Tech

convicted-murderer,-filesystem-creator-writes-of-regrets-to-linux-list

Convicted murderer, filesystem creator writes of regrets to Linux list

Biz & IT, file systems, Hans Reiser, Linux, Linux kernel, linux kernel mailing list, LKML, ReiserFS, Tech / /

Pre-release notes —

“The man I am now would do things very differently,” Reiser says in long letter.

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Hans Reiser letter to Fredrick Brennan

Enlarge / A portion of the cover letter attached to Hans Reiser’s response to Fredrick Brennan’s prompt about his filesystem’s obsolescence.

Fredrick Brennan

With the ReiserFS recently considered obsolete and slated for removal from the Linux kernel entirely, Fredrick R. Brennan, font designer and (now regretful) founder of 8chan, wrote to the filesystem’s creator, Hans Reiser, asking if he wanted to reply to the discussion on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML).

Reiser, 59, serving a potential life sentence in a California prison for the 2006 murder of his estranged wife, Nina Reiser, wrote back with more than 6,500 words, which Brennan then forwarded to the LKML. It’s not often you see somebody apologize for killing their wife, explain their coding decisions around balanced trees versus extensible hashing, and suggest that elementary schools offer the same kinds of emotional intelligence curriculum that they’ve worked through in prison, in a software mailing list. It’s quite a document.

What follows is a relative summary of Reiser’s letter, dated November 26, 2023, which we first saw on the Phoronix blog, and which, by all appearances, is authentic (or would otherwise be an epic bit of minutely detailed fraud for no particular reason). It covers, broadly, why Reiser believes his system failed to gain mindshare among Linux users, beyond the most obvious reason. This leads Reiser to detail the technical possibilities, his interpersonal and leadership failings and development, some lingering regrets about dealings with SUSE and Oracle and the Linux community at large, and other topics, including modern Russian geopolitics.

“LKML and Slashdot.org seem like reasonable places to send it (as of 2006)”

In a cover letter, Reiser tells Brennan that he hopes he can use OCR to import his lengthy letter and asks him to use his best judgment in where to send his reply. He also asks, if he has time, Brennan might send him information on “Reiser5, or any interesting papers on other Filesystems, compression (especially Deep Learning based compression), etc.”

Then Reiser addresses the kernel mailing list directly—very directly:

I was asked by a kind Fredrick Brennan for my comments that I might offer on the discussion of removing ReiserFS V3 from the kernel. I don’t post directly because I am in prison for killing my wife Nina in 2006.

I am very sorry for my crime–a proper apology would be off topic for this forum, but available to any who ask.

A detailed apology for how I interacted with the Linux kernel community, and some history of V3 and V4, are included, along with descriptions of what the technical issues were. I have been attending prison workshops, and working hard on improving my social skills to aid my becoming less of a danger to society. The man I am now would do things very differently from how I did things then.

ReiserFS V3 was “our first filesystem, and in doing it we made mistakes, because we didn’t know what we were doing,” Reiser writes. He worked through “years of dark depression” to get V3 up to the performance speeds of ext2, but regrets how he celebrated that milestone. “The man I was then presented papers with benchmarks showing that ReiserFS was faster than ext2. The man I am now would stat his papers … crediting them for being faster than the filesystems of other operating systems, and thanking them for the years we used their filesystem to write ours.” It was “my first serious social mistake in the Linux community, and it was completely unnecessary.”

Reiser asks that a number of people who worked on ReiserFS be included in “one last release” of the README, and to “delete anything in there I might have said about why they were not credited.” He says prison has changed him in conflict resolution and with his “tendency to see people in extremes.”

Reiser extensively praises Mikhail Gilula, the “brightest mind in his generation of computer scientists,” for his work on ReiserFS from Russia and for his ideas on rewriting everything the field knew about data structures. With their ideas on filesystems and namespaces combined, it would be “the most important refactoring of code ever.” His analogy at the time, Reiser wrote, was Adam Smith’s ideas of how roads, waterways, and free trade affected civilization development; ReiserFS’ ideas could similarly change “the expressive power of the operating system.”

Convicted murderer, filesystem creator writes of regrets to Linux list Read More »

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Inventor of NTP protocol that keeps time on billions of devices dies at age 85

1985, ARPANET, Biz & IT, Dave Mills, FTP, internet history, Internet pioneers, network time protocol, NSFNET, NTP, Ping, retrotech, Tech, The Internet, Vint Cerf / /

A legend in his own time —

Dave Mills created NTP, the protocol that holds the temporal Internet together, in 1985.

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A photo of David L. Mills taken by David Woolley on April 27, 2005.

Enlarge / A photo of David L. Mills taken by David Woolley on April 27, 2005.

David Woolley / Benj Edwards / Getty Images

On Thursday, Internet pioneer Vint Cerf announced that Dr. David L. Mills, the inventor of Network Time Protocol (NTP), died peacefully at age 85 on January 17, 2024. The announcement came in a post on the Internet Society mailing list after Cerf was informed of David’s death by Mills’ daughter, Leigh.

“He was such an iconic element of the early Internet,” wrote Cerf.

Dr. Mills created the Network Time Protocol (NTP) in 1985 to address a crucial challenge in the online world: the synchronization of time across different computer systems and networks. In a digital environment where computers and servers are located all over the world, each with its own internal clock, there’s a significant need for a standardized and accurate timekeeping system.

NTP provides the solution by allowing clocks of computers over a network to synchronize to a common time source. This synchronization is vital for everything from data integrity to network security. For example, NTP keeps network financial transaction timestamps accurate, and it ensures accurate and synchronized timestamps for logging and monitoring network activities.

In the 1970s, during his tenure at COMSAT and involvement with ARPANET (the precursor to the Internet), Mills first identified the need for synchronized time across computer networks. His solution aligned computers to within tens of milliseconds. NTP now operates on billions of devices worldwide, coordinating time across every continent, and has become a cornerstone of modern digital infrastructure.

As detailed in an excellent 2022 New Yorker profile by Nate Hopper, Mills faced significant challenges in maintaining and evolving the protocol, especially as the Internet grew in scale and complexity. His work highlighted the often under-appreciated role of key open source software developers (a topic explored quite well in a 2020 xkcd comic). Mills was born with glaucoma and lost his sight, eventually becoming completely blind. Due to difficulties with his sight, Mills turned over control of the protocol to Harlan Stenn in the 2000s.

A screenshot of Dr. David L. Mills' website at the University of Delaware captured on January 19, 2024.

Enlarge / A screenshot of Dr. David L. Mills’ website at the University of Delaware captured on January 19, 2024.

Aside from his work on NTP, Mills also invented the first “Fuzzball router” for NSFNET (one of the first modern routers, based on the DEC PDP-11 computer), created one of the first implementations of FTP, inspired the creation of “ping,” and played a key role in Internet architecture as the first chairman of the Internet Architecture Task Force.

Mills was widely recognized for his work, becoming a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1999 and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2002, as well as receiving the IEEE Internet Award in 2013 for contributions to network protocols and timekeeping in the development of the Internet.

Mills received his PhD in Computer and Communication Sciences from the University of Michigan in 1971. At the time of his death, Mills was an emeritus professor at the University of Delaware, having retired in 2008 after teaching there for 22 years.

Inventor of NTP protocol that keeps time on billions of devices dies at age 85 Read More »

google-search-is-losing-the-fight-with-seo-spam,-study-says

Google search is losing the fight with SEO spam, study says

Google, google search, spam, Tech / /

Just wait until more AI sites arrive —

Study finds “search engines seem to lose the cat-and-mouse game that is SEO spam.”

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Google search is losing the fight with SEO spam, study says

It’s not just you—Google Search is getting worse. A new study from Leipzig University, Bauhaus-University Weimar, and the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence looked at Google search quality for a year and found the company is losing the war against SEO (Search Engine Optimization) spam.

The study, first spotted by 404media, “monitored Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo for a year on 7,392 product review queries,” using queries like “best headphones” to study search results. The focus was on product review queries because the researchers felt those searches were “particularly vulnerable to affiliate marketing due to its inherent conflict of interest between users, search providers, and content providers.”

Overall, the study found that “the majority of high-ranking product reviews in the result pages of commercial search engines (SERPs) use affiliate marketing, and significant amounts are outright SEO product review spam.” Search engines occasionally update their ranking algorithms to try to combat spam, but the study found that “search engines seem to lose the cat-and-mouse game that is SEO spam” and that there are “strong correlations between search engine rankings and affiliate marketing, as well as a trend toward simplified, repetitive, and potentially AI-generated content.”

The study found “an inverse relationship between a page’s optimization level and its perceived expertise, indicating that SEO may hurt at least subjective page quality.” Google and its treatment of pages is the primary force behind what does and doesn’t count as SEO, and to say Google’s guidelines reduce subjective page quality is a strike against Google’s entire ranking algorithm.

The bad news is that it doesn’t seem like this will get better any time soon. The study points out generative AI sites one or two times, but that was only in the past year. The elephant in the room is that generative AI is starting to be able to completely automate the processes of SEO spam. Some AI content farms can scan a human-written site, use it for “training data,” rewrite it slightly, and then stave off the actual humans with more aggressive SEO tactics. There are already people bragging about doing AI-powered “SEO heists” on X (formerly Twitter). The New York Times is taking OpenAI to court for copyright infringement, and a class-action suit for book publishers calls ChatGPT and LLaMA (Large Language Model Meta AI) “industrial-strength plagiarists.” Artists are in the same boat from tools like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. Most websites do not have the legal capacity to take on an infinite wave of automated spam sites enabled by these tools. Google’s policy is to not penalize AI-generated content in its search results.

A Google spokesperson responded to the study by pointing out that Google is still doing better than its competition: “This particular study looked narrowly at product review content, and it doesn’t reflect the overall quality and helpfulness of Search for the billions of queries we see every day. We’ve launched specific improvements to address these issues – and the study itself points out that Google has improved over the past year and is performing better than other search engines. More broadly, numerous third parties have measured search engine results for other types of queries and found Google to be of significantly higher quality than the rest.”

This post was updated at 6: 00PM ET to add a statement from Google.

Google search is losing the fight with SEO spam, study says Read More »

“alexa-is-in-trouble”:-paid-for-alexa-gives-inaccurate-answers-in-early-demos

“Alexa is in trouble”: Paid-for Alexa gives inaccurate answers in early demos

AI, Amazon, amazon alexa, generative ai, Tech, voice assistant / /
Amazon Echo Show 8 with Alexa

Enlarge / Amazon demoed future generative AI capabilties for Alexa in September.

“If this fails to get revenue, Alexa is in trouble.”

A quote from an anonymous Amazon employee in a Wednesday Business Insider report paints a dire picture. Amazon needs its upcoming subscription version of Alexa to drive revenue in ways that its voice assistant never has before.

Amazon declined Ars’ request for comment on the report. But the opening quote in this article could have been uttered by anyone following voice assistants for the past year-plus. All voice assistants have struggled to drive revenue since people tend to use voice assistants for basic queries, like checking the weather, rather than transactions.

Amazon announced plans to drive usage and interest in Alexa by releasing a generative AI version that it said would one day require a subscription.

This leads to the question: Would you pay to use Alexa? Amazon will be challenged to convince people to change how they use Alexa while suddenly paying a monthly rate to enable that unprecedented behavior.

Workers within Amazon seemingly see this obstacle. Insider, citing an anonymous Amazon employee, reported that “some were questioning the entire premise of charging for Alexa. For example, people who already pay for an existing Amazon service, such as Amazon Music, might not be willing to pay additional money to get access to the newer version of Alexa.”

“There is tension over whether people will pay for Alexa or not,” one of the anonymous Amazon workers reportedly said.

Subscription-based Alexa originally planned for June release

Amazon hasn’t publicly confirmed a release date for generative AI Alexa. But Insider’s report, citing “internal documents and people familiar with the matter,” said Amazon has been planning to release its subscription plan on June 30. However, plans for what Insider said will be called “Alexa Plus” and built on “Remarkable Alexa” technology could be delayed due to numerous development challenges.

According to the report, the Remarkable Alexa tech has been being demoed by 15,000 customers and currently succeeds in being conversational but is “deflecting answers, often giving unnecessarily long or inaccurate responses.”

In September, then-SVP of devices and services at Amazon David Limp demoed Alexa understanding more complex commands, including Alexa not requiring the “Hey Alexa” prompt and being able to understand multiple demands for multiple apps through a single spoken phrase.

Insider reported: “The new Alexa still didn’t meet the quality standards expected for Alexa Plus, these people added, noting the technical challenges and complexity of redesigning Alexa.”

“Legacy constraints”

According to the report, people working on the original Alexa insisted on using what they had already built for the standard voice assistant with the paid-for version, resulting in a bloated technology and “internal politics.”

However, the original Alexa is based on a natural language model with multiple parts doing multiple things, compared to the colossal large language model of generative AI Alexa.

Now, generative AI Alexa is reportedly moving to a new technological stack to avoid the “legacy constraints” of today’s Alexa but potentially delaying things.

“Alexa is in trouble”: Paid-for Alexa gives inaccurate answers in early demos Read More »

samsung’s-$1,300-phone-might-someday-have-fees-for-ai-usage

Samsung’s $1,300 phone might someday have fees for AI usage

AI, Galaxy S24, samsung, Tech / /

Will Samsung even care about AI in 2026? —

Samsung says Galaxy S24 AI features are “free until the end of 2025.”

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Samsung’s $1,300 phone might someday have fees for AI usage

Samsung

Samsung’s big Galaxy S24 launch was yesterday, and to hear Samsung tell the story, the big highlight of the event was “Galaxy AI.” Another view is that Galaxy AI is the usual bundle of baked-in Samsung features skinned on top of Android, but with generative AI being the hot new thing, Samsung went with AI-centric branding. Whatever value you want to place on Samsung’s AI features, you might soon have to place an actual monetary value on them: Despite devices like the Galaxy S24 Ultra costing $1,300, Samsung might start charging for some of these AI phone features.

The fine print on Samsung’s Galaxy S24 promotional page features 44 asterisks and footnotes, and tucked away in that pile of caveats is the line “Galaxy AI features will be provided for free until the end of 2025 on supported Samsung Galaxy devices.” That means Samsung reserves the right to charge for Galaxy AI after 2025.

AI features that require server time have an ongoing cost. Google and Amazon figured this out in the last AI generation (if we can call it that) with the Google Assistant and Alexa voice assistants. Amazon’s finances on the whole situation are clearer than Google’s, and Amazon’s 2022 Alexa financials were reportedly a $10 billion loss. Amazon is planning on a subscription model for Alexa in the future. Google’s normal user subscription plan is Google One, and while that mainly gets you more account storage, it also unlocks some Google AI features like “Magic eraser” in Google Photos. ChatGPT has a subscription plan for its best model, ChatGPT 4, too. Samsung apparently wants to join the party.

The Galaxy S24's

Enlarge / The Galaxy S24’s “Live translate” feature in the phone app. You can speak one language, and the phone app will repeat your message in a different language after a delay.

Samsung

This is the company that makes Bixby and the notoriously poorly coded Tizen, though, so it’s hard to imagine Galaxy AI features being worth paying for. The first item on Samsung’s “Galaxy AI” promo page is Google’s “Circle to search,” a feature it can’t charge for and didn’t build. The Galaxy AI features made by Samsung include “Interpreter,” which is a copy of Google Translate’s conversation mode, and Voice Recorder, a voice transcription app that is just a copy of Google Recorder (and apparently not as good). “Chat Assist” is part of the keyboard and can rewrite any inputted text with generative AI, making your input sound more “fun” or “professional.” “Note Assist” is a Samsung Notes feature that can generate AI summaries of your notes. The one interesting feature is “Live Translate,” which does voice translation of a phone call, translating communication via speech-to-text-to-speech. There’s a lot that can go wrong there, though.

Samsung is a hardware company, and presumably, a lot of these use on-device processing instead of bothering a server somewhere, so it’s hard to know if Samsung even has any serious costs to recoup. Like most Samsung Android features, this feels more like throwing a pile of stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks rather than a collection of killer apps. These are essentially all just app features, too, meaning they have to compete with the nearly infinite Play Store app selection, and you could easily download a free competitor.

The first step to charging for something like this is throwing the idea out there, so Samsung is probably listening to how people will react between now and the end of 2025.

Samsung’s $1,300 phone might someday have fees for AI usage Read More »

netflix-won’t-have-a-vision-pro-app,-compromising-the-device’s-appeal

Netflix won’t have a Vision Pro app, compromising the device’s appeal

apple vision pro, culture, netflix, Tech, visionOS / /

App Support —

You’ll be able to watch via the web browser, but that’s far from ideal.

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Vision Pro will allow users to watch movies on a virtual TV set.

Enlarge / Vision Pro will allow users to watch movies on a virtual TV set.

Apple

In the leadup to Vision Pro preorders tomorrow, Apple has seemingly been prioritizing the message that the device will be an ideal way to watch movies and TV shows. In many ways, that might be true, but there’s one major caveat: Netflix.

In a statement reported by Bloomberg today, Netflix revealed that it does not plan to offer an app for Vision Pro. Instead, users will have to use a web-based interface to watch the streaming service.

Netflix compares the experience to the Mac, but there are a few reasons this won’t be an ideal experience for users. First, the iPad and iPhone mobile apps support offline viewing of downloaded videos. That’s particularly handy for when you’re flying, which is arguably one of the best use cases for Vision Pro.

Unfortunately, Netflix doesn’t support offline downloads on the web. It also remains to be seen what resolution will be achievable—the maximum resolution of a Netflix stream depends on the browser, with most capping out at 720p. That wouldn’t look so great on a 100-foot virtual screen.

Granted, Netflix streams at up to 4K on Safari for macOS, but we don’t know if that will be the case for Safari on Vision Pro.

It will also make launching the app more complicated, and the interface won’t be as nice to use as a native app.

There are two ways Netflix could have supported visionOS more directly. The company could have developed a full-fledged mixed reality app like Disney+ did, with visionOS-specific features. Or it could have at least adapted its iPad app to work well within visionOS.

The latter, while not completely trivial, is relatively easy for a company with Netflix’s development resources, so it’s hard not to see this as a deliberate snub.

This isn’t the first time Netflix has chosen not to play nice with a new Apple initiative. Netflix is the most notable service missing from Apple’s useful TV app on Apple TV and iPhone, which aggregates your viewing activity and makes recommendations that link out to individual streaming apps.

Netflix and Apple now compete in the streaming space. In particular, both have courted awards for their original films with limited theatrical releases and aggressive campaigns. That could be a motivator, but we can’t know what Netflix’s leadership is thinking for sure.

Most other major streaming services, including Disney+, Peacock, Max, and Amazon Prime Video, will have working visionOS apps when the device launches in early February, making Netflix a notable outlier.

While not a deal-breaker for everyone, the omission cuts at the heart of Apple’s messaging around Vision Pro’s value proposition; the steep $3,499 price could be seen as worth the investment if you see the device as replacing both an iPad and a high-end TV. But that pitch is a little bit compromised if the experience on that high-end TV is subpar for one of the most popular streaming services.

Netflix won’t have a Vision Pro app, compromising the device’s appeal Read More »

figma’s-creator-micro-made-me-a-macro-pad-person-with-its-colorful,-clicky-keys

Figma’s Creator Micro made me a macro pad person with its colorful, clicky keys

creator micro, figma, Glowing keyboards, Keyboards, macro pad, mechanical keyboards, Tech, work louder / /

Clicky Keyboards —

Besides being a fun tool, this pad’s layers work great for OS-switching.

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Creator Micro on a desk next to keyboard, glasses, and Field Notes notebook

Enlarge / It’s coded for designers, quite literally, but the Figma Creator Micro is just a rebranded version of the stock Creator Micro from Work Louder. It is quite colorful, though.

Figma

A number of my friends, friends who aren’t streamers, have picked up Elgato’s Stream Decks. I can understand the impulse to have shortcuts, automation triggers, and fiddly little knobs within arm’s reach, without expanding the keyboard itself. But the Stream Deck’s customizable icons, upright nature, and streaming-focused app support make it a non-starter for my physical desktop. I’m a clicky keyboard person, even if I can see some intriguing non-QWERTY possibilities.

I hadn’t considered looking further into a secondary keyboard until I noticed that the makers of interface design tool Figma had collaborated with Work Louder on a custom tiny keyboard, the Figma Creator Micro. It’s a version of Work Louder’s standard Creator Micro, done up with a Figma-style color scheme and set up with four layers of shortcuts most useful inside that app, for a total of 48. It’s mechanical, it’s colorful, and it—or its more standardized cousin—might do a good bit toward improving your workflow.

Figma sent me a sample of its Creator Micro to test it out. I do not design interfaces, nor use Figma, but for all purposes, you could consider this to also be a test run of the standard Creator Micro. The two are functionally identical, minus the looks, and the pre-programming and custom shortcut keycaps included with the Figma version. Mine came with the “Clicky” (Kailh White) keys, though “Silent” (Kailh Brown) is an option.

  • The Figma Creator Micro, minus the USB-C cable it needs for data and power.

    Figma

  • The keycaps included with the Figma version of the Creator Micro.

    Figma

  • The base of the Creator Micro.

    Figma

  • Creator Micro on a desktop, with keyboard for scale.

    Figma

I reprogrammed three layers of my Micro with essentially the same 12 shortcuts, remapped with the web-based VIA software to mimic the same functions on Mac, Windows, and Gnome-based Linux (I haven’t gotten around to Chrome OS yet, but logically that’s next). This is a need more common among technology writers than perhaps many other trades, but it’s my favorite thing about the Micro. When I switch systems, I have to both physically switch my full-size keyboard (a NuPhy Air 75) between “Mac” and “Win” and also mentally shift my keyboard shortcuts. When I toggle between layers on the Micro (helpfully indicated with tiny LEDs), my shortcut scheme remains the same.

That scheme is geared toward my work, which is largely typing, taking screenshots, manipulating windows, and choosing which music is playing when I’m staring at a cursor and doubting myself. I’ve addressed the Micro’s buttons in horizontal rows, from the top:

  • Play, Next (skip) media
  • Resize windows left, center, full-size, and right (using native shortcuts or Rectangle)
  • Full-screen, active window, area selection, and save-to-file screenshots
  • Copy, paste

The top and bottom rows could probably be replaced, but I’m finding it nice to have backups for when my fingers can’t relearn the Command/Control differences between systems. The tall dial I have set to system volume and the smaller metallic wheel set to undo/redo actions. You can obviously go much further into specific app shortcuts, so long as you’re willing to learn VIA’s encoding system.

Having these shortcuts available has been helpful, but also fun. I’m not above admitting that I’m using the Micro to make my job—typing into a box about electricity—seem more like running some kind of complicated machine. The tactile feedback and sound from pressing one of the Micro’s keys provides the same kind of forward momentum feeling that mechanical typing enthusiasts pursue. Moving windows around with dedicated keys, and choosing when to grab a screenshot, feels more intentional and lends a sense of mastery.

OK, it’s fun, I’m saying. It’s fun to have a little box for little computer tasks, rather than efficiently doing them all through one slab you must memorize under pain of being considered unoptimized. Sometimes I just twirl the volume knob up and down, with nothing playing, because it’s fun to twirl a knob.

That kind of fun isn’t going to be worth $130–$160 (at the moment) to most people, maybe not even those already tuned into clicky keys. I think the Micro (and its Figma variant) looks and feels great, especially the knob, wheel, translucent RGB-lit border, and the just-heavy-enough non-skid base. Think about it when you next find your fingers tired from stretching to hit awkward combinations or your brain fatigued from differentiating between too-similar letters.

As Marcin Wichary, Figma’s design director and author of Shift Happens, a terrific compendium of keyboard history, puts it in Figma’s blog post about their Creator: “In a way, the QWERTY keyboard is boring because it has to be boring… it lost a lot of its personality to become versatile, and a lot of its quality to become ubiquitous.” The Creator Micro, and its Figma variant, are just two more tools to wield against practical, reasonable monotony.

Listing image by Figma

Figma’s Creator Micro made me a macro pad person with its colorful, clicky keys Read More »

apple-watch-no-longer-sold-with-blood-oxygen-monitoring-after-patent-battle-loss

Apple Watch no longer sold with blood oxygen monitoring after patent battle loss

Apple, apple watch, patent infringement, Policy, Tech / /
Apple Watch Ultra 2

Enlarge / The Apple Watch Ultra 2.

Apple

Starting today, if you buy an Apple Watch Series 9 or Watch Ultra 2 it won’t be able to tell you your blood oxygen levels, a feature that Apple heavily touted when first introducing the capability in 2020. Although the watches will be less capable than watches of the same model sold before today, Apple is selling the pared-down watches at the same prices as before.

On Wednesday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied [PDF] Apple’s request that an import ban on the smartwatches be lifted for the duration of Apple’s appeal of the ruling that blocked the watches. Apple expects its appeal to take at least a year to be resolved.

In its ruling, the court said:

Our determination is governed by four factors: (1) whether the movant has made a strong showing of likelihood of success on the merits; (2) whether the movant will be irreparably harmed absent a stay; (3) whether issuance of the stay will substantially injure the other parties interested in the proceeding; and (4) where the public interest lies.

In January 2023, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that Apple Watches infringe two patents for light-based pulse oximetry functionality and components owned by California-headquartered Masimo.

After US President Joe Biden declined to veto the ruling, Apple filed an appeal and pulled the watches on December 21. The company received a temporary stay that enabled it to sell the watches with the questioned capabilities from December 27 until 5 pm ET yesterday. But yesterday’s ruling resulted in the stay being lifted, forcing Apple to either stop selling the watches or to continue selling them but with the disputed feature removed.

When reached for comment, an Apple spokesperson told Ars Technica:

Pending the appeal, Apple is taking steps to comply with the ruling while ensuring customers have access to Apple Watch with limited disruption. These steps include introducing a version of Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 in the United States without the Blood Oxygen feature. There is no impact to Apple Watch units previously purchased that include the Blood Oxygen feature.

In a statement shared by Bloomberg today, Masimo CEO Joe Kiani said that Wednesday’s decision “affirms that even the largest and most powerful companies must respect the intellectual rights of American inventors and must deal with the consequences when they are caught infringing others’ patents.”

Same watches, different abilities

Starting today, Apple will only sell the Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2, which both came out in September, with a US Customs and Border Protection-approved software workaround that disables blood oxygen monitoring capabilities. These watches will be available at Apple’s physical and online stores, Apple said. They also have part numbers ending in “LW/A,” per updated Apple support materials.

Users of newly purchased Series 9 and Ultra 2 smartwatches will still have a blood oxygen icon on their watch, but upon tapping the icon, the watch will say, “The Blood Oxygen app is no longer available. Learn more in the Health app on your iPhone.” Once they go to the Health app, users can access a support article on Apple’s website explaining the situation.

Apple’s general product page for the Apple Watch and its websites for the Series 9 and Ultra 2 now include tiny footnotes at the bottom, noting that its watches no longer have the blood oxygen monitoring capabilities that they were announced with. When asked why the watches aren’t less expensive without pulse oximeter functionality, Apple’s rep said that pricing isn’t based on a single feature. It’s worth noting that the watches haven’t become cheaper to make, as they still have the same components as before.

Since the US ITC’s ruling only affects the US, Apple will continue selling the Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 with blood oxygen monitoring capabilities outside the US.

Apple didn’t respond to Ars’ questions asking if it will redesign its watches so that they can offer blood oxygen monitoring without infringing on any patents. On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Apple has “been working on a software update that changes the blood-oxygen app and its algorithms in a way that might circumvent” patent infringement but keep the feature.

Apple Watch no longer sold with blood oxygen monitoring after patent battle loss Read More »

the-galaxy-s24-gets-seven-years-of-updates,-$1,300-titanium-“ultra”-model

The Galaxy S24 gets seven years of updates, $1,300 Titanium “Ultra” model

Tech / /

Woo updates —

The new update plan on a Qualcomm SoC is a major ecosystem change.

– Updated

The Galaxy S24 line.

Enlarge / The Galaxy S24 line.

Samsung

Samsung has unveiled its new flagship phones for 2024: the Galaxy S24, S24+, and S24 Ultra.  Considering Samsung’s usually conservative year-to-year changes, there are a lot of differences this year.

The S24 Ultra now has a titanium body, just like the iPhone 15. It also has a “fully flat display,” ending years of Android’s weird curved OLED panel gimmick that only served to distort the sides of the display. Samsung says the new Ultra design has “42 percent slimmer bezels” and a front hole-punch camera cutout that is “11 percent smaller” than those on the S23 Ultra. The rest of the design looks like Ultra models of past years, with rounded edges and a flat top and bottom. The bottom still houses an S-Pen for handwriting and drawing.

All that titanium will cost you. The S24 Ultra is $100 more than last year, coming to an eye-popping $1,300. An iPhone 15 Pro Max is $1,200, and a Pixel 8 Pro is $1,000, so that’s a tough sell.

The smaller S24+ and S24 models are aluminum and feature a new design with a flat, metal band that goes around the phone’s perimeter, making the devices look a lot like an iPhone 4 or 15. Both models have slimmer bezels and 120 Hz displays; Samsung says all the S23 displays can hit a peak brightness of 2600 nits in sunlight mode. The S24 and S24+ prices are the same as last year: $800 for the S24 and $1,000 for the S24+.

Another big announcement is that Samsung is matching Google’s new update plan and offering “seven years of security updates and seven generations of OS upgrades.” Previously, it gave four years of updates. Apple doesn’t have a formal update policy, but with the iPhone X recently lasting from iOS 11 to iOS 16, Samsung can now credibly say the S24 offers more major OS updates than a typical iPhone. (Let’s not bring up the speed of those OS updates, though, which can still take months.)

  • The S24 Ultra, now made of titanium, is still packing an S-Pen.

    Samsung

  • The top and bottom of the Ultra model are flat.

    Samsung

  • Here you can see a lineup of all the phones and where the S-Pen goes.

    Samsung

  • The camera layout.

    Samsung

  • The display is now totally flat.

    Samsung

  • With a totally flat screen and square corners, the Ultra is a unique-looking phone.

    Samsung

  • Circle to search, a contextal Google search feature that will also be on the Pixel 8.

    Samsung

Google announced seven years of updates for the Pixel 8, but as the maker of Android and with its own “Tensor” SoC, Google’s support system exists outside of the usual Android ecosystem that most OEMs have to deal with. Samsung has somehow gotten Qualcomm to commit to seven years of update support, which feels like a sea change in the industry. Previously, Qualcomm was very resistant to long chip life cycles, with Fairphone desperately sourcing an “industrial” Qualcomm chip just to get five years of support from the company in 2023. This change is what the Android ecosystem has needed for years, and we hope this level of support will be open to all companies in the future.

In the US, the Galaxy line is getting a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Last year, Samsung and Qualcomm signed a sweetheart deal to make the S23 line exclusively use Snapdragon chips worldwide and with that came an exclusive up-clocked “Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy” chip. This year Qualcomm isn’t the exclusive chip provider, but the “For Galaxy” branding is back, according to this Qualcomm press release, so this has the “Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile Platform for Galaxy”. We don’t have any hard data on what exactly the difference is, but the Qualcomm press release promises a “30 percent faster GPU” than last year, while the normal Gen 3 site says the GPU is “25 percent faster.” Exynos chips get an AMD Radeon GPU, so Qualcomm pumping up the GPU to compete makes sense.

And speaking of Exynos chips, they’re back! The S24 chip gets a Snapdragon chip in the US, while internationally, some models will go back to Samsung Exynos chips (specifically the Exynos 2400). Samsung only tells the US press about US specs, but an earlier SamMoble report claims that “the Exynos 2400 will power the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ in pretty much every country other than the US, Canada, Korea, China, and Japan.” Note that those are the two smaller models. If you’re in the market for an Ultra, the site says there is no Exynos Ultra model—they’re all Snapdragons. Qualcomm’s press release backs this up, saying Snapdragon powers “[the] Galaxy S24 Ultra globally and Galaxy S24 Plus and S24 in select regions.”

The Galaxy S24 gets seven years of updates, $1,300 Titanium “Ultra” model Read More »

why-i-hope-the-atari-400-mini-will-bring-respect-to-atari’s-most-underrated-platform

Why I hope the Atari 400 Mini will bring respect to Atari’s most underrated platform

atari, Atari 2600, Atari 400, Atari 8-bit, Atari 8-bit computers, Atari 800, atari vcs, commodore 64, gaming, HDMI, mini consoles, MULE, retrotech, Tech / /

Have you played Atari today? —

Can USB, HDMI, and built-in games raise awareness for a platform overshadowed by the C64?

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Retro Games' THE400 Mini console.

Enlarge / Retro Games’ THE400 Mini console.

Retro Games / Benj Edwards

Last week, UK-based Retro Games, Ltd. announced a mini console version of the Atari 400 home computer, first released in 1979. It’s called “THE400 Mini,” and it includes HDMI video output, 25 built-in games, a USB version of Atari’s famous joystick, and it retails for $120. But this release means something more to me personally because my first computer was an Atari 400—and as any other Atari 8-bit computer fan can tell you, the platform often doesn’t get the respect it should. This will be the first time Atari’s 8-bit computer line has received a major retro-remake release.

My Atari 400 story goes a little something like this. Around the time I was born in 1981, my dad bought my older brother (then 5 years old) an Atari 400 so he could play games and learn to program. My brother almost immediately found its flat membrane keyboard frustrating and the Atari 410 cassette drive too slow, so my dad ordered an Atari 800 and an Atari 810 disk drive instead. This began our family’s golden age of Atari 800 gaming, which I’ve written about elsewhere.

I’ve often said if a modern game designer wants to learn how to make games, just dive into the Atari 400/800 game library. There are some priceless gems there you can’t find anywhere else, plus others that play best on the platform. OK, I’ll name a few: The Seven Cities of Gold, Archon, M.U.L.E., Wizard of Wor, Salmon Run, Star Raiders, The Halley Project, and so much more.

A photo of Benj Edwards' family Atari 800 and Atari 400 in his brother's room, Christmas 1985.

Enlarge / A photo of Benj Edwards’ family Atari 800 and Atari 400 in his brother’s room, Christmas 1985.

Even with the new 800, it seems that my dad must have kept the original Atari 400, because by the time I grew up more and wanted “my own computer” in the late 1980s, he gave me the Atari 400. The 800 was still my brother’s baby and typically remained in his bedroom. When I wasn’t playing more complex games like M.U.L.E. and Archon on the 800 with my brother, I hooked up the 400 to a small black-and-white TV set in my room and mostly played Galaxian, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong on a cartridge. Not long after, I got an Apple II Plus and learned BASIC on that, but the Atari 400 always got pride of place in my growing computer collection.

A snippet from a 1988 to-do list written by Benj Edwards' dad that says

Enlarge / A snippet from a 1988 to-do list written by Benj Edwards’ dad that says “Get TV/monitor for Benj’s Atari 400 computer,” completed 4/14/88.

But enough about me. Let’s talk about the new Atari 400 Mini. I haven’t used it myself yet, so all we have to go on is the information provided by the company—and the company’s reputation. Retro Games has previously released full-sized remakes of the Commodore VIC-20 and the Commodore 64, and mini consoles of the Amiga 500 and the Commodore 64. In 2020, Engadget gave the company’s “THE64 Mini” mixed reviews, praising its looks but complaining about its joystick and poor game selection. We’ll admit preconceived bias and hope the 400 Mini fares much better. Even if the joystick ends up a dud, Retro Games says you can provide your own USB stick or controller.

I also hope THE400 does well because Atari 8-bit fans have a tough time with group identity in the span of retro tech history. Few Americans aside from Atari 400/800 owners have heard of the platform (though the platform did very well in Eastern Europe). The Atari 8-bit series didn’t sell nearly as well as competitors like the Commodore 64 in the US (although Sean Lennon had an Atari 400 as a kid—cool trivia).

And even though the Atari 400/800 series provided the template for Commodore to imitate with the VIC-20 and C64, Commodore undercut Atari in price with cheaper parts, which contributed to Atari’s crash in 1983 and drove Texas Instruments out of the home computer business. More recently, the Commodore 64 has had several retro re-releases since the Commodore 64 Direct-to-TV in 2004. The Atari 400/800 platform has had none until now.

Why I hope the Atari 400 Mini will bring respect to Atari’s most underrated platform Read More »

apple-watch-redesigned-without-blood-oxygen-monitoring-to-avoid-import-ban

Apple Watch redesigned without blood oxygen monitoring to avoid import ban

Apple, apple watch, patent infringement, Policy, smartwatch, Tech / /

Masimo patent battle —

Apple preps update should patent-infringing Watch Series 9, Ultra 2 be banned again.

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Apple Watch Series 9

Enlarge / The Apple Watch Series 9.

Apple

Apple has developed a backup plan for if the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 are import banned again. As it currently appeals the US International Trade Commission’s (ITC’s) ruling that its watches violate a patent owned by Masimo, Apple has come up with a software workaround that strips its current smartwatches of their controversial blood oxygen monitoring capabilities.

In January 2023, the ITC ruled that the Watch violated one of California-headquartered Masimo’s light-based pulse oximetry patents. The Apple Watch Series 6, which came out in 2020, was the first Apple smartwatch to use a pulse oximeter sensor.

Facing a US import ban of the current Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2, both released in September 2023, Apple started pulling the smartwatches on December 21. But on December 27, Apple, which filed its appeal against the ITC’s ruling on December 26 (after US President Joe Biden declined to overrule the ITC ruling), received an emergency interim stay from the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, allowing it to continue selling the Watch.

On Monday, Masimo sent a letter [PDF] to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, as spotted by 9to5Mac, stating that US Customs and Border Protection decided on January 12 that Apple has redesigned the Watches so that they do not contain pulse oximetry functionality.

Apple accomplished this through a “software workaround” for smartwatches recently shipped to its physical stores, according to a Bloomberg report from Mark Gurman on Monday. However, the stores will not sell the redesigned watches until Apple headquarters tells them to, Bloomberg reported.

The publication noted that Apple will probably only release the Watches that can’t monitor blood oxygen levels if the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denies Apple’s request that its stay be upheld for the duration of its appeal against the ITC ruling, which Apple expects to be at least a year, an Apple spokesperson told Ars Technica. Apple expects that ruling to come as early as today.

Currently, the Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2 are still available with blood oxygen monitoring, an Apple spokesperson confirmed to Ars. But Apple hasn’t confirmed how long that will be the case, jeopardizing demand and the perceived value for Apple’s latest smartwatches.

Longer term, Bloomberg also reported that Apple is developing a software update that alters the watches’ blood oxygen monitoring app and algorithms so that users can still check out their blood oxygen but without Apple infringing on any patents.

For the ITC’s part, it responded to Apple’s requests for an extended stay on the import ban in a court filing on January 10 [PDF]. It stated that Apple has provided “a weak and unconvincing case” and that the tech giant’s arguments “amount to little more than an indisputably adjudicated infringer requesting permission to continue infringing the asserted patents.”

Prospective owners of the Apple Watch who value blood oxygen monitoring should keep an eye open for the appeals court’s ruling because it could swiftly result in Apple Watches that they’re considering buying missing a key feature.

Apple Watch redesigned without blood oxygen monitoring to avoid import ban Read More »

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Apple hits “all-time high” smartphone market share, takes #1 spot for 2023

Apple, Tech / /

Eww Android phones, who would want those? —

Apple beat all the Android OEMs while selling dramatically more expensive phones.

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The Apple logo takes corporeal form outside an Apple store.

Market research firm IDC has released some stunning smartphone market share numbers for 2023. The number one smartphone OEM is now Apple. The IDC says Apple hit an “all-time high market share” number for 2023 and that Apple has “the number 1 spot annually for the first time ever.” The analyst group says this represents “a sort of shifting of power” in the smartphone market.

That all-time high market share puts Apple at 20.1 percent for 2023, a 3.7 percent growth over 2022. Nearly everyone on Team Android is way down, with Samsung now in second place after losing 13.6 percent in 2023 for 19.4 percent market share on the year. Chinese firm Xiaomi is down 4.7 percent for 12.5 percent market share, and Oppo (the parent company of OnePlus) dropped 9.9 percent and is fourth, with 8.8 percent of the market. Next up is “Transsion,” a company that is definitely not a household name but is big in emerging markets like Africa. Transsion is a big winner, with 30 percent growth from 2022 to 2023. With 8.1 percent market share, it takes the fifth spot.

The IDC's market share charts for 2023.

Enlarge / The IDC’s market share charts for 2023.

Apple is usually not first in sales because the average iPhone purchase is much more expensive than an average Android phone. Samsung’s cheapest phones can be had for about $50, and while you can get a wildly expensive foldable that costs a lot more than an iPhone, Samsung’s bestselling models are often the midrange “A” series, which are in the $200–$450 range. Other Android manufacturers are in the same boat, with low-volume halo products and high-volume cheap devices.

According to Omdia’s top-10 model sales list for 2023, Apple’s bestselling phone—and the bestselling phone model in the world—was the $1,100 iPhone 14 Pro Max. The world’s second bestselling phone is the $1,000 iPhone 14 Pro. Third is the iPhone 14, which cost $800 for most of 2023. Apple’s cheapest phone is the iPhone SE at $429, but that model doesn’t sell well. The point is that Android manufacturers usually win these market share charts by selling cheap and midrange phones, but Apple was able to take the top spot while existing only in the mid-to-premium phone space. The industry lingo for this is “average sell price” (ASP), and for Q2 2023, the IDC has the average Android phone at $250, while the average iPhone costs $949.

In 2020, Apple was fourth in market share behind Samsung, Huawei, and Xiaomi, which made sense given Apple’s more expensive product line. In 2023, Apple beat all these Android OEMs while selling dramatically more expensive products. The IDC’s Nabila Popal wraps up the numbers by saying, “Apple’s ongoing success and resilience is in large part due to the increasing trend of premium devices, which now represent over 20% of the market, fueled by aggressive trade-in offers and interest-free financing plans.”

Apple hits “all-time high” smartphone market share, takes #1 spot for 2023 Read More »