Daily Archives: March 16, 2020

Former Refrigerator Manufacturer Says Companies Using Open Source, Royalty-Free Video Technology Must Pay To License 2,000 Patents – wait what?!

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Partly in response to this licensing mess, and HEVC’s high per-device cost, the Alliance for Open Media was formed in September 2015:

Seven leading Internet companies today announced formation of the Alliance for Open Media — an open-source project that will develop next-generation media formats, codecs and technologies in the public interest. The Alliance’s founding members are Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel Corporation, Microsoft, Mozilla and Netflix.

In contrast to the proprietary and expensive H.265, the new video standard, called AOMedia Video 1 (AV1), is open source and royalty-free. Those features, and the backing of many of the top Internet companies, would seem to make it an obvious choice for manufacturers to build into their devices, leading to better-quality video streaming for end users at no extra cost.

Life is never that simple. Back in March last year, Sisvel announced a “patent licensing program” for AV1. Sisvel is an Italian company that began as a manufacturer of white goods, particularly refrigerators, and has morphed into a group that “identifies, evaluates and maximizes the value of IP assets for its partners around the world”. The AOMedia group wrote in response:

AOMedia is aware of the recent third-party announcement attempting to launch a joint patent licensing program for AV1. AOMedia was founded to leave behind the very environment that the announcement endorses — one whose high patent royalty requirements and licensing uncertainty limit the potential of free and open online video technology. By settling patent licensing terms up front with the royalty-free AOMedia Patent License 1.0, AOMedia is confident that AV1 overcomes these challenges to help usher in the next generation of video-oriented experiences.

But refrigerator companies don’t give up that easily. Sisvel has just announced that more companies have added patents to its pool. There are currently 1,050 patents that Sisvel says must be licensed, but in due course it expects that number will rise to around 2,000. The fact that people can claim that there are 2,000 separate patents involved in a video encoding format is an indication of how far the patenting madness has gone. The sheer number claimed for a single technology is an indication of how trivial most of them must be — and thus by definition undeserving of monopoly protection.

According to an article on c|net, Sisvel is “willing to pursue companies that don’t pay its AV1 licensing fees”. This probably means we are in for another few years of utterly pointless legal battles over who “owns” certain ideas. That’s bound to cast a chill over this whole area, and to negate some of the benefits that would otherwise flow from an open source, royalty-free video standard. Companies will waste money paying lawyers, and end users will miss out on exciting applications of the technology. And all “because patents”.

Source: Former Refrigerator Manufacturer Says Companies Using Open Source, Royalty-Free Video Technology Must Pay To License 2,000 Patents | Techdirt

This Clever Trick Embeds Holographic Patterns In Your 3D Prints

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Apparently you can use textured sheets on your 3d printer’s print bed to imprint that texture on the first layer of your print. Sounds obvious right? Well, what if that textured sheet is fine enough to give an irridescent or holographic effect? Yup, that works too!

“Kryvian” shared this example where you can clearly see the original sheet they used, and then the resulting effect on prints. Simply stunning. Be sure to click through all 4 videos to see the full results.

In the Reddit thread, they share that they purchased the sheet from “Tectonitor”. After some googling I found this shop, though I can not vouch for the shop itself. Please note that the price is in Taiwanese dollars, so it converts to roughly $20 bucks USD.

Source: This Clever Trick Embeds Holographic Patterns In Your 3D Prints

Apple hit with record-breaking $1.2 billion antitrust price fixing fine in France together with Ingram Micro ($79.2m) and Tech Data ($85m)

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Apple has been hit with a record-breaking fine for antitrust practices. French competition authority Autorité de la Concurrence has found Apple and its wholesale distribution partners Ingram Micro and Tech Data guilty of running a cartel for Apple products, and has fined the companies €1.1 billion ($1.2 billion), €62.9 million ($70.2 million) and €76.1 million ($85 million) respectively.According to the authority, Apple and its partners agreed not to compete with one another and to prevent other distributors from competing on price, “thereby sterilizing the wholesale market for Apple products.” This subsequently meant that premium distributors had no choice but to keep prices high to match those of integrated distributors.Finally, the authority says that Apple “abused the economic dependence” of these premium distributors by subjecting them to unfair and unfavorable commercial conditions compared to its network of integrated distributors. The ruling takes into consideration all Apple products — including computers and tablets — except iPhones, which are frequently sold via separate carriers.Isabelle de Silva, president of the authority, said in a statement that “given the strong impact of these practices on competition in the distribution of Apple products via Apple premium resellers, the Authority imposes the highest penalty ever pronounced in a case. It is also the heaviest sanction pronounced against an economic player, in this case Apple, whose extraordinary dimension has been duly taken into account.”The ruling marks the conclusion of a case dating back years, stemming from a complaint by store chain eBizcuss, which prompted the competition authority to raid Apple offices in France back in 2013. Apple is certainly no stranger to antitrust complaints — most recently, France’s Competition and Fraud body fined Apple €25 million ($27.3 million) for intentionally slowing the performance of older iPhones.

Source: Apple hit with record-breaking $1.2 billion antitrust fine in France | Engadget

Nanostructured rubber-like material with optimal properties could replace human tissue

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Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have created a new, rubber-like material with a unique set of properties that could act as a replacement for human tissue in medical procedures. The material has the potential to make a big difference to many people’s lives. The research was recently published in the highly regarded scientific journal ACS Nano.

In the development of medical technology products, there is a great demand for new naturalistic materials suitable for integration with the body. Introducing materials into the body comes with many risks, such as serious infections, among other things. Many of the substances used today, such as Botox, are very toxic. There is a need for new, more adaptable materials.

In the new study, the Chalmers researchers developed a material consisting solely of components that have already been shown to work well in the body.

The foundation of the material is the same as plexiglass, a material used in many medical technology applications. By redesigning its makeup, and through a process called nanostructuring, the researchers gave the material a unique combination of properties. Their initial intention was to produce a hard, bone-like material, but they had unexpected results.

“We were really surprised that the material turned out to be very soft, flexible and extremely elastic. It would not work as a bone replacement material, we concluded. But the new and unexpected properties made our discovery just as exciting,” says Anand Kumar Rajasekharan, Ph.D. in Materials Science and one of the researchers behind the study.

The results showed that the new rubber-like material may be appropriate for many applications that require an uncommon combination of properties—high elasticity, easy processability, and suitability for medical uses.

“The first application we are looking at now is urinary catheters. The material can be constructed in such a way that prevents bacteria from growing on the surface, meaning it is very well suited for medical uses,” says Martin Andersson, research leader for the study and Professor of Chemistry at Chalmers.

The structure of the new nano-rubber material allows its surface to be treated so that it becomes antibacterial, in a natural, non-toxic way. This is achieved by sticking antimicrobial peptides—small proteins that are part of the innate immune system—onto its surface. This can reduce the need for antibiotics, an important contribution to the fight against growing antibiotic resistance.

The foundation of the material is the same as plexiglass, a material which is common in medical technology applications. Through redesigning its makeup, and through a process called nanostructuring, they gave the newly patented material a unique combination of properties, incuding high elasticity, as demonstrated in the image. Credit: Anna Lena Lundqvist/Chalmers

Because the new material can be injected and inserted via keyhole surgery, it can also help reduce the need for drastic surgery and operations to rebuild parts of the body. The material can be injected via a standard cannula as a viscous fluid, so that it forms its own elastic structures within the body. Or the material can also be 3-D printed into specific structures as required.

“There are many diseases where the cartilage breaks down and friction results between bones, causing great pain for the affected person. This material could potentially act as a replacement in those cases,” Martin Andersson continues.

A further advantage of the material is that it contains three-dimensionally ordered nanopores. This means it can be loaded with medicine for various therapeutic purposes such as improving healing and reducing inflammation. This allows for localized treatment, avoiding, for example, having to treat the entire with drugs, something that could help reduce problems associated with side effects. Since it is non-toxic, it also works well as a filler—the researchers see plastic surgery therefore as another very interesting potential area of application for the new material.

“I am now working full time with our newly founded company, Amferia, to get the research out to industry. I have been pleased to see a lot of real interest in our material. It’s promising in terms of achieving our goal, which is to provide real societal benefit,” Anand concludes.

Source: Nanostructured rubber-like material with optimal properties could replace human tissue

Data of millions of eBay and Amazon shoppers exposed by VAT analysing 3rd party

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Researchers have discovered another big database containing millions of European customer records left unsecured on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for anyone to find using a search engine.

A total of eight million records were involved, collected via marketplace and payment system APIs belonging to companies including Amazon, eBay, Shopify, PayPal, and Stripe.

Discovered by Comparitech’s noted breach hunter Bob Diachenko, the AWS instance containing the MongoDB database became visible on 3 February, where it remained indexable by search engines for five days.

Data in the records included names, shipping addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, items purchased, payments, order IDs, links to Stripe and Shopify invoices, and partially redacted credit cards.

Also included were thousands of Amazon Marketplace Web Services (MWS) queries, an MWS authentication token, and an AWS access key ID.

Because a single customer might generate multiple records, Comparitech wasn’t able to estimate how many customers might be affected.

About half of the customers whose records were leaked are from the UK; as far as we can tell, most if not all of the rest are from elsewhere in Europe.

How did this happen?

According to Comparitech, the unnamed company involved was a third party conducting cross-border value-added tax (VAT) analysis.

That is, a company none of the affected customers would have heard of or have any relationship with:

This exposure exemplifies how, when handing over personal and payment details to a company online, that info often passes through the hands of various third parties contracted to process, organize, and analyze it. Rarely are such tasks handled solely in house.

Amazon queries could be used to query the MWS API, Comparitech said, potentially allowing an attacker to request records from sales databases. For that reason, it recommended that the companies involved should immediately change their passwords and keys.

Watch This SpaceX Rocket Abort Its Launch at the Last Second

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket aborted a planned launch on Sunday morning at the last second due to an engine power issue. The event produced confusion at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where countdown appeared to be proceeding normally. However, the rocket stayed where it was.

In a video published by SpaceX, you can hear a commentator begin to count down. At this moment, the rocket still looks like it’s getting ready to take off, and no one seems to suspect that something is wrong. Once the commentator gets to zero and says liftoff, they immediately add, “Disregard. We have an abort.”

According to Space.com, apparently, the Falcon 9’s onboard computer aborted the launch just before liftoff because it detected an issue with one of the rocket’s nine Merlin 1D engines. Michael Andrews, a supply chain supervisor at SpaceX, said in the launch commentary that they had a “condition regarding engine power that caused us to abort today’s launch.”

Andrews added that the vehicle appeared to be in good health, but the company would no longer try to launch today.

SpaceX itself weighed in on the matter on Twitter shortly after.

“Standing down today; standard auto-abort triggered due to out of family data during engine power check,” SpaceX said. “Will announce next launch date opportunity once confirmed on the Range.”

SpaceX was planning to launch a batch of 60 new Starlink satellites, part of an initiative to provide low-cost Internet to remote locations worldwide where it’s hard to obtain online services. CEO Elon Musk has said that the Starlink constellation system will be available once 400 satellites are in orbit and activated. He claims that it will achieve “significant operational capacity” with 800 satellites.

Today’s launch was significant because it would have been the first Falcon 9 rocket booster, or first stage, to launch five times. The first time this booster launched was in 2018, per Ars Technica. SpaceX had also announced that it would be reusing the rocket’s payload fairing. Overall, this meant that the only part of this Falcon 9 rocket that was not being reused was the second stage.

SpaceX aims to reduce the price of rocket launches by reusing parts of its rockets. There isn’t any word yet on when the company will try to launch this Falcon 9 rocket again. Even though it’s a small bummer, it’s better safe than sorry when you’re launching an expensive rocket, even if you do plan to reuse it. Better luck next time.

Source: Watch This SpaceX Rocket Abort Its Launch at the Last Second

TensorFlow Quantum

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TensorFlow Quantum (TFQ) is a quantum machine learning library for rapid prototyping of hybrid quantum-classical ML models. Research in quantum algorithms and applications can leverage Google’s quantum computing frameworks, all from within TensorFlow.

TensorFlow Quantum focuses on quantum data and building hybrid quantum-classical models. It integrates quantum computing algorithms and logic designed in Cirq, and provides quantum computing primitives compatible with existing TensorFlow APIs, along with high-performance quantum circuit simulators. Read more in the TensorFlow Quantum white paper.

Source: TensorFlow Quantum