Last year was the hottest on record and the Earth is headed towards a global warming of 2.7 degrees, yet top fossil fuel and cement producers show a disregard for climate change and actively make things worse. A new Carbon Majors Database report found that just 57 companies were responsible for 80 percent of the global carbon dioxide emissions between 2016 and 2022. Thirty-eight percent of total emissions during this period came from nation-states, 37 percent from state-owned entities and 25 percent from investor-owned companies. 

Nearly 200 parties adopted the 2015 Paris Agreement, committing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, 58 of the 100 state- and investor-owned companies in the Carbon Majors Database have increased their production in the years since (The Climate Accountability Institute launched Carbon Majors in 2013 to hold fossil fuel producers accountable and is hosted by InfluenceMap). This number represents producers worldwide, including 87 percent of those assessed in Asia, 57 percent in Europe and 43 percent in North America. 

It's not a clear case of things slowly turning around, either. The International Energy Agency found coal consumption increased by eight percent over the seven years to 8.3 billion tons — a record high. The report names state-owned Coal India as one of the top three carbon dioxide producers. Russia's state-owned energy company Gazprom and state-owned oil firm Saudi Aramco rounded out the trio of worst offenders. 

Exxon Mobil topped the list of United States companies, contributing 1.4 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. "These companies have made billions of dollars in profits while denying the problem and delaying and obstructing climate policy. They are spending millions on advertising campaigns about being part of a sustainable solution, all the while continuing to invest in more fossil fuel extraction," Tzeporah Berman, International Program Director at Stand.earth and Chair at Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, said in a statement. "These findings emphasize that, more than ever, we need our governments to stand up to these companies, and we need new international cooperation through a Fossil Fuel Treaty to end the expansion of fossil fuels and ensure a truly just transition." 

There will be no follow-up to that AI-generated George Carlin comedy special released by the podcast Dudesy. In January, Carlin's estate filed a lawsuit against the podcast and its creators Will Sasso and Chad Kultgen, accusing them of violating the performer's right to publicity and infringing on a copyright. Now, the two sides have reached a settlement agreement, which includes the permanent removal of the comedy special from Dudesy's archive. Sasso and Kultgen have also agreed never to repost it on any platform and never to use Carlin's image, voice or likeness without approval from the estate again, according to The New York Times. 

The AI algorithm that Dudesy used for the special was trained on thousands of hours of Carlin's routines that spanned decades of his career. It generated enough material for an hour-long special, but it did a pretty poor impression of the late comedian with basic punchlines and very little of what characterized Carlin's humor. In a statement, Carlin's daughter Kelly called it a "poorly-executed facsimile cobbled together by unscrupulous individuals."

Josh Schiller, who represented the Carlin estate in court, told The Times that "[t]he world has begun to appreciate the power and potential dangers inherent in AI tools, which can mimic voices, generate fake photographs and alter video." He added that it's "not a problem that will go away by itself" and that it "must be confronted with swift, forceful action in the courts." The companies making AI software "must also bear some measure of accountability," the lawyer said. 

This lawsuit is just one of the many filed by creatives against AI companies and the people that use the technology by training algorithms on someone's work. Several non-fiction authors and novelists that include George R.R. Martin, John Grisham and Jodi Picoult sued OpenAI for using their work to train its large language models. The New York Times and a handful of other news organizations also sued the company for using their articles for training and for allegedly reproducing their content word-for-word without attribution. 

The first details emerged Monday from Google’s settlement of a class-action lawsuit over Chrome’s tracking of Incognito users. Filed in 2020, the suit could have required the company to pay $5 billion in damages. Instead, The Wall Street Journal reports that Google will destroy “billions of data points” it improperly collected, update its data collection disclosures and maintain a setting that blocks Chrome’s third-party cookies by default for the next five years.

The lawsuit accused Google of misleading Chrome users about how private Incognito browsing truly is. It claimed the company told customers their info was private — even as it monitored their activity. Google defended its practices by claiming it warned Chrome users that Incognito mode “does not mean ‘invisible’” and that sites could still see their activity. The settlement was first reported in December.

The suit initially asked for $5,000 in damages per user for alleged offenses related to federal wiretapping and California privacy laws. Google tried and failed to have the legal action dismissed, with Judge Lucy Koh determining in 2021 that the company “did not notify” users it was still collecting data while Incognito mode was active.

Engadget emailed Google for comment about the settlement details. We’ll update this article if we hear back.

The suit’s discovery included emails that, in late 2022, revealed publicly some of the company’s concerns about Incognito’s false privacy. In 2019, Google Chief Marketing Officer Lorraine Twohill suggested to CEO Sundar Pichai that “private” was the wrong term for Incognito mode because it risked “exacerbating known misconceptions.” In a later email exchange, Twohill wrote, “We are limited in how strongly we can market Incognito because it’s not truly private, thus requiring really fuzzy, hedging language that is almost more damaging.”

The court didn’t approve a class of plaintiffs for financial damages, so users would have to sue Google as individuals to try to collect compensation. Some didn’t waste any time: A group of 50 people already filed a separate suit in California state court on Thursday over the privacy violations.

The lawsuit’s trial was initially scheduled for February. The settlement still needs final approval from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the Northern District of California before it’s official.

“This settlement is an historic step in requiring honesty and accountability from dominant technology companies,” Attorney David Boies, who represents the plaintiffs, said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.

One piece of the settlement, the requirement that Google turn off third-party tracking cookies by default for the next five years, could already be a moot point. The company’s Privacy Sandbox initiative was already scheduled to disable all third-party cookies for Chrome users by the end of the year. It will replace them with the Topics API, a system that avoids cookies by categorizing browsing activity into locally stored topics. The new system lets advertisers target ads toward users without having direct access to their browsing data.

It’s also questionable how effective the destruction of the improperly collected data will be. Considering that the suit covers information stretching back to 2016, it’s reasonable to assume the company sold much of the data to third parties long ago or incorporated it into separate products not covered by the settlement.

Google will also have to rewrite its privacy disclosures over its data collection practices in Incognito mode. It told The WSJ it’s already begun applying the change.

Gig work predates the internet. Besides traditional forms of self-employment, like plumbing, offers for ad-hoc services have long been found in the Yellow Pages and newspaper classified ads, and later Craigslist and Backpage which supplanted them. Low-cost broadband internet allowed for the proliferation of computer-based gig platforms like Mechanical Turk, Fiverr and Elance, which offered just about anyone some extra pocket change. But once smartphones took off, everywhere could be an office, and everything could be a gig — and thus the gig economy was born.

Maybe it was a confluence of technological advancement and broad financial anxiety from the 2008 recession, but prospects were bad, people needed money and many had no freedom to be picky about how. This was the same era in which the phrase "the sharing economy" proliferated — at once sold as an antidote to overconsumption, but that freedom from ownership belied the more worrying commoditization of any skill or asset. Of all the companies to take advantage of this climate, none went further or have held on harder than Uber.

Uber became infamous for railroading its way into new markets without getting approval from regulators. It cemented its reputation as a corporate ne'er-do-well through a byzantine scandal to avoid regulatory scrutiny, several smaller ones over user privacy and minimally-beneficial surcharges as well as, in its infancy, an internal reputation for sexual harassment and discrimination. Early on, the company used its deep reserves of venture capital to subsidize its own rides, eating away at the traditional cab industry in a given market, only to eventually increase prices and try to minimize driver pay once it reached a dominant position. Those same reserves were spent aggressively recruiting drivers with signup bonuses and convincing them they could be their own boss.

Self-employment has a whiff of something liberatory, but Uber effectively turned a traditionally employee-based industry into one that was contractor-based. This meant that one of the first casualties of the ride-sharing boom were taxi medallions. For decades, cab drivers in many locales effectively saw these licenses as retirement plans, as they'd be able to sell them on to newcomers when it was time to hang up their flat cap. But in large part due to the influx of ride-sharing services, the value of medallions has plummeted over the last decade or so — in New York, for instance, the value of a medallion dropped from around $1 million in 2014 to $100,000 in 2021. That's in tandem with a drop in earnings, leaving many struggling to pay off enormous loans they took out to buy a medallion.

Some jurisdictions have sought to offset that collapse in medallion value. Quebec pledged $250 million CAD in 2018 to compensate cab drivers. Other regulators, particularly in Australia, applied a per-ride fee to ride-sharing services as part of efforts to replace taxi licenses and compensate medallion holders. In each of those cases, taxpayers and riders, not rideshare companies, bore the brunt of the impact on medallion holders.

At first it was just cab drivers that were hurting, but over the years, compensation for this new class of non-employee app drivers dried up too. In 2017, Uber paid $20 million to settle allegations from the Federal Trade Commission that it used false promises about potential earnings to entice drivers to join its platform. Late last year, Uber and Lyft agreed to pay $328 million to New York drivers after the state conducted a wage theft investigation. The settlement also guaranteed a minimum hourly rate for drivers outside of New York City, where drivers were already subject to minimum rates under Taxi & Limousine Commission rules.

Many rideshare drivers have also sought recognition as employees rather than contractors, so they can have a consistent hourly wage, overtime pay and benefits — efforts that the likes of Uber and rival Lyft have been fighting against. In January, the Department of Labor issued a final rule that aims to make it more difficult for gig economy companies to classify workers as independent contractors rather than employees. The EU is also weighing a provisional deal to reclassify millions of app workers as employees.

Of course, the partial erosion of an entire industry's labor market wasn't always the end goal. At one point, Uber wanted to zero out labor costs by getting rid of drivers entirely. It planned to do so by rolling out a fleet of self-driving vehicles and flying taxis.

"The reason Uber could be expensive is because you're not just paying for the car — you're paying for the other dude in the car," former CEO Travis Kalanick said in 2014, a day after Uber suggested drivers could make $90,000 per year on the platform. "When there's no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle. So the magic there is, you basically bring the cost below the cost of ownership for everybody, and then car ownership goes away."

Uber's grand automation plans didn't work out as intended, however. The company, under current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, sold its self-driving car and flying taxi units in late 2020.

Uber's success had second-order effects too: despite a business model best described as "set money on fire until (fingers crossed!) a monopoly is established" a whole slew of startups were born, taking their cues from Uber or explicitly pitching themselves as "Uber for X." Sure, you might find a place to stay on Airbnb or Vrbo that's nicer and less expensive than a hotel room. But studies have shown that such companies have harmed the affordability and availability of housing in some markets, as many landlords and real-estate developers opt for more profitable short-term rentals instead of offering units for long-term rentals or sale. Airbnb has faced plenty of other issues over the years, from a string of lawsuits to a mass shooting at a rental home.

Increasingly, this is becoming the blueprint. Goods and services are exchanged by third parties, facilitated by a semi-automated platform rather than a human being. The platform's algorithm creates the thinnest veneer between choice and control for the workers who perform identical labor to the industry that platform came to replace, but that veneer allows the platform to avoid traditionally pesky things like legal liability and labor laws. Meanwhile, customers with fewer alternative options find themselves held captive by these once-cheap platforms that are now coming to collect their dues. Dazzled by the promise of innovation, regulators rolled over or signed a deal with the devil. It's everyone else who's paying the cost.

To celebrate Engadget's 20th anniversary, we're taking a look back at the products and services that have changed the industry since March 2, 2004.

xAI's Grok chatbot, the Elon Musk-helmed company's answer to OpenAI's ChatGPT, will be available to X's Premium subscribers later this week. Musk has announced Grok's expanded availability in a tweet, along with an instructional video on how to post a conversation with the chatbot directly on the X website. Grok has been available to X's Premium+ subscribers since it exited early beta, but that paid tier on the social network costs $16 a month or $168 for the full year when billed annually. Since the Premium tier costs half that much at $8 a month or $84 a year, this rollout makes Grok a bit more accessible. 

Musk's xAI open sourced its Grok-1 model, which powers its chatbot, in mid-March. Just a couple of weeks before that, the executive sued OpenAI and Sam Altman, accusing them of chasing profits and abandoning their non-profit mission. Musk was one of OpenAI's earliest supporters and funded its operations when it was just starting out. In his lawsuit, he claimed that OpenAI was developing generative artificial intelligence "to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity." That, he said, was a "stark betrayal of the Founding Agreement."

But in a rebuttal of his claims, OpenAI said that there "is no Founding Agreement, or any agreement at all with Musk" to open source its technology. The company said that Musk did not only know that it was going to transition into a for-profit entity, he was also involved in its planning and originally wanted majority equity, control of the initial board of directors and the CEO position. 

TikTok, already fighting a proposed law that could lead to a ban of the app in the United States, may soon also find itself in the crosshairs of the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC is close to wrapping up a multiyear investigation into the company, which could result in a lawsuit or major fine, Politico reports.

The investigation is reportedly centered around the app’s privacy and security practices, including its handling of children’s user data. According to Politico, the FTC is looking into potential violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), as well as “allegations that the company misled its users by stating falsely that individuals in China do not have access to U.S. user data.” TikTok could also be penalized for violating the terms of its 2019 settlement with regulators over data privacy.

While it’s not clear if the FTC’s investigation will result in a lawsuit or other action, the investigation is yet another source of pressure for the company as it tries to secure its future in its largest market.. After a quick passage in the House, the Senate is considering a bill that would force TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app or face an outright ban in the US. The Biden Administration, which has also tried to pressure ByteDance to divest TikTok, is backing the measure and US intelligence officials have briefed lawmakers on the alleged national security risks posed by the app.

TikTok didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

A judge has dismissed a lawsuit from X against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit that researches hate speech on the Elon Musk-owned platform. In the decision, the judge said that the lawsuit was an attempt to “punish” the organization for criticizing the company.

X sued the CCDH last summer, accusing the group of “scraping” its platform as part of a “scare campaign” to hurt its advertising business. The group had published research claiming X was failing to act on reports of hate speech, and was in some cases boosting such content.

In a ruling, federal judge Charles Breyer said that “this case is about punishing” CCDH for publishing unflattering research. “It is clear to the Court that if X Corp. was indeed motived to spend money in response to CCDH’s scraping in 2023, it was not because of the harm such scraping posed to the X platform, but because of the harm it posed to X Corp.’s image,” Breyer wrote. “X Corp.’s motivation in bringing this case is evident. X Corp. has brought this case in order to punish CCDH for CCDH publications that criticized X Corp.—and perhaps in order to dissuade others.”

X said it planned to appeal the decision.

In a statement, CCDH CEO Imram Ahmed said that the ruling “affirmed our fundamental right to research, to speak, to advocate, and to hold accountable social media companies for decisions they make behind closed doors.” He added that “it is now abundantly clear that we need federal transparency laws” that would require online platforms to make data available to independent researchers.

Uh oh. Apple, Meta and Google could be in hot water in Europe over their attempts to stand within the letter, if not exactly the spirit, of the bloc's sweeping new Digital Markets Act (DMA). 

Core to the probe are concerns Google parent Alphabet and Apple have not given sufficiently allowed "app developers to “steer” consumers to offers outside the gatekeepers' app stores, free of charge," according to the European Commission (the European Union's executive arm). As things currently stand, the new rules from these tech companies may "constrain ... developers' ability to freely communicate and promote offers and directly conclude contracts, including by imposing various charges." 

The European Commission said it also believes Alphabet's search may still engage in self-preferencing of Google-owned services, like Google Flights. Apple, it said, may not be allowing users meaningful choice in selecting alternatives to default iOS services or preferences — the ability to uninstall any pre-loaded app, for instance. Also caught up in the probe is Meta, in relation to its new EU scheme wherein users can opt out of ads, but only for a price.   

The European Commission had, in the lead up to these probes, been hinting at a possible investigation into Apple and Google. In January, Apple announced a raft of App Store changes to comply with the DMA, which required it to (among other things) enable alternative app marketplaces on iOS in the EU and to let developers direct users to third-party payment systems. Included in Apple's updates was a new "core technology fee" of €0.50 that developers will have to pay per user per year after the first 1 million installs of an app — even if a user downloads the software from a third-party marketplace. Google is also charging developers fees in the EU if they bypass the Play Store.

Many of Apple's rivals slammed the App Store changes. Some criticized the company's fees for third-party payments in the US too.

The EU, perhaps unsurprisingly, is keeping a close eye on how companies subject to DMA rules are complying (or not) with them. "There are things that we take a keen interest in, for instance, if the new Apple fee structure will de facto not make it in any way attractive to use the benefits of the DMA," antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager told Reuters on March 19. "That kind of thing is what we will be investigating."

Today's announcement also hints that Apple's "new fee structure" for alternative app stores may still be on the docket for future intervention, along with, apparently, Amazon's possible self-preferencing in its digital storefront. 

In statements to press Apple has said it's "confident our plan complies with the DMA" while Alphabet has said it will "continue to defend our approach in the coming months." A Meta spokesperson called its paid, ad-free option "a well-established business model across many industries."

News of the sweeping probe comes soon after the US Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple. The government and more than a dozen states accused Apple of fostering a mobile app monopoly, claiming the company makes it too difficult for rivals to compete with its own products and services. 

It might be a while before we learn the outcome of the EU probes. According to Bloomberg, EC investigators try to reach a final decision within a year of starting a formal investigation. If officials determine that these companies aren't complying with the DMA, they face hefty penalties. 

Under the law, the EU can fine a company up to 10 percent of its total annual revenue, and up to 20 percent for repeated violations. Such penalties could make the $2 billion that the EU recently fined Apple for allegedly suppressing iTunes and Apple Music competitors like Spotify look like pocket change.

The US Department of Justice and more than a dozen states have filed a lawsuit against Apple in federal court, accusing it of violating antitrust laws by making its hardware and software products largely inaccessible to competitors. Apple's "walled garden" approach to business, as it's so often called, makes it difficult for rivals to compete and for customers to switch to other companies' products. The lawsuit comes on the heels of the European Commission slapping Apple with a €1.8 billion ($1.95 billion) fine. Apple, the commission concluded, prevented music streaming developers from "informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available" outside the App Store.

"Apple undermines apps, products, and services that would otherwise make users less reliant on the iPhone," Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote in a press release published by CNN. "Apple exercises its monopoly power to extract more money from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, publishers, small businesses, and merchants, among others."

The complaint alleges that Apple has illegally monopolized the software app market, with the DOJ suggesting that the company used its control over iOS to block innovative apps and cloud streaming services from the public. The suit also suggests that Apple has made it harder for Android messages to appear on iPhones, obstructed rival payment platforms and restricted how competing smartphones integrated with iOS devices. 

"By stifling these technologies, and many others," the complaint reads, “Apple reinforces the moat around its smartphone monopoly not by making its products more attractive to users, but by discouraging innovation that threatens Apple’s smartphone monopoly."

Apple has issued a statement regarding the suit, suggesting that it would hinder its ability to make the types of gadgets and software that made it one of the most valuable companies in the world. The company also said the lawsuit, if successful, would "set a dangerous precedent, empowering government to take a heavy hand in designing people's technology."

The New York Times first reported that the DOJ, which was apparently approaching the conclusion of a probe into the company, could file "a sweeping antitrust case" against Apple back in January. While the department initially focused on the the strategies the company took to protect the iPhone's dominance, it reportedly expanded its investigation's scope to cover other aspects of Apple's business. According to The Times', the DOJ also looked into how the Apple Watch is capable of deeper integration with the iPhone than rival wearables' and the fact that competing operating systems can't access the company's iMessage service. 

This lawsuit against Apple is just the latest proof of the government's increasing scrutiny on the biggest players in the tech industry. The Justice Department had previously accused Google of maintaining an unfair monopoly over search and search-related advertising, and it also filed a separate antitrust lawsuit accusing the company of illegally monopolizing the digital ads market. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, accusing it of certain monopolistic practices that include prohibiting merchants from offering their goods at lower prices on other platforms. The commission and more than 40 US states sued Meta in 2020, as well, for buying former rivals Instagram and WhatsApp to squash competition. 

Intel is getting a huge boost from the US government under the CHIPS and Science Act. The company could get up to $8.5 billion in direct funding from the government, according to the preliminary agreement it has reached with the Department of Commerce. That money will go towards the chipmaker's efforts to expand its manufacturing facilities in the United States, particularly plants designed to make leading-edge semiconductor chips meant for use in AI and other advanced applications.

The government's investment is expected to support Intel projects across four states, including the construction of two new leading-edge logic fabrication facilities and the modernization of another one in Chandler, Arizona, as well as the construction of two more fabs in New Albany, Ohio. It will also help Intel modernize two existing fabs in Rio Rancho, New Mexico and expand its facilities in Hillsboro, Oregon. The government's $8.5 billion funding will augment the company's $100 billion investment in US manufacturing over the next five years. And in case the company needs more money, it can borrow up to $11 billion from the US under the agreement. 

The Biden administration signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law back in 2022 in hopes of fostering domestic semiconductor research and manufacturing and of lessening American companies' reliance in Chinese suppliers. This is the administration's fourth CHIPS investment, and it's largest yet. If you combine Intel's own money with the government's funding, this is one of the biggest investments announced in US semiconductor manufacturing overall. In February, the government also announced that it was granting GlobalFoundries with $1.5 billion in funding under the CHIPS Act to help the AMD spinoff build new fab facilities. 

Intel's projects in those aforementioned regions are expected to create 20,000 construction and 10,000 manufacturing jobs. To help ensure that the local population can benefit from those projects, the government will also earmark $50 million in dedicated funding to train and develop the local workforce. The parties have agreed to these terms under a preliminary agreement only, though, and the Department of Commerce might change them, depending on the results of a comprehensive due diligence process on the proposed projects and any future renegotiations.