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takyon writes:

Texas court orders Intel to pay $2.18 billion for two patent infringements

The two patents are owned by VLSI and relate to ways to manage CPU clock speeds and minimum voltages for memory. VLSI has an additional six patent violation claims against Intel, which could amount to $11 billion in damages. Intel denies all allegations and is confident it can avoid these fees through future appeals.

[...] Waco Tribune-Herald and Tom's Hardware note that one of the patents (759) relates to clock speed management and is supposed to represent $1.5 billion in damages, while the other one (373) describes a method to reduce the minimum voltage for memory and totals just $675 million in damages. The other six patent violations are supposed to amount to $7.1 billion, and Intel must also consider future royalties, attorney's fees, interests, procedure costs etc., which could amount to $1.7 billion if VLSI manages to win the entire case.

Another Texas jury weighing in on patents.

Also at Wccftech.

Original Submission

Halibut writes:

Last November, class action lawsuits were filed against multiple websites employing activity loggers: Nike (and FullStory), Lululemon (and Quantum Metric), and WebMD (and Mouseflow). The WebMD story mentions some others at the end.

According to these lawsuits, the companies running the websites, and the companies providing the logging software, are intercepting and/or recording personally identifiable information without the knowledge or consent of the viewers of the site. The lawsuits, which are filed in the state of California, allege this constitutes an illegal wiretap in violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA). The CIPA is an anti-wiretapping law that imposes civil and criminal penalties for recording confidential conversations, with fairly broad definitions for confidential conversations and consent.

Despite being a few months old, I had not heard about these lawsuits. Website replay logging software scripts have been around for years (here is a story from 2017). These replay loggers can record everything from where your cursor goes to what links you click on to what keys you press on the website. According to the stories, both the company hosting the website and the company who operates the logger can get enough information to fully replay a user's interaction with the website. This would be particularly violating where the user is entering a password or, as in the WebMD case above, personal information including medical information. Even if the user intended to send that information to the website in question, most users are probably not aware that it is also being sent to a third party.

Original Submission

Watch out, PayPal. Square just launched its own bank:

New York (CNN Business) Square, the financial payments firm run by Jack Dorsey, launched an in-house bank that it says will allow it to "operate more nimbly" in an increasingly crowded fintech market.

The firm announced Monday that the bank has begun operations after completing the charter approval process with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions. It will operate as an independently governed subsidiary of Square Inc (SQ) Dorsey is also the CEO and co-founder of Twitter (TWTR).

The Salt Lake City, Utah-based Square Financial Services will provide business loans and deposit products to sellers who use its card reader and other point-of-sale services.

[...] Unlike a traditional bank that must rely on a business' report of its performance, payment service providers "have a constant, near-real-time view into the business performance and perhaps the entirety of their revenue stream," Ford said. "As far as managing risk, they have a constant pulse check on how the business is doing."

This kind of data helps Square lend to businesses that might be turned away by a typical bank — the company says it has a better record of lending to women- and minority-owned businesses than traditional lenders.

Square Capital facilitated approximately 57,000 loans during the fourth quarter of 2020 totaling $254 million (a 62% year-over-year decline that it attributed in part to the pandemic). As of December 31, 2020, Square Capital had also facilitated approximately $857 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans to more than 80,000 small businesses.

The company said Monday it does not expect the bank to have a material impact on its balance sheet, revenue or income in 2021, and that it will "continue to sell loans to third-party investors and limit balance sheet exposure."

Original Submission

[2021-03-03 22:13:57 UTC; UPDATE #2]:

Ars Technica posted an update to their earlier story:

Update 3:45 pm EST: The SN10 Starship prototype very nearly launched on Wednesday afternoon from South Texas, but a last-second out-of-bounds reading aborted the attempt. The abort was caused by a "slightly conservative high thrust limit," SpaceX founder Elon Musk said afterward. Basically, the onboard flight computer received data from one of the engines that it was producing more thrust than anticipated.

The good news? This thrust limit can be adjusted upward in the flight software, and the vehicle is now recycling through propellant loading for another attempt. SN10 may still fly later today, time to be determined.

SpaceX's original (i.e. aborted) launch YouTube link.

Original story moved below the fold.

There is a slight possibility of a retry later today, Wednesday 2021-03-03.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Cord cutting was so bad last year that pay-TV penetration is down to 1994 levels

Cord cutting accelerated at such a rapid pace last year that the penetration of U.S. households paying for traditional TV services is down to levels not seen since the mid-1990s, according to a new report from analyst firm MoffettNathanson.

Over the course of 2020, cable and satellite TV companies shed 6 million subscribing households, the firm estimates, a decline of 7.3%.

And the rise of cable-like streaming services—such as Sling, YouTube TV, and Hulu's live TV service—has not been dramatic enough to make up the difference, since only about one-third of cord cutters subscribed to an over-the-top equivalent.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyGuest93544:

Glow-in-the-dark sharks found off New Zealand coast:

Scientists say they have found that three deepwater shark species living off New Zealand glow in the dark.

The species were collected from the Chatham Rise - an area of ocean floor to the east of New Zealand - in January of last year, according to the study.

[...] The three species were already known to marine biologists but this is the first time that the phenomenon of bioluminescence - organisms emitting light - has been identified in them.

The researchers suggest the sharks' glowing underbellies may help them hide from predators or other threats beneath them.

They say the bioluminescence is achieved through thousands of photophores (light-producing cells) located within the sharks' skin.

[...] The three studied species inhabit a space called the mesopelagic zone, often called the twilight zone, which ranges from 200m to 1,000m depth (the maximum depth reached by sunlight).

The species in question face an environment with no place to hide, hence the need for counterillumination as a form of camouflage, the researchers add.

(Emphasis in original omitted.)

Journal Reference:
Jérôme Mallefet, Darren W. Stevens, Laurent Duchatelet. Bioluminescence of the Largest Luminous Vertebrate, the Kitefin Shark, Dalatias licha: First Insights and Comparative Aspects, Frontiers in Marine Science (DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2021.633582)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Travelers to the tropics are more prone to acquiring superbacteria than previously thought:

Exploring exposure to superbacteria, researchers at the University of Helsinki and Helsinki University Hospital got unexpected results from an international collaborative study conducted in real time among 20 travelers to Southeast Asia. All the participants were found to contract superbacteria within a week after arriving in the destination. A detailed sequence analysis showed that the traveler group acquired a variety of superbacteria comprising over 80 different strains altogether.

Before the corona pandemic, tens of millions international travelers annually headed to the tropics, getting exposed to local intestinal bacteria. A total of 20-70% of those returning from the tropics carry - for the most unknowingly - ESBL[*]-producing bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics. The likelihood of acquiring such superbacteria depends on destination and health behavior abroad. The risk is greatest in South and Southeast Asia, and a substantial increase is associated with contracting travelers' diarrhea and taking antibiotics while abroad.

An investigation led by professor of Infectious diseases Anu Kantele at Helsinki University together with MD Esther Kuenzli from Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute involved a real-time scrutiny of superbacteria acquisition among a group of 20 Europeans over a three-week visit to Laos. The participants' daily stool samples were initially screened on site in Vientiane, Laos, and later, in Europe, the superbacteria strains isolated were analyzed in detail by whole-genome sequencing.

[...] In Laos, daily stool samples from the participants were analyzed locally in the Lao-Oxford-Mahosot Hospital-Wellcome Trust -Research laboratory. Had samples only been collected before and after travel, the proportion of superbacteria carriers had been approximately 70%. Daily real-time scrutiny already while abroad revealed, however, that all travelers had contracted a superbacter within a week after arrival.

martyb writes:

According to c|net, FDA panel gives Johnson & Johnson's one-shot COVID-19 vaccine green light:

An advisory panel for the US Food and Drug Administration has recommended Johnson & Johnson's single-dose COVID-19 vaccine be given the green light by the FDA. The FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee unanimously voted Friday afternoon to approve the vaccine.

The next step will be emergency approval from the FDA itself.

[...] In early February, a week after announcing that its single-dose vaccine was 66% effective overall in preventing COVID-19 in a global clinical trial, Johnson & Johnson submitted an application requesting the FDA grant emergency use authorization for the vaccine.

It would be the third vaccine on the US market, following the FDA granting emergency use authorization for the Pfizer and Moderna coronavirus vaccines in December, with vaccinations beginning just days later. Those vaccines are said to be 95% and 94% effective, respectively. Unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, Johnson & Johnson's vaccine requires only a single shot.

Earlier this month, President Joe Biden announced that the US is buying enough doses of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines to cover 300 million people in the country by the end of July -- though this doesn't mean everyone will be vaccinated by then.

"We've now purchased enough vaccine supply to vaccinate all Americans," Biden said. Actually administering the vaccines to all Americans could take longer because vaccinations are managed at a state and local level.

Here's where to get a COVID-19 shot, and here's how to track how many vaccines are available in your state.

martyb writes:

Massive Iceberg – 10 Times the Size of San Francisco – Breaks Off Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica

A giant iceberg, approximately 1.5 times the size of Greater Paris [or about 10 times the size of San Francisco], broke off from the northern section of Antarctica's Brunt Ice Shelf on Friday 26th February. New radar images, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, show the 1270 sq km[*] iceberg breaking free and moving away rapidly from the floating ice shelf.

Glaciologists have been closely monitoring the many cracks and chasms that have formed in the 150 m thick Brunt Ice Shelf over the past years. In late-2019, a new crack was spotted in the portion of the ice shelf north of the McDonald Ice Rumples, heading towards another large crack near the Stancomb-Wills Glacier Tongue.

This latest rift was closely monitored by satellite imagery, as it was seen quickly cutting across the ice shelf. Recent ice surface velocity data derived from Sentinel-1 data indicated the region north of the new crack to be the most unstable – moving around 5 m per day. Then, in the early hours of Friday 26th, the newer crack widened rapidly before finally breaking free from the rest of the floating ice shelf.

[...] Although currently unnamed, the iceberg has been informally dubbed 'A-74'. Antarctic icebergs are named from the Antarctic quadrant in which they were originally sighted, then a sequential number, then, if the iceberg breaks, a sequential letter.

[*] 1270 sq km is equivalent to ~488 sq miles. Alternatively, a square with sides of length 22 miles (35.6 km).

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Far-Right Platform Gab Has Been Hacked:

Donald Trump and a slew of other far-right users in January, many of them became digital refugees, migrating to sites like Parler and Gab to find a home that wouldn't moderate their hate speech and disinformation. Days later, Parler was hacked, and then it was dropped by Amazon web hosting, knocking the site offline. Now Gab, which inherited some of Parler's displaced users, has been badly hacked too. An enormous trove of its contents has been stolen—including what appears to be passwords and private communications.

On Sunday night the WikiLeaks-style group Distributed Denial of Secrets is revealing what it calls GabLeaks, a collection of more than 70 gigabytes of Gab data representing more than 40 million posts. DDoSecrets says a hacktivist who self-identifies as "JaXpArO and My Little Anonymous Revival Project" siphoned that data out of Gab's backend databases in an effort to expose the platform's largely right-wing users.

[...] DDoSecrets cofounder Emma Best says that the hacked data includes not only all of Gab's public posts and profiles—with the exception of any photos or videos uploaded to the site—but also private group and private individual account posts and messages, as well as user passwords and group passwords. "It contains pretty much everything on Gab, including user data and private posts, everything someone needs to run a nearly complete analysis on Gab users and content," Best wrote in a text message interview with WIRED.

[...] DDoSecrets says it's not publicly releasing the data due to its sensitivity and the vast amounts of private information it contains. Instead the group says it will selectively share it with journalists, social scientists, and researchers. WIRED viewed a sample of the data, and it does appear to contain Gab users' individual and group profiles—their descriptions and privacy settings—public and private posts, and passwords.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Want to Buy a Scrunchie Mask? Great. But Forget About That N95.:

It was the ad on Facebook — for a mask that doubles as a hair scrunchie — that pushed Dan Castle to despair.

His company, CastleGrade, makes a reusable, high-filtration face mask that has been popular among dentists, teachers and those who work in proximity to others — and willing to pay $44.99.

But he has been unable to sell his wares on Facebook since August, when the company abruptly blocked his ads, citing a policy aimed at ensuring medical-grade masks are reserved for health care workers. Since then, he said, sales have plummeted to $5,000 a day from $40,000. And yet, he sees ads for nonmedical grade masks all of the time.

[...] Mr. Castle's experiences with Facebook echoed those of other small mask producers who have recently began making N95s and other medical grade masks. Largely shut out by hospital networks, they had hoped to sell their high-filtration products online, where Americans do much of their shopping. But the tech giants have not made it easy, even as scientists have urged people to upgrade their face coverings to those that can block the tiny pathogens that cause infection.

Google and Facebook ban the sale of medical-grade masks, and Amazon limits their availability to shoppers — policies born during the early months of the pandemic, when hospitals were scrambling to obtain protective gear.

But some public health experts and mask manufacturers say these rules are outdated, especially given the spread of more infectious coronavirus variants and the abundance of domestically made masks that are gathering dust in warehouses across the country. The restrictions, they say, may hinder the country's ability to limit new infections in the months before vaccinations become more widely available.

Where do you get your masks? How did you learn of the provider?

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The Free Software Foundation Europe(FSFE) (no connections to the Free Software Foundation(FSF), despite the name) has logged a win in Italy in court for the freedom to choose the operating system on new computers. Luca Bonissi won after two years of court battles. He won the first round in a kind of small claims court, but Lenovo responded by lawyering up and attacking. The court eventually rejected all of Lenovos argument, confirming that the right to reimbursment for pre-installed software is due. Further, an additional 20k EUR in damages were awarded to Bonissi.

In a historic judgment in Italy, in a case initiated by FSFE supporter Luca Bonissi, Lenovo was ordered to pay 20,000 euros in damages for abusive behaviour in denying to refund the price of a pre-installed Windows licence. In a motivating gesture for the Free Software cause, Luca donated 15,000 euros to the FSFE.

[...] It should go without saying that everyone should be able to freely choose the operating system to run on their personal computers. Free Software is about granting the liberty for people to freely run software they desire and, consequently, decline the software not respecting their freedom. But Microsoft and the vast majority of hardware manufacturers dishonour this principle by dictating which operating system their customers must use, forcing them to run Windows even when they simply do not want to.

See also the FSFE Windows Refund Guide and the Racketware Guide about how to avoid the Windows Tax.

Previously:
(2014) Windows Tax now Illegal in Italy

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

AT&T spinning off DirecTV after losing millions of customers:

AT&T is spinning off its DirecTV into a new company for a fraction of the $48.5 billion it paid for the satellite TV service in 2015. DirecTV has lost millions of customers on AT&T's watch, and is valued in the deal at just $16.25 billion, including debt.

Private equity firm TPG will own 30% of the business, while AT&T holds the rest. The telecom company will receive $7.8 billion in cash, including $1.8 billion from TPG and and $5.8 billion from the new DirecTV firm, which is borrowing that sum. The new DirecTV will also take on $200 million in debt from AT&T.

[...] "It's fair to say that some aspects of the (DirecTV) transaction have not played out as we had planned, such as pay TV households in the U.S. declining at a faster pace across the industry than anticipated," AT&T wrote.

Fnord666 added the following:

Interestingly, Apollo Global Management approached AT&T about spinning off DirecTV in 2019.

Private equity powerhouse Apollo Global Management, working with an outside banker, is pitching AT&T, Inc. a deal that would allow the telecom conglomerate to offload some of the risk of its troubled DirecTV unit while still maintaining control of the satellite service provider, FOX Business has learned.

At that time, AT&T COO John Stankey apparently said that

DirecTV is a crucial piece of his company's video strategy, and that it's not for sale. But the company reportedly hasn't entirely ruled out Apollo's plan.

Wikipedia entry on DirecTV.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Hard-coded key vulnerability in Logix PLCs has severity score of 10 out of 10:

Hardware that is widely used to control equipment in factories and other industrial settings can be remotely commandeered by exploiting a newly disclosed vulnerability that has a severity score of 10 out of 10.

The vulnerability is found in programmable logic controllers from Rockwell Automation that are marketed under the Logix brand. These devices, which range from the size of a small toaster to a large bread box or even bigger, help control equipment and processes on assembly lines and in other manufacturing environments. Engineers program the PLCs using Rockwell software called Studio 5000 Logix Designer.

On Thursday, the US Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Administration [(CISA)] warned of a critical vulnerability that could allow hackers to remotely connect to Logix controllers and from there alter their configuration or application code. The vulnerability requires a low skill level to be exploited, CISA said.

The vulnerability, which is tracked as CVE-2021-22681, is the result of the Studio 5000 Logix Designer software making it possible for hackers to extract a secret encryption key. This key is hard-coded into both Logix controllers and engineering stations and verifies communication between the two devices. A hacker who obtained the key could then mimic an engineering workstation and manipulate PLC code or configurations that directly impact a manufacturing process.

[...] Rockwell isn't issuing a patch that directly addresses the problems stemming from the hard-coded key. Instead, the company is recommending that PLC users follow specific risk mitigation steps. The steps involve putting the controller mode switch into run, and if that's not possible, following other recommendations that are specific to each PLC model.

[...] Claroty has issued its own writeup here.

CVE-2021-22681

Original Submission

aristarchus writes:

More details on Perseverance, at Gizmodo.

As we watched NASA put a rover on Mars last month, it definitely seemed like the agency had to be using some sort of high-tech processor in its machine. Surely the rover is built on something much more powerful than the components in devices us civilians use, right? But while NASA is technically using a specialized processor to power the Perseverance rover, it's not far removed from the world of consumer electronics—about 23 years ago.

NewScientist reports that the Perseverance rover is powered by a PowerPC 750 processor, which was used in Apple's original 1998 iMac G3—you remember, the iconic, colorful, see-through desktop. If the PowerPC name sounds familiar, it's probably because those are the RISC CPUs Apple used in its computers before switching to Intel. (Although now the company is back on the RISC train with its homegrown M1 processor.)