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amc-to-pay-$8m-for-allegedly-violating-1988-law-with-use-of-meta-pixel

AMC to pay $8M for allegedly violating 1988 law with use of Meta Pixel

AMC, facebook, free speech, Google, hidive, Meta, Online Privacy, Policy, shudder, streaming services, sundancenow, Twitter, video privacy protection act, vppa, X / /

Stream like no one is watching —

Proposed settlement impacts millions using AMC apps like Shudder and AMC+.

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AMC to pay $8M for allegedly violating 1988 law with use of Meta Pixel

On Thursday, AMC notified subscribers of a proposed $8.3 million settlement that provides awards to an estimated 6 million subscribers of its six streaming services: AMC+, Shudder, Acorn TV, ALLBLK, SundanceNow, and HIDIVE.

The settlement comes in response to allegations that AMC illegally shared subscribers’ viewing history with tech companies like Google, Facebook, and X (aka Twitter) in violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA).

Passed in 1988, the VPPA prohibits AMC and other video service providers from sharing “information which identifies a person as having requested or obtained specific video materials or services from a video tape service provider.” It was originally passed to protect individuals’ right to private viewing habits, after a journalist published the mostly unrevealing video rental history of a judge, Robert Bork, who had been nominated to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan.

The so-called “Bork Tapes” revealed little—other than that the judge frequently rented spy thrillers and British costume dramas—but lawmakers recognized that speech could be chilled by monitoring anyone’s viewing habits. While the law was born in the era of Blockbuster Video, subscribers suing AMC wrote in their amended complaint that “the importance of legislation like the VPPA in the modern era of datamining is more pronounced than ever before.”

According to subscribers suing, AMC allegedly installed tracking technologies—including the Meta Pixel, the X Tracking Pixel, and Google Tracking Technology—on its website, allowing their personally identifying information to be connected with their viewing history.

Some trackers, like the Meta Pixel, required AMC to choose what kind of activity can be tracked, and subscribers claimed that AMC had willingly opted into sharing video names and URLs with Meta, along with a Facebook ID. “Anyone” could use the Facebook ID, subscribers said, to identify the AMC subscribers “simply by entering https://www.facebook.com/[unencrypted FID]/” into a browser.

X’s ID could similarly be de-anonymized, subscribers alleged, by using tweeterid.com.

AMC “could easily program its AMC Services websites so that this information is not disclosed” to tech companies, subscribers alleged.

Denying wrongdoing, AMC has defended its use of tracking technologies but is proposing to settle with subscribers to avoid uncertain outcomes from litigation, the proposed settlement said.

A hearing to approve the proposed settlement has been scheduled for May 16.

If it’s approved, AMC has agreed to “suspend, remove, or modify operation of the Meta Pixel and other Third-Party Tracking Technologies so that use of such technologies on AMC Services will not result in AMC’s disclosure to the third-party technology companies of the specific video content requested or obtained by a specific individual.”

Google and X did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment. Meta declined to comment.

All registered users of AMC services who “requested or obtained video content on at least one of the six AMC services” between January 18, 2021, and January 10, 2024, are currently eligible to submit claims under the proposed settlement. The deadline to submit is April 9.

In addition to distributing the $8.3 million settlement fund among class members, subscribers will receive a free one-week digital subscription.

According to AMC’s notice to subscribers (full disclosure, I am one), AMC’s agreement to avoid sharing subscribers’ viewing histories may change if the VPPA is amended, repealed, or invalidated. If the law changes to permit sharing viewing data at the core of subscribers’ claim, AMC may resume sharing that information with tech companies.

That day could come soon if Patreon has its way. Recently, Patreon asked a federal judge to rule that the VPPA is unconstitutional.

Patreon’s lawsuit is similar in its use of the Meta Pixel, allegedly violating the VPPA by sharing video views on its platform with Meta.

Patreon has argued that the VPPA is unconstitutional because it chills speech. Patreon said that the law was enacted “for the express purpose of silencing disclosures about political figures and their video-watching, an issue of undisputed continuing public interest and concern.”

According to Patreon, the VPPA narrowly prohibits video service providers from sharing video titles, but not from sharing information that people may wish to keep private, such as “the genres, performers, directors, political views, sexual content, and every other detail of pre-recorded video that those consumers watch.”

Therefore, Patreon argued, the VPPA “restrains speech” while “doing little if anything to protect privacy” and never protecting privacy “by the least restrictive means.”

That lawsuit remains ongoing, but Patreon’s position is likely to be met with opposition from experts who typically also defend freedom of speech. Experts at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, like AMC subscribers suing, consider the VPPA one of America’s “strongest protections of consumer privacy against a specific form of data collection.” And the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has already moved to convince the court to reject Patreon’s claim, describing the VPPA in a blog as an “essential” privacy protection.

“EFF is second to none in fighting for everyone’s First Amendment rights in court,” EFF’s blog said. “But Patreon’s First Amendment argument is wrong and misguided. The company seeks to elevate its speech interests over those of Internet users who benefit from the VPPA’s protections.”

AMC to pay $8M for allegedly violating 1988 law with use of Meta Pixel Read More »

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Google upstages itself with Gemini 1.5 AI launch, one week after Ultra 1.0

AI, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, Google, google ai, Google Gemini, large language model, llm, Pro 1.5, Ultra 1.0 / /

Gemini’s Twin —

Google confusingly overshadows its own pro product a week after its last major AI launch.

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The Gemini 1.5 logo

Enlarge / The Gemini 1.5 logo, released by Google.

Google

One week after its last major AI announcement, Google appears to have upstaged itself. Last Thursday, Google launched Gemini Ultra 1.0, which supposedly represented the best AI language model Google could muster—available as part of the renamed “Gemini” AI assistant (formerly Bard). Today, Google announced Gemini Pro 1.5, which it says “achieves comparable quality to 1.0 Ultra, while using less compute.”

Congratulations, Google, you’ve done it. You’ve undercut your own premiere AI product. While Ultra 1.0 is possibly still better than Pro 1.5 (what even are we saying here), Ultra was presented as a key selling point of its “Gemini Advanced” tier of its Google One subscription service. And now it’s looking a lot less advanced than seven days ago. All this is on top of the confusing name-shuffling Google has been doing recently. (Just to be clear—although it’s not really clarifying at all—the free version of Bard/Gemini currently uses the Pro 1.0 model. Got it?)

Google claims that Gemini 1.5 represents a new generation of LLMs that “delivers a breakthrough in long-context understanding,” and that it can process up to 1 million tokens, “achieving the longest context window of any large-scale foundation model yet.” Tokens are fragments of a word. The first part of the claim about “understanding” is contentious and subjective, but the second part is probably correct. OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo can reportedly handle 128,000 tokens in some circumstances, and 1 million is quite a bit more—about 700,000 words. A larger context window allows for processing longer documents and having longer conversations. (The Gemini 1.0 model family handles 32,000 tokens max.)

But any technical breakthroughs are almost beside the point. What should we make of a company that just trumpeted to the world about its AI supremacy last week, only to partially supersede that a week later? Is it a testament to the rapid rate of AI technical progress in Google’s labs, a sign that red tape was holding back Ultra 1.0 for too long, or merely a sign of poor coordination between research and marketing? We honestly don’t know.

So back to Gemini 1.5. What is it, really, and how will it be available? Google implies that like 1.0 (which had Nano, Pro, and Ultra flavors), it will be available in multiple sizes. Right now, Pro 1.5 is the only model Google is unveiling. Google says that 1.5 uses a new mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture, which means the system selectively activates different “experts” or specialized sub-models within a larger neural network for specific tasks based on the input data.

Google says that Gemini 1.5 can perform “complex reasoning about vast amounts of information,” and gives an example of analyzing a 402-page transcript of Apollo 11’s mission to the Moon. It’s impressive to process documents that large, but the model, like every large language model, is highly likely to confabulate interpretations across large contexts. We wouldn’t trust it to soundly analyze 1 million tokens without mistakes, so that’s putting a lot of faith into poorly understood LLM hands.

For those interested in diving into technical details, Google has released a technical report on Gemini 1.5 that appears to show Gemini performing favorably versus GPT-4 Turbo on various tasks, but it’s also important to note that the selection and interpretation of those benchmarks can be subjective. The report does give some numbers on how much better 1.5 is compared to 1.0, saying it’s 28.9 percent better than 1.0 Pro at “Math, Science & Reasoning” and 5.2 percent better at those subjects than 1.0 Ultra.

A table from the Gemini 1.5 technical document showing comparisons to Gemini 1.0.

Enlarge / A table from the Gemini 1.5 technical document showing comparisons to Gemini 1.0.

Google

But for now, we’re still kind of shocked that Google would launch this particular model at this particular moment in time. Is it trying to get ahead of something that it knows might be just around the corner, like OpenAI’s unreleased GPT-5, for instance? We’ll keep digging and let you know what we find.

Google says that a limited preview of 1.5 Pro is available now for developers via AI Studio and Vertex AI with a 128,000 token context window, scaling up to 1 million tokens later. Gemini 1.5 apparently has not come to the Gemini chatbot (formerly Bard) yet.

Google upstages itself with Gemini 1.5 AI launch, one week after Ultra 1.0 Read More »

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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 »

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The Super Bowl’s best and wackiest AI commercials

AI, american football, Anthropic, Biz & IT, Commercial, commercials, Football, Google, large language models, machine learning, microsoft, Super Bowl / /

Superb Owl News —

It’s nothing like “crypto bowl” in 2022, but AI made a notable splash during the big game.

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A still image from BodyArmor's 2024

Enlarge / A still image from BodyArmor’s 2024 “Field of Fake” Super Bowl commercial.

BodyArmor

Heavily hyped tech products have a history of appearing in Super Bowl commercials during football’s biggest game—including the Apple Macintosh in 1984, dot-com companies in 2000, and cryptocurrency firms in 2022. In 2024, the hot tech in town is artificial intelligence, and several companies showed AI-related ads at Super Bowl LVIII. Here’s a rundown of notable appearances that range from serious to wacky.

Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Game Day Commercial | Copilot: Your everyday AI companion.

It’s been a year since Microsoft launched the AI assistant Microsoft Copilot (as “Bing Chat“), and Microsoft is leaning heavily into its AI-assistant technology, which is powered by large language models from OpenAI. In Copilot’s first-ever Super Bowl commercial, we see scenes of various people with defiant text overlaid on the screen: “They say I will never open my own business or get my degree. They say I will never make my movie or build something. They say I’m too old to learn something new. Too young to change the world. But I say watch me.”

Then the commercial shows Copilot creating solutions to some of these problems, with prompts like, “Generate storyboard images for the dragon scene in my script,” “Write code for my 3d open world game,” “Quiz me in organic chemistry,” and “Design a sign for my classic truck repair garage Mike’s.”

Of course, since generative AI is an unfinished technology, many of these solutions are more aspirational than practical at the moment. On Bluesky, writer Ed Zitron put Microsoft’s truck repair logo to the test and saw results that weren’t nearly as polished as those seen in the commercial. On X, others have criticized and poked fun at the “3d open world game” generation prompt, which is a complex task that would take far more than a single, simple prompt to produce useful code.

Google Pixel 8 “Guided Frame” feature

Javier in Frame | Google Pixel SB Commercial 2024.

Instead of focusing on generative aspects of AI, Google’s commercial showed off a feature called “Guided Frame” on the Pixel 8 phone that uses machine vision technology and a computer voice to help people with blindness or low vision to take photos by centering the frame on a face or multiple faces. Guided Frame debuted in 2022 in conjunction with the Google Pixel 7.

The commercial tells the story of a person named Javier, who says, “For many people with blindness or low vision, there hasn’t always been an easy way to capture daily life.” We see a simulated blurry first-person view of Javier holding a smartphone and hear a computer-synthesized voice describing what the AI model sees, directing the person to center on a face to snap various photos and selfies.

Considering the controversies that generative AI currently generates (pun intended), it’s refreshing to see a positive application of AI technology used as an accessibility feature. Relatedly, an app called Be My Eyes (powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4V) also aims to help low-vision people interact with the world.

Despicable Me 4

Despicable Me 4 – Minion Intelligence (Big Game Spot).

So far, we’ve covered a couple attempts to show AI-powered products as positive features. Elsewhere in Super Bowl ads, companies weren’t as generous about the technology. In an ad for the film Despicable Me 4, we see two Minions creating a series of terribly disfigured AI-generated still images reminiscent of Stable Diffusion 1.4 from 2022. There’s three-legged people doing yoga, a painting of Steve Carell and Will Ferrell as Elizabethan gentlemen, a handshake with too many fingers, people eating spaghetti in a weird way, and a pair of people riding dachshunds in a race.

The images are paired with an earnest voiceover that says, “Artificial intelligence is changing the way we see the world, showing us what we never thought possible, transforming the way we do business, and bringing family and friends closer together. With artificial intelligence, the future is in good hands.” When the voiceover ends, the camera pans out to show hundreds of Minions generating similarly twisted images on computers.

Speaking of image synthesis at the Super Bowl, people mistook a Christian commercial created by He Gets Us, LLC as having been AI-generated, likely due to its gaudy technicolor visuals. With the benefit of a YouTube replay and the ability to look at details, the “He washed feet” commercial doesn’t appear AI-generated to us, but it goes to show how the concept of image synthesis has begun to cast doubt on human-made creations.

The Super Bowl’s best and wackiest AI commercials Read More »

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Android’s infamous January 2024 update is fixed and rolling out again

Google, Tech / /

Taking another swing at it —

The Google Play System update was pulled for breaking device storage, crashing apps.

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Google HQ.

Enlarge / Google HQ.

We’re a third of the way through February, but Android’s January 2024 Google Play System update is just now rolling out. The now-infamous update originally rolled out at the beginning of January but was pulled after it started locking users out of their phone’s local storage. Apparently, the update has been fixed and is rolling back out to devices. We were able to get it to install this morning.

The first time this update went out, some devices with multiple user accounts or work profiles experienced what Google described as “multiple apps crashing, screenshots not saving, and external storage working inconsistently.” Users described phones affected by the issue as “unusable.” Google eventually posted instructions for a manual fix on February 1, about two weeks after the update first started rolling out. These instructions were complicated, though, involving a manual process where you had to enable developer mode, download the developer tools, plug in your phone, and type in the right command prompts to delete buggy packages manually. As part of that February 1 post, Google seemed to promise to release an automated fix someday, but it has been nine days now.

Google skipped the December Play System update due to the holiday break, so this “January” update in February is the first Play System update since November. Play System updates, if you aren’t aware, are a fairly new Android update format that is separate from the OS-level system and security updates. Google created a new, super-privileged code package called an APEX Module that can house core system components like the Android RunTime or media subsystem. Google distributes these through the Play Store, allowing it to update core Android components directly without needing third-party manufacturers to do any work. It sounds great on paper, provided the updates work.

The update was the second time in four months that an automatic Android update broke some Pixel phones (for the record, one was a full OS update, the other was a Play System update). Both issues resulted in downtimes measured in weeks and “fixes” that demanded either developer-level command line work from novice users or caused data loss. Google’s track record these last four months suggests 1) it doesn’t have a reliable rollback method for buggy updates, 2) it doesn’t have adequate testing for its updates, and 3) it can’t quickly stop or repair damage caused by buggy updates. Those issues all make updating a Pixel phone a scary proposition lately.

Android’s infamous January 2024 update is fixed and rolling out again Read More »

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Alleged Pixel Fold 2 prototype shows off ugly new camera block

Google, Google Pixel, pixel fold, Tech / /

Why is Google like this —

Everything we praised in our Pixel Fold review could be removed in the sequel.

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  • The alleged Pixel Fold 2 prototype.

Google still isn’t giving up on the foldable smartphone game, and rumored details about the Pixel Fold 2 are slowly coming out. The most eye-popping news is from Android Authority‘s Mishaal Rahman, who claims to have a live picture of an “early prototype” of the Pixel Fold 2.

A lot about the Fold 2 is different, starting with the camera bump on the back. In every Pixel review, we praise the trademark camera bar for 1) looking good and 2) having a symmetrical design that gives the phone a stable base when placed on a table, and this prototype would seem to walk both of those things back. The supposed Pixel Fold 2 prototype switches to a lopsided rear design with a camera block in the top-left corner of the phone, just like everyone else in the industry. It’s hard to tell what’s going on with the camera block, but there is certainly room for four camera lenses now instead of the usual three. The top-left post almost looks blank in the photo, though—it could just be a spot for a laser autofocus sensor.

One justification for the wonky camera block could be that the device is narrower and doesn’t have room for the full-length camera bar anymore. The report says that “the cover screen is narrower, but more importantly, the inner screen’s aspect ratio is closer to a square.” One of the best parts of the Pixel Fold design was that it opened up into a wide-screen device and had enough horizontal room to show a tablet app layout. If you’re in the “foldable should open up into a tablet” camp, then a square screen would be a disappointment. The other option, followed mainly by the Galaxy Fold series, is “a foldable should open up to show side-by-side phone apps,” and a square screen puts you more in that camp. You could argue that, given the lack of Android tablet apps, a square-ish foldable is a more practical choice. I’d argue the Pixel line should be aspirational and that foldables aren’t yet ready for “practicality” arguments, given all the durability issues that still plague the devices.

The back of the Pixel Fold 1.

Enlarge / The back of the Pixel Fold 1.

While there isn’t a picture of the inner screen, it supposedly has an in-screen camera now. The Fold 1 hid the camera in the bezel, which resulted in a wide bezel around the edges.

There is a chance that this design could change before it hits production. Android Authority says, “The phone is still in an early stage of development, though, so it’s unclear if this is the final design,” and this isn’t the normal way Pixel phones get leaked. Usually, we first see a render thanks to CAD files leaked by the accessory ecosystem, indicating a design has been locked in and is ready for case manufacturers to start their designs. This could be an experiment to pick a direction. This changes most of the things we liked about the Pixel Fold 1, so we’re hoping the design is tweaked.

A second Android Authority report says the Pixel Fold 2 would skip Google’s Tensor G3 and go straight to the G4 chip, which suggests the phone is getting a later launch than usual. The Pixel Fold 1 had kind of an awkward spot in Google’s lineup. It shipped at the end of June with the Tensor G2, and then just over three months later, the Tensor G3 came out with the Pixel 8. Google’s most expensive phone didn’t have Google’s fastest chip for much of its shelf life. Aligning the Fold 2 with the G4 launch would suggest the phone comes out in October alongside the Pixel 9. A later launch would also give Google more time to rethink the design.

Listing image by Android Authority

Alleged Pixel Fold 2 prototype shows off ugly new camera block Read More »

macbooks,-chromebooks-lead-losers-in-laptop-repairability-analysis

MacBooks, Chromebooks lead losers in laptop repairability analysis

Apple, ASUS, chromebooks, Google, laptops, MacBook, repairability, right to repair, Tech / /

Disappointing Disassembly processes —

Analysis heavily weighs how hard the brands’ laptops are to take apart.

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A stack of broken Chromebook laptops

Enlarge / A stack of broken Chromebook laptops at Cell Mechanic Inc. electronics repair shop in Westbury, New York, U.S., on Wednesday, May 19, 2021.

Chromebooks and MacBooks are among the least repairable laptops around, according to an analysis that consumer advocacy group US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) shared this week. Apple and Google have long been criticized for selling devices that are deemed harder to repair than others. Worse, PIRG believes that the two companies are failing to make laptops easier to take apart and fix.

The “Failing the Fix (2024)” report released this week [PDF] is largely based on the repairability index scores required of laptops and some other electronics sold in France. However, the PIRG’s report weighs disassembly scores more than the other categories in France’s index, like the availability and affordability of spare parts, “because we think this better reflects what consumers think a repairability score indicates and because the other categories can be country specific,” the report says.

PIRG’s scores, like France’s repair index, also factor in the availability of repair documents and product-specific criteria (the PIRG’s report also looks at phones). For laptops, that criteria includes providing updates and the ability to reset software and firmware.

PIRG also docked companies for participating in trade groups that fight against right-to-repair legislation and if OEMs failed to “easily provide full information on how they calculated their products.”

Chromebooks, MacBooks lag in repairability

PIRG examined 139 laptop models and concluded that Chromebooks, “while more affordable than other devices, continue to be less repairable than other laptops.” This was largely due to the laptops having a lower average disassembly score (14.9) than the other laptops (15.2).

The report looked at 10 Chromebooks from Acer, Asus, Dell, and HP and gave Chromebooks an average repair score of 6.3 compared to 7.0 for all other laptops. It said:

Both of these lower averages indicate that while often considered an affordable choice for individuals or schools, Chromebooks are on average less repairable than other laptops.

Google recently extended Chromebook support from eight years to 10 years. PIRG’s report doesn’t factor in software support timelines, but even if it did, Chromebooks’ repairability score wouldn’t increase notably since the move only brought them to “industry norms,” Lucas Gutterman, Designed to Last campaign director for the US PIRG Education Fund, told me.

The Chromebooks PIRG considered for its report.

Enlarge / The Chromebooks PIRG considered for its report.

He added, though, that the current “norm” should improve.

At the very least, if it’s no longer financially viable for manufacturers to maintain support, they should allow the community to continue to maintain the software or make it easy to install alternative operating systems so we can keep our laptops from getting junked.

Turning to its breakdown of non-ChromeOS laptops, PIRG ranked Apple laptops the lowest in terms of repairability with a score of D, putting it behind Asus, Acer, Dell, Microsoft, HP, and Lenovo. In this week’s report, Apple got the lowest average disassembly score out of the OEMs (4 out of 10 compared to the 7.3 average)

MacBooks, Chromebooks lead losers in laptop repairability analysis Read More »

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YouTube TV is the US’s 4th-biggest cable TV provider, with 8 million subs

Google, Tech, youtube TV / /

Still not covering that $2 billion-a-year Sunday Ticket deal, though —

Google’s $73-a-month service is going toe-to-toe with the cable companies.

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YouTube TV is the US’s 4th-biggest cable TV provider, with 8 million subs

YouTube is still slowly dripping out stats about its subscriber base. After the announcement last week that YouTube Premium had hit 100 million subscribers, the company now says YouTube TV, its cable subscription plan, has 8 million subscribers.

Eight million subscribers might sound paltry compared to the 100 million people on Premium, but Premium is only $12. YouTube TV is one of the most expensive streaming subscriptions at $73 a month. The cable-like prices are because this is a cable-like service: a huge bundle of 100-plus channels featuring cable TV stalwarts like CNN, ESPN, and your local NBC, CBS, and ABC channels. $73 is also the base price. Like cable TV, there are additional add-on packages for premium movie channels like HBO and Showtime, 4K packages, and other sports and language add-ons. Let’s also not forget NFL Sunday Ticket, which this year became a YouTube TV exclusive, as a $350-a-year add-on to the $73-a-month service (there’s also a $ 450-a-year standalone package).

The subscriber numbers come from a “Letter from the YouTube CEO” blog post for 2024 from YouTube CEO Neal Mohan. With YouTube basically unable to get any bigger as the Internet’s defacto video host, Mohan says the “next frontier” for YouTube is “the living room and subscriptions.” Mohan wants users “watching YouTube the way we used to sit down together for traditional TV shows—on the biggest screen in the home with friends and family,” and says that “viewers globally now watch more than 1 billion hours on average of YouTube content on their TVs every day.”

YouTube TV’s 8 million subscribers make it one of the biggest cable TV providers. Leichtman Research Group‘s subscriber numbers for “Major Pay-TV Providers” (that means cable companies and their competitors) in Q3 2023 had No. 1 Comcast and No. 2 Charter both in the 14 million user range, with DirectTV in third with 11.9 million, and Dish in fourth at 6.7 million customers. Leichtman had YouTube TV in fifth, with 6.5 million users. With No. 4 Dish losing customers every quarter, YouTube TV is in fourth place now. It might be No. 3 soon. Leichtman’s numbers had YouTube TV as the fastest grower of the bunch, adding 600,000 customers in Q3, while DirecTV was the biggest loser, with half a million customers dumping their satellite dishes. Q3 marked the start of NFL Sunday Ticket moving from DirecTV to YouTube TV.

Naturally, these are all US numbers, and being nationwide puts YouTube TV on the same playing field as satellite companies, a big advantage compared to regional cable TV providers. YouTube TV has bigger ambitions than just the US, though. During the January earnings call, Google said it was “looking closely at” expanding the service to more countries. YouTube TV would need to clear an expansion with every single channel partner on the service, though, so it has a lot of negotiations to work through.

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Google and Mozilla don’t like Apple’s new iOS browser rules

Apple, Google, google chrome, mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, safari, Tech / /

Surely US regulators will help us… —

Google and Mozilla want iOS’s new EU browser rules to apply worldwide.

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Extreme close-up photograph of finger above Chrome icon on smartphone.

Apple is being forced to make major changes to iOS in Europe, thanks to the European Union’s “Digital Markets Act.” The act cracks down on Big Tech “gatekeepers” with various interoperability, fairness, and privacy demands, and part of the changes demanded of Apple is to allow competing browser engines on iOS. The change, due in iOS 17.4, will mean rival browsers like Chrome and Firefox get to finally bring their own web rendering code to iPhones and iPads. Despite what sounds like a big improvement to the iOS browser situation, Google and Mozilla aren’t happy with Apple’s proposed changes.

Earlier, Mozilla spokesperson Damiano DeMonte gave a comment to The Verge on Apple’s policy changes and took issue with the decision to limit the browser changes to the EU. “We are still reviewing the technical details but are extremely disappointed with Apple’s proposed plan to restrict the newly-announced BrowserEngineKit to EU-specific apps,” DeMonte said. “The effect of this would be to force an independent browser like Firefox to build and maintain two separate browser implementations—a burden Apple themselves will not have to bear.” DeMonte added: “Apple’s proposals fail to give consumers viable choices by making it as painful as possible for others to provide competitive alternatives to Safari. This is another example of Apple creating barriers to prevent true browser competition on iOS.”

Apple’s framework that allows for alternative browser engines is called “BrowserEngineKit” and already has public documentation as part of the iOS 17.4 beta. Browser vendors will need to earn Apple’s approval to use the framework in a production app, and like all iOS apps, that approval will come with several requirements. None of the requirements jump out as egregious: Apple wants browser vendors to have a certain level of web standards support, pledge to fix security vulnerabilities quickly and protect the user’s privacy by showing the standard consent prompts for access to things like location. You’re not allowed to “sync cookies and state between the browser and any other apps, even other apps of the developer,” which seems aimed directly at Google and its preference to have all its iOS apps talk to each other. The big negative is that your BrowserEngineKit app is limited to the EU, because—surprise—the EU rules only apply to the EU.

Speaking of Google, Google’s VP of engineering for Chrome, Parisa Tabriz, commented on DeMonte’s statement on X, saying, “Strong agree with @mozilla. @Apple isn’t serious about supporting web browser or engine choice on iOS. Their strategy is overly restrictive, and won’t meaningfully lead to real choice for browser developers.”

Today, you can download what look like “alternative” browsers on iOS, like Chrome and Firefox, but these browsers are mostly just skins overtop of Apple’s Safari engine. iOS app developers aren’t actually allowed to include their own browser engines, so everything uses Safari’s WebKit engine, with a new UI and settings and sync features layered on top. That means all of WebKit’s bugs and feature support decisions apply to every browser.

Being stuck with Safari isn’t great for users. Over the years, Safari has earned a reputation as “the new IE” from some web developers, due to lagging behind the competition in its support for advanced web features. Safari has gotten notably better lately, though. For instance, in 2023, it finally shipped support for push notifications, allowing web apps to better compete with native apps downloaded from Apple’s cash-cow App Store. Apple’s support of push notifications came seven years after Google and Mozilla rolled out the feature.

More competition would be great for the iOS browser space, but the reality is that competition will mostly be from the other big “gatekeeper” in the room: Google. Chrome is the project with the resources and reach to better compete with Safari, and working its way into iOS will bring the web close to a Chrome monoculture. Google’s browser may have better support for certain web features, but it will also come with a built-in tracking system that spies on users and serves up their interests to advertisers. Safari has a much better privacy story.

Even though only EU users will get to choose from several actually different browsers, everyone still has to compete in the EU, and that includes Safari. For the rest of the world, even they don’t get a real browser choice; competing in the EU browser wars should make the only iOS browser better for everyone. The EU rules have a compliance deadline of March 2024, so iOS 17.4 needs to be out by then. Google and Mozilla have been working on full versions of their browsers for iOS for at least a year now. Maybe they’ll be ready for launch?

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YouTube Premium announces 100 million subscribers

Google, Tech, youtube music / /

Did someone really forget about this during the earnings call? —

Ad-free videos and YouTube Music access hits a major milestone.

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YouTube Premium announces 100 million subscribers

Hot on the heels of Google’s “One” subscription plan obtaining 100 million users, YouTube is also hitting that big milestone, with 100 million people paying for Premium and YouTube Music. YouTube’s subscription data didn’t make it into the earnings call three days ago.

It’s hard to know what exactly is driving YouTube’s subscriptions. Premium gets you both ad-free YouTube videos and YouTube Music, and it’s easy to imagine people sticking to one or the other. Ad-free videos have been getting the most aggressive promotion lately, with Google cracking down on ad-block users by blocking video playback and displaying interstitial pop-ups. After warning users that ad blockers violate YouTube’s terms of service, the pop-ups show a big “try YouTube Premium” button. Premium also added an exclusive “enhanced bitrate” 1080p setting, although 2K, 4K, and 8K options have always been free.

There’s not much new on the music side of things. YouTube Music is free with ads and a more limited feature set, but subscribing gets you ad-free playback, background playback on phones, and access to YouTube Music streaming on Google’s various speakers. YouTube’s blog post highlights quotes from many big music industry CEOs celebrating the service.

Google’s announcement bundles together two different subscriptions. There’s the $13.99 per month YouTube Premium subscription, which gets you ad-free YouTube and YouTube Music, and a music-only “YouTube Music Premium” subscription, which is $10.99 per month (Google increased prices last year). If you’re a Spotify customer and don’t want Google’s music offering, the company doesn’t have a plan for you. From 2021 to 2023, Google had a music-free “YouTube Premium Lite” subscription plan available only in Europe, but the company killed the plan a few months ago.

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Google’s Pixel storage issue fix requires developer tools and a terminal

Google, Google Pixel, Tech / /

Stagefright’s revenge —

Automatic updates broke your phone; the fix is a highly technical manual process.

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Google’s Pixel storage issue fix requires developer tools and a terminal

Google has another fix for the second major storage bug Pixel phones have seen in the last four months. Last week, reports surfaced that some Pixel owners were being locked out of their phone’s local storage, creating a nearly useless phone with all sorts of issues. Many blamed the January 2024 Google Play system update for the issue, and yesterday, Google confirmed that hypothesis. Google posted an official solution to the issue on the Pixel Community Forums, but there’s no user-friendly solution here. Google’s automatic update system broke people’s devices, but the fix is completely manual, requiring users to download the developer tools, install drivers, change settings, plug in their phones, and delete certain files via a command-line interface.

The good news is that, if you’ve left your phone sitting around in a nearly useless state for the last week or two, following the directions means you won’t actually lose any data. Having a week or two of downtime is not acceptable to a lot of people, though, and several users replied to the thread saying they had already wiped their device to get their phone working again and had to deal with the resulting data loss (despite many attempts and promises, Android does not have a comprehensive backup system that works).

The bad news is that I don’t think many normal users will be able to follow Google’s directions. First, you’ll need to perform the secret action to enable Android’s Developer Options (you tap on the build number seven times). Then, you have to download Google’s “SDK Platform-Tools” zip file, which is meant for app developers. After that, plug in your phone, switch to the correct “File transfer” connection mode, open a terminal, navigate to the platform-tools folder, and run both “./adb uninstall com.google.android.media.swcodec” and “./adb uninstall com.google.android.media.” Then reboot the phone and hope that works.

I skipped a few steps (please read Google’s instructions if you’re trying this), but that’s the basic gist of it. The tool Google is having people use is “ADB,” or the “Android Debug Bridge.” This is meant to give developers command-line access to their phones, which allows them to quickly push new app builds to the device, get a readout of system logs, and turn on special developer flags for various testing.

Google’s instructions will only work if everything goes smoothly, and as someone with hundreds of hours in ADB from testing various Android versions, I will guess that it will probably not go smoothly. On Windows, the ADB drivers often don’t install automatically. Instead, you’ll get “unknown device” or some other incorrect device detection, and you won’t be able to run any commands. You usually have to use the “let me pick from drivers on my computer” option, browse through your file system, and manually “select” (more like “guess”) the driver you need while clicking through various warnings. You can already see at least one user with driver issues in the thread, with Windows telling them, “Your device has malfunctioned,” when really it just needs a driver.

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Google earnings: 100 million Google One subscribers, Google Cloud profits

Google, google cloud, google earnings, Tech / /

Do you have 6M Sunday Ticket subscribers yet? Probably not —

We highlight the interesting numbers from Google’s earnings call.

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Alphabet’s earnings call was yesterday, and as usual, the company took in a lot of money ($86.31 billion), thanks mostly to ad click-through rates being at a certain level. More interesting, though, are the product numbers tucked away in the report.

For the good news, a big announcement was the success of one of Google’s biggest subscription plans, Google One, which CEO Sundar Pichai said is “just about to cross 100 million subscribers.” Google One is mostly a cloud-storage plan for Google accounts, allowing users to pay a monthly fee to get more than the 15GB of Drive and Gmail storage that comes free with a Google account. Pichai says the company’s whole subscription business—which is going to be Google One (storage), Google Workspace (business accounts), YouTube Premium (ad-free YouTube), and YouTube TV (a cable TV alternative)—are up to $5 billion in annual revenue. That’s up fivefold since 2019.

Speaking of subscriptions, one of Google’s most expensive, the $350-a-year NFL Sunday Ticket, didn’t have any hard numbers associated with it. Google SVP and CBO Philipp Schindler said the company was “pleased with the NFL Sunday Ticket signups in our first season.” Sunday Ticket was always a money-loser for DirecTV, and that was before the price shot up half a billion in the streaming era. Google is now reportedly on the hook to pay the NFL $2 billion a year for the next seven years. When asked about a return on investment for the project, Schindler only cited “solid” advertiser interest and that “NFL Sunday Ticket supports our long-term strategy and really helps solidify YouTube’s position as a must-have app on everyone’s TV set.”

The year 2023 was also the first time Google Cloud recorded a profit. Cloud is Google’s attempt to compete with Amazon Web Services as a platform for the cloud-based infrastructure needs of developers. After years of investment and growth, Cloud made $864 million in Q4 2023. It lost $186 million over the same period in 2022. According to a recent Canalys report, Google Cloud’s market share is in a distant third (10 percent) behind Microsoft Azure (25 percent) and the leader, AWS (31 percent).

For a while, Cloud’s third-place position could at least be offset by stronger growth than its competitors, but that Canalys report now has Microsoft with the highest growth rate, thanks to interest in its AI solutions. Microsoft is partnered with OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT. Pichai spent a lot of time talking about Google Cloud’s competing AI work, but OpenAI has a level of hype and interest that can’t be matched by Google’s Bard/Gemini talk.

I don’t think we ever got a clear number for exactly how many people Google laid off in 2023. The company announced 12,000 layoffs in January, saying US employees had “already” been notified, while international employee layoffs would “take longer due to local laws and practices.” The company then laid off various employees across divisions throughout the year. Whatever the final cuts ended up being, the overall headcount only changed from 190,234 in December 2022 to 182,502 at the end of 2023, a net loss of about 8,000 people. Google was still hiring a lot during those layoffs.

One hundred eighty-two thousand employees is still a lot. Google’s headcount at the end of 2021 was 156,000 employees, and some Wall Street investors want to see the company return to that number. Pichai told employees to brace for more layoffs “throughout the year,” though the CEO says they wouldn’t be at the scale of 2023. Google’s downsizing cost a lot of money, with the company spending $2.1 billion on employee severance and $1.8 billion on office space exit charges for 2023.

Listing image by Getty Images | Alexander Koerner

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