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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/google-may-soon-be-ordered-to-break-up-its-lucrative-ad-business-eu-warns/

Google may soon be ordered to break up its lucrative ad business, which amounted to nearly $225 billion in 2022 and represented nearly 80 percent of Google's total revenue. Today, as expected, the European Commission (EC) sent Google a statement of objections, detailing ad tech antitrust charges and explaining exactly why the EC thinks that breaking up Google's ad business may be the only acceptable remedy.

"We are concerned that Google may have illegally distorted competition in the online advertising technology industry," Margrethe Vestager, the EC's executive vice president, said in remarks published today.

According to Vestager, an EC investigation launched in 2021 found that Google may have favored its own ad tech services when serving as an intermediary ad exchange, matching advertiser supply and publisher demand for advertising space online.

To the EC, it seems like Google has its hand in too many pots to be trusted to conduct business fairly. Google operates an ad exchange, AdX, as well as ad tech services for advertisers—Google Ads and Google Display & Video 360 (DV 360)—and services for publishers, DoubleClick For Publishers (DFP).

Vestager said there's potential for misconduct because "Google may hold a dominant position on both ends of the ad tech supply chain" and "appears to have abused its market position" by ensuring that both advertising and publisher services allegedly favored AdX over other ad exchanges when matching advertisers and publishers.

Original Submission

acid andy writes:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a44097391/college-student-solves-seemingly-paradoxical-math-problem/

For 30 years, mathematicians wondered if you could have an infinite set of numbers where each pair of numbers adds up to a unique value, and have those values each be fairly large.

In March, a graduate student [Cédric Pilatte] from Oxford University finally solved the problem by turning to an unlikely solution: geometry.

In 1993, Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős—one of the most prolific mathematicians of the 20th century—posed a question with two components seemingly at odds with one another: Could a Sidon set be an "asymptotic basis of order three?"

[...] Named after another Hungarian mathematician, Simon Sidon, these sets are basically a collection of numbers where no two numbers in the set add up to the same integer. For example, in the simple Sidon set (1, 3, 5, 11), when any of the two numbers in the set are added together, they equal a unique number. Constructing a Sidon set with only four numbers is extremely easy, but as the set increases in size, it just gets harder and harder. As soon as two sums are the same, the collection of numbers is no longer considered a Sidon set.

The second element of Erdős' problem—that scary-sounding "asymptotic basis of order three" part—means that:

1. a set must be infinitely large
2. any large enough integer can be written as the result of adding together at most 3 numbers in the set.

So, this 30-year-old conundrum centered on whether or not these two elements could exist in the same set of numbers. For decades, the answer seemed to be no.

[...] So how did Pilatte get a mathematically square peg to fit a seemingly round hole? He took an unconventional approach and turned to geometry rather than the probabilistic method championed by Erdős and what's called additive number theory. Pilatte replaced numbers with polynomials and made use of the recent work of Columbia University mathematicians. Combining these ideas, Pilatte successfully created a Sidon set dense enough and random enough to finally solve Erdős's original problem.

Journal References:

1.) Pilatte, Cédric. A solution to the Erdős-Sárközy-Sós problem on asymptotic Sidon bases of order 3, arXiv (DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2303.09659)

2.) Sawin, Will. Square-root cancellation for sums of factorization functions over squarefree progressions in F_q[t], arXiv (DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2102.09730)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

In an amendment to his wrongful termination suit, Yintao Yu outlines his alleged witnessing of how ByteDance supplies user data to the CCP:

Yintao "Roger" Yu, a former ByteDance executive based in California, filed a lawsuit against his former employer alleging a list of wrongdoings. According to Yu, ByteDance has stolen content from other creators online, discriminated against employees, and inflated its engagement metrics.

A striking allegation Yu made against ByteDance has been highly suspected but yet to be proven. Yu alleges that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the ruling political party in China, can and has accessed TikTok user data.

Yu alleges that the CCP uses ByteDance as a political propaganda tool and cites two examples in which he witnessed ByteDance promote or demote content on TikTok that aligned with the CCP's political goals.

According to the court filings, "Mr. Yu observed that ByteDance has been responsive to the CCP's requests to share information, and even to elevate or remove content at the request of the CCP."

Yu alleges that ByteDance promoted content that expressed hatred for Japan, and in 2018, ByteDance demoted content that expressed support for political protests in Hong Kong. Yu alleges this was possible in Hong Kong because the CCP monitored activists' locations via backdoor data access.

[...] According to Yu's filing, storing US user data on US soil does not mean the CCP cannot access the data, and the only way to ensure China cannot access the data is to shut the backdoor.

[...] TikTok declined to address Yu's allegations, but a ByteDance spokesperson discredited the allegations by mentioning that Yu did not work for TikTok but for Flipagram, another ByteDance-owned app.

ByteDance's spokesperson questioned Yu's intentions by mentioning that Yu was terminated from Flipagram in 2018 and is now coming forward with his allegations.

[...] However, these allegations are found in a wrongful termination lawsuit and do not supply any further evidence, like internal memos or messages. Yu is the first former ByteDance employee to publicly allege that the relationship between ByteDance and the CCP is too close for comfort.

Original Submission

requerdanos writes:

Scientists hope studying the rare asteroid will provide new insights into our own planet:

Riches beyond our wildest dreams are apparently within reach--at least, within the reach of NASA--in the form of an asteroid made of gold and other metals valued in the neighborhood of ten thousand quadrillion dollars.

[Psyche,] the ultra-valuable asteroid—which appears to be made largely of iron, nickel, gold and other rare metals—orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. It measures 140 miles wide and is shaped somewhat like a potato, according to astronomers.

It's been said that Psyche could be worth $10,000 quadrillion—more than the entire economy on our planet.

[...] The Psyche mission would be NASA's first-ever visit to a world rich in metal, rather than rock or ice. The spacecraft is expected to reach [the] asteroid in August 2029[.]

Journal Reference:
Becker, Tracy et. al. HST UV Observations of Asteroid (16) Psyche, The Planetary Science Journal (DOI: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/abb67e)

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Launching a fleet of space telescopes is not the solution to the Starlink problem:

The sky is rapidly filling with fast-moving satellites reflecting sunlight and zapping astronomers' detectors. It is, after all, exceedingly difficult to see faint galaxies in the distant cosmos when someone is shining a flashlight down your telescope.

The biggest culprit is SpaceX, which has launched a massive and growing fleet of Starlink Internet satellites since 2018. Of the more than 7,500 total working satellites in orbit around the Earth, over 3,900 are Starlinks—meaning more than half of the birds circling our planet fly the SpaceX flag.

These satellites are already menacing astronomy. Many telescopes, especially those doing wide-angle surveys of the sky to search for Earth-threatening asteroids, are seeing observations ruined by bright satellites streaking across their field of view. If not caught, these can cause false positives: things at first assumed to be real but that can take exhaustive efforts to discover are not. This will only get worse as more Starlinks are flown; 12,000 are planned, and SpaceX has filed paperwork for an additional 30,000 beyond that. If this comes to pass, the sky will be filled with satellites zipping across it.

But, in a potential irony, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has claimed that the cause of this woe may also be its cure. The company is currently testing its huge Starship rocket, which, if it works as planned, will have the capability to launch extremely large and heavy payloads. This, Musk said, can be used to send large telescopes into space above the fleet of Starlink satellites, potentially alleviating the contamination issue and ushering in a new era of widespread space-based astronomy.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/comcast-complains-to-fcc-that-listing-all-of-its-monthly-fees-is-too-hard/

Comcast is not happy about new federal rules that will require it to provide broadband customers with labels displaying exact prices and other information about Internet service plans.
Broadband label that ISPs will be required to display to consumers at the point of sale.

In a filing last week, Comcast told the Federal Communications Commission that it is "working diligently to put in place the systems and processes necessary to create, maintain, and display the labels as required." But according to Comcast, "two aspects of the Commission's Order impose significant administrative burdens and unnecessary complexity in complying with the broadband label requirements."
[...]
The FCC was required to implement broadband label rules in a 2021 law passed by Congress. Although the FCC approved the label rules in November 2022, it's not clear when they will take effect. They are subject to a federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) review because of requirements in the US Paperwork Reduction Act.
[...]
While some of these fees are related to government-issued requirements and others are not, poorly trained customer service reps have been known to falsely tell customers that fees created by Comcast are mandated by the government.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Shell Recharge security lapse exposed EV drivers' data:

Security researcher Anurag Sen found a database online that contained close to a terabyte of logging data relating to Shell Recharge, the company's worldwide network of hundreds of thousands of electric vehicle charging stations, which it acquired in part from Greenlots in 2019. Greenlots provided electric vehicle (EV) charging services and technology for customers operating vehicle fleets.

The internal database, hosted on Amazon's cloud, contained millions of logs, said Sen, including details about customers who used the EV charging network. The database had no password, allowing anyone on the internet to access its data from their web browser.

The data, seen by TechCrunch, contained names, email addresses, and phone numbers of fleet customers who use the EV charging network. The database included the names of fleet operators, which identified organizations — such as police departments — with vehicles that recharge on the network. Some of the data included vehicle identification numbers, or VINs.

[...] Shell spokesperson Anna Arata told TechCrunch in a statement: "Shell has taken steps to contain and identify an exposure of Shell Recharge Solutions data. We are investigating the incident, continue to monitor our IT systems, and will take any necessary future actions accordingly."

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/autonomous-waymo-car-runs-over-dog-in-san-francisco/

One of Alphabet's Waymo autonomous cars has killed a pet dog. TechCrunch spotted the public report of the incident, which says one of the Waymo Jaguar I-Pace cars ran over a dog in San Francisco while in autonomous mode with a safety driver behind the wheel.

[...] On May 21 in San Francisco, a small dog ran in front of one of our vehicles with an autonomous specialist present in the driver's seat, and, unfortunately, contact was made. The investigation is ongoing, however the initial review confirmed that the system correctly identified the dog which ran out from behind a parked vehicle but was not able to avoid contact.

[...] The incident is Waymo's first reported fatality.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Hackers can steal cryptographic keys by video-recording power LEDs 60 feet away:

Researchers have devised a novel attack that recovers the secret encryption keys stored in smart cards and smartphones by using cameras in iPhones or commercial surveillance systems to video record power LEDs that show when the card reader or smartphone is turned on.

The attacks enable a new way to exploit two previously disclosed side channels, a class of attack that measures physical effects that leak from a device as it performs a cryptographic operation. By carefully monitoring characteristics such as power consumption, sound, electromagnetic emissions, or the amount of time it takes for an operation to occur, attackers can assemble enough information to recover secret keys that underpin the security and confidentiality of a cryptographic algorithm.

As Wired reported in 2008, one of the oldest known side channels was in a top-secret encrypted teletype terminal that the US Army and Navy used during World War II to transmit communications that couldn't be read by German and Japanese spies. To the surprise of the Bell Labs engineers who designed the terminal, it caused readings from a nearby oscilloscope each time an encrypted letter was entered. While the encryption algorithm in the device was sound, the electromagnetic emissions emanating from the device were enough to provide a side channel that leaked the secret key.

Side channels have been a fact of life ever since, with new ones being found regularly. The recently discovered side channels tracked as Minerva and Hertzbleed came to light in 2019 and 2022, respectively. Minerva was able to recover the 256-bit secret key of a US-government-approved smart card by measuring timing patterns in a cryptographic process known as scalar multiplication. Hertzbleed allowed an attacker to recover the private key used by the post-quantum SIKE cryptographic algorithm by measuring the power consumption of the Intel or AMD CPU performing certain operations. Given the use of time measurement in one and power measurement in the other, Minerva is known as a timing side channel, and Hertzbleed can be considered a power side channel.

[...] Power LEDs are designed to indicate when a device is turned on. They typically cast a blue or violet light that vary in brightness and color depending on the power consumption of the device they are connected to.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

New hypothesis says it's to do with how they harden their shells:

Insects are some of the most successful organisms on the planet. They are said to make up the most biomass of all terrestrial animals and have a significant impact on the global ecosystem. However, their abundance is matched by their startling rarity in the sea. Very few insects call the sea home, even though their biological ancestors came from there. It is a pervading mystery of science, one which scientists have been trying to answer for many years.

Now, researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University led by Assistant Professor Tsunaki Asano have proposed a solution based on evolutionary genetics. The latest in molecular phylogenetics has taught us that both crustaceans and insects are part of the same family, Pancrustacea, and that insects were a branch that left the sea and adapted to the land. They share an important feature, an exoskeleton consisting of a wax layer and hard cuticle. In previous work, the same team showed that when insects adapted to terrestrial environments, they evolved a unique gene that creates an enzyme called multicopper oxidase-2 (MCO2) that helps them harden their cuticles using oxygen. MCO2 mediates a reaction where molecular oxygen oxidizes compounds called catecholamines in the cuticle, turning them into agents that bind and harden the surface. This is in contrast to crustaceans who harden their cuticles using calcium from sea water instead. The team's claim is that this makes the land far more suitable for insects due to the abundance of oxygen. The sea is now a harsh environment due to both the lack of oxygen and the abundance of better adapted organisms.

takyon writes:

AMD Intros EPYC 97x4 "Bergamo" CPUs: 128 Zen 4c CPU Cores For Servers, Shipping Now

Kicking off a busy day of product announcements and updates for AMD's data center business group, this morning AMD is finally announcing their long-awaited high density "Bergamo" server CPUs. Based on AMD's density-optimized Zen 4c architecture, the new EPYC 97x4 chips offer up to 128 CPU cores, 32 more cores than AMD's current-generation flagship EPYC 9004 "Genoa" chips. According to AMD, the new EPYC processors are shipping now, though we're still awaiting further details about practical availability.

AMD first teased Bergamo and the Zen 4c architecture over 18 months ago, outlining their plans to deliver a higher density EPYC CPU designed particularly for the cloud computing market. The Zen 4c cores would use the same ISA as AMD's regular Zen 4 architecture – making both sets of architectures fully ISA compatible – but it would offer that functionality in a denser design. Ultimately, whereas AMD's mainline Zen 4 EPYC chips are designed to hit a balance between performance and density, these Zen 4c EPYC chips are purely about density, boosting the total number of CPU cores available for a market that is looking to maximize the number of vCPUs they can run on top of a single, physical CPU.

Additionally, AMD has launched Zen 4 Genoa-X Epyc CPUs, stacking a 3D V-Cache chiplet on each core chiplet. That means a total of 1152 MiB L3 cache for the 96-core model using 12 chiplets.

upstart writes:

US moves to block Microsoft's Activision takeover:

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said the deal, which would be the largest in the history of the video games industry, could "substantially lessen competition" in the sector.

The move comes after the UK blocked the deal over concerns it would hurt competition, but the EU approved it.

A trial in the US will begin in August.

The FTC said in a court filing that a "preliminary injunction is necessary to... prevent interim harm" while the regulator determines whether "the proposed acquisition violates US antitrust law".

Microsoft's proposed takeover of Activision has split global regulators, and in order for the deal to go through the parties need approval from regulatory bodies in the UK, the EU and the US.

The European Commission has approved the acquisition, saying that Microsoft's offer of 10-year free licensing deals - which promise European consumers and cloud game streaming services access to Activision's PC and console games - mean there would be fair competition in the market.

But the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) blocked the deal in April, saying it was concerned the takeover would offer reduced innovation and less choice for gamers.

Microsoft and Activision hit out at the decision and said they would appeal.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Big Leap for Hard Drive Capacities: 32 TB HAMR Drives Due Soon, 40TB on Horizon:

Offering a brief update on the future of hard drives, Seagate has shared some fresh insights concerning launch of its next generation hard drives featuring its heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. The company's initial commercial HAMR hard drive is set to offer a 32 TB capacity, presumably in the third quarter of 2023, but the new recording technology will enable a relatively quick capacity increase to 40 TB. Meanwhile, high-capacity HAMR HDDs will co-exist with yet-to-be-released 24 TB and 28 TB drives.

[...] "When you go to HAMR, our 32TB is based on 10 disks and 20 heads," said Gianluca Romano, Seagate's chief financial officer, at the Bank of America 2023 Global Technology Conference (via SeekingAlpha). "The following product will be a 36TB and will still be based on 10 disks and 20 heads. So, all the increase is coming through areal density. The following one, 40TB, still the same 10 disks and 20 heads. Also, the 50TB, we said at our earnings release, in our lab, we are already running individual disk at 5TB."

More about HAMR from Seagate.

Ed. Note: What's your biggest storage device? What technology does it use?

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Job seekers in the era of 'social impact framing' are afraid to ask for higher pay:

For many companies today, recruiting employees includes luring them with job postings that tout the organization's altruistic goals, such as to "make an impact" or fulfill a mission or purpose that benefits the greater good.

Appealing to job seekers' altruism isn't just for nonprofits anymore. Both for-profit and nonprofit organizations increasingly employ what has been termed "social impact framing" that emphasizes that their work has welfare benefits for society.

Although companies might have entirely noble intentions when using social impact framing, a recent study by Texas McCombs Assistant Professor of Management Insiya Hussain illustrates how it may work against prospective employees during salary negotiations. Specifically, job candidates exposed to such messaging feel it would be against company norms to ask for higher pay.

"This speaks to a broader social phenomenon about how we view money when it comes to doing good," Hussain says. "There's an implicit assumption that money and altruism don't mix. Money taints attempts to do good. Even if job candidates might not necessarily subscribe to this view, they're assuming that hiring managers will."

[...] The research suggests job applicants might experience a fearful thought process around salary: "I can't even ask. I feel like if I ask, it might be held against me or against the norms of the organization. It might be seen as greedy," Hussain says, paraphrasing the job seekers.

The researchers describe this attitude as a "self-censoring" effect, which Hussain says is a novel finding for research on social impact framing and wage demands. Prior work assumed that candidates sacrificed pay for meaningful work. Hussain and colleagues show this effect may be driven by job candidates feeling uncomfortable with such negotiation.

That mindset was true across the age spectrum and several industries, including education, financial services, food manufacturing, and health care — in both nonprofit and for-profit businesses.

[...] "Job seekers could consider whether companies that stress social impact take care of their own employees — financially or otherwise." Hussain says. "And, companies shouldn't assume that extrinsically motivated workers don't care about the job and aren't willing to work hard to perform well."

Journal Reference:
Insiya Hussain et al., Pay Suppression in Social Impact Contexts: How Framing Work Around the Greater Good Inhibits Job Candidate Compensation Demands, INFORMS, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.1675

Original Submission

Progress is definitely being made, and the different paths are converging. We are not there yet, and there are probably still some significant hurdles to be overcome. There are 3 sides involved, the Board, kolie/replic8tor and the existing staff. NCommander (as the only Board member active on this site) is continuing with his work to containerise everything on the Linode servers. However, for the time being the Rehash repo doesn't always match up with what is actually running the site today. He has an end date in sight and kolie believes that he will 'probably' leave the community at some point, as yet undetermined.

The remaining 2 parties are in frequent discussion. The differences in approach are being identified and compromises on both sides being made where necessary. Yesterday (Tues 13 Jun) a bug appeared on the user comment preferences page. Why it suddenly appeared is anybody's guess. But both kolie and the sysop team set to together to try to resolve it. What became apparent during that session, which will probably resume some time today, is that both sides could better understand the other's position. I will not go into details of where compromises have been made as I do not think that is constructive at this stage - but they are being made. There is a recognition that some of the staff have perfectly acceptable reasons for having shell access to complete their normal voluntary roles, despite NCommander's statement to the contrary.

There is a problem with communication still. I do not think that this is obstructive but represents a different appreciation of the problems we face and what information we each seek from the other. It is not yet overcome but things are slowly getting better. As I speak, there is no increased risk to the safety of your personal information, and that should not change in the future. We have to take statements at face value and accept what is being said to a certain degree, and we are still being wary of what each other means by specific statements. The usual openness of this site and its community is not something that everyone understands at first, and we each come with very different experiences and backgrounds.