The European Union's General Court in Luxembourg has upheld (PDF) the European Commission's decision to slap Google with a record €2.42 billion (US$2.8 billion) fine for an antitrust case back in 2017. Back then, the commission decided after a lengthy investigation that the tech giant favored its own comparison shopping services and unfairly directed users to its own products over those of its rivals'. That $2.8 billion fine is just a tiny fraction of Alphabet's (Google's parent company) $2 trillion valuation, but it was the biggest financial penalty the commission has ever handed out.

 The court said in a statement:

"The General Court finds that, by favoring its own comparison shopping service on its general results pages through more favorable display and positioning, while relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms, Google departed from competition on the merits."

While the General Court mostly sided with the commission's findings that Google's actions had harmful effects on comparison shopping, it disagreed with one element of the EU's case. As The Wall Street Journal noted, it said that regulators weren't able to prove that the company's conduct harmed competition among general search engines.

Back when it appealed the EU's decision, Google argued that the commission ignored the competition it faces in the e-commerce sector from Amazon. The company could appeal the General Court's decision yet again by taking the case to the EU's highest court, the European Court of Justice. A spokesperson told The Journal, however, that the company will still have to review the judgment more closely before deciding whether to file another appeal.

Apple is introducing another way to ensure its AirTags won't be used for stalking when iOS 15.2 comes out. According to MacRumors, the beta version of the mobile platform that has just come out has a new feature that will let users scan for AirTags that may be tracking their location. At the moment, users can find the feature under the Items tab in the Find My‌ app — all they need to do is tap the "Items That Can Track Me" option to do a scan. 

Any trackable item nearby that belongs to someone else will be detected and show up as an unknown item. Apple will then point users to a set of instructions on how to disable the device that's being used to track them. While it could put people's mind at ease, the new feature could also be a double-edged sword. For users that hide AirTags in bikes, other items thieves could steal and even their pets' collars, this could prevent them from catching the culprit and retrieving their property. The feature might work a lot differently, however, by the time iOS 15.2 is ready for wider rollout.

To note, Apple updated AirTags to address stalking concerns back in June. It adjusted the time period after which the device would play a sound when separated from its owner from three days to a random time between 8 and 24 hours. This experimental feature is an additional privacy measure. 

Another interesting feature that showed up with the beta version of iOS 15.2 is Digital Legacy. It will allow users to designate people as Legacy Contacts, who'll be able to access their account and digital information when they pass away. In the current iteration of the mobile OS, Legacy Contact lives inside Password and Security within the Settings app.

NASA has officially adjusted its timeline for the Artemis III mission and won't be landing on the Moon in 2024. The agency is now aiming to land the first woman and next American man on the lunar surface in 2025 at the earliest, NASA administrator Bill Nelson has announced. NASA was originally targeting a 2028 launch date for its return to the Moon, but the Trump administration moved that date up by four years back in 2017. In a conference call with reporters, Nelson said "the Trump administration's target of 2024 human landing was not grounded in technical feasibility."

In addition to the unrealistic deadline, Nelson blamed Blue Origin's lawsuit against the agency for the delay. It had to put its contract with SpaceX on hold and pause work on the lunar lander that's meant to take astronauts to the surface of the Moon for a couple of times. NASA lost almost seven months of work on the lander as a result, which had cast doubts on the 2024 landing even before Nelson made his announcement. 

If you'll recall, NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to develop a Starship-based lunar landing system back in April. The agency historically works with more than one contractor for each mission, but in this instance, it inked a deal with Elon Musk's company alone. Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin sued NASA over that decision, arguing that it wasn't given the chance to revise its bid for the project. 

Based on legal documents The Verge obtained in September, however, NASA felt that Blue Origin "gambled" with its proposed $5.9 billion lunar lander bid. The company allegedly set the price higher than necessary, because it assumed that NASA would award it a contract but negotiate for a lower price. The Federal Court of Claims ultimately ruled against Blue Origin a few days ago, dismissing its claims that NASA ignored "key flight safety requirements" when it awarded SpaceX the lunar lander contract.

Nelson's announcement comes shortly after NASA moved the uncrewed Artemis I flight test launch from this year to February 2022. That's assuming everything will go as planned — the Orion capsule and Space Launch System that will be used for the mission will still have to go through a battery of tests before NASA can schedule it for blastoff.

Apple has failed to convince US District c to delay the App Store change she ordered back in September. As the judge for the Apple vs. Epic trial, Rogers ruled in favor of the tech giant for 9 out of 10 counts, but she also decided that Apple must allow developers to direct users to other payment systems within their apps by December 9th. As a response to that, Apple asked for a stay on the injunction to push back its implementation by one more year. Now, Rogers has rejected the company's appeal for a stay and called the motion "fundamentally flawed."

She wrote in the order (PDF, via CNBC):

"...Apple's motion is based on a selective reading of this Court's findings and ignores all of the findings which supported the injunction, namely incipient antitrust conduct including supercompetitive commission rates resulting in extraordinarily high operating margins and which have not been correlated to the value of its intellectual property."

Apple argued that it needed more time to establish new guidelines to protect users, developers and itself if it allows alternative payment methods. It also previously said that following the court order and allowing developers to link out to other payment methods by December 9th "would be a poor use of resources" due to the "near-inevitable litigation" from Epic regarding the scope of its compliance. In addition, it's still appealing this aspect of the case, and the Court of Appeals could take more than a year to come to a decision.

In her ruling, Rogers said that the party that would benefit most from a stay would be Apple, and that the court can "envision numerous avenues" for the tech giant to comply while still protecting its users. "Other than, perhaps, needing time to establish Guidelines, Apple has provided no credible reason for the Court to believe that the injunction would cause the professed devastation," she added.

As CNBC has noted, though, allowing developers to link out to external payment methods doesn't mean Apple won't be taking a percentage of their earnings. Google, for instance, recently announced that it will now allow the use of alternative payment systems for Play Store apps in South Korea to comply with local laws. While it lowered its commission by four percent for developers using their own payment processors, they will still have to pay the company a cut nonetheless.

Starting next year, you'll be able to use the money anybody Venmos you to buy products directly from Amazon — so long as you live in the US. PayPal has announced that it has struck a deal with the e-commerce giant to allow US customers to pay with Venmo at checkout. It doesn't have an exact date for the feature launch, but when it does become available, you'll be able to pay either with your Venmo balance or your linked bank account. 

Amazon typically only accepts credit/debit cards and gift cards for payment, and you can't even purchase from the website using PayPal itself. But when Venmo payments arrive next year, you'll be able to check out using the option not just on the Amazon website itself, but also on the mobile app. Ben Volk, Director of Global Payment Acceptance at Amazon, said in a statement: "We understand our customers want options and flexibility in how they make purchases on Amazon. We're excited to team-up with Venmo and give our customers the ability to pay by using their Venmo accounts, providing new ways to pay on Amazon."

We'll likely hear more about the payment option the closer we get to its availability. PayPal made its announcement alongside the release of its third quarter earnings results for 2021, wherein it reported a $6.18 billion net revenue that's 13 percent higher than the same period last year. The company said it's off to a solid start in the fourth quarter but that growth rates still remain slightly below its expectations.

Netflix will roll out a new TikTok-inspired featured that specifically targets its younger viewers this week, according to Bloomberg. The streaming giant is reportedly launching "Kids Clip" on its iOS app, which will show short video clips from its library of children's programming to help young viewers find something to watch. Bloomberg says the feature builds upon Fast Laughs, the comedy feed it launched earlier this year. 

Unlike Fast Laughs, however, Kids Clips videos will be horizontal instead of vertical and will take over the entire screen. In addition, kids will only be able to view 10 to 20 clips at any one time. Netflix will add new clips every day based on the current shows and movies available on the platform, as well as future ones slated to arrive on the service. Both features are part of the company's efforts to combat decision fatigue, which ails many of its subscribers. Netflix also launched a shuffle play feature called Play Something back in October to help viewers find something to watch based on their viewing patterns without having to scroll endlessly through the app. 

Netflix still refers Kids Clips as a "test," Bloomberg said, and it won't be available to all its users just yet. For now, it's rolling out in select markets, including the US, Canada, Australia, Ireland and Latin American countries. 

NVIDIA has launched a follow-up to the Jetson AGX Xavier, its $1,100 AI brain for robots that it released back in 2018. The new module, called the Jetson AGX Orin, has six times the processing power of Xavier even though it has the same form factor and can still fit in the palm of one's hand. NVIDIA designed Orin to be an "energy-efficient AI supercomputer" meant for use in robotics, autonomous and medical devices, as well as edge AI applications that may seem impossible at the moment. 

The chipmaker says Orin is capable of 200 trillion operations per second. It's built on the NVIDIA Ampere architecture GPU, features Arm Cortex-A78AE CPUs and comes with next-gen deep learning and vision accelerators, giving it the ability to run multiple AI applications. Orin will give users access to the company's software and tools, including the NVIDIA Isaac Sim scalable robotics simulation application, which enables photorealistic, physically-accurate virtual environments where developers can test and manage their AI-powered robots. For users in the healthcare industry, there's NVIDIA Clara for AI-powered imaging and genomics. And for autonomous vehicle developers, there's NVIDIA Drive.

The company has yet to reveal what the Orin will cost, but it intends to make the Jetson AGX Orin module and developer kit available in the first quarter of 2022. Those interested can register to be notified about its availability on NVIDIA's website. The company will also talk about Orin at NVIDIA GTC, which will take place from November 8th through 11th. 

Robinhood has revealed that it experienced a security breach incident on November 3rd, which exposed the data of as many as 7 million users or around a third of its userbase. The bad actor, the financial services company said, obtained the email addresses of 5 million people and the full names of a different group of around 2 million customers. In addition, the infiltrator managed to steal additional personal information of 310 users, including their name, date of birth and zip code. More extensive account details were exposed for 10 customers among those 310. 

No Social Security numbers, bank account numbers or debit card numbers were exposed in the incident, Robinhood said, but it's still making the appropriate disclosures to the affected customers. The company, which allows users to make commission-free stock and crypto trades, said it had already contained the attack. Upon cutting the hacker's access off, the attacker demanded payment for the stolen data and made threats on what they would do with the information if they weren't paid. 

A Robinhood spokesperson told Bloomberg that it wasn't a ransomware attack, but they also declined to say if they paid up — and if so, how much money changed hands. It did say, however, that it informed law enforcement about the breach and that it had secured the services of security firm Mandiant to investigate the incident. Charles Carmakal, Mandiant's CTO, told Bloomberg that this could just be the start of a series of breaches. Apparently, the firm expects the attacker to target and extort other companies and organizations over the coming months.

Apple has been incredibly secretive about its efforts to develop a self-driving car, but according to Bloomberg, its latest move is hiring a key personnel from its toughest competition. The tech giant has reportedly hired Christopher "CJ" Moore, who's been the director for Tesla's Autopilot Software since 2019 and who's been with the company since 2014. While Moore has yet to update his LinkedIn page, Bloomberg says he will also work on software at Apple and will report to Stuart Bowers. Like Moore, Bowers worked as Tesla's head of Autopilot unit until he left in 2019. 

Back in May, Moore was one of the employees who told the California DMV that Elon Musk exaggerated the automaker's full self-driving timeline. In a DMV conference call, he said Musk's statements that Level 5 automated driving is coming soon didn't "match engineering reality." Musk has been saying that Tesla's technology will soon be able to operate with zero human intervention. At the moment, it's still only capable of Level 2 self-driving, which still requires drivers to keep their hands on the wheel. Moore was called as a witness in a lawsuit over the death of a man in a 2019 Autopilot crash in Florida. The documents for that lawsuit revealed in early October that Moore had already left Tesla.

Moore and Bowers are just two of the former Tesla employees Apple had hired for its car division. Other hires include Michael Schwekutsch, who used to be Tesla's VP of Engineering and who worked on drive trains, and Steve MacManus, who was also a Tesla VP of Engineering.

The company formerly known as Facebook has been discussing the possibility of opening retail stores way before it rebranded itself as Meta, according to The New York Times. Apparently, discussions about opening brick-and-mortar shops started last year, though nothing has been finalized, and the project could still end up being scrapped. If Meta does open physical outlets, however, they will reportedly be more like experience stores introducing people to devices developed by its Reality Labs division rather than outright retail shops.

Those devices include the Oculus Quest (soon to be Meta Quest) virtual reality headsets and the Portal gadgets, which were designed primarily for video calling. The stores could also showcase the augmented reality smart glasses called Stories that Facebook developed with Ray-Ban. Based on the documents The Times saw, Meta's goal is to spark "curiosity" and "closeness" with its stores, as well as provide customers with a welcoming atmosphere where they can have a "judgment free journey" while experimenting with headsets.

Those same documents show that Meta envisions shops with a modern, minimalist aesthetic and subtle branding placement. The company considered a lot of possible names, such as Facebook Hub, Facebook Commons, Facebook Innovations, Facebook Reality Store and From Facebook. It eventually settled on Facebook Store, but that will mostly likely change now that the company has been renamed.

If Meta does push through with this plan, its first retail/experience store will be located in Burlingame, California, where there's a Reality Labs office. The Times says the project could eventually span the world, though, with locations in various countries and regions.