Author name: Kelly Newman

asahi-linux-project’s-opengl-support-on-apple-silicon-officially-surpasses-apple’s

Asahi Linux project’s OpenGL support on Apple Silicon officially surpasses Apple’s

Apple, Apple M1, Apple M2, Apple silicon, asahi linux, OpenGL, Tech, vulkan / /

who needs metal? —

Newest driver supports the latest versions of OpenGL and OpenGL ES.

–

Slowly but surely, the Asahi Linux team is getting Linux up and running on Apple Silicon Macs.

Enlarge / Slowly but surely, the Asahi Linux team is getting Linux up and running on Apple Silicon Macs.

Apple/Asahi Linux

For around three years now, the team of independent developers behind the Asahi Linux project has worked to support Linux on Apple Silicon Macs, despite Apple’s total lack of involvement. Over the years, the project has gone from a “highly unstable experiment” to a “surprisingly functional and usable desktop operating system.” Even Linus Torvalds has used it to run Linux on Apple’s hardware.

The team has been steadily improving its open source, standards-conformant GPU driver for the M1 and M2 since releasing them in December 2022, and today, the team crossed an important symbolic milestone: The Asahi driver’s support for the OpenGL and OpenGL ES graphics have officially passed what Apple offers in macOS. The team’s latest graphics driver fully conforms with OpenGL version 4.6 and OpenGL ES version 3.2, the most recent version of either API. Apple’s support in macOS tops out at OpenGL 4.1, announced in July 2010.

Developer Alyssa Rosenzweig wrote a detailed blog post that announced the new driver, which had to pass “over 100,000 tests” to be deemed officially conformant. The team achieved this milestone despite the fact that Apple’s GPUs don’t support some features that would have made implementing these APIs more straightforward.

“Regrettably, the M1 doesn’t map well to any graphics standard newer than OpenGL ES 3.1,” writes Rosenzweig. “While Vulkan makes some of these features optional, the missing features are required to layer DirectX and OpenGL on top. No existing solution on M1 gets past the OpenGL 4.1 feature set… Without hardware support, new features need new tricks. Geometry shaders, tessellation, and transform feedback become compute shaders. Cull distance becomes a transformed interpolated value. Clip control becomes a vertex shader epilogue. The list goes on.”

Now that the Asahi GPU driver supports the latest OpenGL and OpenGL ES standards—released in 2017 and 2015, respectively—the work turns to supporting the low-overhead Vulkan API on Apple’s hardware. Vulkan support in macOS is limited to translation layers like MoltenVK, which translates Vulkan API calls to Metal ones that the hardware and OS can understand.

Apple’s OpenGL support has been stuck at the 4.1 level since macOS 10.9 Mavericks was released in 2013. Since then, the company has shifted its focus to its proprietary Metal graphics API, which, like DirectX 12 and Vulkan, is a “low-overhead” API meant to reduce the performance overhead sometimes associated with older APIs like OpenGL. But despite declaring OpenGL officially deprecated in 2018, Apple has left its existing OpenGL implementation alone since then, never updating it but also maintaining support even as it has transitioned from Intel’s processors to its own CPUs and GPUs.

Rosenzweig’s blog post didn’t give any specific updates on Vulkan except to say that the team was “well on the road” to supporting it. In addition to supporting native Linux apps, supporting more graphics APIs in Asahi will allow the operating system to take better advantage of software like Valve’s Proton, which already has a few games written for x86-based Windows PCs running on Arm-based Apple hardware.

Though there are still things that don’t work, Fedora Asahi Remix is surprisingly polished and supports a lot of the hardware available in most M1 and M2 Macs—including the webcam, speakers, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and graphics acceleration. Other features, like Thunderbolt, running displays over USB-C, the system’s built-in microphone, and the Touch ID fingerprint sensors, remain non-functional. Asahi’s most recent update blog post, published in mid-January, highlighted HDMI support, support for DRM-protected websites via Google’s proprietary Widevine package, Touchbar support for the handful of Apple Silicon Macs that use one, and more.

As for the newest wave of M3 Macs, Asahi developer Hector Martin said in October 2023 that basic support for the newest chips would take “at least six months.” Among other things, the team will need time to support the M3 GPU in their drivers; the team also relies primarily on Mac mini models for development, and the M3 Mac mini doesn’t exist yet.

Asahi Linux project’s OpenGL support on Apple Silicon officially surpasses Apple’s Read More »

deep-rock-galactic:-survivor-is-a-fine-entry-point-into-the-auto-shooting-depths

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is a fine entry point into the auto-shooting depths

auto-shooter, autoshooter, autoshooters, deep rock galactic, gaming, ghost ship games, steam early access, vampire survivors / /

Vampirock Stonevivors —

This fleshed-out Early Access version could convert first-timers to the genre.

–

Bugs overwhelming a player in Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor

Enlarge / Your author actually made it out of this, but not that much further.

Kevin Purdy/Ghost Ship Games

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor started as a talk over a beer between two development teams, according to Søren Lundgaard, CEO of Ghost Ship Games. Ghost Ship, ramping up its publishing arm after the multi-year success of Deep Rock Galactic, gave Funday Games license to graft its quirky dwarven corporate dystopia onto the auto-shooting likes of Vampire Survivors.

I’m glad they had that beer, and even more glad they’ve offered up the resulting game for Early Access on Windows PC via Steam (and Steam Deck, and Linux via Proton). Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is my favorite of the genre I sometimes call “strategic walking.” I am, of course, biased by the flavor and familiarity with Deep Rock Galactic (DRG). But the elements of DRG Funday has put into DRG: Survivor makes for a fun, cohesive game, one that’s easy to play in sessions and not be overwhelmed—mentally, at least. Bug-wise, you are absolutely going to get trampled.

Launch trailer for Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor.

We peeked at Survivor in June, and it’s gotten a lot of polish since then, along with entirely new character classes, biomes, and upgrade mechanics. The basic mechanics remain the same: You complete mission objectives and mine resources while an increasing horde of insectoids chases you, and your weapons automatically fire at them. Some weapons shoot in wide patterns, some blast up close, and others do things like hone in on the creature with the most hit points. The big decisions you make are where do you move, so as to pick up dropped experience points and angle your shooting, and what do you pick for your upgrades when they come available.

You start out with only one class available, the relatively balanced Scout, and no bonuses. As you accrue resources, experience, and hit achievements, you unlock permanent upgrades to things like damage, item pick-up radius, mining and walking speed, and toughness. Play a couple of sessions, and you can see the build possibilities come to life, with things like critical hits and reload speeds able to be pushed far beyond balance.

That’s just the one class, though. Each of DRG‘s classes gets a spot in DRG: Survivor, and what they do in that first-person game translates surprisingly well to an overhead shooter. Diggers move through stone and harvest more quickly and have their weapons oriented toward protecting them from behind. Gunners, well, shoot a lot, which means a different kind of movement so that you’re looping back on enemy hordes and mowing them down from the front. Engineers set up turrets and shepherd the mobs through them. Each one offers strategic variants, too, like the Digger that leaves trails of acid behind them as they burrow.

  • A moment where your author had things relatively under control. Which way should he go next?

    Kevin Purdy/Ghost Ship Games

  • An Engineer in a magma-ridden world.

    Ghost Ship Games

  • The Digger, choosing acid as his keep-away tool.

    Ghost Ship Games

  • Inside a multi-level mission, you’ll make choices between levels about how to spend your gold and Nitra.

    Kevin Purdy/Ghost Ship Games

  • Between runs, you can make universal upgrades to your characters, upping their damage, defense, criticals, speed, and other values.

    Kevin Purdy/Ghost Ship Games

  • The stat layout from one of my earlier runs.

    Kevin Purdy/Ghost Ship Games

Having played a few other auto-shooters since my first run with DRG: Survivor, what I appreciate most is how the procedural landscapes and inherent greed of mining challenge your thinking and reaction times. Rather than looping around a seemingly endless space, DRG: Survivor makes you think about the dynamics of a giant crowd of bugs that will always take the shortest route to get to you. I felt a bit like an ant in a glass-paned farm sometimes, digging into stone to avoid getting pinched or eking out an escape on the very edge of a map.

There are other DRG-related change-ups, too, like an upgrade station that will only land if you clear the space for it, and the familiar secondary resource objectives you can try and collect on each map. And there’s the core trade-off of stopping to chip away at a valuable resource with your pickax while the aliens not only grow in number but slowly get more powerful as time wears on.

I’ve only had a few hours with DRG: Survivor, but I’m already eager to see what kinds of builds can be unlocked through some combination of luck and stubborn upgrade choices. While there is likely tuning and some fan-requested upgrades to be added on (and the developer promises more capabilities for your robot assistant), it feels quite full for an Early Access release, and especially at $9. It feels like a good first risk/reward decision to make before the game puts hundreds of smaller ones on you.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is a fine entry point into the auto-shooting depths Read More »

musk’s-x-sold-checkmarks-to-hezbollah-and-other-terrorist-groups,-report-says

Musk’s X sold checkmarks to Hezbollah and other terrorist groups, report says

elon musk twitter, elon musk x, Policy / /
A photo of Elon Musk next to the logo for X, the social network formerly known as Twitter,.

Getty Images | NurPhoto

A watchdog group’s investigation found that terrorist group Hezbollah and other US-sanctioned entities have accounts with paid checkmarks on X, the Elon Musk-owned social network that still resides at the twitter.com domain.

The Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a nonprofit that is critical of Big Tech companies, said in a report today that “X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, is providing premium, paid services to accounts for two leaders of a US-designated terrorist group and several other organizations sanctioned by the US government.”

After buying Twitter for $44 billion, Musk started charging users for checkmarks that were previously intended to verify that an account was notable and authentic. “Along with the checkmarks, which are intended to confer legitimacy, X promises various perks for premium accounts, including the ability to post longer text and videos and greater visibility for some posts,” the Tech Transparency Project report noted.

The Tech Transparency Project suggests that X may be violating US sanctions. “The accounts identified by TTP include two that apparently belong to the top leaders of Lebanon-based Hezbollah and others belonging to Iranian and Russian state-run media,” the report said. “The fact that X requires users to pay a monthly or annual fee for premium service suggests that X is engaging in financial transactions with these accounts, a potential violation of US sanctions.”

Some of the accounts were verified before Musk bought Twitter, but verification was a free service at the time. Musk’s decision to charge for checkmarks means that X is “providing a premium, paid service to sanctioned entities,” which may raise “new legal issues,” the Tech Transparency Project said.

Report details 28 checkmarked accounts

Musk’s X charges $1,000 a month for a Verified Organizations subscription and last month added a basic tier for $200 a month. For individuals, the X Premium tiers that come with checkmarks cost $8 or $16 a month.

It’s possible for US companies to receive a license from the government to engage in certain transactions with sanctioned entities, but it doesn’t seem likely that X has such a license. X’s rules explicitly prohibit users from purchasing X Premium “if you are a person with whom X is not permitted to have dealings under US and any other applicable economic sanctions and trade compliance law.”

In all, the Tech Transparency Project said it found 28 “verified” accounts tied to sanctioned individuals or entities. These include individuals and groups listed by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as “Specially Designated Nationals.”

“Of the 28 X accounts identified by TTP, 18 show they got verified after April 1, 2023, when X began requiring accounts to subscribe to paid plans to get a checkmark. The other 10 were legacy verified accounts, which are required to pay for a subscription to retain their checkmarks,” the group wrote, adding that it “found advertising in the replies to posts in 19 of the 28 accounts.”

We contacted X today and will update this article if we get a comment. Our email to press@x.com triggered the standard auto-reply from press+noreply@twitter.com that says, “Busy now, please check back later.”

Update at 4: 28pm ET: After this article was published, X issued the following statement: “X has a robust and secure approach in place for our monetization features, adhering to legal obligations, along with independent screening by our payments providers. Several of the accounts listed in the Tech Transparency Report are not directly named on sanction lists, while some others may have visible account check marks without receiving any services that would be subject to sanctions. Our teams have reviewed the report and will take action if necessary. We’re always committed to ensuring that we maintain a safe, secure and compliant platform.”

Musk’s X sold checkmarks to Hezbollah and other terrorist groups, report says Read More »

us-says-ai-models-can’t-hold-patents

US says AI models can’t hold patents

AI, AI ethics, Biz & IT, copyright, machine learning, patents, US Patent and Trademark Office, USPTO / /

Robot inventors dismayed —

Inventors must be human, but there’s still a condition where AI can officially help.

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An illustrated concept of a digital brain, crossed out.

On Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published guidance on inventorship for AI-assisted inventions, clarifying that while AI systems can play a role in the creative process, only natural persons (human beings) who make significant contributions to the conception of an invention can be named as inventors. It also rules out using AI models to churn out patent ideas without significant human input.

The USPTO says this position is supported by “the statutes, court decisions, and numerous policy considerations,” including the Executive Order on AI issued by President Biden. We’ve previously covered attempts, which have been repeatedly rejected by US courts, by Dr. Stephen Thaler to have an AI program called “DABUS” named as the inventor on a US patent (a process begun in 2019).

This guidance follows themes previously set by the US Copyright Office (and agreed upon by a judge) that an AI model cannot own a copyright for a piece of media and that substantial human contributions are required for copyright protection.

Even though an AI model itself cannot be named an inventor or joint inventor on a patent, using AI assistance to create an invention does not necessarily disqualify a human from holding a patent, as the USPTO explains:

“While AI systems and other non-natural persons cannot be listed as inventors on patent applications or patents, the use of an AI system by a natural person(s) does not preclude a natural person(s) from qualifying as an inventor (or joint inventors) if the natural person(s) significantly contributed to the claimed invention.”

However, the USPTO says that significant human input is required for an invention to be patentable: “Maintaining ‘intellectual domination’ over an AI system does not, on its own, make a person an inventor of any inventions created through the use of the AI system.” So a person simply overseeing an AI system isn’t suddenly an inventor. The person must make a significant contribution to the conception of the invention.

If someone does use an AI model to help create patents, the guidance describes how the application process would work. First, patent applications for AI-assisted inventions must name “the natural person(s) who significantly contributed to the invention as the inventor,” and additionally, applications must not list “any entity that is not a natural person as an inventor or joint inventor, even if an AI system may have been instrumental in the creation of the claimed invention.”

Reading between the lines, it seems the contributions made by AI systems are akin to contributions made by other tools that assist in the invention process. The document does not explicitly say that the use of AI is required to be disclosed during the application process.

Even with the published guidance, the USPTO is seeking public comment on the newly released guidelines and issues related to AI inventorship on its website.

US says AI models can’t hold patents Read More »

google,-environmental-defense-fund-will-track-methane-emissions-from-space

Google, Environmental Defense Fund will track methane emissions from space

edf, Energy, Google, methane, Science, Sustainability / /

It’s a gas —

Satellite data + Google Maps + AI should help figure out where methane is leaking.

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computer-generated image of a satellite highlighting emissions over a small square on the globe.

Enlarge / With color, high resolution.

Google/EDF

When discussing climate change, attention generally focuses on our soaring carbon dioxide emissions. But levels of methane have risen just as dramatically, and it’s a far more potent greenhouse gas. And, unlike carbon dioxide, it’s not the end result of a valuable process; methane largely ends up in the atmosphere as the result of waste, lost during extraction and distribution.

Getting these losses under control would be one of the easiest ways to slow down greenhouse warming. But tracking methane emissions often comes from lots of smaller, individual sources. To help get a handle on all the leaks, the Environmental Defense Fund has been working to put its own methane-monitoring satellite in orbit. On Wednesday, it announced that it was partnering with Google to take the data from the satellite, make it publicly available, and tie it to specific sources.

The case for MethaneSAT

Over the course of 20 years, methane is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to greenhouse warming. And most methane in the atmosphere ultimately reacts with oxygen, producing water vapor and carbon dioxide—both of which are also greenhouse gasses. Those numbers are offset by the fact that methane levels in the atmosphere are very low, currently just under two parts per million (versus over 400 ppm for CO2). Still, levels have gone up considerably since monitoring started.

The primary source of the excess methane is the extraction and distribution of natural gas. In the US, the EPA has developed rules meant to force companies with natural gas infrastructure to find and fix leaks. (Unsurprisingly, Texas plans to sue to block this rule.) But finding leaks has turned out to be a challenge. The US has been using industry-wide estimates that turned out to be much lower than numbers based on monitoring a subset of facilities.

Globally, that sort of detailed surveying simply isn’t possible, and we don’t have the type of satellite-based instruments we need to focus on methane emissions. A researcher behind one global survey said, “We were quite disappointed because we discovered that the sensitivity of our system was pretty low.” (The survey did identify sites that were “ultra emitters” despite the sensitivity issues.)

To help identify the major sources of methane release, the Environmental Defense Fund, a US-based NGO, has spun off a project called MethaneSAT that will monitor the emissions from space. The project is backed by large philanthropic donations and has partnered with the New Zealand Space Agency. The Rocket Lab launch company will build the satellite control center in New Zealand, while SpaceX will carry the 350 kg satellite to orbit in a shared launch, expected in early March.

Once in orbit, the hardware will use methane’s ability to absorb in the infrared—the same property that causes all the problems—to track emissions globally at a resolution down below a square kilometer.

Handling the data

That will generate large volumes of data that countries may struggle to interpret. That’s where the new Google partnership will come in. Google will use the same AI capability it has developed to map features such as roads and sidewalks on satellite images but repurpose it to identify oil and gas infrastructure. Both the MethaneSAT’s emissions data and infrastructure details will be combined and made available via the company’s Google Earth service.

Top image: A view of an area undergoing oil/gas extraction. Left: a close-up of an individual drilling site. Right: Computer-generated color coding of the hardware present at the site.

Top image: A view of an area undergoing oil/gas extraction. Left: a close-up of an individual drilling site. Right: Computer-generated color coding of the hardware present at the site.

Google / EDF

The project builds off work Google has done previously by placing methane monitoring hardware on Street View photography vehicles, also in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund.

In a press briefing, Google’s Yael Maguire said that the challenge is keeping things up to date, as infrastructure in the oil and gas industry can change fairly rapidly. While he didn’t use it as an example, one illustration of that challenge was the rapid development of liquified natural gas import infrastructure in Europe in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The key question, however, is one of who’s going to use this information. Extraction companies could use it to identify the sites of leaks and fix them but are unlikely to do that in the absence of a regulatory requirement. Governments could rely on this information to take regulatory actions but will probably want some sort of independent vetting of the data before doing so. At the moment, all EDF is saying is that it’s engaging in discussions with several parties about potentially using the data.

One clear user will be the academic community, which is already using less-targeted satellite data to explore the issue of methane emissions.

Regardless, as everyone involved in the project emphasizes, getting methane under control is probably the easiest and quickest way to eliminate a bit of impending warming. And that could help countries meet emissions targets without immediately starting on some of the slower and more expensive options. So, even if no one has currently committed to using this data, they may ultimately come around—because using it to do something is better than doing nothing.

Google, Environmental Defense Fund will track methane emissions from space Read More »

backdoors-that-let-cops-decrypt-messages-violate-human-rights,-eu-court-says

Backdoors that let cops decrypt messages violate human rights, EU court says

csam, e2ee, email, end to end encryption, end-to-end, European Commission, European Court of Human Rights, European Court of Justice, European Union, Freedom of speech, Online Privacy, Policy, Private messaging, russia, telegram, Terrorism / /
Building of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (France).

Enlarge / Building of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (France).

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that weakening end-to-end encryption disproportionately risks undermining human rights. The international court’s decision could potentially disrupt the European Commission’s proposed plans to require email and messaging service providers to create backdoors that would allow law enforcement to easily decrypt users’ messages.

This ruling came after Russia’s intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service (FSS), began requiring Telegram to share users’ encrypted messages to deter “terrorism-related activities” in 2017, ECHR’s ruling said. A Russian Telegram user alleged that FSS’s requirement violated his rights to a private life and private communications, as well as all Telegram users’ rights.

The Telegram user was apparently disturbed, moving to block required disclosures after Telegram refused to comply with an FSS order to decrypt messages on six users suspected of terrorism. According to Telegram, “it was technically impossible to provide the authorities with encryption keys associated with specific users,” and therefore, “any disclosure of encryption keys” would affect the “privacy of the correspondence of all Telegram users,” the ECHR’s ruling said.

For refusing to comply, Telegram was fined, and one court even ordered the app to be blocked in Russia, while dozens of Telegram users rallied to continue challenging the order to maintain Telegram services in Russia. Ultimately, users’ multiple court challenges failed, sending the case before the ECHR while Telegram services seemingly tenuously remained available in Russia.

The Russian government told the ECHR that “allegations that the security services had access to the communications of all users” were “unsubstantiated” because their request only concerned six Telegram users.

They further argued that Telegram providing encryption keys to FSB “did not mean that the information necessary to decrypt encrypted electronic communications would become available to its entire staff.” Essentially, the government believed that FSB staff’s “duty of discretion” would prevent any intrusion on private life for Telegram users as described in the ECHR complaint.

Seemingly most critically, the government told the ECHR that any intrusion on private lives resulting from decrypting messages was “necessary” to combat terrorism in a democratic society. To back up this claim, the government pointed to a 2017 terrorist attack that was “coordinated from abroad through secret chats via Telegram.” The government claimed that a second terrorist attack that year was prevented after the government discovered it was being coordinated through Telegram chats.

However, privacy advocates backed up Telegram’s claims that the messaging services couldn’t technically build a backdoor for governments without impacting all its users. They also argued that the threat of mass surveillance could be enough to infringe on human rights. The European Information Society Institute (EISI) and Privacy International told the ECHR that even if governments never used required disclosures to mass surveil citizens, it could have a chilling effect on users’ speech or prompt service providers to issue radical software updates weakening encryption for all users.

In the end, the ECHR concluded that the Telegram user’s rights had been violated, partly due to privacy advocates and international reports that corroborated Telegram’s position that complying with the FSB’s disclosure order would force changes impacting all its users.

The “confidentiality of communications is an essential element of the right to respect for private life and correspondence,” the ECHR’s ruling said. Thus, requiring messages to be decrypted by law enforcement “cannot be regarded as necessary in a democratic society.”

Martin Husovec, a law professor who helped to draft EISI’s testimony, told Ars that EISI is “obviously pleased that the Court has recognized the value of encryption and agreed with us that state-imposed weakening of encryption is a form of indiscriminate surveillance because it affects everyone’s privacy.”

Backdoors that let cops decrypt messages violate human rights, EU court says Read More »

lawsuit-against-prime-video-ads-shows-perils-of-annual-streaming-subscriptions

Lawsuit against Prime Video ads shows perils of annual streaming subscriptions

Amazon, amazon prime video, culture, streaming, Tech / /
Priyanka CHopra (left) and Richard Madden (right) in the AMazon Prime Video original series Citadel.

Enlarge / Priyanka Chopra (left) and Richard Madden (right) in the Prime Video original series Citadel.

Streaming services like Amazon Prime Video promote annual subscriptions as a way to save money. But long-term commitments to streaming companies that are in the throes of trying to determine how to maintain or achieve growth typically end up biting subscribers in the butt—and they’re getting fed up.

As first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, a lawsuit seeking class-action certification [PDF] hit Amazon on February 9. The complaint centers on Amazon showing ads with Prime Video streams, which it started doing for US subscribers in January unless customers paid an extra $2.99/month. This approach differed from how other streaming services previously introduced ads: by launching a new subscription plan with ads and lower prices and encouraging subscribers to switch.

A problem with this approach, though, as per the lawsuit, is that it meant that people who signed up for an annual subscription to Prime Video before Amazon’s September 2023 announcement about ads already paid for a service that’s different from what they expected.

And that’s not the only risk people face when opting-in to a yearlong relationship with streaming services these days.

Paying extra “for something they already paid for”

The lawsuit recently filed against Prime Video names California resident Wilbert Napoleon as a plaintiff and argues that Amazon’s advertisements for Prime Video made “reasonable consumers” think that they would get ad-free movie and TV-show streaming for the duration of their subscription.

The lawsuit reads:

Reasonable consumers expect that, if you purchase a subscription with ad-free streaming of movies and tv shows, that the ad-free streaming for movies and tv shows is available for the duration of the purchased subscription.

… however, Plaintiff and class members’ reasonable expectations were not met. Instead of receiving a subscription that included ad-free streaming of [TV] shows and movies, they received something worth less.

Napoleon bought an annual subscription to Prime Video in June 2023, per the court filings. The lawsuit accuses Amazon of falsely advertising Prime Video.

“Subscribers must now pay extra to get something that they already paid for,” the lawsuit says.

The idea of expectations not being met is common for streaming customers. That said, the lawsuit hasn’t gotten far enough yet where we should expect big changes to Prime Video or financial penalties for Amazon. Changing the user experience mid-deal is aggravating for customers, but Prime Video’s terms of use claim that Amazon maintains the right to diminish the value of Prime Video:

Offers and pricing for subscriptions (also referred to at times as memberships), the subscription services, the extent of available Subscription Digital Content, and the specific titles available through subscription services, may change over time and by location without notice (except as may be required by applicable law).

But there’s still a broader point to be made around streaming services trying to lure people into yearlong commitments knowing that the product they offer today might drastically change over the next 12 months.

Amazon, for example, announced that it would bring commercials to Prime Video in September and didn’t confirm when it would introduce ads until December, about a month ahead of the changes. Yet, Amazon reportedly had plans to bring ads to the service as early as June, per a report from The Wall Street Journal that cited anonymous “people familiar with the situation.” Despite these reported plans to alter the user experience significantly, Amazon continued to sell annual subscriptions to Prime Video. For months, people were committing to something that they expected would include commercial-free viewing, which used to be a popular draw of Prime Video compared to rival streaming services.

Prime Video also seemingly didn’t give a heads-up that it was removing Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support unless subscribers agreed to pay $2.99 more per month for an ad-free plan.

Amazon declined to comment on this story. Lawyers for the lawsuit filed against Amazon didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Lawsuit against Prime Video ads shows perils of annual streaming subscriptions Read More »

mozilla-lays-off-60-people,-wants-to-build-ai-into-firefox

Mozilla lays off 60 people, wants to build AI into Firefox

AI, Firefox, mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Tech / /

Please just make a browser —

Memo details layoffs, “strategic corrections,” and a desire for “trustworthy” AI.

–

Mozilla lays off 60 people, wants to build AI into Firefox

Mozilla got a new “interim” CEO just a few days ago, and the first order of business appears to be layoffs. Bloomberg was the first to report that the company is cutting about 60 jobs, or 5 percent of its workforce. A TechCrunch report has a company memo that followed these layoffs, detailing one product shutdown and a “scaling back” of a few others.

Mozilla started as the open source browser/email company that rose from the ashes of Netscape. Firefox and Thunderbird have kept on trucking since then, but the mozilla.org/products page is a great example of what the strategy has been lately: “Firefox is just the beginning!” reads the very top of the page; it then goes on to detail a lot of projects that aren’t in line with Mozilla’s core work of making a browser. There’s Mozilla Monitor (a data breach checker), Mozilla VPN, Pocket (a news reader app), Firefox Relay (for making burner email accounts), and Firefox Focus, a fork of Firefox with a privacy focus.

That’s not even a comprehensive list of recent Mozilla products. From 2017–2020, there was “Firefox Send,” an encrypted file transfer service, and a VR-focused “Firefox Reality” browser that lasted from 2018 to 2022. In 2022, Mozilla launched a $35 million venture capital fund called Mozilla Ventures. Not all Mozilla side-projects are losers—the memory-safe Rust programming language was spun out of Mozilla in 2020 and has seen rapid adoption in the Linux kernel and Android.

Mozilla is a tiny company that competes with some of the biggest tech companies in the world—Apple, Google, and Microsoft. It’s also very important to the web as a whole, as Firefox is the only browser that can’t trace its lineage back to Apple and WebKit (Chrome’s Blink engine is a WebKit fork. Microsoft Edge is a Chromium fork). So you would think focusing on Firefox would be a priority, but the company continually struggles with focus.

The Mozilla Corporation gets about 80 percent of its revenue from Google—also its primary browser competitor—via a search deal, so Mozilla isn’t exactly a healthy company. These non-browser projects could be seen as a search for a less vulnerable revenue stream, but none have put a huge dent in the bottom line.

TechCrunch managed to get an internal company memo that details a few “strategic corrections” for the myriad Mozilla products. Mozilla has a “mozilla.social” Mastodon instance that the memo says originally intended to “effectively shape the future of social media,” but the company now says the social group will get a “much smaller team.” Mozilla says it will also “reduce our investments” in Mozilla VPN, Firefox Relay, and something the memo calls “Online Footprint Scrubber” (that sounds like Mozilla Monitor?). It’s also shutting down “Mozilla Hubs,” which was a 3D virtual world it launched in 2018—that’s right, there was also a metaverse project! The memo says that “demand has moved away from 3D virtual worlds” and that “this is impacting all industry players.” The company is also cutting jobs at “MozProd,” its infrastructure team.

While chasing the trends of VR and metaverse didn’t work out, Mozilla now wants to chase another hot new trend: AI! The memo says: “In 2023, generative AI began rapidly shifting the industry landscape. Mozilla seized an opportunity to bring trustworthy AI into Firefox, largely driven by the Fakespot acquisition and the product integration work that followed. Additionally, finding great content is still a critical use case for the Internet. Therefore, as part of the changes today, we will be bringing together Pocket, Content, and the AI/ML teams supporting content with the Firefox Organization. More details on the specific organizational changes will follow shortly.” Mozilla paid an undisclosed sum in 2023 to buy a company called Fakespot, which uses AI to identify fake product reviews. Specifically citing “generative AI” leads us to believe the company wants to build a chatbot or webpage summarizer.

The TechCrunch report interprets the memo, saying, “It now looks like Mozilla may refocus on Firefox once more,” but the memo does not give an affirmative statement on “Firefox the browser” being important or seeing additional investments. In 2020, the company had another round of layoffs and said it wanted to “refocus the Firefox organization on core browser growth,” but nothing seems to have come of that. Firefox’s market share is about 3 percent of all browsers, and that number goes down every year.

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Why walking around in public with Vision Pro makes no sense

Apple, augmented reality, Features, Mixed Reality, Reviews, spatial computing, Tech, vision pro, visionOS / /

  • A close-up look at the Vision Pro from the front.

    Samuel Axon

  • The Apple Vision Pro with AirPods Pro, Magic Keyboard, Magic Trackpad, and an Xbox Series X|S controller.

    Samuel Axon

  • You can see the front-facing cameras that handle passthrough video just above the downward-facing cameras that read your hand gestures here.

    Samuel Axon

  • There are two buttons for Vision Pro, both on the top.

    Samuel Axon

  • This is the infamous battery pack. It’s about the size of an iPhone (but a little thicker) and has a USB-C port for external power sources.

    Samuel Axon

  • There are two displays inside the Vision Pro, one for each eye. Each offers just under 4K resolution.

    Samuel Axon

  • Apple offers several variations of the light seal to fit different face shapes.

    Samuel Axon

If you’ve spent any time in the tech-enthusiast corners of Instagram of TikTok over the past few weeks, you’ve seen the videos: so-called tech bros strolling through public spaces with confidence, donning Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro headset on their faces while gesturing into the air.

Dive into the comments on those videos and you’ll see a consistent ratio: about 20 percent of the commenters herald this as the future, and the other 80 mock it with vehement derision. “I’ve never had as much desire to disconnect from reality as this guy does,” one reads.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going all-in on trying the Vision Pro in all sorts of situations to see which ones it suits. Last week, I talked about replacing a home theater system with it—at least when traveling away from home. Today, I’m going over my experience trying to find a use for it out on the streets of Chicago.

I’m setting out to answer a few questions here: Does it feel weird wearing it in public spaces? Will people judge you or react negatively when you wear it—and if so, will that become less common over time? Does it truly disconnect you from reality, and has Apple succeeded in solving virtual reality’s isolationist tendencies? Does it provide enough value to be worth wearing?

As it turns out, all these questions are closely related.

The potential of AR in the wild

I was excited about the Vision Pro in the lead-up to its launch. I was impressed by the demo I saw at WWDC 2023, even though I was aware that it was offered in an ideal setting: a private, well-lit room with lots of space to move around.

Part of my excitement was about things I didn’t see in that demo but that I’ve seen augmented reality developers explore in smartphone augmented reality (AR) and niche platforms like HoloLens and Xreal. Some smart folks have already produced a wide variety of neat tech demos showing what you can do with a good consumer AR headset, and many of the most exciting ideas work outside the home or office.

I’ve seen demonstrations of real-time directions provided with markers along the street while you walk around town, virtual assistant avatars guiding you through the airport, menus and Yelp reviews overlaid on the doors of every restaurant on a city strip, public art projects pieced together by multiple participants who each get to add an element to a virtual statue, and much more.

Of course, all those ideas—and most others for AR—make a lot more sense for unintrusive glasses than they do for something that is essentially a VR headset with passthrough. Nonetheless, I was hoping to get a glimpse at that eventuality with the Vision Pro.

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A new generation of storm chasers takes on Mother Nature in Twisters trailer

culture, Entertainment, film trailers, Twisters, Universal Pictures / /

“If you feel it, chase it!” —

“You don’t face your fears, you ride ’em.”

–

Daisy Edgar-Jones, Anthony Ramos, and Glen Powell star in Twisters, a standalone film inspired by the 1996 classic.

Like so many others, I adored the 1996 film Twister, now a classic in the “disaster porn” genre and still in frequent weekend and holiday rotation on broadcast and cable networks nearly 30 years later. We’re finally getting a follow-up with Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung (Minari). Universal Pictures dropped the official trailer during the Super Bowl on Sunday.

(Some spoilers for the original film below.)

Twister rocked the 1996 box office, racking up $495 million worldwide and snagging an Oscar nomination for special effects. Critics’ reactions were more mixed. The film earned well-deserved  praise for its special effects and sheer entertainment value.  Who can forget the flying cows, the jaw-dropping CGI twisters, and that classic scene when a tornado suddenly rips through a drive-in movie screen right in the middle of The Shining? But others criticized the thin character development and dismissed the film as “loud,” “dumb,” and “a triumph of technology over storytelling and the actor’s craft.”

Was the film often ridiculously over-the-top (especially that final encounter with the F5)? Yes indeed. Were the supporting characters a bit one-note? Granted, especially Cary Elwes’ smarmy corporate-funded rival scientist. But Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton had genuine chemistry as estranged storm-chasing spouses Jo and Bill; their relationship was the heart of the film and clearly resonated with viewers.

And yes, the scientific elements were exaggerated for the big screen, although flying cows (plus pigs, horses, and various vehicles) are absolutely a thing during real tornadoes. The fictional sensing system DOROTHY was inspired by a 1970s instrument to measure real-time conditions of tornadoes called TOTO (Totable Tornado Observatory).  And so many young people loved the movie so much they wanted to become tornado scientists themselves. The number of meteorological majors in the US grew by 10 percent in the 1990s, and the University of Oklahoma doubled its meteorology program. That’s pretty impressive for supposedly loud and dumb mindless entertainment.

  • Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), Javi (Anthony Ramos), and Tyler (Glen Powell) are the next generation of storm chasers.

    YouTube/Universal Pictures

  • Tyler is clearly the Cary Elwes character this time around.

    YouTube/Universal Pictures

  • A storm is brewing

    YouTube/Universal Pictures

  • We’ve still got the storm tracking system, DOROTHY

    YouTube/Universal Pictures

  • Fly, little sensors, fly! Into the tornado!

    YouTube/Universal Pictures

  • Now that’s what we call a twister.

    YouTube/Universal Pictures

  • Kate gives her best “OMG, twister!” face

    YouTube/Universal Pictures

  • Double the fun for our intrepid storm chasers

    YouTube/Universal Pictures

  • “We got twins. TWINS!!!”

    YouTube/Universal Pictures

Rumors were circulating back in 2020 about a possible remake of Twister, with Joseph Kosinski directing, but that had dissipated by the following year. Hunt then proposed a sequel, with herself writing and directing, but the studio nixed that idea. (Apparently Hunt killed off her own character, Jo, in the draft script. Bold move.) Eventually the project morphed into Twisters, centered on the daughter of Hunt’s and Paxton’s characters from the original. It’s now being touted as a standalone sequel, however, so that connection might have fallen by the wayside during development. Per the official premise:

[Daisy] Edgar-Jones stars as Kate Cooper, a former storm chaser haunted by a devastating encounter with a tornado during her college years who now studies storm patterns on screens safely in New York City. She is lured back to the open plains by her friend, Javi (Anthony Ramos) to test a groundbreaking new tracking system. There, she crosses paths with Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), the charming and reckless social-media superstar who thrives on posting his storm-chasing adventures with his raucous crew, the more dangerous the better. As storm season intensifies, terrifying phenomena never seen before are unleashed, and Kate, Tyler and their competing teams find themselves squarely in the paths of multiple storm systems converging over central Oklahoma in the fight of their lives.

The cast also includes Maura Tierney, Brandon Perea, Daryl McCormack, Sasha Lane, Kiernan Shipka, Nik Dodani, Harry Hadden-Paton, David Corenswet, Tunde Adebimpe, and Katy O’Brian.

The trailer itself is just a series of spectacularly frenetic storm chasing sequences interspersed with a bit of human interaction, such as a few romantic sparks between Kate and Tyler the exhibitionist YouTuber (at least Tyler seems to feeling it). Screenwriter Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) consulted with all kinds of scientific experts while working on the screenplay and the storyline incorporates more of the causes and effects of climate change as it pertains to more frequent and violent weather—including tornadoes.

Twisters seems to have all the same requisite elements of its predecessor, including the DOROTHY system—an unusual choice for something meant to be a completely original story—but it still can’t help feeling at best like a pale reflection. And the performances come off as much more shrill and over-the-top, at least in the trailer. The cast is game enough, but screaming “Twins! We got TWINS!” when a tornado splits in two is far less effective than Hunt’s Jo casually glancing at random livestock flying past their truck and blithely commenting, “Cow.” Even Bill’s citified fiancee (Jami Gertz) only managed a wide-eyed “I gotta go, we got cows” over her cell phone. Sometimes less is more.

Then again, the original 1996 trailer for Twister captured nothing of that film’s charm, humor, and sheer entertainment value. We’ll have to wait and see if Chung can pull it off; he’s an able director and an interesting choice to helm this particular project. And who knows? Maybe Twisters will inspire another new generation of storm chasers and climate scientists.

Twisters hits theaters on July 19, 2024.

Listing image by YouTube/Universal Pictures

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