Tech

hp-wants-you-to-pay-up-to-$36/month-to-rent-a-printer-that-it-monitors

HP wants you to pay up to $36/month to rent a printer that it monitors

Biz & IT, HP, printers, subscriptions, Tech / /
HP Envy 6020e printer

Enlarge / The HP Envy 6020e is one of the printers available for rent.

HP launched a subscription service today that rents people a printer, allots them a specific amount of printed pages, and sends them ink for a monthly fee. HP is framing its service as a way to simplify printing for families and small businesses, but the deal also comes with monitoring and a years-long commitment.

Prices range from $6.99 per month for a plan that includes an HP Envy printer (the current model is the 6020e) and 20 printed pages. The priciest plan includes an HP OfficeJet Pro rental and 700 printed pages for $35.99 per month.

HP says it will provide subscribers with ink deliveries when they’re running low and 24/7 support via phone or chat (although it’s dubious how much you want to rely on HP support). Support doesn’t include on or offsite repairs or part replacements. The subscription’s terms of service (TOS) note that the service doesn’t cover damage or failure caused by, unsurprisingly, “use of non-HP media supplies and other products” or if you use your printer more than what your plan calls for.

HP is watching

HP calls this an All-In-Plan; if you subscribe, the tech company will be all in on your printing activities.

One of the most perturbing aspects of the subscription plan is that it requires subscribers to keep their printers connected to the Internet. In general, some users avoid connecting their printer to the Internet because it’s the type of device that functions fine without web access.

A web connection can also concern users about security or HP-issued firmware updates that make printers stop functioning with non-HP ink.

But HP enforces an Internet connection by having its TOS also state that HP may disrupt the service—and continue to charge you for it—if your printer’s not online.

HP says it enforces a constant connection so that the company can monitor things that make sense for the subscription, like ink cartridge statuses, page count, and “to prevent unauthorized use of Your account.” However, HP will also remotely monitor the type of documents (for example, a PDF or JPEG) printed, the devices and software used to initiate the print job, “peripheral devices,” and any other “metrics” that HP thinks are related to the subscription and decides to add to its remote monitoring.

The All-In-Plan privacy policy also says that HP may “transfer information about you to advertising partners” so that they can “recognize your devices,” perform targeted advertising, and, potentially, “combine information about you with information from other companies in data sharing cooperatives” that HP participates in. The policy says that users can opt out of sharing personal data.

The All-In-Plan TOS reads:

Subject to the terms of this Agreement, You hereby grant to HP a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free right to use, copy, store, transmit, modify, create derivative works of and display Your non-personal data for its business purposes.

HP wants you to pay up to $36/month to rent a printer that it monitors Read More »

$30-doorbell-cameras-have-multiple-serious-security-flaws,-says-consumer-reports

$30 doorbell cameras have multiple serious security flaws, says Consumer Reports

Amazon, doorbell camera, doorbell cameras, eken, Security, Tech, tuck, video doorbell, walmart / /

Video doorbell security —

Models still widely available on e-commerce sites after issues reported.

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Image showing a delivery person saying

Enlarge / Consumer Reports’ investigation suggests that, should this delivery person press and hold the bell button and then pair using Eken’s app, he could see if other delivery people get such a perfunctory response.

Eken

Video doorbell cameras have been commoditized to the point where they’re available for $30–$40 on marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, Temu, and Shein. The true cost of owning one might be much greater, however.

Consumer Reports (CR) has released the findings of a security investigation into two budget-minded doorbell brands, Eken and Tuck, which are largely the same hardware produced by the Eken Group in China, according to CR. The cameras are further resold under at least 10 more brands. The cameras are set up through a common mobile app, Aiwit. And the cameras share something else, CR claims: “troubling security vulnerabilities.”

The pairing procedure for one of Eken's doorbell cameras, which allows a malicious actor quite a bit of leeway.

Enlarge / The pairing procedure for one of Eken’s doorbell cameras, which allows a malicious actor quite a bit of leeway.

Eken

Among the camera’s vulnerabilities cited by CR:

  • Sending public IP addresses and Wi-Fi SSIDs (names) over the Internet without encryption
  • Takeover of the cameras by putting them into pairing mode (which you can do from a front-facing button on some models) and connecting through the Aiwit app
  • Access to still images from the video feed and other information by knowing the camera’s serial number.

CR also noted that Eken cameras lacked an FCC registration code. More than 4,200 were sold in January 2024, according to CR, and often held an Amazon “Overall Pick” label (as one model did when an Ars writer looked on Wednesday).

“These video doorbells from little known manufacturers have serious security and privacy vulnerabilities, and now they’ve found their way onto major digital marketplaces such as Amazon and Walmart,” said Justin Brookman, director of tech policy at Consumer Reports, in a statement. “Both the manufacturers and platforms that sell the doorbells have a responsibility to ensure that these products are not putting consumers in harm’s way.”

CR noted that it contacted vendors where it found the doorbells for sale. Temu told CR that it would halt sales of the doorbells, but “similar-looking if not identical doorbells remained on the site,” CR noted.

A Walmart representative told Ars that all cameras mentioned by Consumer Reports, sold by third parties, have been removed from Walmart by now. The representative added that customers may be eligible for refunds and that Walmart prohibits the selling of devices that require an FCC ID and lack one.

Ars contacted Amazon for comment and will update this post with new information. An email sent to the sole address that could be found on Eken’s website was returned undeliverable. The company’s social media accounts were last updated at least three years prior.

Consumer Reports' researchers claim to have found JPEG file references passed in plaintext over the network, which could later be viewed without authentication in a browser.

Consumer Reports’ researchers claim to have found JPEG file references passed in plaintext over the network, which could later be viewed without authentication in a browser.

Consumer Reports

CR issued vulnerability disclosures to Eken and Tuck regarding its findings. The disclosures note the amount of data that is sent over the network without authentication, including JPEG files, the local SSID, and external IP address. It notes that after a malicious user has re-paired a doorbell with a QR code generated by the Aiwit app, they have complete control over the device until a user sees an email from Eken and reclaims the doorbell.

With a few exceptions, video doorbells and other IoT cameras tend to rely on cloud connections to stream and store footage, as well as notify their owners about events. This has led to some notable privacy and security concerns. Ring doorbells were found to be pushing Wi-Fi credentials in plaintext in late 2019. Eufy, a company that marketed its “No clouds” offerings, was found to be uploading facial thumbnails to cloud servers to send push alerts and later apologized for that and other vulnerabilities. Camera provider Wyze recently disclosed that, for the second time in five months, images and video feeds were accidentally available to the wrong customers following a lengthy outage.

Listing image by Amazon/Eken

$30 doorbell cameras have multiple serious security flaws, says Consumer Reports Read More »

speedy-“sd-express”-cards-have-gone-nowhere-for-years,-but-samsung-could-change-that

Speedy “SD Express” cards have gone nowhere for years, but Samsung could change that

microSD, samsung, Tech / /

fast, but for whom? —

Compatibility issues and thermals have, so far, kept SD Express from taking off.

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Samsung's SD Express-compatible microSD cards.

Enlarge / Samsung’s SD Express-compatible microSD cards.

Samsung

Big news for people who like (physically) small storage: Samsung says that it is sampling its first microSD cards that support the SD Express standard, which will allow them to hit sustained read speeds of as much as 800MB per second. That’s a pretty substantial boost over current SD cards, which tend to top out around 80MB or 90MB per second (for cheap commodity cards) and around 250MB per second for the very fastest UHS-II-compatible professional cards.

As Samsung points out, that 800MB/s figure puts these tiny SD Express cards well above the speeds possible with older SATA SSDs, which could make these cards more useful as primary storage devices for PCs or single-board computers that can support the SD Express standard (more on that later).

Samsung is currently sampling a 256GB version of the SD Express card that “will be available for purchase later this year.”

Because this is a tech company announcement in 2024, Samsung also makes an obligatory mention of AI, though there’s absolutely nothing specific the cards are doing to make them particularly well-suited for generative AI tasks other than “be faster.” Adding extra storage to phones or PCs could be useful for on-device generative AI—storing larger language models locally, for example—but most software companies that are offering generative AI features in their OSes or browsers are mostly using server-side processing to do all the heavy lifting for now.

What’s the SD Express standard, again?

The SD Express standard allows SD cards to take advantage of a single lane’s worth of PCIe bandwidth, boosting their theoretical speeds well beyond the 104MB/s cap of the UHS-I standard or the 312MB/s cap of UHS-II (UHS-III exists but isn’t widely used). The SD Express spec was last updated back in October 2023, which bumped it up from PCIe 3.0 to 4.0; it also defines four speed classes with read/write speeds of between 150MB and 600MB per second—a target these Samsung cards claim to be able to surpass.

But the original version of SD Express goes back to mid-2018, when it was added to version 7.0 of the SD specification. And adoption from SD card makers and device makers has been slow to nonexistent so far; AData makes full-size SD Express cards in 256GB and 512GB capacities that you can buy, but that’s about it. Lexar announced some cards back in 2021 that never ended up being released. And even if you had a card, you’d have trouble finding devices that could actually take advantage of the higher speeds, since most cameras, phones, and computers have opted to stick with the more common UHS.

One issue blocking SD Express adoption is that the card and the device have to support SD Express to get the promised speeds; an SD Express card inserted into a regular run-of-the-mill UHS-I SD card slot will be limited to UHS-I speeds. And because both the slots and the cards are visually identical, it’s not always easy to tell which slots support specific speeds.

Heat may also be a major limiting factor when using these SD Express cards to move around hundreds of gigabytes’ worth of data or when using the SD card as the primary storage device in a computer (as you might in a Raspberry Pi or other single-board computers). There’s no room for this kind of thing within the confines of a microSD card slot, so the sustained read and write speeds of Samsung’s new cards could be a bit lower than the promised 800MB-per-second maximum.

The SD Express spec does have mechanisms for keeping thermals in a reasonable range. Samsung also mentions a “Dynamic Thermal Guard” technology that promises to manage the temperatures of its SD Express cards, though it’s not clear whether this is different from what’s already in the SD Express spec.

Samsung jumping into SD Express cards may be what the format needs to take off, or at least to become a viable niche within the wider market for external storage. It’s certainly not difficult to imagine a scenario where something with SSD-ish speeds in an SD card-sized package would be useful. But SD cards are mainly useful because they’re cheap, they’re widely compatible, and they’re fast enough for things like recording video, taking pictures, and loading games. SD Express cards have a long way to go before they can check all the same boxes.

Speedy “SD Express” cards have gone nowhere for years, but Samsung could change that Read More »

paramount-ends-warner-bros.-discovery-merger-talks,-continues-mulling-sell-off

Paramount ends Warner Bros. Discovery merger talks, continues mulling sell-off

max, paramount, streaming, Tech, warner bros. discovery / /

Max and Paramount+ staying separate —

Report: Paramount still contemplating selling to Skydance Media.

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Paramount ends Warner Bros. Discovery merger talks, continues mulling sell-off

Paramount+

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and Paramount Global are no longer considering a merger that would have put the Max and Paramount+ streaming services under one corporate umbrella. Per a CNBC report today citing anonymous “people familiar with the matter,” WBD and Paramount had been mulling a merger for “several months.”

In December, reports started swirling about WBD and Paramount discussing a potential merger. Axios even reported that WBD CEO David Zaslav and Paramount CEO Bob Bakish met in person for “several hours” and that Zaslav also met with Shari Redstone, the owner of National Amusements Inc. (NAI), Paramount’s parent company. Now, CNBC reports that discussions between the media giants “cooled off this month.” Paramount and WBD haven’t commented.

When news of the potential merger dropped, it was unclear what sort of regulatory hurdles the media conglomerates might have faced if they tried becoming one. Combined, the companies would have had the second-biggest streaming business by subscriber count, trailing Netflix.

Debt was also a huge concern. Paramount is $14.6 billion in debt, per its earnings report shared today. WBD was $40 billion in debt at the time of merger talks but said it was eyeing a profitable streaming business. WBD is still in debt currently but reported this month that its streaming business became profitable, making $103 million for the year. Max’s most recent subscriber count is 97.7 million compared to 67.5 million for Paramount+.

Merging with Paramount would have meant WBD added another company with struggling legacy media assets to its portfolio. It also would have meant buying a streaming service that has yet to turn a profit as of this writing. Paramount’s streaming business lost $1.66 billion in 2023, it reported today.

Merger still possible

Although things with WBD reportedly didn’t work out, Paramount is still seriously considering a merger. CNBC reported that the company formed a committee and hired a financial adviser focused on analyzing potential bids for all or parts of the company.

Suitors recently tied to Paramount include Byron Allen and, reportedly, Skydance Media. The David Ellison-owned company is “still performing due diligence on a potential transaction,” CNBC said today, citing two of its anonymous sources. In January, Bloomberg reported that Skydance made an all-cash offer for NAI.

Paramount could also try to bundle its services with another company’s, which could attract subscribers to Paramount+ and help Paramount save money. It has already considered bundling Paramount+ with Comcast’s Peacock through a partnership or joint venture, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported earlier this month. But Comcast doesn’t want to buy Paramount, per one of CNBC’s anonymous sources from today’s report.

Some streaming rivals to Paramount+ are already bundled together (such as Disney’s Disney+ and Hulu) and exploring joint ventures. As streaming services race to achieve the sort of profitability that Netflix has, big strategic moves, such as mergers, partnerships, and price hikes, are expected soon. Meanwhile, subscribers remain worried about potential fallout, which could result in monopolistic practices that limit consumer options.

This article was updated to include information from Paramount’s latest earnings report. 

Paramount ends Warner Bros. Discovery merger talks, continues mulling sell-off Read More »

the-xiaomi-14-ultra-sports-a-six-blade-mechanical-iris-in-the-camera

The Xiaomi 14 Ultra sports a six-blade mechanical iris in the camera

Tech, Xiaomi / /

Have you considered just making the lens bigger —

Xiaomi’s top-tier smartphone is dressed up with lots of “real camera” theatrics.

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  • The Xiaomi 14 Ultra.

    Xiaomi

  • The phone desperately wants to look like a real camera, with a faux-leather wrapping and big circular camera block.

    Xiaomi

  • The camera bump sticks out a lot.

    Xiaomi

  • The screen is curved all over, and raised above the aluminum sides.

    Xiaomi

  • Another look at the screen. All the glass is way above the aluminum sides, so don’t drop it!

    Xiaomi

  • The cooling system.

    Xiaomi

  • An interior view.

    Xiaomi

Xiaomi’s big Mobile World Congress launch is the Xiaomi 14 Ultra. This is a top-tier flagship that of course is not coming to the US but is available in Europe for a whopping 1,499 euros ($1,624).

Let’s get the specs out of the way: This has a 120 Hz, 3200×1440 OLED, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 5000 mAh battery. A proprietary 90 W wired “HyperCharge” will get the phone from 0–100 percent battery in 33 minutes, while a wireless 80 W version will charge the phone in 46 minutes.

Xiaomi is very proud that all four sides of the screen are curved. The whole screen kind of rises up and bubbles out from the aluminum body. Xiaomi says the glass has “deep bending around all four sides and corners, creating a seamlessly elegant curved form.” All images, videos, websites, and apps expect to display on a flat surface, so curved displays serve to distort the picture you’re looking at, and thankfully some manufacturers have started to drop the idea. Having the display be a big glass bubble also means you now have four glass corners on the front of the phone, so uh, don’t drop it!

Just like the Xiaomi 13 Ultra, the whole back design mimics a classic leather-wrapped 35 mm camera—the camera is “Leica” branded, after all. The back is “vegan leather,” aka specially treated plastic (hey, some of those old cameras used fake leather, too!), and the camera lens is a giant circle faintly evoking a normal camera lens.

  • The camera kit gives you a case and a side grip with all sorts of traditional camera buttons.

  • Putting on the grip.

    Xiaomi

  • Inside the grip.

    Xiaomi

The photography focus features the return of the “Professional Camera Kit,” which makes the phone look even more like a real camera. The kit has two parts; the first is a case that adds a mounting ring around the camera bump, so you can attach a lens cover or camera filter to the camera bump. The other half of the kit is a clip-on camera grip attachment, which adds both a 1500 mAh battery and physical camera controls, like a two-stage shutter button that can trigger auto-focus, a record button, a two-way zoom lever, and a customizable dial. Just like last year, this makes the phone look like a more serious camera, but it’s all just looks—what makes a traditional camera good is the significantly bigger camera lens, and this is still just a regular, very small smartphone camera lens.

The camera theatrics continue with the new six-blade variable aperture for the main camera. Just like a traditional camera, there is a very tiny six-blade mechanical iris in the main lens that can open and close to adjust the aperture of your photo. Last year, Xiaomi had a similar system, but it only used two blades and could only snap between the “blades open” f1.9 mode and the “closed blades” f4.0 mode. With six blades, you get a “stepless variable aperture” that lets you pick any spot in the phone’s f-stop range.

  • The Xiaomi 14 Ultra’s six-blade iris sure does look neat.

    Xiaomi

  • A side view.

    Xiaomi

  • An explode view.

    Xiaomi

This is still a tiny phone camera lens, though, so the f-stop range is very small, just f1.63 to f4.0. On a DSLR, adjusting the f-stop would change the camera’s depth of field, with a narrower aperture letting in less light in exchange for a crisp focus. A wider aperture would give brighter pictures with a smaller focal range, which you can use for blurry background bokeh effects. That’s all on a DSLR though, with a normal f-stop range of like F1.4 to F22. On a smartphone camera, especially when there is tons of software processing, f1.6 to f4 won’t change your images much. Any background blur is still a fake post-processing effect, and it’s hard to imagine a scenario where you wouldn’t just want as much light as possible for your tiny smartphone lens. Samsung tried all this before on the Galaxy S9 and S10 and then dropped the feature because it just wasn’t accomplishing much. The six-blade aperture is probably a triumph of micro-engineering, but in the real world, it’s more of a marketing bullet point.

Despite the fluff, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is still packing serious smartphone-level camera hardware. The main sensor is a 1-inch, 50MP Sony LYT-900, probably the biggest and best smartphone camera sensor out there. Smartphone pictures are so heavily processed that the software has just as much to do with the hardware (see: every Pixel phone), but Xiaomi did get the best hardware. The other three rear cameras are all 50 MP Sony IMX858 sensors, with lenses for wide-angle, 3.2x telephoto, and 5x telephoto.

Preorders are already open, and the phone will ship on March 15.

The Xiaomi 14 Ultra sports a six-blade mechanical iris in the camera Read More »

review:-amd-radeon-rx-7900-gre-gpu-doesn’t-quite-earn-its-“7900”-label

Review: AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE GPU doesn’t quite earn its “7900” label

AMD, amd radeon, gaming, GeForce, GPU, NVIDIA, Radeon, Tech / /

rabbit season —

New $549 graphics card is the more logical successor to the RX 6800 XT.

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ASRock's take on AMD's Radeon RX 7900 GRE.

Enlarge / ASRock’s take on AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 GRE.

Andrew Cunningham

In July 2023, AMD released a new GPU called the “Radeon RX 7900 GRE” in China. GRE stands for “Golden Rabbit Edition,” a reference to the Chinese zodiac, and while the card was available outside of China in a handful of pre-built OEM systems, AMD didn’t make it widely available at retail.

That changes today—AMD is launching the RX 7900 GRE at US retail for a suggested starting price of $549. This throws it right into the middle of the busy upper-mid-range graphics card market, where it will compete with Nvidia’s $549 RTX 4070 and the $599 RTX 4070 Super, as well as AMD’s own $500 Radeon RX 7800 XT.

We’ve run our typical set of GPU tests on the 7900 GRE to see how it stacks up to the cards AMD and Nvidia are already offering. Is it worth buying a new card relatively late in this GPU generation, when rumors point to new next-gen GPUs from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel before the end of the year? Can the “Golden Rabbit Edition” still offer a good value, even though it’s currently the year of the dragon?

Meet the 7900 GRE

RX 7900 XT RX 7900 GRE RX 7800 XT RX 6800 XT RX 6800 RX 7700 XT RX 6700 XT RX 6750 XT
Compute units (Stream processors) 84 (5,376) 80 (5,120) 60 (3,840) 72 (4,608) 60 (3,840) 54 (3,456) 40 (2,560) 40 (2,560)
Boost Clock 2,400 MHz 2,245 MHz 2,430 MHz 2,250 MHz 2,105 MHz 2,544 MHz 2,581 MHz 2,600 MHz
Memory Bus Width 320-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 192-bit 192-bit 192-bit
Memory Clock 2,500 MHz 2,250 MHz 2,438 MHz 2,000 MHz 2,000 MHz 2,250 MHz 2,000 MHz 2,250 MHz
Memory size 20GB GDDR6 16GB GDDR6 16GB GDDR6 16GB GDDR6 16GB GDDR6 12GB GDDR6 12GB GDDR6 12GB GDDR6
Total board power (TBP) 315 W 260 W 263 W 300 W 250 W 245 W 230 W 250 W

The 7900 GRE slots into AMD’s existing lineup above the RX 7800 XT (currently $500-ish) and below the RX 7900 (around $750). Technologically, we’re looking at the same Navi 31 GPU silicon as the 7900 XT and XTX, but with just 80 of the compute units enabled, down from 84 and 96, respectively. The normal benefits of the RDNA3 graphics architecture apply, including hardware-accelerated AV1 video encoding and DisplayPort 2.1 support.

The 7900 GRE also includes four active memory controller die (MCD) chiplets, giving it a narrower 256-bit memory bus and 16GB of memory instead of 20GB—still plenty for modern games, though possibly not quite as future-proof as the 7900 XT. The card uses significantly less power than the 7900 XT and about the same amount as the 7800 XT. That feels a bit weird, intuitively, since slower cards almost always consume less power than faster ones. But it does make some sense; pushing the 7800 XT’s smaller Navi 32 GPU to get higher clock speeds out of it is probably making it run a bit less efficiently than a larger Navi 31 GPU die that isn’t being pushed as hard.

  • Andrew Cunningham

  • Andrew Cunningham

  • Andrew Cunningham

When we reviewed the 7800 XT last year, we noted that its hardware configuration and performance made it seem more like a successor to the (non-XT) Radeon RX 6800, while it just barely managed to match or beat the 6800 XT in our tests. Same deal with the 7900 GRE, which is a more logical successor to the 6800 XT. Bear that in mind when doing generation-over-generation comparisons.

Review: AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE GPU doesn’t quite earn its “7900” label Read More »

after-a-decade-of-stops-and-starts,-apple-kills-its-electric-car-project

After a decade of stops and starts, Apple kills its electric car project

AI, Apple, car, Cars, John Giannandrea, Project Titan, Tech / /

Project Titan —

Report claims Apple leadership worried profit margins simply wouldn’t be there.

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An enormous ring-shaped building on a green campus.

Enlarge / Apple’s global headquarters in Cupertino, California.

After 10 years of development, multiple changes in direction and leadership, and a plethora of leaks, Apple has reportedly ended work on its electric car project. According to a report in Bloomberg, the company is shifting some of the staff to work on generative AI projects within the company and planning layoffs for some others.

Internally dubbed Project Titan, the long-in-development car would have ideally had a luxurious, limo-like interior, robust self-driving capabilities, and at least a $100,000 price tag. However, the ambition of the project was drawn down with time. For example, it was once planned to have Level 4 self-driving capabilities, but that was scaled back to Level 2+.

Delays had pushed the car (on which work initially began way back in 2014) to a target release date of 2028. Now it won’t be released at all.

The decision was “finalized by Apple’s most senior executives in recent weeks,” according to Bloomberg’s sources. Apple’s leadership worried that the car might never find the profit margins they previously hoped for. This development won’t surprise many who have been following closely, though. The project has been known to be troubled for a while, and Apple would have had to face high startup costs and a difficult regulatory environment even had it been able to get a product together.

The shift in focus was announced to staff by Apple executives Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch. Many employees who were working on the self-driving feature of the car will be moved under AI chief John Giannandrea to work on various projects, including generative AI. However, the fates of others who worked on other aspects of the car, like automobile engineering and design, are less certain. The report says layoffs are likely but doesn’t specify how many or on what timeline.

For a long time, it was known that Apple was investing in two major expansions: one into the automobile space and one into augmented reality. The first step in the latter was rolled out in the form of the Vision Pro headset a few weeks ago. With the car project canceled, Apple’s known areas of planned future expansion include mixed reality, wearables, and generative AI.

After a decade of stops and starts, Apple kills its electric car project Read More »

apple-vision-pro’s-components-cost-$1,542—but-that’s-not-the-full-story

Apple Vision Pro’s components cost $1,542—but that’s not the full story

Apple, apple vision pro, Tech, vision pro, visionOS / /

Headset Economics —

The OLED displays account for more than a third of the component costs.

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A render of the displays inside the headset

Enlarge / The Vision Pro has two micro-OLED displays.

Apple

Research firm Omdia has published the first publicly available educated estimates of how much the materials for each Vision Pro really cost Apple. The analysis sets an overall price tag for the materials and identifies which components cost the most money.

Omdia Senior Research Director David Hsieh estimates that the total bill of materials comes in at around $1,542. The consumer price for the headset starts at $3,499 but can be as much as a thousand dollars more than that, depending on the configuration the buyer chooses.

Vision Pro presents both the real and the virtual worlds to the user with two micro-OLED displays, one for each eye. Together, these dual displays are the most expensive component in the headset, costing $456. Another external display (the one used for EyeSight) costs around $70, Hsieh estimates. That means that Omdia estimates the device’s displays account for about 35 percent of the total cost of the device’s materials.

The runner-up category is silicon; a roll-up cost estimate of both the M2 system-on-a-chip and the R1 processor together lands at $240, or just over 15 percent of the total cost of the device’s materials.

You can see the full table of materials in Omdia’s estimate here, as first seen in one of the firm’s blog posts:

No matter how accurate that $1,542 number is, we should steer clear of the temptation to declare that Apple profits $1,957 on each Vision Pro sold for $3,499, as that’s certainly not the case.

A bill of materials like this doesn’t take into account manufacturing, shipping, or marketing, nor does it factor in the cost of research and development. There’s no way to know from these estimates how much profit Apple earns on each Vision Pro sold, but it’s definitely a lot less than the difference between the price tag and the bill of materials.

Apple has historically maintained substantial profit margins on its hardware products like the iPhone, and Vision Pro could follow in those footsteps, or it could be that Vision Pro is anomalous. Only Apple knows for sure. In any case, analysts expect some of these costs to come down with time.

Apple Vision Pro’s components cost $1,542—but that’s not the full story Read More »

wear-os-“hybrid”-design-has-two-oses,-two-cpus,-“100-hour”-battery-life

Wear OS “Hybrid” design has two OSes, two CPUs, “100 hour” battery life

OnePlus, Tech, Wear OS / /

Throwing more hardware at the problem —

Wear OS + Snapdragon uses too much power, so what if we just turned it off?

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  • The OnePlus Watch 2.

    OnePlus

  • The back heart rate sensor and charging pins.

    OnePlus

  • That round button looks like a digital crown, but it’s just a button.

    OnePlus

  • OnePlus has this very interesting table detailing what chip and OS combo runs which modes.

    OnePlus

  • The first-party watch faces. These are important since these are the only low-power ones.

    OnePlus

  • The app drawer.

    OnePlus

Smartwatches are capable little devices, but a big downside is that the battery doesn’t last that long. A smartphone-style smooth-scrolling UI usually leads to smartphone-style battery life, where you have to charge the watch every day or so. Simpler fitness devices with more minimal screens and UIs can last a lot longer, but what if there was a smartwatch that could attain the best of both worlds?

That’s the solution OnePlus and Google have cooked up, with the new “Wear OS hybrid interface” on the OnePlus Watch 2. Basically, the smartwatch is now packing two different sets of CPUs and OSes: One set is geared for low-power and is used for the always-on display, and a second set is for screen-on touch usage. OnePlus claims “market-leading battery life of up to 100 hours” in the OS-switching “smart mode,” though of course, how much you use the watch will make a huge difference.

Wear OS devices have been creeping up to this line for a while. Watches have long shipped with low-power “co-processors” either built right into the system-on-a-chip (SoC) or tacked on as an extra chip. The major step here is the extra OS, which allows the hardware to put Wear OS to sleep when you aren’t actively using the watch. Google isn’t very forthcoming in its blog post about manufacturers wanting to kick the power-hungry Wear OS to the curb, but OnePlus says the watch runs a real-time operating system (RTOS) when in its “efficiency” mode. On the OnePlus Watch 2, the chip layout is a Snapdragon W5 SoC that runs Wear OS, while the RTOS runs on a BES 2700 microcontroller unit (MCU) chipset.

The

Enlarge / The “Hybrid OS interface” can be run by either CPU.

Google

Wear OS and the RTOS can both run a “Hybrid OS interface” that just looks like bits of Wear OS. Google’s photos show the notification panel as part of this “hybrid OS interface.” When the screen is idle, you’re getting the efficient OS/chipset combo; the animation shows that when you tap the screen, it switches to Wear OS and Snapdragon in an apparently seamless transition.

Google says, “Bridged notifications will be delivered to the watch without waking up the high-performance AP. Users can read and dismiss these notifications while the watch is still powered by the MCU. The MCU can also handle wearable-specific actions in notifications, such as quick replies or remote actions.” “Bridged notifications” in Wear OS parlance means notifications from apps on your phone, which get sent over Bluetooth to the watch. That’s probably a big hint as to what is going on under the hood here. For a bridged notification, the phone is doing all the processing in terms of connectivity, and it just sends it to the watch. The MCU/RTOS side of the watch most likely has no support for Wear OS app ecosystem code and no Internet connectivity. The BES 2700 is usually used in Bluetooth headphones and certainly has no direct Internet access. It’s not known what any of this means for standalone Wear OS modes—if you were to go jogging and leave the phone at home, presumably the notification panel would have to be high-power, all the time.

OnePlus’ website has a detailed breakdown of the RTOS capabilities that will work in low-power mode. The always-on screen works on the low-power BES/RTOS mode, but only if you use a first-party watch face. Third-party watch faces will still run on the Snapdragon chip and Wear OS and drain a lot more power. Besides low-power notifications, you can use the quick settings panel, swipe through your first-party watchface to check tiles, start a workout through OnePlus’ app, and do sleep and heart rate detection, all without waking up Wear OS. OnePlus’ low-power watch hardware probably doesn’t run very well, since the fine print notes that if users turn on “animation booster” in the settings, Wear OS will instead take over all these duties.

Notifications can be accessed from either OS/Chipset combo.

Enlarge / Notifications can be accessed from either OS/Chipset combo.

Google

Google describes the development of this hybrid interface as a collaboration between it and OnePlus. You can see how OnePlus arrived at this solution. Three years ago, it made the OnePlus Watch 1, which only ran a familiar-sounding proprietary RTOS on top of a collection of low-power chips. Running a proprietary OS with zero apps led to the watch being widely panned, but the big upside of that limited power was a claimed 14-day battery life. OnePlus’ response for the sequel seems to have been to slap the usual Snapdragon + Wear OS combo on top of the low-power watch it already had, realign the RTOS with Wear OS more, and enable seamless switching.

As for the OnePlus Watch 2, it’s sporting a 2.5D sapphire crystal cover and stainless steel body with IP68 dust and water resistance. The watch band is rubber, but if you can find something else that fits the watch body, it’s removable with pins. The Snapdragon W5 SoC is paired with 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and a big 500 mAh battery with 7.5 W quick charging. The RTOS lives on a separate 4GB EMMC. The display is a 1.43-inch 466×466 OLED. The watch supports NFC and Google Wallet payments, but there’s no cellular. The watch has two buttons on the right side, and while the top one looks like it would be a scrolling digital crown—and it does actually spin—it’s just a button.

The major downside to throwing hardware at the battery problem is that all that extra stuff takes up a lot of room. The watch measures 47.0×46.6×12.1 mm. The OnePlus Watch 2 ships in the US and Canada on March 4 for $299.99.

Listing image by OnePlus

Wear OS “Hybrid” design has two OSes, two CPUs, “100 hour” battery life Read More »

sony-claims-to-offer-subs-“appropriate-value”-for-deleting-digital-libraries

Sony claims to offer subs “appropriate value” for deleting digital libraries

anime, crunchyroll, funimation, Sony, streaming, Tech / /

(No) Funimation —

Customers confused as Sony claims to work with affected users individually.

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Luffy from One Piece smiling with a treasuer

Enlarge / A scene from One Piece, one of the animes that Funimation has distributed.

Sony is making an effort to appease customers who will lose their entire Funimation digital libraries when the anime streaming service merges into Crunchyroll. Currently, though, the company’s plan for giving disappointed customers “an appropriate value” for their erased digital copies isn’t very accessible or clear.

Earlier this month, Sony-owned Funimation announced that customers’ digital libraries would be unavailable starting on April 2. At that time, Funimation accounts will become Crunchyroll accounts. Sony acquired Crunchyroll in 2021, so some sort of merging of the services was expected. However, less expected was customers’ lost access to online copies of beloved anime that they acquired through digital codes provided in purchased Funimation DVDs or Blu-rays. Funimation for years claimed that customers would be able to stream these copies “forever, but there are some restrictions.”

Rahul Purini, Crunchyroll’s president, explained the decision while speaking to The Verge’s latest Decoder podcast, noting that the feature was incorporated into the Funimation platform.

“As we look at usage of that and the number of people who were redeeming those and using them, it was just not a feature that was available in Crunchyroll and isn’t in our road map,” Purini said.

The executive claimed that Funimation is “working really hard directly” with each affected customer to “ensure that they have an appropriate value for what they got in the digital copy initially.” When asked what “appropriate value” means, Purini responded:

It could be that they get access to a digital copy on any of the existing other services where they might be able to access it. It could be a discount access to our subscription service so they can get access to the same shows through our subscription service. So we are trying to make it right based on each user’s preference.

Clarifying further, Purini confirmed that this means that Sony is willing to provide affected customers with a new digital copy via a streaming service other than Crunchyroll. The executive said that the company is handling subscribers’ requests as they reach out to customer service.

Notably, this approach to compensating customers for removing access to something that they feel like they purchased (digital copies are considered a free addition to the physical copies, but some people might not have bought the discs if they didn’t come with a free digital copy) puts the responsibility on customers to reach out. Ahead of Purini’s interview, Sony didn’t publicly announce that it would offer customers compensation. And since Funimation’s terms of use include caveats that content may be removed at any time, customers might have thought that they have no path for recourse.

But even if you did happen to demand some sort of refund from Funimation, you might not have been offered any relief. The Verge’s Ash Parrish, who has a free-tier Funimation account, reported today on her experience trying to receive the “appropriate value” for her digital copies of Steins;Gate and The Vision of Escaflowne. Parrish noted that Steins;Gate isn’t available to stream off Crunchyroll with a free subscription, meaning she’d have no way to watch it digitally come April 2. Parrish said Funimation support responded with two “boilerplate” emails that apologized but offered no solution or compensation. She followed up about getting compensated for a premium subscription so that she’d be able to stream what she used to digitally own through Crunchyroll but hadn’t received a response by publication time.

Following up with Funimation’s PR department didn’t provide any clarity. Brian Eley, Funimation’s VP of communications, reportedly told Parrish via email: “Funimation users who have questions about digital copies can contact Funimation here. A Funimation account associated with a digital copy redemption is required for verification.” Ars Technica reached out to Crunchyroll for comment but didn’t hear back in time for publication.

The downfalls of digital “ownership”

Sony’s plan to delete access to customers’ digital properties shows the risks of relying on streaming services. The industry is infamous for abruptly losing licenses to programming, changing prices and accessibility to titles, mergers, as is the case here, and collaborations that change what customers are entitled to.

When asked about this broader industry challenge on Decoder, Purini acknowledged customer inconvenience but noted the importance for Crunchyroll to “keep our resources and teams focused on what would help us bring the best experience for the broader audience.”

It’s unclear how many users were using their Funimation digital copies. However, some may consider their digital copies backups that they won’t use unless they’re no longer able to play their physical copy, giving Funimation customers peace of mind.

Although Funimation claimed that digital copies would be viewable “forever,” their terms of use note that Funimation can remove content “for any reason.” However, it’s not uncommon for customers to avoid reading lengthy, wordy terms of service agreements. Terms of service are easy to understand for an industry participant like Purini, he said, but “that might not be the case with a broader general audience.”

That said, with streaming becoming a more substantial part of people’s media libraries, users must understand what they’re spending money on. Access to beloved shows and movies over the Internet isn’t guaranteed, and inconsistent compensation plans are often the result.

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avast-ordered-to-stop-selling-browsing-data-from-its-browsing-privacy-apps

Avast ordered to stop selling browsing data from its browsing privacy apps

Avast, avast antivirus, Biz & IT, browsing data, federal trade commission, ftc, jumpshot, Policy, privacy, Security, Tech / /

Security, privacy, things of that nature —

Identifiable data included job searches, map directions, “cosplay erotica.”

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Avast logo on a phone in front of the words

Getty Images

Avast, a name known for its security research and antivirus apps, has long offered Chrome extensions, mobile apps, and other tools aimed at increasing privacy.

Avast’s apps would “block annoying tracking cookies that collect data on your browsing activities,” and prevent web services from “tracking your online activity.” Deep in its privacy policy, Avast said information that it collected would be “anonymous and aggregate.” In its fiercest rhetoric, Avast’s desktop software claimed it would stop “hackers making money off your searches.”

All of that language was offered up while Avast was collecting users’ browser information from 2014 to 2020, then selling it to more than 100 other companies through a since-shuttered entity known as Jumpshot, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Under a proposed recent FTC order (PDF), Avast must pay $16.5 million, which is “expected to be used to provide redress to consumers,” according to the FTC. Avast will also be prohibited from selling future browsing data, must obtain express consent on future data gathering, notify customers about prior data sales, and implement a “comprehensive privacy program” to address prior conduct.

Reached for comment, Avast provided a statement that noted the company’s closure of Jumpshot in early 2020. “We are committed to our mission of protecting and empowering people’s digital lives. While we disagree with the FTC’s allegations and characterization of the facts, we are pleased to resolve this matter and look forward to continuing to serve our millions of customers around the world,” the statement reads.

Data was far from anonymous

The FTC’s complaint (PDF) notes that after Avast acquired then-antivirus competitor Jumpshot in early 2014, it rebranded the company as an analytics seller. Jumpshot advertised that it offered “unique insights” into the habits of “[m]ore than 100 million online consumers worldwide.” That included the ability to “[s]ee where your audience is going before and after they visit your site or your competitors’ sites, and even track those who visit a specific URL.”

While Avast and Jumpshot claimed that the data had identifying information removed, the FTC argues this was “not sufficient.” Jumpshot offerings included a unique device identifier for each browser, included in data like an “All Clicks Feed,” “Search Plus Click Feed,” “Transaction Feed,” and more. The FTC’s complaint detailed how various companies would purchase these feeds, often with the express purpose of pairing them with a company’s own data, down to an individual user basis. Some Jumpshot contracts attempted to prohibit re-identifying Avast users, but “those prohibitions were limited,” the complaint notes.

The connection between Avast and Jumpshot became broadly known in January 2020, after reporting by Vice and PC Magazine revealed that clients, including Home Depot, Google, Microsoft, Pepsi, and McKinsey, were buying data from Jumpshot, as seen in confidential contracts. Data obtained by the publications showed that buyers could purchase data including Google Maps look-ups, individual LinkedIn and YouTube pages, porn sites, and more. “It’s very granular, and it’s great data for these companies, because it’s down to the device level with a timestamp,” one source told Vice.

The FTC’s complaint provides more detail on how Avast, on its own web forums, sought to downplay its Jumpshot presence. Avast suggested both that only non-aggregated data was provided to Jumpshot and that users were informed during product installation about collecting data to “better understand new and interesting trends.” Neither of these claims proved true, the FTC suggests. And the data collected was far from harmless, given its re-identifiable nature:

For example, a sample of just 100 entries out of trillions retained by Respondents

showed visits by consumers to the following pages: an academic paper on a study of symptoms

of breast cancer; Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s presidential candidacy announcement; a CLE course

on tax exemptions; government jobs in Fort Meade, Maryland with a salary greater than

$100,000; a link (then broken) to the mid-point of a FAFSA (financial aid) application;

directions on Google Maps from one location to another; a Spanish-language children’s

YouTube video; a link to a French dating website, including a unique member ID; and cosplay

erotica.

In a blog post accompanying its announcement, FTC Senior Attorney Lesley Fair writes that, in addition to the dual nature of Avast’s privacy products and Jumpshot’s extensive tracking, the FTC is increasingly viewing browsing data as “highly sensitive information that demands the utmost care.” “Data about the websites a person visits isn’t just another corporate asset open to unfettered commercial exploitation,” Fair writes.

FTC commissioners voted 3-0 to issue the complaint and accept the proposed consent agreement. Chair Lina Khan, along with commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, issued a statement on their vote.

Since the time of the FTC’s complaint and its Jumpshot business, Avast has been acquired by Gen Digital, a firm that contains Norton, Avast, LifeLock, Avira, AVG, CCLeaner, and ReputationDefender, among other security businesses.

Disclosure: Condé Nast, Ars Technica’s parent company, received data from Jumpshot before its closure.

Avast ordered to stop selling browsing data from its browsing privacy apps Read More »

reddit-admits-more-moderator-protests-could-hurt-its-business

Reddit admits more moderator protests could hurt its business

API, generative ai, IPO, Policy, reddit, Social Media, Tech / /

SEC filing —

Losing third-party tools “could harm our moderators’ ability to review content…”

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Reddit logo on website displayed on a laptop screen is seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on February 22, 2024.

Reddit filed to go public on Thursday (PDF), revealing various details of the social media company’s inner workings. Among the revelations, Reddit acknowledged the threat of future user protests and the value of third-party Reddit apps.

On July 1, Reddit enacted API rule changes—including new, expensive pricing —that resulted in many third-party Reddit apps closing. Disturbed by the changes, the timeline of the changes, and concerns that Reddit wasn’t properly appreciating third-party app developers and moderators, thousands of Reddit users protested by making the subreddits they moderate private, read-only, and/or engaging in other forms of protest, such as only discussing John Oliver or porn.

Protests went on for weeks and, at their onset, crashed Reddit for three hours. At the time, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said the protests did not have “any significant revenue impact so far.”

In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), though, Reddit acknowledged that another such protest could hurt its pockets:

While these activities have not historically had a material impact on our business or results of operations, similar actions by moderators and/or their communities in the future could adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition, and prospects.

The company also said that bad publicity and media coverage, such as the kind that stemmed from the API protests, could be a risk to Reddit’s success. The Form S-1 said bad PR around Reddit, including its practices, prices, and mods, “could adversely affect the size, demographics, engagement, and loyalty of our user base,” adding:

For instance, in May and June 2023, we experienced negative publicity as a result of our API policy changes.

Reddit’s filing also said that negative publicity and moderators disrupting the normal operation of subreddits could hurt user growth and engagement goals. The company highlighted financial incentives associated with having good relationships with volunteer moderators, noting that if enough mods decided to disrupt Reddit (like they did when they led protests last year), “results of operations, financial condition, and prospects could be adversely affected.” Reddit infamously forcibly removed moderators from their posts during the protests, saying they broke Reddit rules by refusing to reopen the subreddits they moderated.

“As communities grow, it can become more and more challenging for communities to find qualified people willing to act as moderators,” the filing says.

Losing third-party tools could hurt Reddit’s business

Much of the momentum for last year’s protests came from users, including long-time Redditors, mods, and people with accessibility needs, feeling that third-party apps were necessary to enjoyably and properly access and/or moderate Reddit. Reddit’s own technology has disappointed users in the past (leading some to cling to Old Reddit, which uses an older interface, for example). In its SEC filing, Reddit pointed to the value of third-party “tools” despite its API pricing killing off many of the most popular examples.

Reddit’s filing discusses losing moderators as a business risk and notes how important third-party tools are in maintaining mods:

While we provide tools to our communities to manage their subreddits, our moderators also rely on their own and third-party tools. Any disruption to, or lack of availability of, these third-party tools could harm our moderators’ ability to review content and enforce community rules. Further, if we are unable to provide effective support for third-party moderation tools, or develop our own such tools, our moderators could decide to leave our platform and may encourage their communities to follow them to a new platform, which would adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition, and prospects.

Since Reddit’s API policy changes, a small number of third-party Reddit apps remain available. But some of the remaining third-party Reddit app developers have previously told Ars Technica that they’re unsure of their app’s tenability under Reddit’s terms. Nondisclosure agreement requirements and the lack of a finalized developer platform also drive uncertainty around the longevity of the third-party Reddit app ecosystem, according to devs Ars spoke with this year.

Reddit admits more moderator protests could hurt its business Read More »