Daily Archives: April 18, 2022

Source: Apple

Apple, last year, introduced a new feature in iOS 14.5, which changed the course of how ads are shown in an app. The feature, called App Tracking Transparency, lets users block apps from collecting their usage data. Since an app cannot track the behavior of a user and how they use the app, it becomes difficult for advertisers to target ads.

Ever since Apple rolled out the feature to its users, big tech companies have been saying that App Tracking Transparency is bad for the advertising industry. We saw the effects it had last year, with Snapchat reporting that it lost millions of dollars due to App Tracking Transparency. On the other hand, Facebook reported that it would have to rebuild its ad infrastructure from scratch.

A new report from Lotame has now revealed that App Tracking Transparency could cost big tech companies almost $16 billion in 2022. The report reveals the probable effects of App Tracking Transparency on four major players in this field Snap, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Lotame says that Facebook will take the biggest hit of all the companies, with the company losing around $12.8 billion in revenue in 2022. That is followed by YouTube, which could lose up to $2.1 billion as per the report. Despite the loss in revenue, Mike Woosley, Chief Operating Officer at Lotame, says that it is difficult to isolate the effect of App Tracking Transparency alone because all of these platforms are "still growing extremely strongly."

"The effects of these changes on these companies are hard to isolate because all four players are still growing extremely strongly, still taking share from the last bastions of traditional media and gaining share in digital media as privacy regulations make it harder and harder for independent publishers and technologies to execute. To add to the complexity, the pandemic has introduced volatile and unpredictable gyrations in the pacing of media spending."

Mike Woosley, Chief Operating Officer, Lotame

All in all, the report points out that App Tracking Transparency has caused havoc in the advertising industry. The big tech companies are draining money daily, and it will only continue to increase. And not only big tech companies but a lot of other organizations who use Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and other channels to promote their products and services have also seen ad prices shoot up. Due to this, the revenue of several startups and businesses has also gone down. Many organizations have reported that it has now become difficult to target their campaigns and connect with users using ads.

Despite this, we believe that App Tracking Transparency is indeed beneficial for the user. It improves the user experience by making sure that advertisers are not tracking your usage and that data remains private to you. Apple says that an average app has six trackers from other companies whose sole purpose is to collect data and track people and their personal info. App Tracking Transparency disables advertisers from collecting this data.

And even though the feature doesn't lower the number of ads shown, it makes sure that the ads you see are not targeted. Apple's current rules only allow advertisers to target their ads at cohorts or groups of people based on certain characteristics. These groups arent based on unique device IDs as they're now hidden from the trackers. Moreover, Apple does not allow app developers to offer rewards and offer for enabling app tracking.

How to disable app tracking if you haven't already

If you haven't already disabled app tracking on your iPhone, read along and learn how you can disable all apps from tracking in just a few steps.

That's it. You have now blocked all apps on your iPhone from even requesting to track your data. The apps on your iPhone will now not be able to track your usage, and you will begin to see general ads on your device now.

Read more:

Apple chose its own users over tech giants - Pocketnow

Intel is joining other tech giants, such as Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, in pledges to reduce or eliminate carbon emissions in the next 20 years.

HILLSBORO, Ore. Intel is pledging to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, reducing its footprint across the chain of operation.

The tech company has its biggest campus in Hillsboro and is Oregon's largest corporate employer.

CEO Patrick Gelsinger was in Oregon Monday for the Grand opening of Mod3, a new semiconductor factory expansion of Intel's D1X facility.

"Every aspect of human existence is becoming more digital. Everything digital relies on semiconductors," Gelsinger told the crowd. "We need innovation, we need manufacturing."

On Wednesday, Gelsinger was part of an even bigger announcement online.

"We are committing to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across our operations by 2040," he said in a video statement.

Intel acknowledged the challenge of this goal.

"This will not be easy," Gelsinger said.

Intel detailed the chain of its own greenhouse gas footprint, from mining and transportation of raw materials for computer chips, to electricity used in manufacturing, to distribution of products.

Intel is the state's largest corporate employer. The state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) noted Intel is Oregon's seventh largest emitter of greenhouse gases, excluding electric utilities.

"The impacts of climate change are an urgent global threat," Gelsinger said in his video statement. "We can do more."

To meet Intel's 2040 net-zero emissions goal, it said it is developing more efficient factories and ways to use greener chemicals in manufacturing. It added it would also hold suppliers to higher environmental standards.

In addition to the carbon metric, Intel is pushing to have net positive water use and 100% renewable energy use globally by 2030.

"The idea that we can be completely moving to renewable energy is something Intel is driving forward," Sen. Jeff Merkley said at Monday's event.

Intel is one of several big technology companies that have made similar climate promises.

Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook) and Google have all pledged significant carbon emission reduction or elimination in the next 10-20 years.

Go here to see the original:

Intel commits to net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, joining other tech giants in climate promises - KGW.com

Tech giants are worried their employees will miss out on thousands of potential green cards this year as the U.S. continues to struggle with an immigration backlog.

Why it matters: In a tight labor market, industry leaders say they can't afford to lose talented high-skilled workers frustrated with long delays in granting permanent legal status.

What's happening: There are about 280,000 employment-based green cards available this year, but immigration officials are on track to waste about 100,000 of them, based on processing times in the first quarter, Cato Institute research fellow David Bier told Axios.

Between the lines: The issue disproportionately affects people from India because of the caps on the number of green cards that can be granted per country.

Zoom out: The pandemic contributed to processing delays, as did a sharp increase in the number of employment-based visas available.

What they're saying: When employees are going through this process, the fear, uncertainty, anxiety and doubt created by the backlog in processing is just brutal," Microsoft associate general counsel Jack Chen told Axios.

Immigration officials have processed fewer than half of Google's employee applications since October 2020, Kent Walker, president, global affairs & chief legal officer for Google told Axios.

The other side: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services used more of the visas in the first half of this fiscal year than the agency did for the same time period last year.

The intrigue: Wide-ranging legislation meant to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing could include provisions to help ease high-skilled immigration.

What to watch: The tech sector backs the immigration provision, although it would not fully clear the backlog.

Original post:

Tech's immigration headache isn't going away - Axios

Tech entrepreneur Brendan Morrissey has developed a free, virtual, web-based classroom to assist Ukrainian children who are entering Irish schools.

he Kilkenny-based investor has previously developed a similar app and network for children with dyslexia and ADHD that is used by thousands of users around the world through the eSchools app.

He is now urging major tech firms to come on board to help drive the Ukraine School project, which in recent days began to sign up its first users.

We dont require funding, said Morrissey. Were giving the platforms away for free to students, schools, teachers and parents. What we do require is hardware or corporate sponsors to supply hardware.

If Microsoft, Google, Samsung are reading this, laptops, tablets, smartphones would be very helpful to preload Ukraine School software on, so we can hand them out to students and parents. I hope we can help in our own small way through education.

Ukraine School, which can be accessedvia the free eSchools app,is available in 50 languages so children can learn through Ukrainian and switch it over to English or Irish to connect with the school and classmates.

The students are assigned their own secure class on the network alongside their teachers, who are then able to share project resources with the children and also assign homework or class-based assignments. Children also have access to class discussion and chat features through the app.

"Language seems to be the biggest barrier. Here in Ireland children are entering schools with no English. Ukraine School means a child can work in their own language.

"We then assist by managing their homework, activities, calendar, blogs, projects and class discussions. It allows them to connect with other Ukrainian students to start building their own safe community, said Morrissey.

Its wonderful to see Ukrainian people on the platform and using it daily. he said. Its hard to comprehend whats happened to them in the past few weeks.

Original post:

Tech giants urged to back Ukraine Schools app with laptops and tablets for refugee schoolchildren - Independent.ie

A clutch of the world's largest tech firms have teamed up to launch a pioneering multi-billion dollar fund aimed at bringing carbon removal start-ups to scale and reducing the costs of drawing CO2 from the atmosphere using technology.

The Frontier Fund, launched today by financial services company Stripe, Google owner Alphabet, Shopify, McKinsey, and Facebook owner Meta, is aiming to invest $925m over the coming nine years in companies focused on building technological solutions designed to suck carbon from the atmosphere.

The fund's advance market commitment (AMC) mechanism, used in the past to spur the development of vaccines with high up-front development costs, will enable companies to enter into offtake agreements with carbon removal suppliers for future tonnes of high-quality carbon removals, according to the group.

Kate Brandt, chief sustainability officer at Google, said that sending demand signals to the nascent carbon removals market would be critical to bringing down the costs of removal carbon from the air.

"At Alphabet, we know first-hand from our long-standing history of working to advance new climate solutions that signalling early demand can spur innovation and lower the price for everyone," she said. "That's why we are joining this exciting coalition of climate leaders, who jointly see the promise of new carbon removal technologies and the power of sending a clear demand signal to the market."

Under the plans, fledgling carbon removal firms will be invited to pitch for funding to Frontier, which will then evaluate their negative emissions offering, taking a range of factors into consideration. The fund's experts will then negotiate a price per tonne captured with successful companies, and make a commitment to spend millions of dollars for the delivery of those tonnes as offsets, according to the group.

The carbon removals market remains nascent, with direct air capture (DAC) technologies that filter carbon from the atmosphere systems currently limited to a handful of pilot projects around the world that are expensive to operate, such as Swiss firm Climeworks' facility in Iceland.

Other carbon removals techniques include nature-based solutions, such as reforestation, ecosystem restoration, and biochar, as well carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies that can be installed at industrial, gas, and bioenergy plants.

Frontier said it was likely to pay higher initial prices per tonne to technologies that meet particular criteria around cost, physical footprint, capacity, permanence and commitment to environmental justice.

Last week, the world's leading climate scientists making up the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that scaling carbon removal technologies was now "unavoidable" in order to cap global temperature rise at safe levels, with the technologies required to compensate for emissions produced in sectors most resistant to decarbonisation, such as aviation, shipping and chemicals. Advocates of CDR technologies have long argued that policy frameworks need to be introduced now in order to scale the market in time to mitigate for any overshoot in global carbon budgets over the coming decades.

However, carbon removal technologies remain contentious within some environmental circles, amid concern that national and corporate decarbonisation approaches that rely on unproven, costly and unregulated negative emissions technologies risk hindering efforts to reduce absolute emissions in the first place, by giving polluters license to continue burning fossil fuels. There are also fears that - if poorly regulated and policed - nature-based solutions efforts such as tree-planting can have a detrimental impact on biodiversity, food and water security, as well as local or Indigenous livelihoods.

But Dickon Pinner, senior partner and co-leader of McKinsey Sustainability, said that carbon removal technology had "an essential role to play" in the drive to reaching net zero missions.

"Our research shows that the amount of carbon removal needed by 2025 to achieve the IPCC's 1.5C pathway will be missed by 80 per cent, based on the current pipeline of projects," he said. "Frontier will play a catalytic role in enabling the supply of high-quality carbon removal."

The fund, a public-benefit corporation wholly-owned by Stripe, is also set to be funded by the thousands of businesses that use the Stripe Climate platform, a tool which allows businesses to direct a fraction of their revenue in carbon removal.

"With Frontier, we want to send a loud demand signal to entrepreneurs, researchers, and investors that there is a market for permanent carbon removal: build and we will buy," said head of climate at Stripe, Nan Ransohoff.

Go here to read the rest:

Tech giants launch $925m fund to shrink costs of carbon removal technologies - http://www.businessgreen.com

The new tech watchdog will have its powers to block takeovers by Silicon Valley giants curbed after ministers bowed to pressure from the likes of Google and Facebook.

Ministers are drawing up plans to soften a clampdown on tech acquisitions under the Digital Markets Unit after concerns it would stifle investment in UK startups, according to Whitehall sources.

The unit within the Competition and Markets Authority was set up to rein in Silicon Valley giants, including powers to more easily intervene in takeovers by large tech firms with strategic market status.

However, experts warned the startup scene would be badly damaged by the proposals that would all but ban big tech firms from making deals by judging them under a new stricter standard.

Whitehall sources said the powers to block takeovers will be reined in significantly in a major victory for Silicon Valley and startups.

The new mergers control regime that was being proposed is not going to be taken forward, said one source. It is the one thing that needed amending and was preventing something that otherwise is really great and really impactful.

The Digital Markets Unit had sparked opposition from both early-stage startups and Big Tech, including Google and Facebook. It had been hoped legislation to equip the unit with the new powers would be introduced this year following consultations.

Startups have warned the original proposals threatened to damage investment as it could block a lucrative exit route out of stakes in innovative startups.

Sam Dumitriu, research director at the Entrepreneurs Network, said: Startup formation and venture capital investment is extremely sensitive to the availability of exits. If the possibility of exiting via Big Tech acquisition was removed, it'd give founders fewer options and make starting a tech business riskier.

He warned that the proposals would mean fewer high-growth tech businesses starting in the UK and a tougher investment environment for those who remain".

A poll by startups industry group Coadec found that 90pc of investors think the ability to be acquired is very important to the success of the tech startup ecosystem. Half warned that curbs restricting exits from startups would significantly reduce investment.

Coadec estimates that the Digital Markets Unit plans could cause a 2.2bn drop in venture capital as countries with more liberal takeover rules enjoy stronger investment.

It said in a report last year that lowering the bar for intervention in tech takeovers threatens the foundations of the tech ecosystem.

This lower bar demonstrates the mission creep Parliament should be fearful of, as it effectively hands powers to the Competition and Markets Authority to block any acquisition that can be deemed as having a realistic prospect of harming competition.

On unveiling the new Digital Markets Unit powers last year, the Government said it would ensure British firms have a level playing field with the tech giants, and that the public gets the best services at fair prices.

It said the reforms will drive greater dynamism in our tech sector, empower consumers and drive growth across the economy.

A Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport spokesman said: "Our pro-competition regime will change the conduct of the most powerful tech firms and protect the businesses and consumers who rely on them right across the economy. This is about supporting competition and innovation, not stifling it."

Go here to read the rest:

Tech watchdog's wings clipped in wake of Silicon Valley pressure - The Telegraph