Daily Archives: 2025-09-02

Judge: Google can keep Chrome, must share search data with “qualified competitors”

Posted on 2025-09-02 by pappp

Source: Ars Technica

Article note: It's a weird situation. On one hand, we've basically determined that yes, they're abusing a monopoly, and no, we won't be imposing any meaningful penalties. On the other hand, there are very few entities that could end up with Chrome (or Android) without doing something even more harmful, and the search bundling payouts are what's keeping Firefox (as the only serious competitor in one of the spaces) afloat, and so on. ...Boy we've allowed some structurally abusive shit to get deeply rooted, and it's pretty clear via the various open-washing and deals between large players that much of it was planned/intended/done with careful legal consideration.

Google has avoided the worst-case scenario in the pivotal search antitrust case brought by the US Department of Justice. More than a year ago, the Department of Justice (DOJ) secured a major victory when Google was found to have violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. The remedy phase took place earlier this year, with the DOJ calling for Google to divest the market-leading Chrome browser, release data to competitors, and end many of its search distribution deals.

The government is getting almost none of that. DC District Court Judge Amit Mehta has ruled that Google doesn't have to give up the Chrome browser to mitigate its illegal monopoly in online search. The court will only require a handful of modest data and behavioral remedies, forcing Google to release some search data to competitors and limit its ability to make exclusive distribution deals.

Chrome remains with Google

This case drew many comparisons to the decades-old antitrust case against Microsoft, which nearly saw the company split in two. The company narrowly avoided that fate, and it seems Google will as well—the DOJ came up short on the so-called structural remedies. While there will be some changes to search distribution, the court didn't believe that a breakup was fair in this situation.

Read full article

Comments

Posted in News | Leave a comment

This ultra-rare ’90s LaserDisc game console can finally be emulated on a PC

Posted on 2025-09-02 by pappp

Source: Ars Technica

Article note: This is extremely cool. Had to work through over a decade of folks inventing the necessary technologies to make it happen.

Here in the year 2025, it's not every day that a classic gaming console from the 20th century becomes playable via emulation for the first time. But that's just what happened last week with the release of Ares v146 and its first-of-its-kind support for Mega LD titles designed for the Pioneer LaserActive.

Even retro console superfans would be forgiven for not knowing about the LaserActive, a pricey LaserDisc player released in 1994 alongside swappable hardware modules that could add support for Sega Genesis and NEC TurboGrafx-16 games and controllers. Using those add-ons, you could also play a handful of games specifically designed for the LaserActive format, which combined game data and graphics with up to 60 minutes of full-screen, standard-definition analog video per side.

Mega-LD games (as the Genesis-compatible LaserActive titles were called) were, for the most part, super-sized versions of the types of games you'd find on early CD-ROM console of the era. That means a lot of edutainment titles, branching dungeon crawlers, Dragon's Lair-style animated quick-time event challenges, and rail shooters that overlayed standard Genesis or TG-16 graphics on top of elaborate animated video backgrounds (sometimes complete with filmed actors).

Read full article

Comments

Posted in News | Leave a comment

Imgur’s Community Is in Full Revolt Against Its Owner

Posted on 2025-09-02 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Imgur as a "community" has always been weird to me because I remember that it was literally a less-shit photo hosting platform (than photobucket or reddit's awful first party tools at the time, or the like) to use with other platforms, that then metastasized its own community. That said, from a few visits, their revolt looks a little more effective than the last set of bad reddit ToS changes, and the barrier to running an imgur-like service is pretty low, so they might be in danger. I would certainly be happy to see one of the advertising companies who own platforms get kicked in the teeth for shitty extractive behavior.
Comments
Posted in News | Leave a comment