Author name: Shannon Garcia

broadcom-execs-say-vmware-price,-subscription-complaints-are-unwarranted 

Broadcom execs say VMware price, subscription complaints are unwarranted 

Biz & IT, Broadcom, Europe, European Comission, vmware / /

Broadcom’s defense —

Industry groups aren’t giving up hope for government intervention.

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vmware by Broadcom logo

Broadcom has made controversial changes to VMware since closing its acquisition of the virtualization brand in late November. Broadcom executives are trying to convince VMware customers and partners that they’ll eventually see the subscription-fueled light. But discontent remains, as illustrated by industry groups continuing to urge regulators to rein-in what they claim are unfair business practices.

Since Broadcom announced that it would no longer sell perpetual VMware licenses as of December 2023, there have been complaints about rising costs associated with this model. In March, a VMware User Group Town Hall saw attendees complaining of price jumps of up to 600 percent, The Register reported. Small managed service providers that had worked with VMware have reported seeing the price of business rising tenfold, per a February ServeTheHome report.

Broadcom execs defend subscription model

However, Sylvain Cazard, president of Broadcom Software for Asia-Pacific, reportedly told The Register that complaints about higher prices are unwarranted since customers using at least two components of VMware’s flagship Cloud Foundation will end up paying less and because the new pricing includes support, which VMware didn’t include before.

The Register reported that Cazard, as well as Paul Turner, VP of product management at VMware, and Prashanth Shenoy, VP of product and technical marketing for the Cloud, Infrastructure, Platforms, and Solutions group at VMware, all agreed that people who think moving to subscriptions is unfair aren’t considering that VMware waited longer than many in the industry to implement the model.

This is an argument Broadcom has made before. Broadcom CEO and President Hock Tan called subscription-only licensing “the industry standard” in a March blog post defending VMware’s changes.

Pushing for government intervention

Despite Broadcom execs’ efforts to convince people that its changes are reasonable and will eventually end up financially benefitting stakeholders, there’s still effort from industry groups to get federal regulators involved with how Broadcom is running VMware.

As reported by Dutch IT magazine Computable on Friday, representatives from Beltug, a Belgian CIO trade group; Le Cigref, a French network of companies interested in digital technology; the CIO Platform Nederland association for CIOs and CDOs; and VOICE e.V., a German association for IT decisionmakers, sent a letter [PDF] to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Commissioner Thierry Breton on Thursday to “strongly condemn” Broadcom’s businesses practices and ask the commission to take action.

The letter complains of “sudden changes in policy and practices” that Broadcom issued to VMware that the authors claim led to: “steeply increased prices; non-fulfillment of previous contractual agreements; disallowing reselling of licenses; refusing to maintain security conditions for perpetual licenses; (re)bundling of licenses, leading to higher costs; a shake up of the ecosystem of VMware resellers and partners”; and “a loss of knowledge.”

The letter reads, in part:

In the context of the VMware takeover and the change in business strategy, Broadcom’s contempt and brutality towards its customers are unprecedented in the recent history of the digital economy in Europe. In view of its scale and Broadcom’s impact, this case cannot be left exclusively to competition law technicians.

The letter also discusses concerns about Broadcom driving business to the public cloud with negative consequences for the European economy.

“This will further strengthen the position and power of the hyperscalers, which will have a profound impact on the entire market,” the letter says.

It’s worth noting that this group has written letters to the commission before and that the commission approved Broadcom’s VMware acquisition in July 2023 after an antitrust probe. However, Broadcom was recently contacted by antitrust authorities in Europe regarding claims that it was changing VMware software licensing and support conditions, MLex reported on Wednesday.

Regardless of whether a government body steps in, longtime VMware users and partners are reconsidering whether the company’s vision aligns with their own businesses. Meanwhile, rivals are pushing hard to capitalize on the disruption happening at VMware.

Cloud Foundation updates

Broadcom has a couple of big updates planned for VMware’s Cloud Foundation that, execs told The Register, will help people understand the value of the new VMware.

In July, Broadcom plans to update Cloud Foundation so that a single license key can be used for all components. The update is also supposed to heighten OAuth support as the company seeks to bring single sign-on to all VMware products and add a VMware NSX overlay. Turner told The Register that the changes are examples of how Broadcom is trying to make VMware Cloud Foundation easier to implement than before Broadcom took over.

In the first half of 2025, VMware plans to release the VCF 9 update, which will be “the fullest expression of Broadcom’s vision for product integration,” Shenoy told The Register. Turner claimed that because of the update, users with multiple VMware products would no longer need individual silos for discrete storage.

Broadcom execs say VMware price, subscription complaints are unwarranted  Read More »

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Users say Google’s VPN app “breaks” the Windows DNS settings

Google, Tech / /

You know who you’re signing up with —

Does Google’s app really need to constantly reset all Windows network interfaces?

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Users say Google’s VPN app “breaks” the Windows DNS settings

Aurich / Thinkstock

Google offers a VPN via its “Google One” monthly subscription plan, and while it debuted on phones, a desktop app has been available for Windows and Mac OS for over a year now. Since a lot of people pay for Google One for the cloud storage increase for their Google accounts, you might be tempted to try the VPN on a desktop, but Windows users testing out the app haven’t seemed too happy lately. An open bug report on Google’s GitHub for the project says the Windows app “breaks” the Windows DNS, and this has been ongoing since at least November.

A VPN would naturally route all your traffic through a secure tunnel, but you’ve still got to do DNS lookups somewhere. A lot of VPN services also come with a DNS service, and Google is no different. The problem is that Google’s VPN app changes the Windows DNS settings of all network adapters to always use Google’s DNS, whether the VPN is on or off. Even if you change them, Google’s program will change them back.

Most VPN apps don’t work this way, and even Google’s Mac VPN program doesn’t work this way. The users in the thread (and the ones emailing us) expect the app, at minimum, to use the original Windows settings when the VPN is off. Since running a VPN is often about privacy and security, users want to be able to change the DNS away from Google even when the VPN is running.

Changing the DNS can result in several problems for certain setups. As users in the thread point out, some people, especially those using a VPN, want an encrypted DNS setup, and Google’s VPN program will just turn this off. It can break custom filtering setups and will prevent users from accessing local network IPs, like a router configuration page or corporate intranet pages. It will also make it impossible to log in to a captive portal, which you often see on public Wi-Fi at a hotel, airport, or coffee shop.

Besides that behavior, the thread is full of all sorts of reports of Google’s VPN program getting screwy with the Windows DNS settings. Several users say Google’s VPN app frequently resets the DNS settings of all network adapters, even if they change them after the initial install sets them to 8.8.8.8. For instance, one reply from ryanzimbauser says: “This program has absolutely no business changing all present NICs to a separate DNS on the startup of my computer while the program is not set to ‘Launch app after computer starts.’ This recent change interfered with my computer’s ability to access a network implementing a private DNS filter. This has broken my trust and I will not be reinstalling this program until this is remedied.”

Several user reports say that even after uninstalling the Google VPN, the DNS settings don’t revert to what they used to be. Maybe this is more of a Windows problem than a Google problem, but a lot of users have trouble changing the settings away from 8.8.8.8 through the control panel after uninstalling. They are resorting to registry changes, PowerShell scripts, or the “reset network settings” button.

Google employee Ryan Lothian responded to the thread, saying:

Hey folks, thank you for reporting this behaviour.

To protect users privacy, the Google One VPN deliberately sets DNS to use Google’s DNS servers. This prevents a nefarious DNS server (that might be set by DHCP) compromising your privacy. Visit https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy to learn about the limited logging performed by Google DNS.

We think this is a good default for most users. However, we do recognize that some users might want to have their own DNS, or have the DNS revert when VPN disconnects. We’ll consider adding this to a future release of the app.

It’s pretty rare for Google, the web and Android company, to make a Windows program. There’s Chrome, the Drive syncing app, Google Earth Pro, this VPN app, and not too much else. You can find it by going to the Google One website, clicking “Benefits” in the sidebar, and then “View Details” under the VPN box, where you’ll find an exceedingly rare Google Windows executable.

If you want a VPN and care about privacy, there are probably better places to go than Google. The company can still see all the websites you’re visiting via its DNS servers, and while the VPN data might be private, Google’s DNS holds onto your web history for up to 48 hours and is subject to subpoenas. There are several accusations in the thread of Google changing DNS for data harvesting purposes, but if you’re concerned about that, maybe don’t do business with one of the world’s biggest user-tracking companies.

Users say Google’s VPN app “breaks” the Windows DNS settings Read More »

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Apple wouldn’t let Jon Stewart interview FTC Chair Lina Khan, TV host claims

AI, Apple, Apple TV, culture, ftc, jon stewart, lina khan, paramount, Policy, Tech, The Daily Show / /

The Problem with Jon Stewart —

Tech company also didn’t want a segment on Stewart’s show criticizing AI.

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The Daily Show host Jon Stewart’s interview with FTC Chair Lina Khan. The conversation about Apple begins around 16: 30 in the video.

Before the cancellation of The Problem with Jon Stewart on Apple TV+, Apple forbade the inclusion of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan as a guest and steered the show away from confronting issues related to artificial intelligence, according to Jon Stewart.

This isn’t the first we’ve heard of this rift between Apple and Stewart. When the Apple TV+ show was canceled last October, reports circulated that he told his staff that creative differences over guests and topics were a factor in the decision.

The New York Times reported that both China and AI were sticking points between Apple and Stewart. Stewart confirmed the broad strokes of that narrative in a CBS Morning Show interview after it was announced that he would return to The Daily Show.

“They decided that they felt that they didn’t want me to say things that might get me into trouble,” he explained.

Stewart’s comments during his interview with Khan yesterday were the first time he’s gotten more specific publicly.

“I’ve got to tell you, I wanted to have you on a podcast, and Apple asked us not to do it—to have you. They literally said, ‘Please don’t talk to her,'” Stewart said while interviewing Khan on the April 1, 2024, episode of The Daily Show.

Khan appeared on the show to explain and evangelize the FTC’s efforts to battle corporate monopolies both in and outside the tech industry in the US and to explain the challenges the organization faces.

She became the FTC chair in 2021 and has since garnered a reputation for an aggressive and critical stance against monopolistic tendencies or practices among Big Tech companies like Amazon and Meta.

Stewart also confirmed previous reports that AI was a sensitive topic for Apple. “They wouldn’t let us do that dumb thing we did in the first act on AI,” he said, referring to the desk monologue segment that preceded the Khan interview in the episode.

The segment on AI in the first act of the episode mocked various tech executives for their utopian framing of AI and interspersed those claims with acknowledgments from many of the same leaders that AI would replace many people’s jobs. (It did not mention Apple or its leadership, though.)

Stewart and The Daily Show‘s staff also included clips of current tech leaders suggesting that workers be retrained to work with or on AI when their current roles are disrupted by it. That was followed by a montage of US political leaders promising to retrain workers after various technological and economic disruptions over the years, with the implication that those retraining efforts were rarely as successful as promised.

The segment effectively lampooned some of the doublespeak about AI, though Stewart stopped short of venturing any solutions or alternatives to the current path, so it mostly just prompted outrage and laughs.

The Daily Show host Jon Stewart’s segment criticizing tech and political leaders on the topic of AI.

Apple currently uses AI-related technologies in its software, services, and devices, but so far it has not launched anything tapping into generative AI, which is the new frontier in AI that has attracted worry, optimism, and criticism from various parties.

However, the company is expected to roll out its first generative AI features as part of iOS 18, a new operating system update for iPhones. iOS 18 will likely be detailed during Apple’s annual developer conference in June and will reach users’ devices sometime in the fall.

Listing image by Paramount

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Expedition uses small underwater drone to discover 100-year-old shipwreck

Archaeology, maritime history, photogrammetry, robotics, Science, shipwrecks, underwater drones / /

The sunken place —

The underwater drone Hydrus can capture georeferenced 4K video and images simultaneously.

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3D model of a 100-year-old shipwreck off the western coast of Australia. Credit: Daniel Adams, Curtin University HIVE.

A small underwater drone called Hydrus has located the wreckage of a 100-year-old coal hulk in the deep waters off the coast of western Australia. Based on the data the drone captured, scientists were able to use photogrammetry to virtually “rebuild” the 210-foot ship into a 3D model (above). You can explore an interactive 3D rendering of the wreckage here.

The use of robotic submersibles to locate and explore historic shipwrecks is well established. For instance, researchers relied on remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to study the wreckage of the HMS Terror, Captain Sir John S. Franklin‘s doomed Arctic expedition to cross the Northwest Passage in 1846. In 2007, a pair of brothers (printers based in Norfolk) discovered the wreck of the Gloucester, which ran aground on a sandbank off the coast of Norfolk in 1682 and sank within the hour. Among the passengers was James Stuart, Duke of York and future King James II of England, who escaped in a small boat just before the ship sank.

In 2022, the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust and National Geographic announced the discovery of British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton‘s ship Endurance. In 1915, Shackleton and his crew were stranded for months on the Antarctic ice after the ship was crushed by pack ice and sank into the freezing depths of the Weddell Sea. The wreckage was found nearly 107 years later, 3,008 meters down, roughly four miles (6.4 km) south of the ship’s last recorded position. The wreck was in pristine condition partly because of the lack of wood-eating microbes in those waters. In fact, the lettering “ENDURANCE” was clearly visible in shots of the stern.

And just last year, an ROV was used to verify the discovery of the wreckage of a schooner barge called Ironton, which collided with a Great Lakes freighter called Ohio in Lake Huron’s infamous “Shipwreck Alley” in 1894. The wreck was so well-preserved in the frigid waters of the Great Lakes that its three masts were still standing and its rigging still attached. That discovery could help resolve unanswered questions about the ship’s final hours.

Deployment of one of Advanced Navigation's Micro Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV).

Enlarge / Deployment of one of Advanced Navigation’s Micro Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV).

Advanced Navigation

According to Advanced Navigation, there are some 3 million undiscovered shipwrecks around the world—1,819 recorded wrecks lying off the coast of Western Australia alone. That includes the Rottnest ship graveyard just southwest of Rottnest Island, with a seabed some 50 to 200 meters below sea level (164 to 656 feet). The island is known for the number of ships wrecked near its shore since the 17th century. The Rottnest graveyard is more of a dump site for scuttling obsolete ships, at least 47 of which would be considered historically significant.

However, this kind of deep ocean exploration can be both time-consuming and expensive, particularly at depths of more than 50 meters (164 feet). Hydrus was designed to reduce the cost of this kind of ocean exploration significantly. One person can deploy the drone because of its compact size, so there is no need for large vessels or complicated launch systems. And Hydrus can capture georeferenced 4K video and still images at the same time. Once this latest expedition realized they had found a shipwreck, they were able to deploy a pair of the drones to take a complete survey in just five hours.

Hydrus captured this footage of the 210-foot wreck of a 19th-century coal hulk. Credit: Advanced Navigation

Ross Anderson, curator of the Western Australia Museum, was able to identify the wreck as an iron coal hulk once used in Freemantle Port to service steamships, probably built in the 1860s–1890s and scuttled in the graveyard sometime in the 1920s. The geolocation data provided to scientists at Curtin University HIVE enabled them to use photogrammetry to convert that data into a 3D digital model. “It can’t be overstated how much this structure in data assists with constraining feature matching and reducing the processing time, especially in large datasets,” Andrew Woods, a professor at the university, said in a statement.

The expedition team’s next target using the Hydrus technology is the wreck of the luxury passenger steamship SS Koombana, which disappeared somewhere off Port Hedland en route to Broome during a tropical cyclone in 1912, with 150 on board presumed to have perished. The only wreckage recovered at the time was part of a starboard bow planking, a stateroom door, a panel from the promenade deck, and a few air tanks. There were a couple of reports in the 1980s of “magnetic anomalies” in the seabed off Bedout Island, part of the route the Koombana would have taken. But despite several deep-water expeditions in the early 2010s, to date the actual shipwreck has not been found.

Listing image by Advanced Navigation

Expedition uses small underwater drone to discover 100-year-old shipwreck Read More »

new-catan-game-has-overpopulation,-pollution,-fossil-fuels,-and-clean-energy

New Catan game has overpopulation, pollution, fossil fuels, and clean energy

ars cardboard, benjamin teuber, Board games, Catan, gaming, klaus teuber, Settlers of Catan / /

The Unsettling of Catan —

If pollution levels go too high, the game ends for everyone. It’s a fun escape!

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Catan: New ENergies box in a green hill landscape with nearby wind turbines

Enlarge / If you didn’t know what “New Energies” meant, this promotional image puts a windmill on it.

Catan GmbH

In Klaus Teuber’s Catan (previously Settlers of Catan), the player is tasked with starting from scratch and building as much as they can: the largest army, the most cities, the best sea ports for easy trading, even the longest road. It’s all beneficial, and the only real drawback is that you have to prioritize certain things over others. There wasn’t direct conflict or battle, but there were scarce resources, and the savviest player could corner the market for them.

Catan was released in 1995. Now, in 2024, Teuber’s son, Benjamin Teuber, is releasing Catan: New Energies, which he developed with his late father. While it is “rooted in classic Catan mechanics of trading, harvesting, and building,” there are some decidedly 2024 issues at play now that the Vikings have settled in for more than a millennia.

As detailed by Benjamin Teuber in a Fast Company interview, New Energies will see players:

  • Choosing between cheaper fossil fuel power or research-intensive renewables
  • Limited in resources as pollution grows
  • Ending the game entirely if pollution hits a certain level
  • Countering pollution with “green tokens” from renewable building
  • Dealing with the effects worldwide climate change exacts on smaller islands
  • Realizing that “As in real life, the most sustainable player does not always win.”

It is, however, a hopeful game. The game comes by its “meaningful, evidence-based message” as sincerely as is possible for a mass-produced product. New Energies is printed and assembled in the US, contains no plastic, and uses sustainably sourced wood and paper materials. It’s available now for preorder at $70 and due in the spring of 2024.

  • Catan: New Energies with all pieces and boards laid out

    Catan GmbH

  • A player board from Catan: New Energies. The brown pieces are drawn more frequently at the beginning, but gradually transition to green tokens.

    Catan GmbH

  • Dev cards from Catan: New Energies.

    Catan GmbH

As with Catan games in general, the game’s competition for land and resources is balanced by the presence of other players, whose actions, appetite for trading, and even collaboration can affect outcomes.

“Very often at the end of the game, you see everybody completely freaking out, like, ‘Oh man, we’ve got to save the world!’” Benjamin Teuber told Fast Company. “But the pollution is already here, like what did you expect? And then maybe people start working together, and that’s a really nice effect that makes you think ‘if we do all work together and all did our share, then it can work, and all it cost is that we grow a little bit slower.’”

If you haven’t played a Catan game in a while or missed most of the variants and alternate settings, New Energies might provide a distinctly fresh experience. The artwork, by Ian O’Toole (On Mars, Rococo, Fit to Print), is distinct from the original. And the new systems look like they’ll provide some new layers of strategy for those who might feel too familiar with the core Catan concepts.

At a minimum, you can test your friends’ patience and sense of humor by playing as a game-ending cheap coal villain. Global footprint marker? Environmental inspector? Not your problem.

This post was updated at 3: 30 p.m. Eastern to note the game’s overall hopeful nature, which might not have been apparent at first glance.

New Catan game has overpopulation, pollution, fossil fuels, and clean energy Read More »

medicare-forced-to-expand-forms-to-fit-10-digit-bills—a-penny-shy-of-$100m

Medicare forced to expand forms to fit 10-digit bills—a penny shy of $100M

car T-cell therapies, CMS, drug pricing, health, medicare, Pharmaceutical industry, Science / /

more zeros —

Previously, some doctors had to divide bills by 10 and submit 10 claims to get costs covered.

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High angle close-up view still life of an opened prescription bottles with pills and medication spilling onto ae background of money, U.S. currency with Lincoln Portrait.

In a disturbing sign of the times, Medicare this week implemented a change to its claims-processing system that adds two extra digits to money amounts, expanding the fields from eight digits to 10. The change now allows for billing and payment totals of up to $99,999,999.99, or a penny shy of $100 million.

In a notice released last month, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) explained the change, writing, “With the increase of Part B procedures/treatments exceeding the $999,999.99 limitation, CMS is implementing the expansion of display screens for monetary amount fields related to billing and payment within [the Fiscal Intermediary Shared System (FISS)] to accept and process up to 10 digits ($99,999,999.99).”

The FISS is the processing system used by hospitals and doctors’ offices to process Medicare claims.

Stat news, which first reported the update, noted that it’s not the first time CMS has struggled to make room for ever-increasing drug and treatment prices in its claims processing systems. In 2022, the agency had to give technical advice to doctors submitting claims for chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, which is used to treat blood cancers. CAR T-cell therapies run around half a million dollars, or eight digits. But in a different claims processing system, called the Multi-Carrier System (MCS), the money amount fields only included seven digits. In that case, rather than expanding the field, the CMS requested that doctors divide the bill by either five or 10, depending on the size, and then bill Medicare five or 10 separate times for a single claim.

CAR T-cell therapies aren’t the only treatments with eye-popping price points these days. Just last month, the drug Lenmeldy, a lifesaving gene therapy for a tragic childhood condition, set the current record for the highest drug price in the world at $4.25 million. Before Lenmeldy arrived, the hemophilia B drug Hemgenix held that record, with its price set at $3.5 million.

While these advanced therapies come with mind-boggling prices, prescription drug costs in the US are a problem across the board. In a KFF poll published in August, 28 percent of US adults reported difficulty affording their prescription medication, while 31 percent reported not taking their medicine as prescribed in the past year due to the cost. A federal report from 2022 found that Americans pay nearly three times more for prescription drugs than people in 33 other wealthy countries.

Medicare forced to expand forms to fit 10-digit bills—a penny shy of $100M Read More »

carmakers-give-up-on-software-that-avoids-kangaroos

Carmakers give up on software that avoids kangaroos

animal collisions, automated systems, Cars, driver safety, kangaroos / /

Hopping madly —

Australia is turning to virtual fences to cut down on car-kangaroo impacts.

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Once they go airborne, collision avoidance software can't make sense of kangaroos.

Enlarge / Once they go airborne, collision avoidance software can’t make sense of kangaroos.

Shane Williams is always on the lookout for dead kangaroos. She keeps a can of red spray paint and a pillowcase in her car, just in case she finds one on the side of the road.

When Williams spots a roo, she hops out of her car to check for an orphaned joey, which might still be in its now-dead mother’s pouch. She then sprays the adult with a large pink cross so drivers will know the body has been searched. If Williams, the founder of Bridgetown Wildlife Rescue, finds a baby roo, she’ll hang it up in a pillowcase inside the car for the ride home. Sometimes, she said, when the animals are too small to generate their own heat, “you just put ‘em straight down your top.”

Williams has had plenty of opportunities to refine her technique, as kangaroos are one of Australia’s biggest traffic threats.

Wildlife hazards

Australia’s National Roads and Motorist’s Association estimated that over 12,000 of its insurance claims from 2018 were from kangaroo and wallaby collisions, accidents which cost upward of $5,000 AUD on average.

Over the past 20 years, car companies have pivoted from the old strategies of structurally reinforcing cars to designing prevention technologies that avoid crashes altogether. Car companies and researchers have spent years trying to create systems to detect or deter the animals. But so far, marsupials have presented a nearly impossible tech challenge, leaving communities to come up with alternative solutions to keep roos away from busy roads.

One issue is that collision-prevention systems for large wildlife were originally designed with a very different animal in mind: moose. Wildlife collision technology began in earnest due to increasingly prevalent moose crashes in Nordic countries. These crashes are serious, and if one occurs, the sheer weight of the animal—which is sometimes over 1,200 pounds—causes extensive damage to vehicle, moose, and human.

To mitigate these brutal impacts, Magnus Gens, a master’s vehicle engineering student at KTH Royal Institute of Technology partnered with Saab, a Swedish car company, to investigate how its cars could keep drivers safe in wildlife collisions. For his thesis, Gens built a life-sized moose dummy—crafted from 116 bright red rubber disks—to test on Saabs and Volvos. The dummy mimicked lethal moose accidents, which are especially dangerous when the mammal’s body mass rolls directly into (and through) the car’s windshield.

Saab’s participation in the project and continued wildlife-testing protocols initiated its reputation as a moose-proof vehicle manufacturer, while Gens won a long-belated Ig Nobel Prize for his research last year.

Volvo, however, was the first to market with a Large Animal Detection System, which debuted in 2016. It’s unique because it accurately detects and brakes for mammals when a driver doesn’t have time to respond manually. The system is equipped with a camera and radar that track how far away an animal is by using the ground as a reference point. The program can detect moose, elk, horses, and deer. But it can’t figure out kangaroos.

Completely irrational animals

That’s because kangaroos are completely irrational animals, said David Pickett, Volvo Australia’s technical lead. In 2015, Pickett was a part of the Volvo team that tried to develop the world’s first kangaroo detection and avoidance system by a major car manufacturer.

Pickett and a research team from Volvo headquarters in Sweden traveled to Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve near Canberra, Australia, where they spent a week driving up and down winding roads, watching their detection system attempt to account for kangaroos.

“We were able to drive through the Tidbinbilla, looking past and filming what the car saw, and look at the way the car would sort of react,” Pickett said. “Well, the car wasn’t reacting.”

It quickly became clear that ground detection wouldn’t work for animals with such a hoppy disposition. They look entirely different in full flight than when resting, and they’re fast. They jump in unpredictable ways, maneuvering mid-air to confuse and outrun predators.

Carmakers give up on software that avoids kangaroos Read More »

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Trash from the International Space Station may have hit a house in Florida

Florida, international space station, NASA, Science, Space, space debris, space junk / /
This cylindrical object, a few inches in size, fell through the roof of Alejandro Otero's home in Florida last month.

Enlarge / This cylindrical object, a few inches in size, fell through the roof of Alejandro Otero’s home in Florida last month.

A few weeks ago, something from the heavens came crashing through the roof of Alejandro Otero’s home, and NASA is on the case.

In all likelihood, this nearly two-pound object came from the International Space Station. Otero said it tore through the roof and both floors of his two-story house in Naples, Florida.

Otero wasn’t home at the time, but his son was there. A Nest home security camera captured the sound of the crash at 2: 34 pm local time (19: 34 UTC) on March 8. That’s an important piece of information because it is a close match for the time—2: 29 pm EST (19: 29 UTC)—that US Space Command recorded the reentry of a piece of space debris from the space station. At that time, the object was on a path over the Gulf of Mexico, heading toward southwest Florida.

This space junk consisted of depleted batteries from the ISS, attached to a cargo pallet that was originally supposed to come back to Earth in a controlled manner. But a series of delays meant this cargo pallet missed its ride back to Earth, so NASA jettisoned the batteries from the space station in 2021 to head for an unguided reentry.

Otero’s likely encounter with space debris was first reported by WINK News, the CBS affiliate for southwest Florida. Since then, NASA has recovered the debris from the homeowner, according to Josh Finch, an agency spokesperson.

Engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center will analyze the object “as soon as possible to determine its origin,” Finch told Ars. “More information will be available once the analysis is complete.”

Ars reported on this reentry when it happened on March 8, noting that most of the material from the batteries and the cargo carrier would have likely burned up as they plunged through the atmosphere. Temperatures would have reached several thousand degrees, vaporizing most of the material before it could reach the ground.

The entire pallet, including the nine disused batteries from the space station’s power system, had a mass of more than 2.6 metric tons (5,800 pounds), according to NASA. Size-wise, it was about twice as tall as a standard kitchen refrigerator. It’s important to note that objects of this mass, or larger, regularly fall to Earth on guided trajectories, but they’re usually failed satellites or spent rocket stages left in orbit after completing their missions.

In a post on X, Otero said he is waiting for communication from “the responsible agencies” to resolve the cost of damages to his home.

Hello. Looks like one of those pieces missed Ft Myers and landed in my house in Naples.

Tore through the roof and went thru 2 floors. Almost his my son.

Can you please assist with getting NASA to connect with me? I’ve left messages and emails without a response. pic.twitter.com/Yi29f3EwyV

— Alejandro Otero (@Alejandro0tero) March 15, 2024

If the object is owned by NASA, Otero or his insurance company could make a claim against the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act, according to Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi.

“It gets more interesting if this material is discovered to be not originally from the United States,” she told Ars. “If it is a human-made space object which was launched into space by another country, which caused damage on Earth, that country would be absolutely liable to the homeowner for the damage caused.”

This could be an issue in this case. The batteries were owned by NASA, but they were attached to a pallet structure launched by Japan’s space agency.

Trash from the International Space Station may have hit a house in Florida Read More »

openai-drops-login-requirements-for-chatgpt’s-free-version

OpenAI drops login requirements for ChatGPT’s free version

AI, AI assistants, AI models, Anthropic, Antrhopic Claude, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, Claude 3, Google, Google Gemini, GPT-3.5, GPT-4, GPT-4-turbo, large language models, machine learning, openai / /

free as in beer? —

ChatGPT 3.5 still falls far short of GPT-4, and other models surpassed it long ago.

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A glowing OpenAI logo on a blue background.

Benj Edwards

On Monday, OpenAI announced that visitors to the ChatGPT website in some regions can now use the AI assistant without signing in. Previously, the company required that users create an account to use it, even with the free version of ChatGPT that is currently powered by the GPT-3.5 AI language model. But as we have noted in the past, GPT-3.5 is widely known to provide more inaccurate information compared to GPT-4 Turbo, available in paid versions of ChatGPT.

Since its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT has transformed over time from a tech demo to a comprehensive AI assistant, and it’s always had a free version available. The cost is free because “you’re the product,” as the old saying goes. Using ChatGPT helps OpenAI gather data that will help the company train future AI models, although free users and ChatGPT Plus subscription members can both opt out of allowing the data they input into ChatGPT to be used for AI training. (OpenAI says it never trains on inputs from ChatGPT Team and Enterprise members at all).

Opening ChatGPT to everyone could provide a frictionless on-ramp for people who might use it as a substitute for Google Search or potentially gain new customers by providing an easy way for people to use ChatGPT quickly, then offering an upsell to paid versions of the service.

“It’s core to our mission to make tools like ChatGPT broadly available so that people can experience the benefits of AI,” OpenAI says on its blog page. “For anyone that has been curious about AI’s potential but didn’t want to go through the steps to set up an account, start using ChatGPT today.”

When you visit the ChatGPT website, you're immediately presented with a chat box like this (in some regions). Screenshot captured April 1, 2024.

Enlarge / When you visit the ChatGPT website, you’re immediately presented with a chat box like this (in some regions). Screenshot captured April 1, 2024.

Benj Edwards

Since kids will also be able to use ChatGPT without an account—despite it being against the terms of service—OpenAI also says it’s introducing “additional content safeguards,” such as blocking more prompts and “generations in a wider range of categories.” What exactly that entails has not been elaborated upon by OpenAI, but we reached out to the company for comment.

There might be a few other downsides to the fully open approach. On X, AI researcher Simon Willison wrote about the potential for automated abuse as a way to get around paying for OpenAI’s services: “I wonder how their scraping prevention works? I imagine the temptation for people to abuse this as a free 3.5 API will be pretty strong.”

With fierce competition, more GPT-3.5 access may backfire

Willison also mentioned a common criticism of OpenAI (as voiced in this case by Wharton professor Ethan Mollick) that people’s ideas about what AI models can do have so far largely been influenced by GPT-3.5, which, as we mentioned, is far less capable and far more prone to making things up than the paid version of ChatGPT that uses GPT-4 Turbo.

“In every group I speak to, from business executives to scientists, including a group of very accomplished people in Silicon Valley last night, much less than 20% of the crowd has even tried a GPT-4 class model,” wrote Mollick in a tweet from early March.

With models like Google Gemini Pro 1.5 and Anthropic Claude 3 potentially surpassing OpenAI’s best proprietary model at the moment —and open weights AI models eclipsing the free version of ChatGPT—allowing people to use GPT-3.5 might not be putting OpenAI’s best foot forward. Microsoft Copilot, powered by OpenAI models, also supports a frictionless, no-login experience, but it allows access to a model based on GPT-4. But Gemini currently requires a sign-in, and Anthropic sends a login code through email.

For now, OpenAI says the login-free version of ChatGPT is not yet available to everyone, but it will be coming soon: “We’re rolling this out gradually, with the aim to make AI accessible to anyone curious about its capabilities.”

OpenAI drops login requirements for ChatGPT’s free version Read More »

microsoft-splits-up-the-teams-and-office-apps-worldwide,-following-eu-split

Microsoft splits up the Teams and Office apps worldwide, following EU split

Biz & IT, microsoft, microsoft 365, Microsoft office, Microsoft Teams, office, Teams / /

different teams —

Changes may save a bit of money for people who want Office apps without Teams.

– Updated

Teams is being decoupled from the other Office apps worldwide, six months after Microsoft did the same thing for the EU.

Enlarge / Teams is being decoupled from the other Office apps worldwide, six months after Microsoft did the same thing for the EU.

Microsoft/Andrew Cunningham

Months after unbundling the apps in the European Union, Microsoft is taking the Office and Teams breakup worldwide. Reuters reports that Microsoft will begin selling Teams and the other Microsoft 365 apps to new commercial customers as separate products with separate price tags beginning today.

“To ensure clarity for our customers, we are extending the steps we took last year to unbundle Teams from M365 and O365 in the European Economic Area and Switzerland to customers globally,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. “Doing so also addresses feedback from the European Commission by providing multinational companies more flexibility when they want to standardize their purchasing across geographies.”

The unbundling is a win for other team communication apps like Slack and videoconferencing apps like Zoom, both of which predate Teams but haven’t had the benefits of the Office apps’ huge established user base.

The separation follows an EU regulatory investigation that started in July of 2023, almost exactly three years after Slack initially filed a complaint alleging that Microsoft was “abusing its market dominance to extinguish competition in breach of European Union competition law.”

In August of 2023, Microsoft announced that it would be unbundling the apps in the EU and Switzerland in October. Bloomberg reported in September that Zoom had met with EU and US Federal Trade Commission regulators about Microsoft, further ratcheting up regulatory pressure on Microsoft.

In October, Microsoft European Government Affairs VP Nanna-Louise Linde described the unbundling and other moves as “proactive changes that we hope will start to address these concerns in a meaningful way,” though the EU investigation is ongoing, and the company may yet be fined. Linde also wrote that Microsoft would allow third-party apps like Zoom and Slack to integrate more deeply with the Office apps and that it would “enable third-party solutions to host Office web applications.”

Microsoft has put up a blog post detailing its new pricing structure here—for now, the changes only affect the Microsoft 365 plans for the Business, Enterprise, and Frontline versions of Microsoft 365. Consumer, Academic, US Government, and Nonprofit editions of Microsoft 365 aren’t changing today and will still bundle Teams as they did before.

Current Office/Microsoft 365 Enterprise customers who want to keep using the Office apps and Teams together can continue to subscribe to both at their current prices. New subscribers to the Enterprise versions of Microsoft 365/Office 365 can pay $5.25 per user per month for Teams, whether they’re buying Teams as standalone software or adding it on top of a Teams-free Office/Microsoft 365 subscription.

For the Business and Frontline Microsoft 365 versions, you can either buy the version with Teams included for the same price as before, or choose a new Teams-less option that will save you a couple of dollars per user per month. For example, the Teams-less version of Microsoft 365 Business Standard costs $10.25 per user per month, compared to $12.50 for the version that includes Teams.

Updated April 1, 2024, at 4: 12 pm to add more details about pricing and a link to Microsoft’s official blog post about the announcement; also added a statement from a Microsoft spokesperson.

Microsoft splits up the Teams and Office apps worldwide, following EU split Read More »

discord-starts-down-the-dangerous-road-of-ads-this-week

Discord starts down the dangerous road of ads this week

ads, discord, gaming, Social Media, Tech / /

Sponsored Quests —

Discord’s first real foray into ads seems minimally intrusive.

– Updated

The Discord logo on a funky cyber-background.

Discord

Discord had long been strongly opposed to ads, but starting this week, it’s giving video game makers the ability to advertise to its users. The introduction of so-called Sponsored Quests marks a notable change from the startup’s previous business model, but, at least for now, it seems much less intrusive than the ads shoved into other social media platforms, especially since Discord users can choose not to engage with them.

Discord first announced Sponsored Quests on March 7, with Peter Sellis, Discord’s SVP of product, writing in a blog post that users would start seeing them in the “coming weeks.” Sponsored Quests offer PC gamers in-game rewards for getting friends to watch a stream of them playing through Discord. Discord senior product communications manager Swaleha Carlson confirmed to Ars Technica that Sponsored Quests launch this week.

Discord shared this image in March as an example of the new type of ads.

Enlarge / Discord shared this image in March as an example of the new type of ads.

The goal is for video games to get exposure to more gamers, serving as a form of marketing. On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that it viewed a slide from a slideshow Discord shows to game developers regarding the ads that reads: “We’ll get you in front of players. And those players will get you into their friend groups.”

Sellis told WSJ that Discord will target ads depending on users’ age, geographic location data, and gameplay. The ads will live on the bottom-left of the screen, but users can opt out of personalized promotions for Quests that are based on activity or data shared with Discord, Swaleha Carlson, senior product communications manager at Discord, told Ars Technica.

“Users may still see Quests, however, if they navigate to their Gift Inventory and/or through contextual entry points like a user’s friends’ activity. They’ll also have the option to hide an in-app promotion for a specific Quest or game they’re not interested in,” she said.

“Users may still see Quests, however, if they navigate to their Gift Inventory and/or through contextual entry points like a user’s friends’ activity. They’ll also have the option to hide an in-app promotion for a specific Quest or game they’re not interested in. “

Discord already tested the ads in May with Lucasfilm Games and Epic Games. Discord users were able to receive Star Wars-themed gear in Fortnite for getting a friend to watch them play Fortnite on PC for at least 15 minutes.

Jason Citron, Discord co-founder and CEO, told Bloomberg in March that the company hopes that one day “every game will offer Quests on Discord.”

Discord used to be anti-ads

It may be a nuisance for users to have to disable personalized promotion for Sponsored Quests when they never asked for them, but it should bring long-term users at least some comfort that their data purportedly doesn’t have to contribute to the marketing. However, it’s unclear if Discord may one day change this. The fact that the platform is implementing ads at all is somewhat surprising. Discord named its avoidance of advertising as one of its key differentiators from traditional social media platforms as recently as late January.

In March 2021, Citron told WSJ that Discord had eschewed ads until that point because ads would be intrusive, considering Discord’s purpose of instant back-and-forth communication and people’s general distaste for viewing ads and having their data shared with other companies.

“We really believe we can build products that make Discord more fun and that people will pay for them. It keeps our incentives aligned,” Citron told WSJ at the time.

That same year, Citron, in response to a question about why being ad-free is important to Discord, told NPR: “We believe that people’s data is their data and that people should feel comfortable and safe to have conversations and that their data is not going to be used against them in any way that is improper.”

Sponsored Quests differs from other types of ads that would more obviously disrupt Discord users’ experiences, such as pop-up ads or ads viewed alongside chat windows.

A tight-rope to walk

Beyond Sponsored Quests, Discord, which launched in 2015, previously announced that it would start selling sponsored profile effects and avatar decorations in the Discord Shop. In March, Discord’s Sellis said this would arrive in the “coming weeks.” Discord is also trying to hire more than 12 people to work in ad sales, WSJ said Saturday, citing anonymous “people familiar with [Discord’s] plans.”

Discord’s Carlson declined to comment to Ars on whether or not Discord plans to incorporate other types of ads into Discord. She noted that Sponsored Quests “are currently in the pilot phase” and that the company will “continue to iterate based on what we learn.”

In 2021, Discord enjoyed a nearly three-times revenue boost that it attributed to subscription sales for Nitro, which adds features like HD video streaming and up to 500MB uploads. In March, Citron told Bloomberg that Discord has more than 200 million monthly active users and that the company will “probably” go public eventually.

The publication, citing unnamed “people with knowledge of the matter,” also reported that Discord makes over $600 million in annualized revenue. The startup has raised over $1 billion in funding and is reported to have over $700 million in cash. However, the company reportedly isn’t profitable. It also laid off 17 percent of staffers, or 170 workers, in January.

Meanwhile, ads are the top revenue generator for many other social media platforms, such as Reddit, which recently went public.

While Discord’s first real ads endeavor seems like it will have minimal impact on users who aren’t interested in them, it brings the company down a tricky road that it hasn’t previously navigated. A key priority should be ensuring that any form of ads doesn’t disrupt the primary reasons people like using Discord. As it stands, Sponsored Quests might already put off some users.

“I don’t want my friendships to be monetized or productized in any way,” Zack Mohsen, a reported long-time user and computer hardware engineer based in Seattle, told WSJ.

Updated April 1, 2024 at 5: 32 p.m. ET to add information and comment from Discord. 

Discord starts down the dangerous road of ads this week Read More »

google-agrees-to-delete-incognito-data-despite-prior-claim-that’s-“impossible”

Google agrees to delete Incognito data despite prior claim that’s “impossible”

chrome incognito, data privacy, Google, google incognito, Policy / /

Deleting files —

What a lawyer calls “a historic step,” Google considers not that “significant.”

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Google agrees to delete Incognito data despite prior claim that’s “impossible”

To settle a class-action dispute over Chrome’s “Incognito” mode, Google has agreed to delete billions of data records reflecting users’ private browsing activities.

In a statement provided to Ars, users’ lawyer, David Boies, described the settlement as “a historic step in requiring honesty and accountability from dominant technology companies.” Based on Google’s insights, users’ lawyers valued the settlement between $4.75 billion and $7.8 billion, the Monday court filing said.

Under the settlement, Google agreed to delete class-action members’ private browsing data collected in the past, as well as to “maintain a change to Incognito mode that enables Incognito users to block third-party cookies by default.” This, plaintiffs’ lawyers noted, “ensures additional privacy for Incognito users going forward, while limiting the amount of data Google collects from them” over the next five years. Plaintiffs’ lawyers said that this means that “Google will collect less data from users’ private browsing sessions” and “Google will make less money from the data.”

“The settlement stops Google from surreptitiously collecting user data worth, by Google’s own estimates, billions of dollars,” Boies said. “Moreover, the settlement requires Google to delete and remediate, in unprecedented scope and scale, the data it improperly collected in the past.”

Google had already updated disclosures to users, changing the splash screen displayed “at the beginning of every Incognito session” to inform users that Google was still collecting private browsing data. Under the settlement, those disclosures to all users must be completed by March 31, after which the disclosures must remain. Google also agreed to “no longer track people’s choice to browse privately,” and the court filing said that “Google cannot roll back any of these important changes.”

Notably, the settlement does not award monetary damages to class members. Instead, Google agreed that class members retain “rights to sue Google individually for damages” through arbitration, which, users’ lawyers wrote, “is important given the significant statutory damages available under the federal and state wiretap statutes.”

“These claims remain available for every single class member, and a very large number of class members recently filed and are continuing to file complaints in California state court individually asserting those damages claims in their individual capacities,” the court filing said.

While “Google supports final approval of the settlement,” the company “disagrees with the legal and factual characterizations contained in the motion,” the court filing said. Google spokesperson José Castañeda told Ars that the tech giant thinks that the “data being deleted isn’t as significant” as Boies represents, confirming that Google was “pleased to settle this lawsuit, which we always believed was meritless.”

“The plaintiffs originally wanted $5 billion and are receiving zero,” Castañeda said. “We never associate data with users when they use Incognito mode. We are happy to delete old technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalization.”

While Castañeda said that Google was happy to delete the data, a footnote in the court filing noted that initially, “Google claimed in the litigation that it was impossible to identify (and therefore delete) private browsing data because of how it stored data.” Now, under the settlement, however, Google has agreed “to remediate 100 percent of the data set at issue.”

Mitigation efforts include deleting fields Google used to detect users in Incognito mode, “partially redacting IP addresses,” and deleting “detailed URLs, which will prevent Google from knowing the specific pages on a website a user visited when in private browsing mode.” Keeping “only the domain-level portion of the URL (i.e., only the name of the website) will vastly improve user privacy by preventing Google (or anyone who gets their hands on the data) from knowing precisely what users were browsing,” the court filing said.

Because Google did not oppose the motion for final approval, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is expected to issue an order approving the settlement on July 30.

Google agrees to delete Incognito data despite prior claim that’s “impossible” Read More »