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Monthly Archives: August 2020

Brain-Computer Interfaces: U.S. Military Applications and Implications, An Initial Assessment

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The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has invested in the development of technologies that allow the human brain to communicate directly with machines, including the development of implantable neural interfaces able to transfer data between the human brain and the digital world. This technology, known as brain-computer interface (BCI), may eventually be used to monitor a soldier’s cognitive workload, control a drone swarm, or link with a prosthetic, among other examples. Further technological advances could support human-machine decisionmaking, human-to-human communication, system control, performance enhancement and monitoring, and training. However, numerous policy, safety, legal, and ethical issues should be evaluated before the technology is widely deployed. With this report, the authors developed a methodology for studying potential applications for emerging technology. This included developing a national security game to explore the use of BCI in combat scenarios; convening experts in military operations, human performance, and neurology to explore how the technology might affect military tactics, which aspects may be most beneficial, and which aspects might present risks; and offering recommendations to policymakers. The research assessed current and potential BCI applications for the military to ensure that the technology responds to actual needs, practical realities, and legal and ethical considerations.

Source: Brain-Computer Interfaces: U.S. Military Applications and Implications, An Initial Assessment | RAND

Cory Doctorow’s New Book Explains ‘How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism’

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Blogger/science fiction writer Cory Doctorow (also a former EFF staffer and activist) has just published How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism — a new book which he’s publishing free online.

In a world swamped with misinformation and monopolies, Doctorow says he’s knows what’s missing from our proposed solutions: If we’re going to break Big Tech’s death grip on our digital lives, we’re going to have to fight monopolies. That may sound pretty mundane and old-fashioned, something out of the New Deal era, while ending the use of automated behavioral modification feels like the plotline of a really cool cyberpunk novel… But trustbusters once strode the nation, brandishing law books, terrorizing robber barons, and shattering the illusion of monopolies’ all-powerful grip on our society. The trustbusting era could not begin until we found the political will — until the people convinced politicians they’d have their backs when they went up against the richest, most powerful men in the world. Could we find that political will again…?

That’s the good news: With a little bit of work and a little bit of coalition building, we have more than enough political will to break up Big Tech and every other concentrated industry besides. First we take Facebook, then we take AT&T/WarnerMedia. But here’s the bad news: Much of what we’re doing to tame Big Tech instead of breaking up the big companies also forecloses on the possibility of breaking them up later… Allowing the platforms to grow to their present size has given them a dominance that is nearly insurmountable — deputizing them with public duties to redress the pathologies created by their size makes it virtually impossible to reduce that size. Lather, rinse, repeat: If the platforms don’t get smaller, they will get larger, and as they get larger, they will create more problems, which will give rise to more public duties for the companies, which will make them bigger still.

We can work to fix the internet by breaking up Big Tech and depriving them of monopoly profits, or we can work to fix Big Tech by making them spend their monopoly profits on governance. But we can’t do both. We have to choose between a vibrant, open internet or a dominated, monopolized internet commanded by Big Tech giants that we struggle with constantly to get them to behave themselves…

Big Tech wired together a planetary, species-wide nervous system that, with the proper reforms and course corrections, is capable of seeing us through the existential challenge of our species and planet. Now it’s up to us to seize the means of computation, putting that electronic nervous system under democratic, accountable control.
With “free, fair, and open tech” we could then tackle our other urgent problems “from climate change to social change” — all with collective action, Doctorow argues. And “The internet is how we will recruit people to fight those fights, and how we will coordinate their labor.

“Tech is not a substitute for democratic accountability, the rule of law, fairness, or stability — but it’s a means to achieve these things.”

Source: Cory Doctorow’s New Book Explains ‘How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism’ – Slashdot

Cloudflare Blames CenturyLink for Sunday’s Internet Blackout – again

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Widespread internet outages knocked down Cloudflare, the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, Amazon, Hulu, and a slew of other sites on Sunday morning, and it’s apparently all because of a single internet service provider: CenturyLink.

Given that Cloudflare’s online security services are designed to keep websites up and running, when it went down, so did dozens of the popular sites and services that rely on it, including Discord, Feedly, and League of Legends. Cloudflare began seeing “an increased level of HTTP 5xx class errors” early Sunday morning, according to the company’s status page. It later tweeted that issues with a “third-party transit provider” were affecting all of Cloudflare’s data centers that use that provider.

CenturyLink confirmed on Twitter that its technicians were working to fix an IP outage, which was resolved shortly before noon.

“We are able to confirm that all services impacted by today’s IP outage have been restored. We understand how important these services are to our customers, and we sincerely apologize for the impact this outage caused,” the company tweeted.

DownDetector showed reports of internet connectivity problems coming in from across the U.S. and western Europe on Sunday morning. Cloudflare chief tech officer John Graham-Cumming told CNN that “the extent of the problem required manual intervention” in addition to its automated bug detection systems.

It’s not the first time most of the internet’s gone dark because of issues with CenturyLink’s services. A nationwide blackout in 2018 took down Verizon mobile data, ATMs, and, most worryingly, the 911 emergency line in several parts of America. In response, Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai announced a federal investigation into CenturyLink.

“When an emergency strikes, it’s critical that Americans are able to use 911 to reach those who can help,” Pai said at the time. “The CenturyLink service outage is therefore completely unacceptable, and its breadth and duration are particularly troubling.”

As annoying as this morning may have been, I suppose we can be thankful that the outage wasn’t that bad at least.

Source: Cloudflare Blames CenturyLink for Sunday’s Internet Blackout

Xiaomi’s under display camera tech is coming to phones next year

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Under-display cameras do a neat trick, allowing manufacturers to build all-screen phones without complex pop-up selfie cameras. Now, Xiaomi has unveiled its third-generation of under-display cameras and promised that the technology will be coming to the mass market “next year.”

Cameras that live under the screen present two problems: creating a dark “hole” on the display above the camera while making selfie photos look hazy and dull. Xiaomi said its third-generation tech can “perfectly disguise the front camera under the phone’s screen without ruining the edge-to-edge display effect.” In other words, you get a seamless full-screen display with nary a punch hole, cutout or other blemish in sight, while matching regular front cameras for photo quality.

Xiaomi developed its own pixel grid arrangement that allows light to pass through the gap area of sub-pixels. At the same time, each single pixel has a complete RGB subpixel layout with no sacrifice in pixel density. All of that means that the display pixel density above the camera is the same as elsewhere on the screen, showing the “same brightness, color gamut and color accuracy.” Xiaomi also optimized the camera algorithm, claiming it performs the same as conventional front cameras.

Source: Xiaomi’s under display camera tech is coming to phones next year | Engadget

Visa Unveils More Powerful AI Tool That Approves or Denies Card Transactions

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Visa Inc. said Wednesday it has developed a more advanced artificial intelligence system that can approve or decline credit and debit transactions on behalf of banks whose own networks are down.

The decision to approve or deny a transaction typically is made by the bank. But bank networks can crash because of natural disasters, buggy software or other reasons. Visa said its backup system will be available to banks who sign up for the service starting in October.

The technology is “an incredible first step in helping us reduce the impact of an outage,” said Rajat Taneja, president of technology for Visa. The financial services company is the largest U.S. card network, as measured both by the number of cards in circulation and by transactions.

The service, Smarter Stand-In Processing, uses a branch of AI called deep learning

[…]

Smarter STIP kicks in automatically if Visa’s network detects that the bank’s network is offline or unavailable.

The older version of STIP uses a rules-based machine learning model as the backup method to manage transactions for banks in the event of a network disruption. In this approach, Visa’s product team and the financial institution define the rules for the model to be able to determine whether a particular transaction should be approved.

“Although it was customized for different users, it was still not very precise,” said Carolina Barcenas, senior vice president and head of Visa Research.

Technologists don’t define rules for the Smarter STIP AI model. The new deep-learning model is more advanced because it is trained to sift through billions of data points of cardholder activity to define correlations on its own.

[…]

In tests, the deep-learning AI model was 95% accurate in mimicking the bank’s decision on whether to approve or decline a transaction, she said. The technology more than doubled the accuracy of the old method, according to the company. The two versions will continue to exist but the more advanced version will be available as a premium service for clients.

[…]

Source: Visa Unveils More Powerful AI Tool That Approves or Denies Card Transactions – WSJ

Powell’s says it won’t sell books on Amazon anymore: ‘We must take a stand’

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Powell’s Books says it won’t sell on Amazon anymore, declaring that the online retail giant undermines communities by siphoning business from the real world and replacing it with internet commerce.

“For too long, we have watched the detrimental impact of Amazon’s business on our communities and the independent bookselling world,” CEO Emily Powell wrote in a note to customers Wednesday.

“The vitality of our neighbors and neighborhoods depends on the ability of local businesses to thrive,” Powell wrote. “We will not participate in undermining that vitality.”

Portland-based Powell’s is among the world’s largest bookstores and is the city’s signature retailer. But it’s dwarfed by the inventory available through Amazon’s website.

So Powell’s, like many other retailers, supplements its business by listing its products on Amazon’s own site – and giving Amazon a share of each sale.

That puts smaller retailers at an obvious disadvantage, given that they’re depending on a much larger competitor for an important share of their sales. But many feel they have no choice but to list on Amazon given that company’s dominant market position online.

Seattle-based Amazon did not respond to a request for comment and Powell’s declined to elaborate on Wednesday’s statement. However, Emily Powell told CNBC that Amazon had been a “big sales generator” for the Portland bookstore.

“It was hard to give up, sort of like smoking,” she said. “We knew we shouldn’t be doing it, but, you know, we sort of needed it from a sales perspective to keep going. We couldn’t face the possibility of not having that sales channel.”

The pandemic changed the landscape, Powell said, with Amazon prioritizing cleaning supplies and other essential goods — slowing the shipment of books. Powell said its Amazon sales slowed so she decided to focus on the bookstore’s own website.

“We just decided to make that a permanent business choice,” Powell said.

Source: Powell’s says it won’t sell books on Amazon anymore: ‘We must take a stand’ – oregonlive.com

Intel, HP, Tesla, etc protest to US monopoly watchdog: FTC vs Qualcomm case overturned to the surprise of all

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Intel, HP, Tesla and a host of other tech giants have written to America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) urging it to appeal Qualcomm’s legal win against the watchdog in a row over patent fees.

The FTC had successfully sued Qualcomm, arguing the corporation rode roughshod over antitrust laws, only for that victory to be overturned earlier this month on appeal. Now the technology world’s big names want the regulator to fight that latest ruling.

The appeals court decision “undermines longstanding US law and policy and wrongly applies competition law,” the letter from 21 organizations argued. “If it becomes precedent, this decision would endanger domestic competitiveness, as well as weaken the ability of the FTC to protect consumers through future enforcement actions.”

Often derided as a toothless watchdog, the FTC found some courage in 2017 and took Qualcomm to court for abusing its its numerous critical patents to force companies to pay it inflated licensing fees before they were allowed to buy its chips.

The case put a spotlight on the double-dealing and backstabbing world of chips and mobile phones with claims of arrogant and bullying Qualcomm execs hassing big customers and that Apple top brass who agreed to undermine a rival technology in return for lower licensing rates.

The FTC won the case, with a strong decision from federal district Judge Lucy Koh accusing Qualcomm of having “strangled competition… and harmed rivals, OEMs and end consumers in the process.” But Qualcomm appealed and, to many people’s surprise, won.

Abusive or hypercompetitive?

Where the district court found that Qualcomm had abused its position and issued a permanent injunction against the company, the appeals court decided instead that Qualcomm had engaged in “hypercompetitive behavior.”

“Our job is not to condone or punish Qualcomm for its success, but rather to assess whether the FTC has met its burden under the rule of reason to show that Qualcomm’s practices have crossed the line to ‘conduct which unfairly tends to destroy competition itself’,” the appeals court decided.

The panel also found that if Qualcomm did breach obligations to license its SEPs [standard-essential patent] on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, it would be a breach of contract issue, not an antitrust problem. And it found that the company’s “no license, no chips” policy did not impose a surcharge on the sales of chips by rivals, contradicting the lower court’s finding.

The 21 letter signatories, which also include Ford, Honda, Daimler and several industry associations, take issue with that decision and argue that the Ninth Circuit panel decision “misapplies competition law to the facts of the case, was particularly misguided in asserting that Qualcomm’s breach of its FRAND commitments did not impair rivals, controverts existing Ninth Circuit precedent, and undermines the critical role standards play in facilitating competition and innovation.”

They argue that the FTC should ask for an en banc meeting of the Ninth Circuit where 11 judges, rather than three, hear the case. Without that larger appeal, the FTC can only go to the Supreme Court and it’s far from certain it would hear the case, leaving the current decision to stand.

Stable genius

The letter warns that if that happens, it “could destabilize the standards ecosystem by encouraging the abuse of market power acquired through collaborative standard-setting” as well as “embolden foreign entities to refuse to license their standard essential patents (SEPs) to competitors in the United States.”

They also pointedly tells the FTC that if it doesn’t ,the agency would be undermining its own authority: “Because of the key role the FTC plays in protecting American consumers and competition, we urge you to consider how the panel’s decision impacts the FTC’s ability to carry out its mission, whether as to SEP issues or otherwise.

[…]

Source: Intel, HP, Tesla, etc protest to US monopoly watchdog: Are you just gonna let Qualcomm patent-tax us to death? • The Register

This Guy is Suing the Patent Office for Deciding an AI Can’t Invent Things

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A computer scientist who created an artificial intelligence system capable of generating original inventions is suing the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) over its decision earlier this year to reject two patent applications which list the algorithmic system, known as DABUS, as the inventor.

The lawsuit is the latest step in an effort by Stephen Thaler and an international group of lawyers and academics to win inventorship rights for non-human AI systems, a prospect that raises fundamental questions about what it means to be creative and also carries potentially paradigm-shifting implications for certain industries.

In July 2019, Thaler filed two patent applications in the US—one for an adjustable food container, the other for an emergency beacon—and listed the inventor as DABUS. He describes DABUS as a “creativity engine” composed of neural networks trained on a broad swath of data, and not designed to solve any particular problem. The USPTO rejected the applications, citing court decisions ruling that corporations, as opposed to individuals within corporations, cannot be legal inventors, and asserting that “conception—the touchstone of inventorship—must be performed by a natural person.”

British, German, and European Union patent regulators have also rejected Thaler’s applications, decisions he has appealed. Petitions for DABUS-invented patents are still pending in China, Japan, India, and several other countries.

“What we want is to have innovation. AI has been used to help generate innovation for decades and AI is getting better and better at doing these things, and people aren’t.” Ryan Abbott, a professor at the University of Surrey School of Law, who is representing Thaler in the suit, told Motherboard. “The law is not clear on whether you can have a patent if the AI does that sort of work, but if you can’t protect inventions coming out of AI, you’re going to under-produce them.”

[…]

Source: This Guy is Suing the Patent Office for Deciding an AI Can’t Invent Things

Um, almost the entire Scots Wikipedia was written by someone with no idea of the language – 10,000s of articles

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In an extraordinary and somewhat devastating discovery, it turns out virtually the entire Scots version of Wikipedia, comprising more than 57,000 articles, was written, edited or overseen by a netizen who clearly had nae the slightest idea about the language.

The user is not only a prolific contributor, they are an administrator of sco.wikipedia.org, having created, modified or guided the vast majority of its pages in more than 200,000 edits. The result is tens of thousands of articles in English with occasional, and often ridiculous, letter changes – such as replacing a “y” with “ee.”

That’s right, someone doing a bad impression of a Scottish accent and then writing it down phonetically is the chief maintainer of the online encyclopedia’s Scots edition. And although this has been carrying on for the best part of a decade, the world was mostly oblivious to it all – until today, when one Redditor finally had enough of reading terrible Scots and decided to look behind the curtain.

“People embroiled in linguistic debates about Scots often use it as evidence that Scots isn’t a language, and if it was an accurate representation, they’d probably be right,” noted the Reddit sleuth, Ultach. “It uses almost no Scots vocabulary, what little it does use is usually incorrect, and the grammar always conforms to standard English, not Scots.”

[…]

Source: Um, almost the entire Scots Wikipedia was written by someone with no idea of the language – 10,000s of articles • The Register

Apple Has Finally Gotten Too Big for Its Britches – and even Kinja group is pissed off now

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What started out as a battle between Apple and Epic over direct in-app purchases in Fortnite has evolved into an ill-advised, petty revenge scheme. On Sunday, Epic filed a new motion to bar Apple from revoking iOS and macOS support for its Unreal Engine while its other beef is ongoing.

To back up a bit, Apple and Epic have been sniping at each other since August 13, when Epic launched its own in-app direct payments system that skirted Apple’s famous 30% fee. Apple then struck back by removing Fortnite from the App Store. Epic countered with a spicy video and an anti-trust lawsuit—a timely barb given heightened scrutiny around Apple being a control freak over its App Store. Apple then responded saying Epic had been trying to get preferential treatment via a special deal—a claim Epic CEO publicly refuted. In the midst of this legal spat, Apple decided that this coming Friday, it would delete all of Epic’s developer accounts and cut off access to the Apple SDK, effectively shutting down third-party access to Epic’s Unreal Engine.

Epic’s latest filing is aimed at temporarily halting Apple from screwing over developers while they duke it out in court. Its argument is that not only is axing the developer accounts unnecessarily harsh, but pulling SDK support also hurts third-parties who have built on the Unreal Engine and have no skin in the legal games Apple and Epic are playing. (And, honestly, Epic doesn’t want to lose out on that money stream.)

Adding to the dogpile, Microsoft also filed a statement supporting Epic in which it echoed those sentiments. Microsoft’s Kevin Gammill, general manager of gaming developer experiences, writes, “Epic Games’ Unreal Engine is critical technology for numerous game creators, including Microsoft.” He goes on to explain that while some larger game companies might have the means to create their own proprietary game engines, most don’t and for them, licensing third-party engines is how they do their thing. “As a result,” Gammill writes, “Epic’s Unreal Engine is one of the most popular third-party engines available to game creators, and in Microsoft’s view there are very few other options available for creators to license with as many features and as much functionality as Unreal Engine across multiple platforms, including iOS.”

Now Microsoft isn’t being purely altruistic in sticking up for the little guy here. It’s got a stake in gaming, as well as its own ax to grind with Apple over cloud gaming. But also, it has an extremely valid point about the damage Apple is potentially doing to users and developers just so it can clap back at Epic. If Apple succeeds in cutting support to the Apple SDK, it’s not just Epic that gets fucked. Any game developer who’s made significant progress in building their stuff out on Unreal Engine faces the conundrum of not only losing lots of time and effort, but they’d also have to calculate whether to start all over on a new engine, leave out iOS and macOS users entirely, or just throw in the towel. It also means games that have already been released on iOS and macOS won’t receive critical security updates or bug fixes.

Let’s be real. Apple has little justification for this other than flexing on Epic for daring to challenge the App Store status quo. Oh, you want to change how we do things around here? You want to call us out for our 30% commission rate? You don’t know who you’re fucking with because whoops, what if we just… cripple your ability to license Unreal Engine, a pretty big chunk of your revenue stream? Oh, you don’t want us to do that? How ‘bout you learn your place and back down?

It’s a game of legal chicken, but it’s also baffling on Apple’s part considering it’s under fire for its alleged anti-trust tendencies. Whatever you think about its ongoing spat with Epic, Unreal Engine is a different, unrelated thing. Epic’s decision to introduce direct in-app purchases in Fortnite arguably does flout Apple’s App Store guidelines. It might even have a point that Epic decided to say “fuck you” in the flashiest and most clearly orchestrated way possible. Both parties deserve their day in court over it. But I must have missed how an argument over direct payment system relates to critical developer tools used by third-parties? What was Unreal Engine’s sin, other than being owned by Epic Games?

In trying to punish Epic, Apple is dangerously close to showing its entire monopolistic ass. It’s reached too far and frankly, undermined its defense that it’s not an anti-competitive asshole. In its boilerplate statement when this all began, Apple said its guidelines “create a level playing field for all developers.” It’s not creating a level playing field if you use your vast power to screw third-party developers because you want to make a point about the company they license software from. It’s hard to interpret this particular action as anything other than bullying and retaliatory.

This behavior isn’t limited to Epic Games either. Last week, Apple was threatening to block updates to the WordPress iOS app until the company enabled in-app purchases through Apple’s payment system. You know, so it could get that sweet 30% fee. At the time, WordPress promoted paid subscriptions within the app, but didn’t provide a way for users to buy those subscriptions via the app itself. Sure, Apple backed down over the weekend and even said “sorry” to WordPress. But it was an empty apology. According to CNET, Apple withdrew because WordPress removed any references in the app to outside payment options. WordPress’s Matt Mullenweg also told CNET that it had promised to build in-app purchase support within the next 30 days and then tweeted a word of warning to other developers in similar situations to do the same.

So it’s not just adding a direct payment system that will get you in Apple’s crosshairs. Even referencing that you can pay for a service but not including a means to buy within the iOS app will incur Apple’s wrath. This is arguably no longer about people violating reasonable App Store guidelines for “safety” purposes. This is about Apple hamfistedly reminding everyone to play by its rules, however, it chooses to interpret them on a given day, and always in its own favor. Apple, so used to acting with impunity, has lost all pretense of believing in fair play. If there’s any justice in the world, that’s how it’ll get the reckoning it deserves.

Source: Apple Has Finally Gotten Too Big for Its Britches

Which is quite amazing, considering that all the Kinja group websites’ reporting on this Apple incident has been heavily anti Epic and pro Apple

Apple apologises to WordPress for forcing in-app purchases and U-turns

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Apple has clarified the situation with the WordPress iOS app, apologizing for the mistake of blocking developer updates to the app until they added in-app purchases, despite the app not including any functionality involving payments.

On Friday, it was reported the lack of app updates for the WordPress app were due to it being “locked” on the App Store. After three weeks of absence, developers of the app had agreed to implement some form of in-app purchase to the app to enable updates to go through again, among other possible solutions.

In a statement provided to AppleInsider on Saturday, Apple claims the issue with the app has been “resolved” overnight.

“Since the developer removed the display of their service payment options from the app, it is now a free stand-alone app and does not have to offer in-app purchases,” states Apple. “We have informed the developer and apologize for any confusion that we have caused.”

At the time the block came to light, it was suggested the app was blocked because it was possible for users to see a page within the app’s Help Center discussing upgrades to paid plans. This is in reference to WordPress.com’s paid hosting offerings, which are managed from the website, not the app.

While the app itself doesn’t offer any monetary transaction capabilities at all, it is believed the mention in the support page for the website version was a violation of App Store review guidelines

Source: Apple didn’t force in-app purchases on WordPress | Appleinsider

How Appleinsider managed to turn the above content into the above headline is a mystery to me.

Epic move: Judge says Apple can’t revoke Unreal Engine dev tools, asks ‘Where does the 30 per cent come from?’

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A Federal US judge questioned why Apple takes a 30 per cent slice of developer revenues as she ruled that while Apple cannot cut off Epic’s access to iOS Unreal Engine development tools, she would not order the company to allow Fortnite to return to the App Store.

In the eight-page order [PDF], Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, the Northern California district judge yesterday said that Unreal – used by hundreds of third-party devs for both console and mobile games inside and out of Apple’s App Store and dubbed by Microsoft at the weekend as a “critical technology” – was governed by a separate contract between the parties, the “Xcode and Apple [software development kits] Agreement”.

Epic Games and Apple are at liberty to litigate against each other, but their dispute should not create havoc to bystanders

She said it was “relevant” that this was distinct from “Apple’s agreements with developers and the App Store guidelines”, which do not generally permit third-party developers to circumvent the IAP [in-app purchases] system”.

The move on 13 August that kicked this all off – the activation of “allegedly hidden code in Fortnite allowing Epic Games to collect in-app purchases directly” via its “Fortnite Mega Drop” – was described as “calculated” by the Northern California court judge.

Making that move, as we’ve previosuly mentioned, precluded Apple from taking its traditional 30 per cent cut and saw the developer booted out of the store, prompting it to fling an almost certainly pre-prepared sueball at Cupertino as the boot hit its face.

Epic’s original complaint alleged Apple is abusing its dominant position by seeking to “control markets, block competition, and stifle innovation”.

The split order was handed down late last night after some oral wrangling with Apple’s counsel over Zoom – dodging an authentication issue on the platform earlier that day.

The judge reportedly asked Apple lawyer Richard Doren at the Zoom hearing yesterday: “The question is, without competition: where does the 30 per cent (App Store commission) come from? Why isn’t it 10? 20? How is the consumer benefiting?”

To the last question, Doren, a partner at LA law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, replied that consumers could choose when deciding to buy an Android device or an iPhone.

In the written order filed late yesterday, the judge noted:

While the Court anticipates experts will opine that Apple’s 30 percent take is anti-competitive, the Court doubts that an expert would suggest a zero per cent alternative. Not even Epic Games gives away its products for free.

The order will be a relief to Epic in that it won’t be cut off from Unreal Engine development on Apple’s operating systems; the judge noted the court had to weigh up whether an “injunction is in the public interest”.

She spoke of the “potential significant damage to both the Unreal Engine platform itself, and to the gaming industry generally, including on both third-party developers and gamers”, adding that “not only has the underlying [SDK] agreement not been breached, but the economy is in dire need of increasing avenues for creativity and innovation, not eliminating them. Epic Games and Apple are at liberty to litigate against each other, but their dispute should not create havoc to bystanders.”

Source: Epic move: Judge says Apple can’t revoke Unreal Engine dev tools, asks ‘Where does the 30 per cent come from?’ • The Register

US Border Patrol Says They Can Create Central Repository Of Traveler Emails, calendar, etc, Keep Them For 75 Years

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The U.S. government has taken the opportunity during the global pandemic, when people aren’t traveling out of the country much, to roll out a new platform for storing information they believe they are entitled to take from people crossing the border. A new filing reveals how the U.S. Border Patrol will store data from traveler devices centrally, keeping it backed up and searchable for up to 75 years.

On July 30 the Department of Homeland Security published a privacy impact assessment detailing the electronic data that they may choose to collect from people crossing the border – and what happens to that data.

  • Border Patrol claims the right to search laptops, thumb drives, cell phones, and other
    devices capable of storing electronic information” and when they call it a ‘border search the can do this not just when you’re “crossing the U.S. border” in either direction (i.e. when you’re leaving, not just when you’re entering the country) but even “at the extended border” which generally means within 100 miles of the border, which encompasses where two-thirds of the U.S. population lives.
  • They needed an updated privacy impact assessment because of a new “enterprise-wide solution to manage and analyze certain types of information and metadata USBP collects from electronic devices” – and they they actually keep on file.

Border Patrol will “acquire a mirror copy of the data on the device” they take from a traveler and store it locally. Before uploading it to their network they check to make sure there’s no porn on it (so they search your devices to find porn first). Then once they’ve determined it’s “clean” they transfer the data first to an encrypted thumb drive and then to the Border Patrol-side system called PLX.

Examples of what they plan to keep from travelers’ devices include e-mails; videos and pictures; texts and chat messages; financial accounts and transactions; location history; web browser bookmarks; tasks list; calendar; call logs; contracts. Information is stored for 75 years although if it’s not related to any crime it may be deleted after 20 years.

The government emphasizes they’ve been collecting this information, what’s changed is simply that they’ll be storing it in a central system where everything “will now by accessible to a larger number of USBP agents with no nexus” to suspected illegal activity. They promise, though, to restrict access and train staff not to do anything they aren’t supposed to. And they don’t see risk to privacy because they’ve published a notice (that I’m now writing about) telling you how your privacy may be violated.

Electronic device searches have been on the rise. Between October 2008 and June 2010 6500 devices were searched. In 2016 there were 10,000 device searches, and 30,200 in 2017.

It’s not clear though that these searches are all actually legal. In November 2019 a federal judge in Boston ruled that forensic searches of cell phones require at least reasonable suspicion “that the devices contain contraband.”

Source: US Border Patrol Says They Can Create Central Repository Of Traveler Emails, Keep Them For 75 Years – View from the Wing

Microsoft sides with Epic over Apple developer ban, supports motion for temporary restraining order

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Microsoft’s Kevin Gammill, general manager of Gaming Developer Experiences, called Epic’s Unreal Engine “critical technology” in a filing at the weekend [PDF] in support of Epic’s motion for a temporary restraining order to prevent Apple from terminating its developer account.

Referring to the statement, Xbox supremo Phil Spencer tweeted yesterday to say “ensuring that Epic has access to the latest Apple technology is the right thing for gamer developers and gamers.”

Gammill’s argument is that Unreal Engine, a cross-platform runtime and development environment, is “critical technology for numerous game creators including Microsoft”, and that “there are few other options available for creators to license with as many features and as much functionality as Unreal Engine.”

“If Unreal Engine cannot support games for iOS or macOS, Microsoft would be required to choose between abandoning its customers and potential customers on the iOS and macOS platforms or choosing a different game engine when preparing to develop new games,” said Gammill in the filing. He added that it would also harm those with games in “later stages of development” using Unreal Engine, and already-launched games for which Unreal Engine could no longer be updated or receive security patches.

[…]

Source: Microsoft sides with Epic over Apple developer ban, supports motion for temporary restraining order • The Register

Solar Panels Are Starting to Die, Leaving Behind Toxic Trash

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By 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency projects that up to 78 million metric tons of solar panels will have reached the end of their life, and that the world will be generating about 6 million metric tons of new solar e-waste annually. While the latter number is a small fraction of the total e-waste humanity produces each year, standard electronics recycling methods don’t cut it for solar panels. Recovering the most valuable materials from one, including silver and silicon, requires bespoke recycling solutions. And if we fail to develop those solutions along with policies that support their widespread adoption, we already know what will happen.

“If we don’t mandate recycling, many of the modules will go to landfill,” said Arizona State University solar researcher Meng Tao, who recently authored a review paper on recycling silicon solar panels, which comprise 95 percent of the solar market.

Solar panels are composed of photovoltaic (PV) cells that convert sunlight to electricity. When these panels enter landfills, valuable resources go to waste. And because solar panels contain toxic materials like lead that can leach out as they break down, landfilling also creates new environmental hazards.

[…]

Under EU law, producers are required to ensure their solar panels are recycled properly. In Japan, India, and Australia, recycling requirements are in the works. In the United States, it’s the Wild West: With the exception of a state law in Washington, the US has no solar recycling mandates whatsoever. Voluntary, industry-led recycling efforts are limited in scope. “Right now, we’re pretty confident the number is around 10 percent of solar panels recycled,” said Sam Vanderhoof, the CEO of Recycle PV Solar, one of the only US companies dedicated to PV recycling. The rest, he says, go to landfills or are exported overseas for reuse in developing countries with weak environmental protections.

[…]

Recyclers often take off the panel’s frame and its junction box to recover the aluminum and copper, then shred the rest of the module, including the glass, polymers, and silicon cells, which get coated in a silver electrode and soldered using tin and lead. (Because the vast majority of that mixture by weight is glass, the resultant product is considered an impure, crushed glass.) Tao and his colleagues estimate that a recycler taking apart a standard 60-cell silicon panel can get about $3 for the recovered aluminum, copper, and glass. Vanderhoof, meanwhile, says that the cost of recycling that panel in the US is between $12 and $25—after transportation costs, which “oftentimes equal the cost to recycle.” At the same time, in states that allow it, it typically costs less than a dollar to dump a solar panel in a solid-waste landfill.

“We believe the big blind spot in the US for recycling is that the cost far exceeds the revenue,” Meng said. “It’s on the order of a 10-to-1 ratio.”

If a solar panel’s more valuable components—namely, the silicon and silver—could be separated and purified efficiently, that could improve that cost-to-revenue ratio. A small number of dedicated solar PV recyclers are trying to do this. Veolia, which runs the world’s only commercial-scale silicon PV recycling plant in France, shreds and grinds up panels and then uses an optical technique to recover low-purity silicon. According to Vanderhoof, Recycle PV Solar initially used a “heat process and a ball mill process” that could recapture more than 90 percent of the materials present in a panel, including low-purity silver and silicon. But the company recently received some new equipment from its European partners that can do “95 plus percent recapture,” he said, while separating the recaptured materials much better.

[…]

In addition to developing better recycling methods, the solar industry should be thinking about how to repurpose panels whenever possible, since used solar panels are likely to fetch a higher price than the metals and minerals inside them (and since reuse generally requires less energy than recycling). As is the case with recycling, the EU is out in front on this: Through its Circular Business Models for the Solar Power Industry program, the European Commission is funding a range of demonstration projects showing how solar panels from rooftops and solar farms can be repurposed, including for powering ebike charging stations in Berlin and housing complexes in Belgium.

[…]

Source: Solar Panels Are Starting to Die, Leaving Behind Toxic Trash

Edit: A new article, The Environmental Impact of Solar Panels, explores this further

Epic Games start Free Fortnite cup time with awesome prizes incl a rotten apple skin

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As PC Gamer’s Fortnite guy, I’ve written many a guide to Epic’s various tournaments, cash cups, and special events, but few have ever been as weird as this one. On Thursday evening, Epic announced the #FreeFortnite Cup, a new tournament seemingly designed to continue Epic’s campaign against Apple and Google. Barring a legal miracle, it’s effectively your last chance to cross-play with friends on iOS and Android devices for a long while.

“All of your friends. Awesome prizes. And one bad apple,” Epic writes.

The prizes available? Well, that’s where things get a little… silly.

Participants who score ten or more points during the tournament (details below) will earn the ‘Tart Tycoon’ skin. You’ll recognize it as the apple man from Epic’s parody of Apple’s famous 1984 ad that made the rounds last week. Here he is in all his subtle glory.

(Image credit: Epic Games)

It’s pretty much a guarantee that anyone who plays a couple matches during the tournament window will earn the skin, as you get points just for surviving every minute.

Epic could have stopped there and called it a day, but no. For some reason, they’re offering the top 20,000 players a #FreeFortnite hat. A dad hat. A dad hat with the Fortnite llama colored like Apple’s old rainbow logo.

(Image credit: Epic Games)

God have mercy on us all.

Epic is also giving 1,200 players (of undetermined criteria) some free gaming gear, like Alienware gaming laptops, Samsung Galaxy Tabs, and some good old-fashioned consoles. Not sure if that’s going to stem the tide of millions of mobile players from calling up customer support, but it’s a start?

Either way, Epic is clearly rolling full steam ahead with its campaign against Apple and Google. Whether or not they can win against the tech giants in a court of law remains to be seen, but Epic is certainly investing in the court of public opinion.

Source: Epic Games Free Fortnite cup time: How to get the Fortnite apple skin | PC Gamer

Apple cut off updates to completely free WordPress app until it adds in app purchases because it wants 30 percent

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WordPress, the iOS app, lets you build and manage a website right from your iPhone or iPad, for free.

Separately, WordPress.com also happens to sell domain names and fancier website packages.

Now, WordPress founding developer Matt Mullenweg is accusing Apple of cutting off the ability to update that app — until or unless he adds in-app purchases so the most valuable company in the world can extract its 30 percent cut of the money.

Here’s the thing: the WordPress app on iOS doesn’t sell anything. I just checked, and so did Stratechery’s Ben Thompson. The app simply lets you make a website for free. There isn’t even an option to buy a unique dot-com or even dot-blog domain name from the iPhone and iPad app — it simply assigns you a free WordPress domain name and 3GB of space.

Apple admitted to The Verge that it’s involved, reminding us that in-app purchases are required whenever apps “allow users to access content, subscriptions, or features they have acquired in your app on other platforms or your web site.” But again, the WordPress app doesn’t sell anything itself, and it sounds like you can’t do anything special with anything you’ve purchased from WordPress.com (beyond uploading additional files or selecting website themes) from the app, either.

While Mullenweg says there technically was a roundabout way for an iOS to find out that WordPress has paid tiers (they could find it buried in support pages, or by navigating to WordPress’s site from a preview of their own webpage), he says that Apple rejected his offer to block iOS users from seeing the offending pages.

Mullenweg tells The Verge he’s not going to fight it anymore, though — he will add brand-new in-app purchases for WordPress.com’s paid tiers, which include domain names, within 30 days. Apple has agreed to allow Automattic to update the app while it waits. (The last update was issued yesterday.)

In other words, Apple won: the richest company in the world just successfully forced an app developer to monetize an app so it could make more money. It’s just the latest example of Apple’s fervent attempts to guard its cash cow resulting in a decision that doesn’t make much sense and doesn’t live up to Apple’s ethos (real or imagined) of putting the customer experience ahead of all else.

Source: WordPress claims Apple cut off updates to its completely free app because it wants 30 percent – The Verge

Ex-Uber chief security officer charged, accused of covering up theft of personal info from databases by hackers

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Uber’s chief security officer, Joe Sullivan broke the law by hushing up the theft of millions of people’s details from the app maker’s databases by hackers, prosecutors say.

Sullivan, 52, formerly of eBay, Facebook, and PayPal, was today charged with obstruction of justice and misprision – concealing knowledge of a crime from law enforcement – by the US District Attorney for Northern California, an office he briefly worked for back in the day. These come with potentially five and three-year prison sentences, respectively, and a fine of up to $250,000 apiece.

According to the government, the charges [PDF] stem from Sullivan’s efforts to cover up the 2016 security breach at Uber in which miscreants siphoned from internal databases the personal information of 57 million passengers and 600,000 drivers, including their driving license details.

The hack was significant enough that Sullivan was “visibly shaken” by the break-in, particularly after Uber had been dealing with the fallout from a 2014 cyber-intrusion, according to FBI special agent Mario Scussel.

“A witness also reported that Sullivan stated in a private conversation that he could not believe they had let another breach happen and that the team had to make sure word of the breach did not get out,” Scussel claimed in court filings this week.

We’re told that, rather than informing the Feds and publicly disclosing the security lapse, Sullivan instead sought to hush up the hack by buying the silence of the intruders with $100,000 in Bitcoins, making them sign confidentiality agreements to keep the details under wraps, and playing the whole thing off as a reward for finding a bug in Uber’s systems rather than characterizing it more accurately as a data leak.

Source: Ex-Uber chief security officer charged, accused of covering up theft of personal info from databases by hackers • The Register

News outlets join Epic in challenging Apple’s app store terms

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Major news organizations are joining Epic Games in the push for Apple to rethink its app store terms following Fortnite’s high-profile ban this month.

Digital Content Next, a trade organization representing the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and dozens of other media outlets and publishers (including yours truly, G/O Media), sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook on Thursday asking if it was possible to renegotiate a better deal with the tech giant regarding its notoriously high commission rates for app developers. AKA what’s infamously known as “the Apple tax.”

As it stands, news outlets fork over 30% of all revenue from first-time subscriptions made through iOS apps, with Apple’s cut falling to 15% after the first year should the reader continue their subscription, per the Wall Street Journal. A 30% tax on an app’s revenue is standard across the board on both Google and Apple’s app stores, though the latter gets significantly more heat for this because of its walled garden (whereas Android’s open ecosystem allows for multiple stores if app developers would rather not pay the toll).

“The terms of Apple’s unique marketplace greatly impact the ability to continue to invest in high-quality, trusted news and entertainment particularly in competition with other larger firms,” said the letter, which is signed by Digital Content Next’s CEO, Jason Kint.

In the letter, Kint argues that Apple has previously made an exception to its usual 30% rate for one preeminent customer in particular: Amazon. Emails between top Apple exec Eddy Cue and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that were revealed in an antitrust hearing last month showed that Amazon agreed to pay Apple just 15% of its revenue from Amazon Prime Video subscriptions during its first year on the app store. Given this, Kint contends that Digital Content Next’s news outlets and publishers should qualify for the same kind of modified terms Amazon was offered. At the very least, Apple needs to outline what conditions Amazon met to receive such a discount and afford other app developers the same opportunity.

“The monopolistic behavior of big tech puts a wide range of industries—not the least of which is the news industry—at a distinct disadvantage,” the group’s SVP of government affairs, Chris Pedigo, wrote in a blog post Thursday. “It is laudable that EU and American regulatory bodies are digging in and uncovering these anti-competitive behaviors. Talking trust is not enough. We need to level the playing field and transparency is a critical first step.”

[…]

Source: News outlets join Epic in challenging Apple’s app store terms

Putting the d’oh! in Adobe: ‘Years of photos’ permanently wiped from iPhones, iPads by bad Lightroom app update

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Adobe is offering its condolences to customers after an update to its Lightroom photo manager permanently deleted troves of snaps on people’s iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches.

First reported by PetaPixel, the data annihilation was triggered after punters this week fetched version 5.4 of the iOS software. Netizens complained that, following the release and installation of that build, their stored photos and paid-for presets vanished. Adobe acknowledged the issue though it didn’t have much to offer punters besides saying sorry.

“Yesterday when I use the Lightroom Mobile, it was okay,” reported customer Mohamad Alif Eqnur.

“I still have my presets and pictures saved in the apps but today, 18th August 2020, after I updated the apps on Apps Store, all of my pictures and presets gone.”

The photo-nuking bug has apparently been fixed, and updating to the latest version of the iOS app will keep you from losing your stuff, if it hasn’t been lost already. Assets saved to the Lightroom cloud are still intact as are those on non-iOS devices.

If you had copied your photos on your Mac, PC, or Android gear, the pics will still be there. Basically, if you backed up your snaps from your iThing, you’re OK. If you left it all on your iPhone or iPad… sorry, friend.

Source: Putting the d’oh! in Adobe: ‘Years of photos’ permanently wiped from iPhones, iPads by bad Lightroom app update • The Register

A Gmail and Google Drive outage is causing errors around the world – yay cloud!

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Can’t send something on Gmail? If so then you’re in good company, ever since about midnight ET, people have been complaining about issues connecting to many of the G suite services, but especially Gmail.

The Google apps status page just updated to confirm they’ve received reports of an issue with Gmail and Google Drive, while a quick look at Twitter or on DownDetector shows thousands of reports over the last hour or so.

I’ve been able to send emails, but trying to attach a file shows a slow upload process that, if it completes, eventually leads to an error message saying that I need to check my network. It’s the same thing many others are experiencing, but at least it’s working a little. Oh, and if things weren’t bad enough for remote workers on this shift, it looks like Slack is having some issues too.

Update (2:14 AM ET): Google’s status page says they are continuing to investigate the issue. It has also updated to indicate reports of problems with Google Meet, Google Voice and Google Docs, while anecdotal reports show people are having issues uploading to YouTube as well.

Google:

8/20/20, 1:29 AM We’re investigating reports of an issue with Gmail. We will provide more information shortly.

8/20/20, 2:07 AM We are continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by 8/20/20, 4:00 AM detailing when we expect to resolve the problem.

Source: A Gmail and Google Drive outage is causing errors around the world | Engadget

235 Million Instagram, TikTok And YouTube User Profiles Exposed In Massive Data Leak

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it was such an unsecured database that the Comparitech researchers, led by Bob Diachenko, discovered on August 1, leaving the personal profile data of nearly 235 million Instagram, TikTok and YouTube users up for grabs.

The data was spread across several datasets; the most significant being two coming in at just under 100 million each and containing profile records apparently scraped from Instagram. The third-largest was a dataset of some 42 million TikTok users, followed by just under 4 million YouTube user profiles.

MORE FROM FORBESGot An Email From A Hacker With Your Password? Do These 3 ThingsBy Davey Winder

Comparitech says that, based on the samples it collected, one in five records contained either a telephone number or email address. Every record also included at least some, sometimes all, the following information:

  • Profile name
  • Full real name
  • Profile photo
  • Account description

Statistics about follower engagement, including:

  • Number of followers
  • Engagement rate
  • Follower growth rate
  • Audience gender
  • Audience age
  • Audience location
  • Likes
  • Last post timestamp
  • Age
  • Gender

“The information would probably be most valuable to spammers and cybercriminals running phishing campaigns,” Paul Bischoff, Comparitech editor, says. “Even though the data is publicly accessible, the fact that it was leaked in aggregate as a well-structured database makes it much more valuable than each profile would be in isolation,” Bischoff adds. Indeed, Bischoff told me that it would be easy for a bot to use the database to post targeted spam comments on any Instagram profile matching criteria such as gender, age or number of followers.

Tracing the source of the leaked data

So, where did all this data originate? The researchers suggest that the evidence, including dataset names, pointed to a company called Deep Social. However, Deep Social was banned by both Facebook and Instagram in 2018 after scraping user profile data. The company was wound down sometime after this.

A Facebook company spokesperson told me that “scraping people’s information from Instagram is a clear violation of our policies. We revoked Deep Social’s access to our platform in June 2018 and sent a legal notice prohibiting any further data collection.”

Once the researchers found the database and the clues to its origin, “we sent an alert to Deep Social, assuming the data belonged to them,” Bischoff says. The administrators of Deep Social then forwarded the disclosure to a Hong Kong-registered social media influencer data-marketing company called Social Data. “Social Data shut down the database about three hours after our initial email,” Bischoff says.

[…]

Source: 235 Million Instagram, TikTok And YouTube User Profiles Exposed In Massive Data Leak

Scientists slow and steer light with resonant nanoantennas

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in a paper published on Aug. 17, in Nature Nanotechnology, Stanford scientists demonstrate a new approach to slow light significantly, much like an echo chamber holds onto sound, and to direct it at will. Researchers in the lab of Jennifer Dionne, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford, structured ultrathin silicon chips into nanoscale bars to resonantly trap light and then release or redirect it later. These “high-quality-factor” or “high-Q” resonators could lead to novel ways of manipulating and using light, including new applications for quantum computing, virtual reality and augmented reality; light-based WiFi; and even the detection of viruses like SARS-CoV-2.

“We’re essentially trying to trap light in a tiny box that still allows the light to come and go from many different directions,” said postdoctoral fellow Mark Lawrence, who is also lead author of the paper. “It’s easy to trap light in a box with many sides, but not so easy if the sides are transparent—as is the case with many Silicon-based applications.”

Source: Scientists slow and steer light with resonant nanoantennas

The Unforeseen Consequences of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on Society: A Systematic Review of Regulatory Gaps Generated by AI in the U.S. | RAND

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AI’s growing catalog of applications and methods has the potential to profoundly affect public policy by generating instances where regulations are not adequate to confront the issues faced by society, also known as regulatory gaps.

The objective of this dissertation is to improve our understanding of how AI influences U.S. public policy. It systematically explores, for the first time, the role of AI in the generation of regulatory gaps. Specifically, it addresses two research questions:

  1. What U.S. regulatory gaps exist due to AI methods and applications?
  2. When looking across all of the gaps identified in the first research question, what trends and insights emerge that can help stakeholders plan for the future?

These questions are answered through a systematic review of four academic databases of literature in the hard and social sciences. Its implementation was guided by a protocol that initially identified 5,240 candidate articles. A screening process reduced this sample to 241 articles (published between 1976 and February of 2018) relevant to answering the research questions.

This dissertation contributes to the literature by adapting the work of Bennett-Moses and Calo to effectively characterize regulatory gaps caused by AI in the U.S. In addition, it finds that most gaps: do not require new regulation or the creation of governance frameworks for their resolution, are found at the federal and state levels of government, and AI applications are recognized more often than methods as their cause.

Source: The Unforeseen Consequences of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on Society: A Systematic Review of Regulatory Gaps Generated by AI in the U.S. | RAND

A Facebook Account Will Be Mandatory for Oculus Devices

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It’s official. Starting this October, a Facebook account will be mandatory for all future Oculus headsets. While there’ll be a grace period for anyone with a separate Oculus account, Facebook will end support for those on January 1, 2023.

The decision was announced today on both Oculus’s Twitter and in a press release. The gist of it is anyone who is new to an Oculus device after October must log in with a Facebook account. At that time, existing Oculus users will have the option of merging their Facebook and Oculus accounts. Anyone who doesn’t merge will have two years before their Oculus accounts are kaput. The devices will technically still work, but “full functionality will require a Facebook account.”

Notably, all future, unreleased Oculus devices will also require a Facebook account, regardless of whether you already have an Oculus account. This is perhaps a reference to the rumored successor to the Oculus Quest, which leaks suggest may launch as early as September 15.

What about things you already purchased on your Oculus account? Well, Facebook says it will “take steps” to allow folks to keep the things they’ve already bought but it “expect[s] some games and apps may no longer work,” hinting that developers may decide to include features that require a Facebook account or just stop supporting the app or game in question.

As you might imagine, the replies to Oculus’s announcement on Twitter are less than kind. In a few instances, users cried foul, pointing to a promise from founder Palmer Luckey when Facebook acquired Oculus that people wouldn’t need to log into Facebook when they wanted to use the Oculus Rift. While the move is painted as a means of streamlining the VR experience by “giving people a single way to log in,” it’s also a blatant attempt at forcing people onto Facebook’s platform so it can get your sweet, sweet data.

This has been coming for some time. Last year, the Oculus platform got a boatload of social features that no one asked for. It required a Facebook login to work and introduced an element of data harvesting for targeted ads.

[…]

Source: A Facebook Account Will Be Mandatory for Future Oculus Devices