Nobody Cares: Technology-only Edition

[Govi]

Nothing so infectious as that sort of laugh (and its cause).

 

[Free]

Apple settles with states for $113M over iPhone battery throttling

The problem wasn't so much what Apple did, states said, as what Apple hid.

arstechnica.com

The attorneys general for 33 states and the District of Columbia have reached a $113 million settlement with Apple over allegations that the iPhone maker throttled performance in several generations of the device to conceal a design defect in the battery.

The states alleged that Apple throttled performance in aging iPhones without telling consumers it was doing it or why. That concealment violated states' consumer protection laws, the attorneys general argued.

"Apple withheld information about their batteries that slowed down iPhone performance, all while passing it off as an update," California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said when announcing the settlement. "Today's settlement ensures consumers will have access to the information they need to make a well-informed decision when purchasing and using Apple products."

 

[Free]

FCC takes spectrum from auto industry in plan to “supersize” Wi-Fi

45MHz freed up in 5GHz band because automakers failed to widely deploy safety tech.

arstechnica.com

The Federal Communications Commission today voted to add 45MHz of spectrum to Wi-Fi in a slightly controversial decision that takes the spectrum away from a little-used automobile-safety technology.

The spectrum from 5.850GHz to 5.925GHz has, for about 20 years, been set aside for Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC), a vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications service that's supposed to warn drivers of dangers on the road. But as FCC Chairman Ajit Pai today said, "99.9943 percent of the 274 million registered vehicles on the road in the United States still don't have DSRC on-board units." Only 15,506 vehicles have been equipped with the technology, he said.

In today's decision, the FCC split the spectrum band and reallocated part of it to Wi-Fi and part of it to a newer vehicle technology. The lower 45MHz from 5.850GHz to 5.895GHz will be allocated to Wi-Fi and other unlicensed services.

 

[Free]

New “targeted healing” approach rejuvenates run-down battery materials

Rather than break down cathode material, why not restore it?

arstechnica.com

A new study led by Panpan Xu at the University of California, San Diego shows off a very different technique for lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries. This isn’t the most energy-dense type of lithium-ion battery, but it is economical and long-lived. (It’s the chemistry Tesla wants to rely on for shorter-range vehicles and grid storage batteries, for example.) Its low cost cuts both ways—less expensive ingredients mean less profit from recycling operations. But rejuvenating the lithium-iron-phosphate cathode material without breaking it down and starting over seems to be possible.

The idea behind the study relies on knowledge of how LFP battery capacity degrades. On the cathode side, the crystalline structure of the material doesn’t change over time. Instead, lithium ions increasingly fail to find their way back into their slots in the crystal during battery discharge. Iron atoms can move and take their place, plugging up the lithium pathway. If you could convince iron atoms to return to their assigned seats and repopulate with lithium atoms, you could have cathode material that is literally “as good as new.”

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

FCC takes spectrum from auto industry in plan to “supersize” Wi-Fi

45MHz freed up in 5GHz band because automakers failed to widely deploy safety tech.

arstechnica.com

This is a horrorshow. Direct vehicle-to-vehicle communication works everywhere. Cellular only works where you have a cell tower. It also requires an ongoing subscription and requires more infrastructure.

Aircraft have ADS-B transponders and TCAS. Ground vehicles need the same capability.

Hopefully they will be able to fire Ajit Pai in February and get this reversed.

 

[Essence Lumin]

This is a horrorshow. Direct vehicle-to-vehicle communication works everywhere. Cellular only works where you have a cell tower. It also requires an ongoing subscription and requires more infrastructure.

Aircraft have ADS-B transponders and TCAS. Ground vehicles need the same capability.

Hopefully they will be able to fire Ajit Pai in February and get this reversed.

I don't know how much this affects your argument but will note that wifi is not cellular, doesn't require a subscription and does not require a cell tower.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

It doesn't effect my comment at all.

They are not using wifi for V2V (vehicle to vehicle) communication. They are taking the V2V spectrum, splitting off half of it for domestic wifi, killing V2V, and replacing it with C-V2X (cellular vehicle to anything).

 

[Essence Lumin]

Update: As of this moment, my first choice of software is now working again.

Youtube-dl is back on github.

GitHub reinstates youtube-dl library after EFF intervention

GitHub also establishes a $1 million "developer defense fund" to help open source developers fight against abusive DMCA Section 1201 takedown claims.

www.zdnet.com

 

[Free]

 

[Free]

Seems Google's image recognition software ("AI") is sexist. Who could have expected?

When AI sees a man, it thinks “official.” A woman? “Smile”

Concerns about bias in image recognition services from Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.

arstechnica.com

When US and European researchers fed pictures of members of Congress to Google’s cloud image recognition service, the service applied three times as many annotations related to physical appearance to photos of women as it did to men. The top labels applied to men were “official” and “businessperson”; for women they were “smile” and “chin.”

“It results in women receiving a lower-status stereotype: that women are there to look pretty and men are business leaders,” says Carsten Schwemmer, a postdoctoral researcher at GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Köln, Germany. He worked on the study, published last week, with researchers from New York University, American University, University College Dublin, University of Michigan, and nonprofit California YIMBY.

At least we're "persons."

 

[Free]

Apple security chief maintains innocence after bribery charges

Sheriff's office allegedly sought 200 iPads in trade for concealed carry permits.

arstechnica.com

A grand jury in California's Santa Clara County has indicted Thomas Moyer, Apple's head of global security, for bribery. Moyer is accused of offering 200 iPads to the Santa County Sheriff's office in exchange for concealed carry permits for four Apple employees.

Moyer's attorney says that he did nothing wrong, and notably Apple is standing behind its executive.

“We expect all of our employees to conduct themselves with integrity," an Apple spokesperson said in a statement. "After learning of the allegations, we conducted a thorough internal investigation and found no wrongdoing."

Also indicted were two officials in the office of Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith. These officials are accused of soliciting the alleged bribe.

 

[Free]

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I appreciate you trying to protect my delicate sensibilities, Bing, but the translation was not useful.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Evidently Amazon Web Services is or was having issues today and basically everything that uses AWS was crippled or inoperative because of it. Including, interestingly, my local news channel's website.

 

[Free]

Evidently Amazon Web Services is or was having issues today and basically everything that uses AWS was crippled or inoperative because of it.

Not everything, thankfully. My company uses AWS exclusively and we didn't see a blip.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

THANKS FOR YOUR HUSBAND/FATHER DYING SO THAT I CAN PLAY ON MY PHONE GOING DOWN THE FREEWAY AT 80MPH

 

[Essence Lumin]

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

I have scraped HTML with regex.

 

[Essence Lumin]

I have scraped HTML with regex.

HTML can be parsed for specific cases where the format of the html is known but people go into long arguments showing it can't be done in an all purpose way.

 

[Free]

HTML can be parsed for specific cases where the format of the html is known but people go into long arguments showing it can't be done in an all purpose way.

Most regexes are not designed for "all purpose" data collection.