with knowledge of the events.

The effort by Intel to win out over Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O)in a competitive bidding process to supply the design for the forthcoming PlayStation 6 chip and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (2330.TW) as the contract manufacturer would have amounted to billions of dollars of revenue and fabricating thousands of silicon wafers a month, two sources said.

Intel and AMD were the final two contenders in the bidding process for the contract.

Winning the Sony (6758.T) PlayStation 6 chip design business would have been a victory for Intel's design segment and would have doubled as a win for the company's contract manufacturing effort, or foundry business, which was the centerpiece of Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger’s turnaround plan.

Mark Zuckberg’s Meta is to go ahead with controversial plans to use millions of UK Facebook and Instagram posts to train its artificial intelligence (AI) technology, in a practice that is effectively outlawed under EU privacy laws.

Meta said it had “engaged positively” with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) over the plan, after it paused similar proposals in June in the UK and EU. The pause came after the ICO warned tech firms to respect the privacy of users when building generative AI.

On Friday, the ICO made it clear it has not provided regulatory approval for the plan, but will instead monitor the experiment after Meta agreed changes to its approach. These include making it easier for users to opt out of allowing their posts to be processed for AI.

DNA testing giant 23andMe has agreed to pay $30 million to settle a lawsuit over a data breach that exposed the personal information of 6.4 million customers in 2023.

The proposed class action settlement, filed Thursday in a San Francisco federal court and awaiting judicial approval, includes cash payments for affected customers, which will be distributed within ten days of final approval.

"23andMe believes the settlement is fair, adequate, and reasonable," the company said in a memorandum filed Friday.

Google announced on Wednesday that its AI note-taking and research app, NotebookLM, is adding an “Audio Overview” feature. Audio Overview will give users another way to digest and comprehend the information in the documents they have uploaded to the app, such as course readings or legal briefs.

Since its launch, NotebookLM has used text to summarize and explain source materials, but now, it can do so out loud using audio. The feature is geared toward people who grasp materials better by listening to explanations as opposed to reading them.

Bluesky has gained a million new users in the last three days.

The platform posted about the milestone this afternoon, which it crossed after Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered a ban on Elon Musk’s X yesterday as part of an ongoing feud with the platform.

Apparently, enough are headed to Bluesky to drive its iOS app to the top of the Brazilian App Store, as TechCrunch writes.

Raspberry Pi has confirmed a bug in the new RP2350 microcontroller family, which causes pins to freeze outputting 2.15V when configured as inputs using the internal pull-down resistors — tied, it seems, to changes made by a vendor to an off-the-shelf fault tolerant pad IP block.

"[I] found a silicon bug," Dangerous Prototypes' Ian Lesnet explains of the issue, which has been confirmed as an erratum in Raspberry Pi's official documentation for the newly-launched dual-architecture RP2350 microcontroller family. "When a GPIO [General-Purpose Input/Output] pin is an input with the pull-down resistor enabled, it acts like a bus hold. We use the pull-down on the button, which connects to 3.3V when pressed. During the self-test pressing the button works, but then it never goes low again, it sits at 2.15V…"

The head of Telegram, Pavel Durov, has been charged by the French judiciary for allegedly allowing criminal activity on the messaging app but avoided jail with a €5m bail.

The Russian-born multi-billionaire, who has French citizenship, was granted release on condition that he report to a police station twice a week and remain in France, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement.

The charges against Durov include complicity in the spread of sexual images of children and a litany of other alleged violations on the messaging app.

His surprise arrest has put a spotlight on the criminal liability of Telegram, the popular app with around 1 billion users, and has sparked debate over free speech and government censorship.