Baidu launched its Apollo Go robotaxi service in the Chinese cities of Changsha and Cangzhou back in August, shortly after announcing that its autonomous driving computer is ready for use on the streets. Now, Apollo Go has also made its way to Beijing, making it the first autonomous car service operating in the nation’s capital. Apollo Go’s service area in Beijing encompasses 435 miles of road with 100 pick-up and drop-off stations across several residential and business areas. Baidu says it has the longest road network for a manned autonomous driving test in China.

The tech giant will start operations with 40 autonomous vehicles in the capital. They’ll still have human drivers behind the wheel, though of course the ultimate goal is providing a truly driverless taxi experience. Passengers will be able to hail one of the service’s robotaxis by signing up on Baidu Maps or on the Apollo website. While the company didn’t mention it this time around, it noted that Apollo Go rides were free when they launched in Cangzhou.

You’ll see the ACU in use quickly. It will power Apollo Valet Parking, a team-up with WM Motor that will automatically pick you up and otherwise streamline valet service without requiring drivers. It’s due to launch in the second half of 2020 and could be helpful during a pandemic, when you probably don’t want other people touching your car.

The firm isn’t the only one working on self-driving computers. NVIDIA is quickly landing deals with GM, Toyota and others that could make it a powerhouse, for instance. However, Baidu might be the first to put a platform into real-world (albeit limited) use. That, in turn, could spur competition and increase the chances you’ll experience driverless cars first-hand.

As is the case in many other nations, TikTok is a huge deal in India. The short-form video app has more than 200 million users in the country, and parent company ByteDance had expected to cross the 300 million mark there by the end of this year.

All of the apps are still available on Apple’s App Store and the Google Play store, according to TechCrunch. It’s unclear at the moment how India actually plans to enforce the bans. The move will surely deepen tensions between the planet’s two most populated countries. Earlier this month, at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a border clash with Chinese troops.

“The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) has also received many representations from citizens regarding security of data and breach of privacy impacting upon public order issues,” the government said. “There has been a strong chorus in the public space to take strict action against apps that harm India’s sovereignty as well as the privacy of our citizens.”

An abysmal performance by Google further helped Baidu. The company shipped 4.3 million Home and Nest-branded devices in Q2 2019, down from 5.4 million during the same period last year. The drop in shipments represents a 19.8 percent year on year decline for Google.

Notably, of the five main companies included in today’s report, only Google shipped fewer speakers than it did last year. Looking at Xiaomi, the next ‘worst’ player on the list, emphasizes just how poorly the search giant did this past quarter. Xiaomi increased shipments of its smart speakers by 37.5 percent year over year. Moreover, Google’s footprint shrunk at a time when worldwide smart speaker shipments grew by 55.4 percent. Amazon, for example, shipped 6.6 million Echo devices during the same time frame.

Canalys cites Google’s recent Nest rebranding, in which the company confusingly only brought some of its smart speaker products under the Nest umbrella, as one major reason for the downturn. It’s fair to say when even Google employees have trouble properly identifying the company’s different smart speakers, the rebranding hasn’t worked out perfectly. Canalys also suggests Google needs to revamp its non-smart display products to keep up with Amazon. The number one player in the space has done a much better job updating its lineup, releasing new devices at a steady clip. Google, by contrast, hasn’t updated the Home Mini in almost two years, and the original Home in almost three.

For what it’s worth, it appears Google is aware of its recent missteps and that the company is working to correct course. A recent Nest Mini leak suggests Google is both updating its smallest smart speaker to make it competitive with the third-generation Echo Dot and rebranding the device to add it to its Nest lineup.

Some of the early contributions include a Microsoft framework that helps you write code to run inside Trusted Execution Environments, an Intel framework for protecting code at the hardware level and a Red Hat tool that abstracts secure environments to the point where you can create and run private “serverless” apps.

Appropriately, the Linux Foundation will host the Consortium.

There’s a lot of work to be done before the CCC bears fruit. It’s easy to make a public commitment to the notion of confidential computing, but it’s another matter to follow through. It’s the first time an open source project like this has gotten underway, though, and it could lead to a day when you can assume your data is reasonably secure at every stage — even if some governments are likely to complain.

Users don’t even need to fire up the app: the clicks happen even if the application isn’t running, which means it can drain battery and consume data. This fraudulent action happens with ads served with Google’s AdMob and Twitter’s MoPub, further showing how bad actors are exploiting Twitter’s ad platform. Back in March, BuzzFeed News reported a massive ad fraud scheme that also exploited MoPub by hiding video ads behind legit banner advertisements.

In addition to fraudulently clicking on ads, the DU Group apps involved in the scheme — Omni Cleaner, RAM Master, Smart Cooler, Total Cleaner and AIO Flashlight, aside from Selfie Camera — also hid their affiliation with the company. They didn’t disclose that they were collecting data and sending it back to China, as well.

BuzzFeed News discovered DU Group’s involvement after examining 5,000 popular apps on the Play Store. It found a lot of more apps involved in ad fraud other than the six DU Group applications, though, proving that it’s a major problem Google needs to address. Arete Research Senior Analyst Richard Kramer told the publication that Google needs to do more to solve the issue. “Ad fraud is simply the norm in China (and for many other apps), and… Google should be doing far more to prevent it, even if it would materially reduce sales. They cannot claim ignorance of, or deny the problem,” he said.