"U.S. scientists have reportedly carried out the first nuclear fusion experiment to achieve a net energy gain," reports the Independent, "a major breakthrough in a field that has been pursuing such a result since the 1950s, and a potential milestone in the search for a climate-friendly, renewable energy source to replace fossil fuels." The experiment took place in recent weeks at the government-funded Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, where researchers used a process known as inertial confinement fusion, the Financial Times reports, citing three people with knowledge of the experiment's preliminary results. The test involved bombarding a pellet of hydrogen plasma with the world's largest laser to trigger a nuclear fusion reaction, the same process which takes place in the sun.

Researchers were able to produce 2.5 megajoules of energy, 120 per cent of the 2.1 megajoules used to power the experiment. The laboratory confirmed to the FT it had recently conducted a "successful" experiment at the National Ignition Facility, but declined to comment further, citing the preliminary nature of the data....

"Scientists have struggled to show that fusion can release more energy out than is put in since the 1950s, and the researchers at Lawrence Livermore seem to have finally and absolutely smashed this decades-old goal," Arthur Turrell, deputy director of the UK Office for National Statistics, wrote on Twitter on Sunday. "This experimental result will electrify efforts to eventually power the planet with nuclear fusion — at a time when we've never needed a plentiful source of carbon-free energy more!"
But "the resources needed to recreate the reaction on the scale required to make fusion practical for energy production are immense," reports the Washington Post: More importantly, engineers have yet to develop machinery capable of affordably turning that reaction into electricity that can be practically deployed to the power grid. Building devices that are large enough to create fusion power at scale, scientists say, would require materials that are extraordinarily difficult to produce. At the same time, the reaction creates neutrons that put a tremendous amount of stress on the equipment creating it, such that it can get destroyed in the process. And then there is the question of whether the technology could be perfected in time to make a dent in climate change.

Even so, researchers and investors in fusion technology hailed the breakthrough as an important advancement.

Lexus is apparently working on a "virtual" manual transmission, reports the Verge, "to find out if the stick shift can survive the electric revolution..." British car enthusiast publication Evo reported this week that Lexus, which now leads Toyota's high-performance EV efforts, is developing a kind of shifting system that mimics the feel of a clutch and a stick shift in an electric car. Of course, it comes without the traditional mechanical connections for such a transmission because an EV doesn't need those things, but it mimics the motions involved with three-pedal driving. The company has even been showing it off on a special version of the Lexus UX 300e, an electric crossover not sold in the U.S.

Evo reports the "transmission" has an unconnected gear stick and clutch coupled to the electric powertrain, with fake internal combustion sounds and software that augments the electric torque output. In other words, it's a full-on pretend manual in an EV, complete with the "vroom vroom" sounds.... If this electric transformation really happens, being an enthusiast in the future could mean paying big bucks to simulate the things that got lost along the way.
Their headline puts it less charitably. ("Lexus could save the stick shift for EVs, if drivers are willing to pretend.")

But Evo writes that Toyota's ultimate goal is "making EVs more engaging to drive," noting it's also equipped with haptic drivers "to generate 'feel.'" Clumsy shifts will be accurately translated; you'll even be able to stall it. Toyota says it'll be able to theoretically recreate any engine and transmission combination through both sound and torque deliveries from the powertrain.... Takashi Watanabe, Lexus Electrified Chief Engineer, explained: "It is a software-based system, so it can be programmed to reproduce the driving experience of different vehicle types, letting the driver choose their preferred mapping...."

The sound being created from this sort of system is bound to only get better too, as other factors like vibrations through the cabin could be recreated by motors in the seats. This is a system used in BMW's latest high-end Bowers & Wilkins sound systems, which use vibrating motors in the seats to create more depth to the bass coming from its speakers.... It might not be the real thing, but in a future where we don't have a choice on the matter and have to drive an EV, it might be the next best thing...

The U.K. government will bring forward a consultation on the case for a central bank digital currency "in the coming weeks (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source)," Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt said. Bloomberg reports: The Bank of England will also release a paper setting out technology considerations informing the potential build of a digital pound, Hunt said in a written statement to Parliament. Hunt announced the plan as part of a wider set of reforms to spur the U.K.'s financial services industry. BOE officials led by Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe have become increasingly vocal about the need for so-called central bank digital currencies, or CBDC, which would give consumers and businesses a form of money that's as safe as cash but usable in online transactions. They note a sharp drop in the use of cash is leaving money increasingly controlled by private companies that don't have the explicit government guarantee carried by banknotes and coins.

However, a U.K. parliamentary panel said earlier this year that officials have given no convincing reason it is needed. The House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee. The group, which includes former BOE Governor Mervyn King, said at the time that the project might threaten the stability of the banking system and inject the BOE into controversial debates on privacy. One concern is that it could allow the state to have greater surveillance of people's spending choices.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed News: Joe Bowser is a computer scientist based in Port Moody, British Columbia, who has long loved Raspberry Pis. He uses the low-cost, single-board computers, which were launched in February 2012 by a UK-based company of the same name, for many of his tech projects. Those include linking the Raspberry Pi up to a 3D printer, and using the Pi to run a machine-learning demo. There's one use case that Bowser described as "the most important": using a Raspberry Pi to identify the use of IMSI catchers -- telephone eavesdropping devices that snoop on phone calls and text messages -- by law enforcement. Protesters opposing new oil pipelines happen to pass by Bowser's house regularly. He thinks cops shouldn't spy on them. So he's trying to help out the protesters using his tech knowledge. To do that, he uses Raspberry Pis. Or more accurately, he did. Bowser has forsworn using the computers ever again. He and many others are expressing their displeasure with the company on social media.

The controversy began yesterday when Raspberry Pi posted an announcement on Twitter and Mastodon: "We hired a policeman and it's going really great." The company linked to a laudatory blog post on its website announcing it had hired an ex-police officer, Toby Roberts, as its maker-in-residence. "I was a Technical Surveillance Officer for 15 years, so I built stuff to hide video, audio, and other covert gear," Roberts is quoted as saying in the post. "You really don't want your sensitive police equipment discovered, so I'd disguise it as something else, like a piece of street furniture or a household item. The variety of tools and equipment I used then really shaped what I do today." A subsection of the Raspberry Pi community expressed concern about the blase way the company presented intrusive covert surveillance. (The news caused particular ire on Mastodon, leading some to describe Roberts as the burgeoning social media platform's first "main character.") [...]

Liz Upton, Raspberry Pi's cofounder and chief marketing officer, told BuzzFeed she believes that much of the issue stems not from the hiring of the former police officer who admitted to using Raspberry Pis for covert surveillance, but instead from a picture the account posted to Mastodon a day earlier showing pigs in blankets. "We didn't put a content warning on it, because we don't put a content warning on meat," Upton said. "There were quite a few people who tried to start dogpiling on that." She also claimed that part of the vitriolic response could be because Raspberry Pi is struggling with supply chain difficulties at present, and people "were already cross." "I think what we're looking at is a dogpile that's being organized somewhere," Upton said. "There's obviously a Discord or a forum somewhere." She did not provide evidence to support that claim. "I don't think this is organic, but it's very unpleasant, and extraordinarily unpleasant for the people involved," she said. Upton claimed both Roberts and Raspberry Pi's social media manager have been doxxed and received death threats. "I am disgusted that [Raspberry Pi's] official post on Toby Roberts' hiring promotes his use of their products to surveil individuals without their consent," Matt Lewis, a Denver-based site reliability engineer, wrote via Twitter DM. "In my eyes, this behavior is completely unethical and the work Toby has done for 15 years is indefensible. I'm also upset that they have chosen to double down on this position against the community outrage."

"I think this event will mark a turning point in the organization's reputation," added Wikipedia consultant Pete Forsyth in a Twitter DM. "It's hard to see how they can recover the trust they seem to have almost willfully dismantled today."

Not everyone is downbeat about the future of the company. University of Surrey cybersecurity professor Alan Woodward called Roberts an "interesting hire" for Raspberry Pi. "His previous uses of the Pi shows just what a versatile device it is: I'm sure he's not the only one using the smallest variants to make covert devices," Woodward said. "You find that you have to be very creative to build these types of covert devices, so hopefully he can now bring that to his new role, for a wider variety of applications."

"It's not as if he is going to corrupt any of the Pis -- like all technology, it has some uses some people will object to," he said. Rather, Woodward believes "the loudest objectors are taking it a bit far. Maybe they could look at it as a glass-half-full situation: Think of the unusual innovations he might bring."

A year after Britain hosted a major climate summit, the British government on Wednesday approved its first new coal mine in 30 years, stoking anger among environmental campaigners. The Washington Post reports: The new mine, approved on Wednesday by Michael Gove, Britain's levelling-up secretary, will take two years to build and will produce an estimated 2.8 tonnes of coking coal a year, which is used in the production of steel. Coal is the planet's most polluting fossil fuel, and the greenlighting (PDF) of a new mine -- a decision that has been delayed for years -- is controversial in Britain and beyond, attracting unfavorable attention from people such as Greta Thunberg and U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry.

The British government has stressed that the coal taken from the mine will be used for the production of steel, rather than coal used to generate electricity, which Britain has largely weaned itself off of. [...] The new mine, which will cost an estimated 165 million pounds ($201 million), will see the majority of its coal exported to mainland Europe. The project is expected to create about 500 direct and 1,500 indirect jobs for the region of Cumbria and for Whitehaven, an ex-industrial town in the north of England that will welcome an influx of economic activity. "This coal will be used for the production of steel and would otherwise need to be imported. It will not be used for power generation," the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said in a statement. "The mine seeks to be net zero in its operations and is expected to contribute to local employment and the wider economy."

Risky and criminal online behaviour is in danger of becoming normalized among a generation of young people across Europe, according to EU-funded research that found one in four 16- to 19-year-olds have trolled someone online and one in three have engaged in digital piracy. From a report: An EU-funded study found evidence of widespread criminal, risky and delinquent behaviour among the 16-19 age group in nine European countries including the UK. A survey of 8,000 young people found that one in four have tracked or trolled someone online, one in eight have engaged in online harassment, one in 10 have engaged in hate speech or hacking, one in five have engaged in sexting and one in three have engaged in digital piracy. It also found that four out of 10 have watched pornography.

Julia Davidson, a co-author of the research and professor of criminology at the University of East London (UEL), said risky and criminal online behaviour was becoming almost normalised among a generation of European young people. "The research indicates that a large proportion of young people in the EU are engaging in some form of cybercrime, to such an extent that the conduct of low-level crimes online and online risk-taking has become almost normalised," she said.

A little more than one in five techies in Britain is aged 50 or older, and enticing more of that demographic to enter the world of information technology could help alleviate a perennial skills gap. From a report: This is according to research by the British Computer Society (BCS), which reckons just 22 percent (413,000) of the 1.9 million IT specialists in the local industry are at or past the half century mark. To fall in line with the average number of 50 year olds or older across all other employment areas (561,000) in the UK, an additional 148,000 people in that grouping are needed in the tech sector, the BCS claimed, basing its finding on data provided by the Office for National Statistics.

"We can only achieve the government's ambition for the UK to be the 'next Silicon Valley' by closing the digital skills gap and making this vital profession attractive to a far broader range of people," said Rashik Parmar MBE, CEO of the BCS. For those not aware, the UK government's latest harebrained scheme, outlined in the Autumn statement by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, is to convert the island nation into "the next Silicon Valley". Sounds plausible? Oven-baked plan? No, we didn't think so either. The age factor was most pronounced in the north-east of the UK where just one in eight programmers/developers was 50 or over, the research found -- but didn't state why.

UK's Ofcom hired former Google executive Gill Whitehead to head up a team regulating search engines and social media firms, the latest in a string of Silicon Valley appointments as the watchdog prepares to impose sweeping new online safety laws. From a report: Whitehead, formerly Google's senior director of client solutions and analytics, will work alongside Ofcom Chief Technology Officer Sachin Jogia and online safety lead Jessica Zucker. Jogia and Zucker were was previously executives at Amazon.com and Meta Platforms respectively. Ofcom's top hires over the past 18 months underscore a pivot in its role from an auditor of the airwaves and postal service to one increasingly concerned with the internet and Big Tech.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The first drug to slow the destruction of the brain in Alzheimer's has been heralded as momentous and historic. The research breakthrough ends decades of failure and shows a new era of drugs to treat Alzheimer's -- the most common form of dementia -- is possible. Yet the medicine, lecanemab, has only a small effect and its impact on people's daily lives is debated. And the drug works in the early stages of the disease, so most would miss out without a revolution in spotting it. [...] Lecanemab is an antibody -- like those the body makes to attack viruses or bacteria -- that has been engineered to tell the immune system to clear amyloid from the brain. Amyloid is a protein that clumps together in the spaces between neurons in the brain and forms distinctive plaques that are one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's.

The large-scale trial involved 1,795 volunteers with early stage Alzheimer's. Infusions of lecanemab were given every fortnight. The results, presented at the Clinical Trials on Alzheimer's Disease conference in San Francisco and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, are not a miracle cure. The disease continued to rob people of their brain power, but that decline was slowed by around a quarter over the course of the 18 months of treatment. The data is already being assessed by regulators in the US who will soon decide whether lecanemab can be approved for wider use. The developers -- the pharmaceutical companies Eisai and Biogen -- plan to begin the approval process in other countries next year.

There is debate among scientists and doctors about the "real world" impact of lecanemab. The slower decline with the drug was noticed using ratings of a person's symptoms. It's an 18-point scale, ranging from normal through to severe dementia. Those getting the drug were 0.45 points better off. [Prof Tara Spires-Jones, from the University of Edinburgh] said that was a "small effect" on the disease, but "even though it is not dramatic, I would take it." Dr Susan Kohlhaas, from Alzheimer's Research UK, said it was a "modest effect... but it gives us a little bit of a foothold" and the next generation of drugs would be better. There are also risks. Brain scans showed a risk of brain bleeds (17% of participants) and brain swelling (13%). Overall, 7% of people given the drug had to stop because of side effects. A crucial question is what happens after the 18 months of the trial, and the answers are still speculation. [Dr Elizabeth Coulthard, who treats patients at North Bristol NHS Trust] says that people have, on average, six years of living independently once mild cognitive impairment starts. Slow that decline by a quarter and it could equate to an extra 19 months of independent life, "but we don't know that yet", she says. It is even scientifically plausible that the effectiveness could be greater in longer trials.

The British government has abandoned a plan to force tech firms to remove internet content that is harmful but legal, after the proposal drew strong criticism from lawmakers and civil liberties groups. From a report: The U.K. on Tuesday defended its decision to water down the Online Safety Bill, an ambitious but controversial attempt to crack down on online racism, sexual abuse, bullying, fraud and other harmful material. Similar efforts are underway in the European Union and the United States, but the U.K.'s was one of the most sweeping. In its original form, the bill gave regulators wide-ranging powers to sanction digital and social media companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok.

Critics had expressed concern that a requirement for the biggest platforms to remove "legal but harmful" content could lead to censorship and undermine free speech. The Conservative government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who took office last month, has now dropped that part of the bill, saying it could "over-criminalize" online content. The government hopes the change will be enough to get the bill through Parliament, where it has languished for 18 months, by mid-2023. Digital Secretary Michelle Donelan said the change removed the risk that "tech firms or future governments could use the laws as a license to censor legitimate views."

Britain will not force tech giants to remove content that is "legal but harmful" from their platforms after campaigners and lawmakers raised concerns that the move could curtail free speech, the government said on Monday. Reuters reports: Online safety laws would instead focus on the protection of children and on ensuring companies removed content that was illegal or prohibited in their terms of service, it said, adding that it would not specify what legal content should be censored. Platform owners, such as Facebook-owner Meta and Twitter, would be banned from removing or restricting user-generated content, or suspending or banning users, where there is no breach of their terms of service or the law, it said.

The government had previously said social media companies could be fined up to 10% of turnover or 18 million pounds ($22 million) if they failed to stamp out harmful content such as abuse even if it fell below the criminal threshold, while senior managers could also face criminal action. The proposed legislation, which had already been beset by delays and rows before the latest version, would remove state influence on how private companies managed legal speech, the government said. It would also avoid the risk of platforms taking down legitimate posts to avoid sanctions. [...]

The revised Online Safety Bill, which returns to parliament next month, puts the onus on tech companies to take down material in breach of their own terms of service and to enforce their user age limits to stop children circumventing authentication methods, the government said. If users were likely to encounter controversial content such as the glorification of eating disorders, racism, anti-Semitism or misogyny not meeting the criminal threshold, the platform would have to offer tools to help adult users avoid it, it said. Only if platforms failed to uphold their own rules or remove criminal content could a fine of up to 10% of annual turnover apply. Britain said late on Saturday that a new criminal offense of assisting or encouraging self-harm online would be included in the bill.

AmiMoJo writes: A hundred UK companies have signed up for a permanent four-day working week for all their employees with no loss of pay, a milestone in the campaign to fundamentally change Britain's approach to work. The 100 companies employ 2,600 staff -- a tiny fraction of the UK's working population -- but the 4 Day Week Campaign group is hoping they will be the vanguard of a major shift.

Proponents of the four-day week say that the five-day pattern is a hangover from an earlier economic age. They argue that a four-day week would drive companies to improve their productivity, meaning they can create the same output using fewer hours. For some early adopters the policy has also proven a useful way of attracting and retaining employees. The two biggest companies that have signed up are Atom Bank and global marketing company Awin, who each have about 450 staff in the UK. They have been accredited by the four-day week campaign, meaning they have demonstrated that they have genuinely reduced hours for workers rather than forcing them into longer days.

"News from Mars," CNN reported Friday. "Not just that water was there, perhaps millions of years ago, but also these organic compounds."

In an interview with the head of Earth Sciences collections at the UK's Natural History Musem, CNN asked the million-dollar question. "How much more likely, if you believe so, that that makes it that there was life on Mars at some time." A: So what we've found with data that's come back from the Rover and has been studied over the last few months is that we see igneous rocks -- so these are rocks that have been formed through volcanic processes -- which have also been affected by the action of liquid water.

And that's really really interesting and exciting, because liquid water is one of the key ingredients you need for life to start. So if you've got the chances of life ever being on Mars, you'd need to have somewhere that had liquid water for at least a period of time. And we've got good evidence for that.

Now that's combined with the fact that we're seeing, using instruments like SHERLOCK, which is an instrument that I'm involved with, also the presence of organic molecules. And organic molecules are chemical molecules made of the elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sometimes bits of sulfur, sometimes bits of phosphorous, and maybe some added-up things. And those are really really important, because you need organic molecules for life to start.

And the other thing that's really interesting about organic molecules is they can actually be sort of fossil chemical evidence of potential past life.

The UK government will no longer deploy surveillance equipment made by Chinese companies at sites it considers sensitive, minister Oliver Dowden said in a statement Thursday. From a report: "Since security considerations are always paramount around these sites, we are taking action now to prevent any security risks materialising," Dowden said. The government's decision was based on a review of current and future possible security risks arising from the installation of visual surveillance systems on the government estate.

China's Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co. and Zhejiang Dahua Technology are among the world's leading video surveillance providers and have been on a US blacklist since 2019 because of concerns about them being implicated in human rights violations. Discontent about the lack of safeguards preventing the Chinese government from acquiring data and information from its companies has grown in recent years and other governments have taken steps to limit their exposure.

Brace for yet another expansion to the UK's Online Safety Bill: The Ministry of Justice has announced changes to the law which are aimed at protecting victims of revenge porn, pornographic deepfakes and other abuses related to the taking and sharing of intimate imagery without consent -- in a crackdown on a type of abuse that disproportionately affects women and girls. From a report: The government says the latest amendment to the Bill will broaden the scope of current intimate image offences -- "so that more perpetrators will face prosecution and potentially time in jail."

Other abusive behaviors that will become explicitly illegal include "downblousing" (where photographs are taken down a women's top without consent); and the installation of equipment, such as hidden cameras, to take or record images of someone without their consent. The government describes the planned changes as a comprehensive package of measure to modernize laws in this area.

An anonymous reader shares a report: According to Microsoft, Nintendo "offers a broader range of mature content than Xbox." Microsoft's statements came about as part of its response to the UK CMA about wanting to buy Activision. Despite some claiming that Nintendo is more family-friendly, Switch in particular has proven otherwise. Microsoft highlighted the Nintendo-published Bayonetta 3, the console-exclusive Shin Megami Tensei V, and other third-party titles such as The Witcher 3 and NieR: Automata. Ultimately Microsoft is looking to prove that Nintendo is as much a competitor as Sony is with PlayStation, and was looking to provide "evidence that Nintendo Switch is not just a console aimed at the family friendly customer segment but more broadly at a diverse group of gamers across all demographics."

What is thought to be Europe's biggest battery energy storage system has begun operating near Hull. The BBC reports: The site, said to be able to store enough electricity to power 300,000 homes for two hours, went online at Pillswood, Cottingham, on Monday. Its launch was brought forward four months as the UK faces possible energy shortages this winter. The facility was developed by North Yorkshire renewable power firm Harmony Energy using technology made by Tesla.

The Pillswood facility has the capacity to store up to 196 MWh energy in a single cycle. It has been built next to the National Grid's Creyke Beck substation, which will be connected to Dogger Bank, the world's largest offshore wind farm, when it launches in the North Sea later this decade. The system, which will use Tesla's AI software to match energy supply to demand, had been due to be switched on in two stages in December 2022 and March 2023. Peter Kavanagh, director of Harmony Energy, said: "Battery energy storage systems are essential to unlocking the full potential of renewable energy in the UK and we hope this particular one highlights Yorkshire as a leader in green energy solutions."

"These projects are not supported by taxpayer subsidy and will play a major role in contributing to the Net Zero transition, as well as ensuring the future security of the UK's energy supply and reduced reliance on foreign gas imports."

The U.S. Navy was found guilty of piracy and is ordered to pay a software company $154,400 for a lawsuit filed back in 2016. Gizmodo reports: The company, Bitmanagement Software GmbH, filed a complaint against the Navy, accusing the military branch of copyright infringement. GmbH claimed they had issued 38 copies of their 3D virtual reality software, BS Contact Geo, but while they were still in negotiations for additional licenses, the Navy installed the software onto at least 558,466 machines between 2013 and 2015. In the court filing (PDF), GmbH claimed, "Without Bitmanagement's advance knowledge or consent, the Navy installed BS Contact Go onto hundreds of thousands of computers. Bitmanagement did not license or otherwise authorize these uses of its software, and the Navy has never compensated Bitmanagement for these uses of Bitmanagement's software."

The company sued the Navy for nearly $600 million for "willful copyright infringement" of the software which, according to the vendor's website, is a 3D viewer that "enables you to visualize and interact with state of the art 2D/3D content," and is based on digital data captured from "various sources (land surveys, CAD, satellite imagery, airborne laser scanning, etc)." The court filings stated that after GmbH filed the lawsuit in July 2016, the Navy uninstalled the BS Contact Geo software from all of its computers and "subsequently reinstalled the software on 34 seats, for inventory purposes." GmbH wrote in the court filing, "The government knew or should have known that it was required to obtain a license for copying Bitmanagement software onto each of the devices that had Bitmanagement software installed. The government nonetheless failed to obtain such licenses."

Protests have broken out at Foxconn's vast iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, central China, as footage circulating on social media shows workers clashing with baton-wielding riot police and hazmat-suited officials. The Verge reports: The protests started after workers, who have been under strict covid lockdown for weeks, learned bonus payments would be delayed, reports The Wall Street Journal. Zhengzhou, known locally as "iPhone city," is home to an estimated 200,000 workers who are responsible for the vast majority of all iPhone production.

The Wall Street Journal reports that protests started on Tuesday evening near Foxconn employee accommodations at the Zhengzhou facility. Foxconn's strict covid controls have reportedly isolated its employees, forcing them to live and work on-site (with limited food and supplies) in order to prevent further outbreaks in Zhengzhou. Since October, many workers have escaped from the locked-down facility, leading Foxconn to promise incentives like higher salaries and bonuses to retain staff.

Video footage captured on Wednesday shows hundreds of workers protesting at the campus, chanting "give us our pay" while surrounded by riot police and people in hazmat suits. Livestream footage later that night saw protests escalating, with workers chanting "Defend our rights! Defend our rights!" as they confronted police officers, according to the Agence France-Presse news agency. "Foxconn never treats humans as humans," said another person in a social media video at the scene. Other workers captured on live streams said they were protesting over food shortages in addition to the delayed payments. "They changed the contract so that we could not get the subsidy as they had promised. They quarantine us but don't provide food," said one Foxconn worker during a live stream as reported by the BBC. "If they do not address our needs, we will keep fighting."

The UK's antitrust watchdog has moved to deepen its scrutiny of the Apple and Google mobile duopoly -- kicking off an in-depth investigation into elements of the pair's mobile ecosystem dominance by probing their approach toward rival mobile browsers and cloud gaming services which it's concerned could be restricting competition and harming consumers. From a report: The move follows a market study conducted by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) last year that led to a final report this summer which concluded there are substantial competition concerns -- with the regulator finding the tech giants have what it described as "an effective duopoly on mobile ecosystems that allows them to exercise a stranglehold over operating systems, app stores and web browsers on mobile devices."

At the same time, the CMA proposed to undertake what's known as a market investigation reference (MIR) with two points of focus: One looking at Apple's and Google's market power in mobile browsers; and another probing Apple's restrictions on cloud gaming through its App Store. That proposal for an MIR kicked off a standard consultation process, with the regulator seeking feedback on the scope of its proposed probe, and today it's confirmed the decision to make a market investigation -- opening what's referred to as a 'Phase 2' (in-depth) investigation which could take up to 18 months to complete. The probe will focus on the supply of mobile browsers and browser engines; and the distribution of cloud gaming services through app stores on mobile devices, the CMA said today.