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Facebook

Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter Face New Rules in India (wsj.com) 6

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
India is establishing new rules to govern internet firms like Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter, [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source] a fresh challenge for the American giants in a huge market that is key to their global expansion. From a report: The new guidelines, unveiled Thursday, say that in order to counter the rise of problematic content online like false news and violent material, intermediaries must establish "grievance redressal mechanisms" to resolve user complaints about postings and share with the government the names and contact details for "grievance officers" at the firms. These officers must acknowledge complaints within a day and resolve them within 15. Social media firms must take down material involving explicit sexual content within 24 hours of being flagged. Firms must also appoint officers and contact people -- who live in India -- to coordinate with law enforcement agencies and address complaints. Some firms must also help identify the "first originator" of some messages, the rules say. "We appreciate the proliferation of social media in India," Ravi Shankar Prasad, India's minister of electronics and information technology, said Thursday. "We want them to be more responsible and more accountable," he said.

The rules are New Delhi's latest move to assert control over global tech firms that have experienced breakneck growth in a country of more than 1.3 billion. The regulations also come during monthslong farmers' protests against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, which have sparked fierce debate on social media. They have emerged as Mr. Modi's stiffest political challenge since he assumed power in 2014. The rules say the government can implement a code of ethics for digital media and so-called over-the-top platforms, a term applied to video streaming services like Netflix.
Australia

Australia Passes Law To Make Google, Facebook Pay for News (apnews.com) 28

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Australia's law forcing Google and Facebook to pay for news is ready to take effect, though the laws' architect said it will take time for the digital giants to strike media deals. From a report: The Parliament on Thursday passed the final amendments to the so-called News Media Bargaining Code agreed between Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday. In return for the changes, Facebook agreed to lift a ban on Australians accessing and sharing news. Rod Sims, the competition regulator who drafted the code, said he was happy that the amended legislation would address the market imbalance between Australian news publishers and the two gateways to the internet. "All signs are good," Sims said. "The purpose of the code is to address the market power that clearly Google and Facebook have. Google and Facebook need media, but they don't need any particular media company, and that meant media companies couldn't do commercial deals," the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair added. The rest of the law had passed in Parliament earlier, so it can now be implemented. Google has already struck deals with major Australian news businesses in recent weeks including News Corp. and Seven West Media.
Businesses

Nvidia Made $5 Billion During a GPU Shortage and Expects To Do It Again in Q1 (theverge.com) 43

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Nvidia has shared its Q4 2021 earnings, and despite the company's GPUs being in extremely low supply, it didn't seem to hurt how much money the company made. From a report: In fact, it reported a record $5 billion in revenue, which is up 61 percent year-over-year. What's more impressive is that Nvidia expects to make another $5 billion in revenue during Q1 2022. This positive outlook is surprising given that Q1 is generally slower than other quarters, even for the biggest tech companies, as it follows the rush of people buying lots of products during the holiday period. It's generally a slower period in general for product releases across tech and gaming. Also, let's not forget the GPU shortage is still happening. Nvidia reiterated that sparse supply will continue through the next quarter, but that's likely factored into its rosy revenue prediction.

Nvidia says it expects most of that $5 billion revenue estimate in Q1 2022 to come from the gaming market, despite being the segment it's currently having the toughest time serving. Since the launch of the RTX 30-series desktop graphics cards, leading with the RTX 3080, 3090, 3070, and followed by other products, Nvidia hasn't been able to meet the demand -- though it's not the only company affected. AMD has also struggled, perhaps more than Nvidia, to keep a steady stock of graphics cards heading to retailers.
Bug

iRobot Says It'll Be a Few Weeks Until It Can Clean Up Its Latest Roomba Software Update Mess (theverge.com) 36

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
iRobot, maker of the robotic Roomba vacuums, has confirmed that a software update has been causing issues for some users of its i7 and s9 robots and that it's working on another one to prevent future issues. The catch? It might be a bit before things get sorted out, with iRobot expecting the update to roll out "over the next several weeks." From a report: According to users on Reddit and Twitter, the recent 3.12.8 firmware update has been causing navigation issues. One user described their robot cleaner as acting "drunk" after the update: spinning itself around and bumping into furniture, cleaning in strange patterns, getting stuck in an empty area, and not being able to make it home to the dock. What's more, some other users are reporting that the environment maps their Roombas made were wiped out by the update.
Data Storage

Toshiba Unveils World's First FC-MAMR HDD: 18 TB, Helium Filled (anandtech.com) 99

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Toshiba this week announced the industry's first hard drive featuring flux-control microwave-assisted magnetic recording (FC-MAMR) technology. The new MG09-series HDDs are designed primarily for nearline and enterprise applications, they offer an 18 TB capacity along with an ultra-low idle power consumption. From a report: The Toshiba MG09-series 3.5-inch 18 TB HDD are based on the company's 3rd generation nine-platter helium sealed platform that features 18 heads with a microwave-emitting component which changes magnetic coercivity of the platters before writing data. The HD disks are made by Showa Denko K.K. (SDK), a long-time partner of Toshiba. Each aluminum platter is about 0.635 mm thick, it features an areal density of around 1.5 Tb/inch2 and can store up to 2 TB of data. The MG09 family also includes a 16 TB model which presumably features a lower number of platters (based on the same performance rating).

For modern enterprise and nearline 3.5-inch HDDs, Toshiba's MG09-series drives uses a motor with a 7200-RPM spindle speed. The HDDs are also equipped with a 512 MB buffer and are rated for a 281 MB/s maximum sustained data transfer rate. Unfortunately, Toshiba has not updated the random access performance of the new products, though it is likely that their per-TB IOPS performance is lower when compared to predecessors. The manufacturer will offer its new drives both with SATA 3.3 (6 Gbps) and SAS 3.0 (12 Gbps) interfaces as well as a selection of logical data block length.

One of the noteworthy things about Toshiba's MG09-series FC-MAMR HDDs is their power consumption. In active idle mode, they typically consume 4.16/4.54 Watts (SATA/SAS models), which is considerably lower when compared with Seagate's Exos X18 as well as Western Digital's Ultrastar DC HC550. As far as power consumption efficiency at idle (large hard drives could spend plenty of time idling) is concerned, the 18 TB MG09 is an undeniable champion consuming just 0.23 Watts per TB (in case of the SATA version). Meanwhile, the new drives are rated for 8.35/8.74 Watts (SATA/SAS SKUs) during read/write operations, which is higher when compared to the DC HC550 as well as predecessors from the MG07 and the MG08-series.
Security

CD Projekt Ransomware Hack Severely Disrupts Work on Cyberpunk Updates (bloomberg.com) 58

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
CD Projekt SA said Wednesday it will delay a promised update to the much-criticized role-playing game Cyberpunk 2077, pinning the blame for its slow progress on a recent security breach. From a report: What the Polish publisher didn't say is that most of its employees have been locked out of their workstations for the past two weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. The work stoppage is the result of a ransomware attack disclosed on Feb. 9. The extent of the disruption, which hasn't been previously reported, poses a major setback to CD Projekt's attempt to rescue a game in desperate need of repairs. CD Projekt has said it refused to pay a ransom to the hackers. As a result, employees remain unable to log onto the company's virtual private network, making it impossible to access the systems and tools needed to do most of their jobs, said the people, requesting anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk publicly. Although some CD Projekt employees are working from the headquarters in Warsaw, the majority are at home due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Television

LG Says It Will License webOS To Other TV Makers (gizmodo.com) 62

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
LG will make its webOS software available to other companies. From a report: The proprietary software on LG's own sets will be able to be licensed by outside TV brands, the company announced Wednesday. Notably, TV brands that choose to bring LG's software to their televisions will also get its Magic Motion remote, LG's very good cursor-like wand. It would also see the same voice control tools, algorithms, and apps -- including LG Channels -- included on those displays as well, the company said. "By welcoming other manufacturers to join the webOS TV ecosystem, we are embarking on a new path that allows many new TV owners to experience the same great UX and features that are available on LG TVs. We look forward to bringing these new customers into the incredible world of webOS TV," Park Hyoung-sei, president of the LG Home Entertainment Company, said in a statement.
Businesses

Biden Signs Executive Order To Address Chip Shortage Through a Review To Strengthen Supply Chains (cnbc.com) 191

Posted by msmash from the breaking-news dept.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday meant to address a global chip shortage impacting industries ranging from medical supplies to electric vehicles. From a report: The order includes a 100-day review of key products including semiconductors and advanced batteries used in electric vehicles, followed by a broader, long-term review of six sectors of the economy. The long-term review will allow for policy recommendations to strengthen supply chains, with the goal of quickly implementing the suggestions, Biden said at a press event Wednesday before he signed the order. The action follows calls from bipartisan members of Congress and industry leaders warning about the potential consequences of the shortage. Commonly known as chips, semiconductors are used to power electronics including phones, electric vehicles and even some medical supplies. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that "semiconductor manufacturing is a dangerous weak spot in our economy and in our national security." Press release from The White House.
Verizon

Verizon Leads 5G Airwave Bidding With Record $45 Billion Splurge (bloomberg.com) 24

Posted by msmash from the 5G-race dept.
Verizon Communications committed $45 billion for 5G wireless airwaves in a government auction that attracted record bidding as the largest U.S. mobile carriers race to build faster networks. From a report: At $23 billion, AT&T was the second-highest bidder, according to the Federal Communications Commission, which ran the auction. Participants also included T-Mobile US Inc. and pay-TV providers such as Dish Network, Comcast and Charter Communications. Some have already tapped the debt market to help pay the tab. The auction started in December, and within days the tally exceeded analysts' estimates of $47 billion before settling at $81.2 billion. The budget-stretching bidding underscores how crucial these so-called midband frequencies are to companies trying to seize global leadership in emerging 5G technology. The airwaves are prized for their combined ability to travel far and carry lots of data. They are expected to drive years of growth when deployed for next-generation mobile devices, autonomous vehicles, health-care equipment and manufacturing facilities.
Programming

Why Discord Is Switching From Go To Rust 192

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
RoccamOccam writes: The developers at Discord have seen success with Rust on their video encoding pipeline for Go Live and on their Elixir NIFs' server. Recently, they penned a post explaining how they have drastically improved the performance of a service by switching its implementation from Go to Rust.

From the post, "Remarkably, we had only put very basic thought into optimization as the Rust version was written. Even with just basic optimization, Rust was able to outperform the hyper hand-tuned Go version. This is a huge testament to how easy it is to write efficient programs with Rust compared to the deep dive we had to do with Go."
Google

Google Sponsors 2 Full-Time Devs To Improve Linux Security (theregister.com) 49

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Worried about the security of Linux and open-source code, Google is sponsoring a pair of full-time developers to work on the kernel's security. From a report: The internet giant builds code from its own repositories rather than downloading outside binaries, though given the pace at which code is being added to Linux, this task is non-trivial. Google's open-source security team lead Dan Lorenc spoke to The Register about its approach, and why it will not use pre-built binaries despite their convenience. But first: the two individuals full-time sponsored by Google are Gustavo Silva, whose work includes eliminating some classes of buffer overflow risks and on kernel self-protection, and Nathan Chancellor, who fixes bugs in the Clang/LLVM compilers and improves compiler warnings. Both are already working at the Linux Foundation, so what is new?

"Gustavo's been working on the Linux kernel at the Linux Foundation for several years now," Lorenc tells us. "We've actually been sponsoring it within the Foundation for a number of years. The main change is that we're trying to talk about it more, to encourage other companies to participate. It's a model that works, we're trying to expand it, find contributors that want to turn this into a full-time thing, and giving them the funding to do that." It is in the nature of open source that Google's funding benefits other Linux users, and it is also in the company's interests. How important is Linux to Google? "It's absolutely critical. Google started on Linux. We use it everywhere," says Lorenc. That being the case, why can Google only manage "Gold" membership of the Linux Foundation ($100,000 per annum), whereas others including Microsoft, Intel, Facebook, and Red Hat are "Platinum", which contributes $500,000 annually? "I'm not sure about that stuff. There are dozens of sub-foundations which we are also members of," he adds. Google is ahead of AWS, which is a mere "Silver" member ($20,000 a year).
The Almighty Buck

The Fed's System That Allows Banks To Send Money Back and Forth is Down (cnbc.com) 53

Posted by msmash from the breaking-news dept.
The Federal Reserve's system that allows financial institutions to send money back and forth electronically went down Wednesday morning. From a report: The "operational error," as the Fed described it, impacted multiple services, including its pivotal automated clearinghouse system, which connects depository and related institutions send electronic credit and debt transfers. There were no initial indications that foul play was suspected. Along with the Fed ACH service, other systems impacted included the Check 21, FedCash, Fedwire and the national settlement service. A statement from the central bank said it became aware of a problem around 11:15 a.m. ET. "Our technical teams have determined that the cause is a Federal Reserve operational error. We will provide updates via service status as more information becomes available," the Fed said. The statement further noted that the glitch impacted payment deadlines and said the Fed "will communicate remediation efforts to our customers when available."
Apache

Apache Software Foundation Ousts TinkerPop Creator (theregister.com) 223

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Frosty P writes: The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has removed Marko Rodriguez from the TinkerPop project he co-founded because his provocative Twitter posts were said to have violated the ASF Code of Conduct. "I was removed from the project I started 11 years ago for 'publishing offensive humor that borders on hate speech,'" Rodriguez explained in an email to The Register. "However, now that Big Tech has secured the ASF board, it is a way to 'shut me up' about the monopolistic practices of Big Tech." Rodriguez argues that "woke culture" is a creation of "Big Tech," and that it serves to protect the industry's economic monopoly "by monopolizing the ideology of the people." Asked whether he sees the problem in light of the content-moderation challenge faced by social media services, which police speech without clear, consistent rules or due process, he said not at all. "I like to tweet, so I tweet. If Apache likes to police tweets, then may they police tweets," Rodriguez replied. "The question becomes: do they really like to police tweets? Are they finding as much joy in policing tweets as I find in tweeting tweets? If so, then we are both happy and the world rejoices. If not, then how can we help Apache find joy ... For joyless people ultimately impede those that do find joy in what they do." In a subsequent message he noted he has received death threats demanding he apologize for his thoughts, and that those people always assume he's a Trump supporter. "I've never voted," he said. "I simply don't care."
Television

Amazon Prime Video Direct and the Dystopian Decision To Stop Accepting Documentaries (indiewire.com) 73

Posted by msmash from the stranger-things dept.
When Amazon made a unilateral decision in early February to stop accepting documentaries and short films via Prime Video Direct (a policy that also covers "slide shows, vlogs, podcasts, tutorials, filmed conferences, monologues, toy play, music videos, and voiceover gameplay"), the announcement also served as a quiet purge. Amazon also has been dropping long-running documentary titles from the service, with stakeholders receiving no warning or context for the decisions. From a report: Filmmakers and distributors are aghast, but Amazon Prime Video Direct seems to be egalitarian in how it treats its partners. Whether you're an individual filmmaker or an established specialty distributor, no one can ask an Amazon Prime Video Direct representative for more information; there's no one to ask. All inquiries are submitted via trouble tickets, and everyone receives the same boilerplate response via their Amazon Prime Video direct dashboards: "Unless otherwise indicated," the message says, "removed titles (or titles not selected for licensing) may not be resubmitted or appealed."

"The selections are so random, it feels like a machine is doing this and not humans," said one executive working on films impacted by the decision. "The lack of any human response adds to the frustration. It reminds me of when politicians want to cut PBS funding." Despite Amazon's dystopian approach to customer service, Prime Video Direct has been in a process of evolution from the start. When it launched in May 2016, it was positioned to lure content creators away from YouTube with bonuses and a more premium experience. Anyone could upload content to Amazon either as titles included free with Prime subscriptions (and earn a royalty) or as digital purchases or rentals. Given Amazon's massive reach, and multiple ways to make money, it was positioned as a fierce competitor in the battle for video ad dollars.
The Internet

Starlink Will Hit 300Mbps and Expand To 'Most of Earth' This Year (arstechnica.com) 138

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Starlink broadband speeds will double to 300Mbps "later this year," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter this week. SpaceX has been telling users to expect speeds of 50Mbps to 150Mbps since the beta began a few months ago. From a report: Musk also wrote that "latency will drop to ~20ms later this year." This is no surprise, as SpaceX promised latency of 20ms to 40ms during the beta and had said months ago that "we expect to achieve 16ms to 19ms by summer 2021." It sounds like the speed and latency improvements will roll out around the same time as when Starlink switches from beta to more widespread availability. Two weeks ago, Starlink opened preorders for service expected to be available in the second half of 2021, albeit with limited availability in each region. Reader xonen writes: Starlink has become available in my country, The Netherlands. I verified pricing -- it's the same prices in Euros as in the USA in dollars, which was to be expected due to sales taxes being about equal the difference in value between dollars and euro's, so 99 euro monthly, and 499 up front for the hardware. From the email:

Starlink is now available for order to a limited number of users in your coverage area. Placing your order now will hold your place in line for future service. Orders will be fulfilled on a first-come, first-served basis. During beta, users can expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s and latency from 20ms to 40ms in most locations over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system. There will also be brief periods of no connectivity at all. As we launch more satellites, install more ground stations and improve our networking software, data speed, latency and uptime will improve dramatically. The Starlink team will provide periodic updates on availability as we launch more satellites and expand our coverage area. Depending on your location, some orders may take 6 months or more to fulfill. To check availability for your location, visit Starlink.com and re-enter your service address. Thank you for your interest in Starlink and your continued support!

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