Apple’s Legal Battle with Epic Games Escalates #1819

The lead story for Thursday, May 5, Apple's filed an appeal to overturn a recent court ruling in a legal battle with Epic Games, which barred the company from charging developers fees on purchases made outside the App Store. The ruling follow accusations that Apple defied a prior injunction and misused legal privilege to delay the case. The judge also referred Apple's VP of finance for potential criminal investigation due to false testimony.

If upheld, the ruling could reshape Apple's fee structure and App Store control. I wanna welcome you to episode 1,819. I'm your host, Todd Cochran of the Geek News Central podcast. Welcome, everyone. And, boy, I tell you this this battle this battle with Apple just continues to, to go on. And Apple's tried every single trick in the book to the main control of the App Store and and their 30% take on anything that happens on the iPhone.

And this stinging rebuke that the lower court placed upon them, was pretty, inflammatory. Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers not only agreed with Epic Games but also found that Apple's vice president of finance had lied under oath and referred the matter to district federal prosecutor for potential criminal investigation. The judge additionally sanctioned a Apple for misuse of attorney client privileges

designation to delay proceedings. And, you know, the lawsuit that result in a court order in joining Apple from anti steering activities that has hindered developers from telling users to make purchases out the inside the app. And, I tell you, with the Epic having, alleged that Apple violated this order, it's it's it's a pretty serious, situation for Apple at this point. So we will see where this leads.

Apple has definitely appealed already, but, you know, maybe maybe there's gonna be some relief for, some of these, some of these app developers.

Again, I wanna welcome you in 1,000, episode 1,819. A quick shout out to our incredible sponsor at GoDaddy, of course. Score exclusive deals and discounts at geeknewcentral.com/GoDaddy. And, of course, to all of our listeners, you are the real heartbeat of this show. If you wanna support GNC, head over to geeknewcentral.com/insider and become a GNC insider. We're lit and live. Don't just listen. Experience the show live by grabbing a modern podcast app at podcastapps.com

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I'm, you know, I'm kind of in the down turn here, getting ready to, to pack things up. Matter of fact, I've ordered my transportation, back to Manila to, on Sunday morning, Mother's Day to, to get my flight home. It's Manila to San Francisco and then San Francisco to, Chicago. I spend the night in Chicago because we get in too late for me to catch the Amtrak train and then I, midday on Monday, I take the train back and I get in about 6PM on Monday,

the twelfth. So there will be no show on Monday just because of, number one, jet lag. Number two, a time that I arrive. Be with you on Thursday for an episode, next week. But, again, continued scheduled here all the way to the, to the departure. So, one more show here in the studio in, in The Philippines and then, back to, I hope, a little more stable, platform. Well, hope you're all doing good. Again, thank you for staying, subscribing, being part of the family. Let's go ahead and get into,

the tech stack here. Kind of an interesting lineup of stuff today. UAE, the country, has introduced AI to public school curriculum this year as a Gulf country advised to become a regional powerhouse for AI development. The subjects that we rolled out in kindergarten pupils through twelfth grade include ethical awareness as well as foundational concepts in real world application. The UAE is joining a group of countries integrating a AI into school education.

I'm kind of interesting. You know, Beijing did this as well, for primary and secondary schools in China, last month. What are you seeing in your children's schools in The United States or in Europe or in Canada? I would really, love to know. Let me know, what you see in your communities, and how much AI is being used except saying you can't use it. Yeah. Just drop me a line on that. I'd appreciate to hear what you're what's happening in your school districts.

China is, developing a 6,500 feet below sea level underwater station. So that yeah. They're going to over a mile deep. And, I don't know if this is a mock up image. It's on the screen for those of you watching live, but, again, an underwater station. And what are they gonna be looking at? Well, energy.

70,000,000,000 tons of methane hydrates are relocated beneath the seabed, roughly equivalent to half of China's current oil and gas reserves, and this resource could dramatically alter the country's energy economy. So they're trying to figure that out. They're also trying to figure out how to get rare minerals such as cobalt and nickel that are on the ocean floor. Now, you know, China is not one to be very, very conscious of ecosystems.

So if they start mining the ocean floor, which sounds, pretty crazy, just think of the ecological mess that that would, that that would occur. I I just it just seems to me, it's it's crazy. How they do that? Again, I don't know. But, yeah, they're gonna put in a six what could go wrong at 6,500? Because it's just has to be a lot more can a lot more technological advance than even the International Space Station. So, good luck to that. A White House budget proposal,

slashes half a billion from CISA. And I don't know how much they get every year to begin with, but, the White House justification was echoed by the Department of Homeland Security that accused the CISA of string from its founding principles. The DHS was conducting a review of c as I CISA structure finding that the staff insist that a oh, they've they're gonna be reoriented to its original May emission on cyber defense.

But they found that CISA was more focused on censorship than protecting nations nation's critical systems. I'd like to know more information on that. What were they exactly doing? The budget eliminates a so called misinformation and propaganda as well as external engagement office such as international affairs.

Apparently, according to the government, these programs and offices were used as a hub in in the censorship industrial complex to violate first amendment, target Americans for protected speech, and target, the executive. So I'd love to know more details. But 491,000,000 out of whatever their current budget is is significant. Waymo says it will add 2,000 more robotaxis in 2026.

So Waymo said it's recently, received its last delivery of the Jaguar I PACE SUV, which will be retrofitted with sensors and autonomous driving tech at its factory in Arizona. So,

in a blog pace blog post today, the Alphabet company said it currently has 1,500 Jaguars operating across its four main markets, San Francisco, LA, Phoenix, and Austin, and plans on adding 2,000 more vehicles in 2026. The question is, why are they why did they use Jaguars? Why didn't they use American vehicles? I I would kinda love to know that. There's probably a a reason for it, but one can only tell. SpaceX launch a Starlink mission deleted indefinitely at

Vandenberg, so it's a little bit weird. A a Falcon nine, once aimed for mid Saturday, and then Sunday, mission appeared from a list of upcoming launches. SpaceX did not explain the reason for the the delay. But while the Vandenberg launch has been delayed, another Falcon mission from Florida delivered 29 satellites. So keep an eye on this and see what's going on.

Maybe there was a problem with the rocket development that they needed to say, okay. We need to take this back and work on it time. We'll see what happens when we get some updates. An IPV six networking feature has been hit by hackers to hijack software updates. This has been going on for a while. According to the article, Chinese threat fact threat actors called the Wizards observe running a Slack s l l s l a c attack since 2022. The attack delivers tainted software updates.

Most most victims were in China, Hong Kong, here in The Philippines, and UAE. So as a man in the middle, delivering updates from a false update server, So who knows what people got? Kind of scary.

If you're having problems with your Roku device with washed out videos, Roku wants to hear about it. Is the HDR video quality looking dull or faded? Apparently, you're they're not the only one. It happens with the four k and HDR titles that appear to be, washed out. It makes a ton of shows simply unwatchable. So, of course, HDR is supposed to be the latest and greatest. So something going on with the encoder there, but if you're having trouble, a Roku would like a a report.

T Mobile's doing a five year price guarantee to offer some long term savings. So, everyone at T Mobile's new experience more and experience beyond plans locks in your monthly rate for full five years. That covers your on network talk, text, and five g data. No bait and switch. No limited prime row, promo shenanigans,

just predictable pricing. So, again, it's for T Mobile new experience and experience beyond. So it's those, two plans they're making that available. The president has announced additional tariffs, including tariffs on movies.

He says administration will institute high tariffs on movies at a %. And in a Sunday evening truth post, he claimed that other countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from The United States, something that's constituted as a concerted effort by other nations? Of course, Hawaii does tax benefits and all kinds of crazy things, which, of course, is part of The United States to pull movie, creators there.

So the question will be, what will that tariff actually look like? How do they tariff the actual cost? Is it on the price of the ticket? Is it the cost? I didn't know there was a cost to bring a movie into America, so, we'll keep an eye on that. The Apple iPhone Air rumor suggests a bigger

screen coming in 2027. Again, iPhone Air of a 6.6 inch screen versus a 6.9 inch screen. So, we'll we'll see about this. I don't the Air, is that the foldable phone? Yeah. Apple reduces size to 6.6 to avoid another bend gate scenario. So maybe that's exactly was the air will be the, the foldable phone. Scientists did something kinda cool. They chased the, falling spacecraft with a plane to understand satellite

air pollution, but this satellite was coming in, right at, like, noon at the height of the, of the day. And, obviously, the 27 cameras they had on their spacecraft, had challenges following it, but they were able to detect certain compounds coming off that you would expect aluminum, lithium, and other chemicals. And what they're trying to figure out is how is this affecting the, the atmosphere. So trying to see

if these, reentering satellites are, I guess, causing climate change. An update to the Cali benefits data breach, the impact grows to 400,000 individuals. The company revealed last month that it was targeted by hackers in December 2024. The investigation of the attackers managed to exfiltrate personal information during a five day period, including Social Security numbers, date of birth, tax ID numbers, health insurance, and medical information as well as financial account information.

So, again, this has grown to a 400,000 people. If you are affected, you will be getting a notification from them on some protective services. At the same time, Gmail Gmail servers are been high have been hijacked by malicious high ply packages to spread, havoc. So, essentially, updates to Gmail service have pulled in some, Python stuff that's been it's being very, very naughty.

Gmail has since removed them from their platform, but it just goes to show even the big boys can pick stuff up from repositories. There were seven malicious Python packages, some which were sitting on their platform over more than three years, and they had over 55,000 downloads. And, those have been removed from the repositories. NASA's sphere space telescope has begun its mission to snap, to to map the entire sky. I guess they are taking snaps.

So, again, this space observatory designed to map the entire sky over a period of two years. The further understanding of the early universe has started snapping images. The space, space telescope will complete about 14.5 orbits per day, capturing 3,600 images daily and observing the sky in an unprecedented hundred and two wavelengths of infrared light. Its observations will eventually be combined to create for all sky maps.

This is a twenty five month survey. So it's one of the most comprehensive that we have done from a science standpoint.

So, we'll see. Are you going to use these to to examine the universe's expansion into whatever? Brazil has a big issue, and they're going after social media to keep kids safe. Now this is something that's, very curious. There's Brazilian kidfluencers, and these kidfluencers are being paid by a variety of agencies and TikTok, are promoting products and services. And these kids is young as, I believe, 16. So, really, it's teenagers. It's not kids.

So one of these individuals has enough followers where he's earning about a thousand dollars a month as a 16 year old. Now oh, excuse me. They're targeting nine to 17 year olds,

and Brazil is not liking it at all. And, such work under the age of 16 is considered unlawful child labor. Unless the creator receives authorization from a judge to perform artistic labor, an exemption that is reserved for child actors and similar artists and could include influencers. So they're really trying to make sure these, folks under 16 are not being exploited.

TikTok has been, allowing folks to create re accounts under the creator rewards program after a lot of this was brought to light and other agencies, that they're going after. So imagine, you know, nine year old that's on social media going a little bit viral promoting candy or something like that and getting paid up to a thousand. And it's actually more than the, monthly wage of most adults. So, interesting times indeed. A leading deep fake porn site is shut down for good.

Mister Deepfakes is thankfully no more. So a critical service provider terminated the service permanently. Data loss is made impossible to continue operation. A notice on the site reads, we'll not be relaunching any website claiming this is fake. The domain will eventually expire, and we're not responsible for for virtue use. So this is site that I I wasn't even familiar with, but I guess it's been, a place where a lot of nonconsensual deep fake content has been placed. So, good riddance.

Microsoft's next Surface device to be smaller, cheaper, and arm ready. Just ahead of the scheduled May 6 event,

Microsoft appears to be preparing to unveil a fresh lineup of Surface devices. Microsoft is working in a new 12 inch Surface Pro and a more compact 13 inch Surface laptop, both powered by Qualcomm snap drop and snap dragon x plus platform. And, so a little bit smaller form factor. And, for those of you that are Surface fans, just be aware that this is forthcoming. Of course, with the slump in PC sales, probably bad time to be launching a whole bunch of new products.

There is a new class action lawsuit going after Toyota for illegally sharing driver's data. This is this is bad. Better class action lawsuit this week in Texas accused Toyota and affiliated telemetrics aggregator of unlawfully collecting driver's information and selling that data to progressive.

Lawsuit alleges Toyota and connected analytic Services collected vast amounts of vehicle data, including location, speed, direction, breaking, and swerving, cornering events, and then shared the information with the progressive snapshot. People became aware when they were applying for progressive insurance when they said, hey. We've already got your driving data. And even a lawyer was affected.

On his on YouTube, on the YouTube channel, consumer protection attorney Steve Leto shared a related experience he had before realizing he wasn't alone. I've heard that story from so many people said, yeah. I just brought a new car, and the salesman was showing how he set everything up. And during the setup process, he clicked yes on something. Who knows what he just clicked? So this is something that Toyota claims new customers have opted in on, and, people are saying, no. We have not.

Hey. This is an interesting the ID Buzz VW

has been recalled and appears to have made automotive history. Well, what it boils down to is one of the seats has too much room. The back seat has only got two seat belts, but apparently there's enough room for three. So they're all the vehicles are being recalled, and they're gonna have to put bumpers in the seats to make it uncomfortable, and not able to seat three anymore.

They're not gonna have to add a seat belt, which is pretty hard to do considering, but they're gonna have to make it so the seat cannot seat three people. That's, simply amazing.

Really, really. Does anyone own one of these vehicles? I'd love to see the before and after picture of this. Of course, you can send me email [email protected] or follow me and and message me on Twitter or at x@geeknewsat at any time. So, definitely, fire me a note if this is you. IStorage has launched, yes, a 26 terabyte hardware encrypted desktop hard drive, government grade security, and a massive storage capacity. That's amazing.

Offers a hundred and offers, FIPS a 40 dash three security and common criteria certified microprocessor aimed at businesses, governments, and users needing top tier offline data protection. You unlock it with a PIN number, for 26 terabytes. It's priced at $1,814. So there's two models. The second one comes in at 1,500. A lot of money for security, but, I understand the need sometimes. I really, really do.

I was when I was traveling back and forth, be between, Hawaii and Waco, I was clearing, unclassified but I would call them sensitive data on a hard drive. And that hard drive was encrypted. It uses the fingerprint to unlock. It was part of my that was my even though the data was unclassified, there was, enough of it on the drive that if it people had all that information together, it would, you know, basically additional sensitivity.

So, again, I could only travel with a drive that, had a fingerprint and it was a pain in the butt to get that from the government. It was total pain because it's just something that wasn't done very often. Hey. A major DJI Osmo three sixty leak has included dozen images of the three sixty camera,

and it's a manual. So, you can see the inside and the outside of the camera. The launch of the die device is in doubt. Now why would the launch of the device be in doubt? So the the three sixty apparently arrived at the FCC back in October. So this has been a long time coming, and Tipster suggests we may not actually see the Osmo three sixty after all. He pounds he points to a lack of retailer leaks and ongoing uncertainty over tariffs. So okay. Well,

we'll we'll see. But the rest of the country, the rest of the world buys DGI gear. TeleMessage, which I'm not familiar with, it's a signal s q basically, it's a spin off app. Hackers have claimed to have stolen, have broken into the message service and stolen data. TeleMessage is a clone of signal, a popular privacy oriented chat app used by some government officials and, apparently, it's been hacked. Some of the messages have been hacked.

So so far, all parties included TeleMessage and the US government have not commented on the news.

A signal spokesman told Reuters that the company cannot guarantee the privacy or security properties of unofficial versions of signal. So, oh, so it was a it was a it was a branch. Isn't that interesting? So not even the real deal. Yeah. Be careful of, grabbing those. Next gen photo photos are incoming as Samsung reportedly begins mass production of a Galaxy z flip seven and fold seven.

The company is just weeks away from the official launch of the 25 Edge removed rumored to be revealed on the May 13, and this will include an event for its folding devices. Or maybe it was only gonna No. The folding devices are expected coming the at the end of summer. So, again, lots of rumors here. We'll see. WordPress sites, as always, have been targeted by

malicious plugin disguised as a security tool. The name of it alone would made me have been, like, Apparently, it was, infected. And, you know, I thought WordPress had been pretty good about keeping these types of, infected apps off the repository. I don't understand why this has still happened. So it it did compromise sites. So if you've been using this plug in, your site is more than likely, compromised.

An amazing story here, Mozilla Firefox could be collateral damage in the Google antitrust battle. This

this blows me away. The search giant pays Mozilla substantial fees remained in default search engine in Firefox, creating a revenue stream that Mozilla argues is essential to its survival. Court documents and testimony shows that in 2023, Mozilla generated 495,000,000 from such licensings out of 653,000,000 in total revenue. Losing that revenue all at once would would mean Mozilla would have to make significant cuts across the company.

Wow. Wow. That's that's amazing that Firefox is that dependent upon Google for its survival. Those of you using Firefox, would you be willing to pay? Microsoft has fixed a bug in Windows 10 that broke part of the start menu and the reason why this happens is likely to annoy you. The error was caused by Microsoft account related nudging that apparently to this article nobody wants by being back ported from Windows 11. So anyway, I'm I'm this is the one I'm

I don't understand. I don't, I don't know how this actually happens, but something about right clicking on the start menu. But, anyway, those of you had an issue, I'll link up the show notes to to review. A man that admitted hacking Disney leaking data disguised as a hacktivist, has pled again, plead guilty. According to DOJ, Ryan Mitchell Kramer pled guilty to accessing a computer and taking information threatening damage to a protected computer as well as

two felony charges that each carry presence a prison sentence up to five years. So he's pled guilty. When is he going to be sentenced? Does it say? This guy claimed to be a hacktivist group protecting artist rights, but he wasn't. He was just one individual. No no information on, what he's gonna get in time. If he's pled guilty, maybe he's part of a plea deal. Who knows? And I think we reported this on the last show, so be it pro orbiting Earth since 1972. We'll soon reenter the atmosphere.

It's cosmos four eighty two. And, yeah, maybe today or tomorrow. So, oh, n p this is a NPR article, and they just did a pop up. What was that pop up? Let me refresh the page and see if I can get that again. Let me see if it'll if it'll show it to me. There's something about something under threat. Yeah. NPR and others are under threat from their government funding, but I agree.

Very rarely do I cover anything that's been written by NPR. The president promising protection for TikTok from which he says has a warm spot in my heart. There's a deadline of of what is it? June let me look here. He says there's a bunch of people trying to buy it. June 19 is the deadline. So we'll see, where this moves. But he says he's gonna protect TikTok. Does that mean another extension? I don't know.

SpaceX Texas HQ Starbase officially on its way to becoming a city, and, they want a specific ZIP code too, which is kind of, ironic and it's it follows the 420 line. The question is, do they make SpaceX employees take the wiz quiz, or can SpaceX employees, partake in the, in the herbal herb? Are they allowed to, or do they you know, if you live in a town that has a four twenty as part of its ZIP code, you would wonder if, if they enforce, you know, drug testing at SpaceX. Good question.

Does anybody know? I would assume because they got government contracts, they have to. Can any SpaceX employee or anyone that's familiar SpaceX let me know if their SpaceX employees are allowed to smoke weed or not. I I would truly would like to know. TikTok TikTok has been supplying $600,000,000 over Europe's fears of China surveilling people's data.

So, of course, the EU wants, wants some money, and, they gotta refill their tech, Ott, you know, their their their money they're using. So they need to get a $600,000,000 fine against TikTok for, for EU breakage of a rule. So, not surprising there that, the EU is once again going over, going after big companies money even though TikTok's probably guilty of it. So, fun fun fun. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Don't forget about our sponsor GoDaddy at ketoncentral.com/GoDaddy.

And, if you haven't become an insider yet, nusentra.com/insider. Again, sorry for not covering the insider on today's show. Completely my fault in doing so.

But, again, if you wanna reach out to me on the show, it's real easy to do. [email protected] or just follow me on Facebook. It's been a pleasure. And you know what we did today? We made it all the way through the show with no camera disconnecting, no audio disconnecting. How it's just like nothing has changed. I didn't touch nothing, yet we made it to the end. I'm happy. I'm sure those of you watching the show are happy.

But, everyone, thanks for being here and, I'll see you on Thursday for another edition of the Geekness Central podcast. Take care. Bye bye.