Month: August 2021

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | d3sign)

More than 90 policy groups from the US and around the world signed an open letter urging Apple to drop its plan to have Apple devices scan photos for child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

"The undersigned organizations committed to civil rights, human rights, and digital rights around the world are writing to urge Apple to abandon the plans it announced on 5 August 2021 to build surveillance capabilities into iPhones, iPads, and other Apple products," the letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook said today. "Though these capabilities are intended to protect children and to reduce the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), we are concerned that they will be used to censor protected speech, threaten the privacy and security of people around the world, and have disastrous consequences for many children."

The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) announced the letter, with CDT Security & Surveillance Project Co-Director Sharon Bradford Franklin saying, "We can expect governments will take advantage of the surveillance capability Apple is building into iPhones, iPads, and computers. They will demand that Apple scan for and block images of human rights abuses, political protests, and other content that should be protected as free expression, which forms the backbone of a free and democratic society."

Enlarge (credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia's purchase of ARM sure is taking a while, and today the company told the Financial Times it is unlikely to meet the 18-month regulatory window it initially laid out. The blockbuster $40 billion deal was announced in September 2020, and it would give Nvidia control of the world's most popular architecture, used by Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, Huawei, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and a ton of other companies.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told the Financial Times, "Our discussions with regulators are taking longer than initially thought, so it’s pushing out the timetable... It’s not one particular regulator, but we’re confident in the deal, we’re confident regulators should recognize the benefits of the acquisition."

Nvidia is facing several problems with regulators. First up, regulators in ARM's home country, the UK, have national security concerns. Bloomberg spoke with a "person familiar with the matter" and reports that "the UK is currently inclined to reject the takeover" as it currently stands. Of course, Nvidia could make some concessions to push the deal through, but Bloomberg quotes one analyst as saying investors have "low expectations" that the deal will go through.

Enlarge / Amazon has experimented with physical retail for years, including this pop-up store inside a Whole Foods in Chicago, Illinois. (credit: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg)

Amazon is looking for its next conquest. After years of growth, most recently fueled in no small part by the COVID-19 pandemic that also has decimated physical retailers across the country, the company is reportedly planning to open its own department stores.

The move would represent a subtle shift in strategy for the e-commerce giant. Though it has experimented with its own brick-and-mortar locations, Amazon's few-dozen currently branded stores tend to be small affairs that offer a selection of goods. Its largest customer-facing real estate, Whole Foods, came through an acquisition. If Amazon follows through on its department store plans, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, it would represent the company's biggest ground-up push into physical retail, a flagging but still massive sector of the economy.

Don’t expect Amazon to follow in the footsteps of JC Penney or Macy’s, however. Rather, Amazon appears to be following a playbook similar to the one embraced by grocers Aldi and Trader Joe’s. Where most existing department stores are on the order of 100,000 square feet, Amazon’s stores will be about a third the size, with the first set to appear in California and Ohio. And like Aldi and Trader Joe’s, expect Amazon’s department stores to heavily feature Amazon’s private-label goods.