Author name: Paul Patrick

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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 »

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Test flights on tap for Space Perspective’s luxury high-altitude balloon

balloon, Commercial space, Science, Space, space perspective / /
Space Perspective's first test capsule, <em>Excelsior</em>, has a diameter of approximately 16 feet (4.9 meters).” src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Space_Perspective_Capsule_Front_on_Sunset_Landscape-800×533.jpg”></img><figcaption> <p><a data-height=Enlarge / Space Perspective’s first test capsule, Excelsior, has a diameter of approximately 16 feet (4.9 meters).

Space Perspective could begin test flights of its privately owned capsule suspended under a high-altitude balloon within the next couple of months, the company’s co-founder told Ars this week.

Florida-based Space Perspective released photos of its first completed test capsule Tuesday. The company will use this pressurized capsule, called Excelsior, for a series of test flights this year over the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Cape Canaveral. Taber MacCallum, Space Perspective’s co-founder and chief technology officer, said employees have also finished fabricating the giant balloon that will lift the test capsule into the upper atmosphere for the first test flight.

The final piece of the puzzle is a ship, named Marine Spaceport Voyager, that Space Perspective will use to launch the balloon and capsule. This vessel is due to depart an outfitting facility in Louisiana in the next few weeks for a trip to Port Canaveral, Florida, where Space Perspective will load aboard the capsule and balloon. Then, perhaps in four to six weeks, ground teams will be ready for the system’s first test flight, according to MacCallum.

But this is a test program, and there could be delays, MacCallum said. In the meantime, Space Perspective will start building a second capsule for human test flights.

“We’ll do a series of unmanned tests with this capsule,” he said. “In theory, we could fly people in this capsule. It’s designed that way, and it has all of the systems set up for human flight. But our planning assumes that trailing on what we learn from this capsule, we build another capsule that will be our first human flight capsule. And this will remain an unmanned test capsule.”

Soaring to the edge of “space”

These tests are a prelude to Space Perspective’s plans for regular commercial flights carrying paying customers to 100,000 feet (about 30 kilometers), roughly three times higher than the cruising altitude of a typical commercial airliner. From 100,000 feet, Space Perspective’s clients will see panoramic views of the ground and ocean far below, and the sky will be black, with the capsule flying above 99 percent of Earth’s atmosphere.

Founded in 2019, Space Perspective says on its website it is “driven by a desire to share the transformative power of space travel with as many people as possible.” In reality, the company will give customers an experience similar to spaceflight, with a few significant differences.

Essentially, passengers on Space Perspective’s high-altitude balloon will get a view the company says is similar to what a passenger might see on a suborbital spacecraft from Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic. But Space Perspective’s vehicle won’t subject customers to any high G-forces or the risks of rocket flight. The balloon passengers also won’t float in microgravity. And it will max out at 30 kilometers, well short of the 80-kilometer boundary of space recognized by the US government or the 100-kilometer Kármán line.

Still, the view from 30 kilometers must be tremendous. “You’ll see essentially all of Florida,” MacCallum said. “We’re also looking at flying sort of across the southern tip of Florida, so you’d see Cuba, the Bahamas, essentially all of Florida. So amazing views.”

Test flights on tap for Space Perspective’s luxury high-altitude balloon Read More »

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iMessage gets a major makeover that puts it on equal footing with Signal

Apple, Biz & IT, iMessage, messaging apps, MESSENGER, quantum computing, Security, signal / /
Stylized illustration of key.

iMessage is getting a major makeover that makes it among the two messaging apps most prepared to withstand the coming advent of quantum computing, largely at parity with Signal or arguably incrementally more hardened.

On Wednesday, Apple said messages sent through iMessage will now be protected by two forms of end-to-end encryption (E2EE), whereas before, it had only one. The encryption being added, known as PQ3, is an implementation of a new algorithm called Kyber that, unlike the algorithms iMessage has used until now, can’t be broken with quantum computing. Apple isn’t replacing the older quantum-vulnerable algorithm with PQ3—it’s augmenting it. That means, for the encryption to be broken, an attacker will have to crack both.

Making E2EE future safe

The iMessage changes come five months after the Signal Foundation, maker of the Signal Protocol that encrypts messages sent by more than a billion people, updated the open standard so that it, too, is ready for post-quantum computing (PQC). Just like Apple, Signal added Kyber to X3DH, the algorithm it was using previously. Together, they’re known as PQXDH.

iMessage and Signal provide end-to-end encryption, a protection that makes it impossible for anyone other than the sender and recipient of a message to read it in decrypted form. iMessage began offering E2EE with its rollout in 2011. Signal became available in 2014.

One of the biggest looming threats to many forms of encryption is quantum computing. The strength of the algorithms used in virtually all messaging apps relies on mathematical problems that are easy to solve in one direction and extremely hard to solve in the other. Unlike a traditional computer, a quantum computer with sufficient resources can solve these problems in considerably less time.

No one knows how soon that day will come. One common estimate is that a quantum computer with 20 million qubits (a basic unit of measurement) will be able to crack a single 2,048-bit RSA key in about eight hours. The biggest known quantum computer to date has 433 qubits.

Whenever that future arrives, cryptography engineers know it’s inevitable. They also know that it’s likely some adversaries will collect and stockpile as much encrypted data now and decrypt it once quantum advances allow for it. The moves by both Apple and Signal aim to defend against that eventuality using Kyber, one of several PQC algorithms currently endorsed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Since Kyber is still relatively new, both iMessage and Signal will continue using the more tested algorithms for the time being.

iMessage gets a major makeover that puts it on equal footing with Signal Read More »

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Unvaccinated Florida kids exposed to measles can skip quarantine, officials say

anti-vaccine, Florida, health, Ladapo, measles, MMR, Science, vaccines / /

Bad idea —

On Tuesday, nearly 20 percent of the school’s 1,067 students were reportedly absent.

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Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo speaks during a press conference at Neo City Academy in Kissimmee, Florida.

Enlarge / Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo speaks during a press conference at Neo City Academy in Kissimmee, Florida.

Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

A sixth student at Florida’s Manatee Bay Elementary School outside of Fort Lauderdale has a confirmed case of measles, health officials announced late Tuesday. However, health officials are not telling unvaccinated students who were potentially exposed to quarantine.

The school has a low vaccination rate, suggesting that the extremely contagious virus could spark a yet larger outbreak. But in a letter sent to parents late Tuesday, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo—known for spreading anti-vaccine rhetoric and vaccine misinformation—indicated that unvaccinated students can skip the normally recommended quarantine period.

The letter, signed by Ladapo, noted that people with measles can be contagious from four days before the rash develops through four days after the rash appears. And while symptoms often develop between 8 to 14 days after exposure, the disease can take 21 days to appear. As such, the normal quarantine period for exposed and unvaccinated people, who are highly susceptible to measles, is 21 days.

“Because of the high likelihood of infection, it is normally recommended that children stay home until the end of the infectious period, which is currently March 7, 2024,” Ladapo’s letter states, adding that the date could change as the situation develops. “However, due to the high immunity rate in the community, as well as the burden on families and educational costs of healthy children missing school, [the health department] is deferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance.”

Local media outlets reported that, on Tuesday, more than 200 of the school’s 1,067 students were absent.

The measles cluster began Friday when a third grader, who had not recently traveled, was diagnosed with the vaccine-preventable illness. Over the weekend, three additional cases were identified, leading the local health department to release a health advisory. Two additional cases were identified this week. It’s unclear if all six children are unvaccinated.

According to a county vaccine study, only 89.31 percent of the school’s students were vaccinated in the 2023/2024 school year, suggesting that around 114 students are susceptible due to their vaccination status.

The measles virus spreads easily through respiratory transmission and can linger in air space for up to two hours after an infected person has been in an area. Among people susceptible to the virus—those who are unvaccinated or have compromised immune systems—up to 90 percent will become infected upon exposure. People who are fully vaccinated, meanwhile, are considered protected. Two doses of the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine are 97 percent effective at preventing the disease.

Measles symptoms include high fever, runny nose, red and watery eyes, and a cough, as well as a telltale rash that develops after initial symptoms. About 1 in 5 unvaccinated people with measles are hospitalized, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while 1 in 20 infected children develop pneumonia and up to 3 in 1,000 children die of the infection.

Unvaccinated Florida kids exposed to measles can skip quarantine, officials say Read More »

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Ala. hospital halts IVF after state’s high court ruled embryos are “children”

Alabama, assisted reproductive technology, children, embryo, fertility, frozen embryo, health, IVF, Science / /

Consequences —

Anger and uncertainty spread in wake of Friday’s ruling by the state’s Supreme Court.

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Nitrogen tanks holding tens of thousands of frozen embryos and eggs sit in the embryology lab at New Hope Fertility Center in New York City on December 20, 2017.

Enlarge / Nitrogen tanks holding tens of thousands of frozen embryos and eggs sit in the embryology lab at New Hope Fertility Center in New York City on December 20, 2017.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) health system is halting in vitro fertilization treatment in the wake of a ruling by the state’s Supreme Court on Friday that deemed frozen embryos to be “children,” The ruling opens up anyone who destroys embryos to liability in a wrongful death lawsuit, according to multiple media reports.

The announcement—the first facility to report halting IVF services—is the much-feared outcome of Friday’s ruling, which was widely decried by reproductive health advocates.

“We are saddened that this will impact our patients’ attempt to have a baby through IVF, but we must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the standard of care for IVF treatments,” UAB said a statement to media. The statement noted that egg retrieval would continue but that egg fertilization and embryo development are now paused.

Ars has reached out to UAB for further comment and will update this story with any additional information.

Production of extra embryos is a normal part of IVF treatment for several reasons. Most notably, not all embryos will be viable, implant in a uterus, and lead to a live birth. So, creating as many embryos as possible is a common strategy to ensure that people who wish to conceive have the best chance of doing so. Embryos can also be screened for genetic conditions, allowing only the healthiest to be implanted, while those with debilitating or fatal abnormalities can be discarded.

In 2021, approximately 238,126 patients in the US had 413,776 rounds of IVF, resulting in 97,128 live-born infants, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The percentage of egg retrievals that lead to a live birth ranges from 54 percent to 9 percent, depending on a patient’s age.

But, the standard practices of IVF used for hundreds of thousands of patients each year were thrown into question and upheaval Friday when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that all embryos, even those outside of a uterus or frozen in storage, are “children” under state law. Anyone who destroys them is liable under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, the court concluded. Chief Justice Tom Parker cited his religious beliefs and quoted the Bible to support the stance.

Reproductive health experts quickly speculated that the ruling would roll back IVF treatment in the state. Some facilities, such as the case of UAB, may halt treatment entirely. While others may choose to fertilize eggs conservatively, adding cost and time to the already arduous process of IVF. Genetic screening of embryos from couples who carry debilitating or fatal mutations may no longer be possible. Doctors could be sued if an embryonic ball of a few cells does not survive the treatment. Insurance rates for fertility clinics could skyrocket. Patients, meanwhile, may have to keep unneeded embryos frozen indefinitely.

On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that the ruling had created a wave of anger, shock, and confusion across the state. Patients are considering moving frozen embryos—some leftover from IVF rounds, some purposely banked for future use—to storage facilities out of the state. Lawyers cautioned that divorce settlements that stipulate frozen embryos must be destroyed may now be void.

But the fear and confusion don’t end there. Health advocates worry more states will follow Alabama’s lead. And, if small clumps of cells gain personhood rights in more states, liability could spread to contraceptive use and people who suffer a miscarriage.

Ala. hospital halts IVF after state’s high court ruled embryos are “children” Read More »

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Blue Origin has emerged as the likely buyer for United Launch Alliance

blue origin, Science, Space, ula / /

Blue-LA —

Pairing of two launch companies could provide more robust competition to SpaceX.

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The first Vulcan rocket fires off its launch pad in Florida in January 2024.

Enlarge / The first Vulcan rocket fires off its launch pad in Florida in January 2024.

United Launch Alliance

The rocket company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin, has emerged as the sole finalist to buy United Launch Alliance.

The sale is not official, and nothing has been formally announced. The co-owners of United Launch Alliance (ULA), Lockheed Martin and Boeing, have yet to comment publicly on the sale of the company, which, until the rise of SpaceX, was the sole major launch provider in the United States. They declined again on Wednesday.

“Consistent with our corporate practice, Boeing doesn’t comment on potential market rumors or speculation,” a Boeing spokesperson said.

Blue Origin did not return a request for comment.

However, two sources told Ars that Blue Origin is nearing the purchase of ULA. The sources said they have not personally seen any signed agreements, but they expect the sale to be announced within a month or two.

In the 11 months since Ars first reported that ULA was up for sale, the company’s potential buyer has become a topic of widespread speculation and interest. In November, Ars reported that Blue Origin was one of three potential buyers. In December, the Wall Street Journal confirmed that the competition was narrowing and said Blue Origin and a large private equity firm, Cerberus, were the two most likely bidders.

Bezos stock sales

Some recent related activity suggests the sale is imminent. A handful of senior officials at ULA are seeking new jobs. Additionally, Bezos recently sold $2.4 billion in Amazon stock and, in securities filings, disclosed that he could sell an additional $8 billion to $9 billion in stock over the next 12 months. Although there are no confirmed values, there has been speculation in the launch industry that ULA may be sold for $2 billion to $3 billion.

ULA was created in 2006 through a merger of Boeing’s Delta rocket program and Lockheed Martin’s Atlas launcher family. Since then, ULA has been a profitable enterprise for both aerospace giants, thanks to military launch contracts and (until recently) large annual subsidies from the US Department of Defense to maintain “launch readiness” for national security missions.

During the last decade, however, ULA’s launch dominance has first been challenged and then supplanted by the rise of SpaceX and its less expensive and highly reliable Falcon 9 rocket. Tory Bruno, who became ULA’s chief executive in 2014, has slashed employee headcount and taken other steps to control costs, such as closing infrequently used launch pads.

One of the key questions about the acquisition is what will happen to Bruno, who has demonstrated the ability to run a launch company with an excellent record of success, manage the development of a large new launch vehicle—the Vulcan rocket—and is willing to compete with SpaceX. It is unclear what role he would have in an acquisition by Blue Origin. Sources indicate that Bruno has a good relationship with Bezos.

Will the merger work?

There is considerable overlap in the launch businesses of ULA and Blue Origin. Vulcan and Blue Origin’s own large rocket, New Glenn, will both compete for government launch contracts, and both use the BE-4 rocket engines developed by Blue Origin. However, some synergies could make a combined Blue Origin-ULA a more formidable launch competitor to SpaceX.

ULA has operational launch pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It has large integration facilities at both locations. Additionally, it has an experienced launch team with a long track record of success, which could be useful to Blue Origin as it seeks to launch the New Glenn rocket later this year.

Finally, ULA has some expertise in the storage of cryogenic fuels in space. For a time, before its co-owners shut down the program, ULA was developing an innovative upper stage known as ACES (Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage). This upper stage was intended to be reusable and powered by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. These are the kinds of technologies that Blue Origin will need as it develops a lunar lander and tug spacecraft that uses these same propellants and requires them to be stored in space for long periods of time.

Blue Origin has emerged as the likely buyer for United Launch Alliance Read More »

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Google launches “Gemini Business” AI, adds $20 to the $6 Workspace bill

AI, Gemini, Google, google ai, Google Gemini, Tech / /

$6 for apps like Gmail and Docs, and $20 for an AI bot? —

Google’s AI features add a 3x increase over the usual Workspace bill.

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Google launches “Gemini Business” AI, adds $20 to the $6 Workspace bill

Google

Google went ahead with plans to launch Gemini for Workspace today. The big news is the pricing information, and you can see the Workspace pricing page is new, with every plan offering a “Gemini add-on.” Google’s old AI-for-Business plan, “Duet AI for Google Workspace,” is dead, though it never really launched anyway.

Google has a blog post explaining the changes. Google Workspace starts at $6 per user per month for the “Starter” package, and the AI “Add-on,” as Google is calling it, is an extra $20 monthly cost per user (all of these prices require an annual commitment). That is a massive price increase over the normal Workspace bill, but AI processing is expensive. Google says this business package will get you “Help me write in Docs and Gmail, Enhanced Smart Fill in Sheets and image generation in Slides.” It also includes the “1.0 Ultra” model for the Gemini chatbot—there’s a full feature list here. This $20 plan is subject to a usage limit for Gemini AI features of “1,000 times per month.”

The new Workspace pricing page, with a

Enlarge / The new Workspace pricing page, with a “Gemini Add-On” for every plan.

Google

Gemini for Google Workspace represents a total rebrand of the AI business product and some amount of consistency across Google’s hard-to-follow, constantly changing AI branding. Duet AI never really launched to the general public. The product, announced in August, only ever had a “Try” link that led to a survey, and after filling it out, Google would presumably contact some businesses and allow them to pay for Duet AI. Gemini Business now has a checkout page, and any Workspace business customer can buy the product today with just a few clicks.

Google’s second plan is “Gemini Enterprise,” which doesn’t come with any usage limits, but it’s also only available through a “contact us” link and not a normal checkout procedure. Enterprise is $30 per user per month, and it “includes additional capabilities for AI-powered meetings, where Gemini can translate closed captions in more than 100 language pairs, and soon even take meeting notes.”

Google launches “Gemini Business” AI, adds $20 to the $6 Workspace bill Read More »

google-goes-“open-ai”-with-gemma,-a-free,-open-weights-chatbot-family

Google goes “open AI” with Gemma, a free, open-weights chatbot family

AI, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, Gemini, Google, Google Gemini, LLaMA, Llama 2, machine learning, Meta, Meta Llama, Open AI models, Open weights AI, openai, source-available AI / /

Free hallucinations for all —

Gemma chatbots can run locally, and they reportedly outperform Meta’s Llama 2.

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The Google Gemma logo

On Wednesday, Google announced a new family of AI language models called Gemma, which are free, open-weights models built on technology similar to the more powerful but closed Gemini models. Unlike Gemini, Gemma models can run locally on a desktop or laptop computer. It’s Google’s first significant open large language model (LLM) release since OpenAI’s ChatGPT started a frenzy for AI chatbots in 2022.

Gemma models come in two sizes: Gemma 2B (2 billion parameters) and Gemma 7B (7 billion parameters), each available in pre-trained and instruction-tuned variants. In AI, parameters are values in a neural network that determine AI model behavior, and weights are a subset of these parameters stored in a file.

Developed by Google DeepMind and other Google AI teams, Gemma pulls from techniques learned during the development of Gemini, which is the family name for Google’s most capable (public-facing) commercial LLMs, including the ones that power its Gemini AI assistant. Google says the name comes from the Latin gemma, which means “precious stone.”

While Gemma is Google’s first major open LLM since the launch of ChatGPT (it has released smaller research models such as FLAN-T5 in the past), it’s not Google’s first contribution to open AI research. The company cites the development of the Transformer architecture, as well as releases like TensorFlow, BERT, T5, and JAX as key contributions, and it would not be controversial to say that those have been important to the field.

A chart of Gemma performance provided by Google. Google says that Gemma outperforms Meta's Llama 2 on several benchmarks.

Enlarge / A chart of Gemma performance provided by Google. Google says that Gemma outperforms Meta’s Llama 2 on several benchmarks.

Owing to lesser capability and high confabulation rates, smaller open-weights LLMs have been more like tech demos until recently, as some larger ones have begun to match GPT-3.5 performance levels. Still, experts see source-available and open-weights AI models as essential steps in ensuring transparency and privacy in chatbots. Google Gemma is not “open source” however, since that term usually refers to a specific type of software license with few restrictions attached.

In reality, Gemma feels like a conspicuous play to match Meta, which has made a big deal out of releasing open-weights models (such as LLaMA and Llama 2) since February of last year. That technique stands in opposition to AI models like OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo, which is only available through the ChatGPT application and a cloud API and cannot be run locally. A Reuters report on Gemma focuses on the Meta angle and surmises that Google hopes to attract more developers to its Vertex AI cloud platform.

We have not used Gemma yet; however, Google claims the 7B model outperforms Meta’s Llama 2 7B and 13B models on several benchmarks for math, Python code generation, general knowledge, and commonsense reasoning tasks. It’s available today through Kaggle, a machine-learning community platform, and Hugging Face.

In other news, Google paired the Gemma release with a “Responsible Generative AI Toolkit,” which Google hopes will offer guidance and tools for developing what the company calls “safe and responsible” AI applications.

Google goes “open AI” with Gemma, a free, open-weights chatbot family Read More »

microsoft-confirms-which-xbox-games-are-going-to-switch,-playstation

Microsoft confirms which Xbox games are going to Switch, PlayStation

exclusives, gaming, microsoft, xbox / /

four fewer reasons to buy an Xbox? —

Hi-Fi Rush, Grounded, Pentiment, and Sea of Thieves are going multiplatform.

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Four Xbox console exclusives will soon be exclusive no more.

Enlarge / Four Xbox console exclusives will soon be exclusive no more.

Microsoft

During a “business update” video podcast last week, Microsoft addressed widespread rumors of Xbox software going multiplatform by saying that four of its legacy titles would be going “to the other consoles” in the future. But the company waited until today to confirm the names of the four soon-to-be-multiplatform titles.

The Xbox games coming to other consoles in the coming months are (multiplatform launch date in parentheses):

  • Pentiment (February 22, Switch, PS4/5): Obsidian’s historical murder mystery has a sprawling narrative that reacts strongly to player choices.
  • Hi-Fi Rush (March 9, PS5): A rhythm-action game from Bethesda Softworks where you have to match your attacks and movements to the beat to maximize your impact.
  • Grounded (April 16, Switch, PS4/5): Obsidian’s co-op survival adventure will be fully cross-play compatible across all platforms.
  • Sea of Thieves (April 30, PS5): Despite what we considered a poor first impression, Rare’s pirate-themed multiplayer simulation has attracted 35 million players, according to Microsoft. This title will also be cross-play compatible across platforms.

Microsoft’s announcement comes just after Grounded and Pentiment were announced for Switch as part of the morning’s Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase video stream, the timing of which likely prevented Microsoft from announcing its plans for those titles last week. There wasn’t a lot of drama to today’s announcement, though; The Verge and independent journalist Stephen Totilo cited anonymous sources in accurately naming all four games just after Microsoft’s presentation last week.

Before that presentation, rumors flying around the Xbox community suggested that major Xbox exclusives like Starfield or Bethesda’s upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle would be coming to other consoles or that Microsoft had plans to leave the console space entirely. And while Microsoft has effectively shot down those rumors, the company has suggested that exclusive games will be a less important part of its console strategy going into the future.

“[I have] a fundamental belief that over the next five or ten years… games that are exclusive to one piece of hardware are going to be a smaller and smaller part of the game industry,” Xbox CEO Phil Spencer said.

Microsoft confirms which Xbox games are going to Switch, PlayStation Read More »

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Twitter security staff kept firm in compliance by disobeying Musk, FTC says

elon musk ftc, elon musk twitter, Policy / /

Close call —

Lina Khan: Musk demanded “actions that would have violated the FTC’s Order.”

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Elon Musk sits on stage while being interviewed during a conference.

Enlarge / Elon Musk at the New York Times DealBook Summit on November 29, 2023, in New York City.

Getty Images | Michael Santiago

Twitter employees prevented Elon Musk from violating the company’s privacy settlement with the US government, according to Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan.

After Musk bought Twitter in late 2022, he gave Bari Weiss and other journalists access to company documents in the so-called “Twitter Files” incident. The access given to outside individuals raised concerns that Twitter (which is currently named X) violated a 2022 settlement with the FTC, which has requirements designed to prevent repeats of previous security failures.

Some of Twitter’s top privacy and security executives also resigned shortly after Musk’s purchase, citing concerns that Musk’s rapid changes could cause violations of the settlement.

FTC staff deposed former Twitter employees and “learned that the access provided to the third-party individuals turned out to be more limited than the individuals’ tweets and other public reporting had indicated,” Khan wrote in a letter sent today to US Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). Khan’s letter said the access was limited because employees refused to comply with Musk’s demands:

The deposition testimony revealed that in early December 2022, Elon Musk had reportedly directed staff to grant an outside third-party individual “full access to everything at Twitter… No limits at all.” Consistent with Musk’s direction, the individual was initially assigned a company laptop and internal account, with the intent that the third-party individual be given “elevated privileges” beyond what an average company employee might have.

However, based on a concern that such an arrangement would risk exposing nonpublic user information in potential violation of the FTC’s Order, longtime information security employees at Twitter intervened and implemented safeguards to mitigate the risks. Ultimately the third-party individuals did not receive direct access to Twitter’s systems, but instead worked with other company employees who accessed the systems on the individuals’ behalf.

Khan: FTC “was right to be concerned”

Jordan is chair of the House Judiciary Committee and has criticized the investigation, claiming that “the FTC harassed Twitter in the wake of Mr. Musk’s acquisition.” Khan’s letter to Jordan today argues that the FTC investigation was justified.

“The FTC’s investigation confirmed that staff was right to be concerned, given that Twitter’s new CEO had directed employees to take actions that would have violated the FTC’s Order,” Khan wrote. “Once staff learned that the FTC’s Order had worked to ensure that Twitter employees took appropriate measures to protect consumers’ private information, compliance staff made no further inquiries to Twitter or anyone else concerning this issue.”

Khan also wrote that deep staff cuts following the Musk acquisition, and resignations of Twitter’s top privacy and compliance officials, meant that “there was no one left at the company responsible for interpreting and modifying data policies and practices to ensure Twitter was complying with the FTC’s Order to safeguard Americans’ personal data.” The letter continued:

During staff’s evaluation of the workforce reductions, one of the company’s recently departed lead privacy and security experts testified that Twitter Blue was being implemented too quickly so that the proper “security and privacy review was not conducted in accordance with the company’s process for software development.” Another expert testified that he had concerns about Mr. Musk’s “commitment to overall security and privacy of the organization.” Twitter, meanwhile, filed a motion seeking to eliminate the FTC Order that protected the privacy and security of Americans’ data. Fortunately for Twitter’s millions of users, that effort failed in court.

FTC still trying to depose Musk

While no violation was found in this case, the FTC isn’t done investigating. When contacted by Ars, an FTC spokesperson said the agency cannot rule out bringing lawsuits against Musk’s social network for violations of the settlement or US law.

“When we heard credible public reports of potential violations of protections for Twitter users’ data, we moved swiftly to investigate,” the FTC said in a statement today. “The order remains in place and the FTC continues to deploy the order’s tools to protect Twitter users’ data and ensure the company remains in compliance.”

The FTC also said it is continuing attempts to depose Musk. In July 2023, Musk’s X Corp. asked a federal court for an order that would terminate the settlement and prevent the FTC from deposing Musk. The court denied both requests in November. In a filing, US government lawyers said the FTC investigation had “revealed a chaotic environment at the company that raised serious questions about whether and how Musk and other leaders were ensuring X Corp.’s compliance with the 2022 Administrative Order.”

We contacted X today, but an auto-reply informed us that the company was busy and asked that we check back later.

Twitter security staff kept firm in compliance by disobeying Musk, FTC says Read More »

the-top-7-bestselling-phone-models-of-2023-are-all-iphones

The top 7 bestselling phone models of 2023 are all iPhones

apple iphone, Tech / /

Ok, but spots 8-1,000 are Android phones —

Every currently sold iPhone makes the top seven, except the iPhone SE.

–

The iPhone 14.

Enlarge / The iPhone 14.

Apple

Counterpoint has a new report on the top-selling phone models of 2023, and for the first time, the top seven sold models for the year are all iPhones. The report tracks worldwide sales of individual smartphone models, and while hundreds of new phones are released yearly, Counterpoint says this top-10 list represents a whopping 20 percent of the worldwide market.

The top three spots are all the iPhone 14 models, with the cheaper base model taking the top spot. 2023 saw the release of the iPhone 15, but only in September 2023. The iPhone 15 models rocketed to spots 5, 6, and 7 with only about three months of sales. Sandwiched in between the 14 and 15 models at No. 4 is the iPhone 13, the cheapest modern-looking iPhone Apple sells.

Counterpoint's 2023 smartphone chart.

Enlarge / Counterpoint’s 2023 smartphone chart.

Counterpoint

The actual cheapest iPhone, the iPhone SE, didn’t make the list this year. The dated design and (maybe?) small size isn’t resonating with consumers, and right now, the rumor mill suggests Apple won’t be making another SE. The 2022 version of this report included the SE, so eight of the top 10 devices were Apple phones, but a Samsung phone crept in at spot No. 4.

Speaking of Samsung, the bottom three phones in the list are all Samsung phones, but probably none anyone has ever heard of. Samsung has plenty of expensive flagships, like the Galaxy Z Fold at $1,800, but the phones it ships at volume are all budget devices. Spot No. 8 is the $200 Galaxy A14 5G. No. 9 is the very bottom of Samsung’s phone lineup, the $100 Galaxy A04e, and then, at No. 10, a Galaxy A14 4G (not 5G), which is around $160. We’re trying to go by MSRP for these phone prices, but they all tend not to sell at MSRP. These cheaper devices are frequently on sale or are available as burner phones on a two-year pre-paid plan at a big discount.

It’s hard for any Samsung phone to stand out in the market because Samsung releases so many devices. If we look at the GSM Arena’s database for phones released from 2021–2023, Apple has released 13 phones, while Samsung has 89 different models.

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a-tale-of-two-restaurant-types

A Tale of Two Restaurant Types

Restaurant / /

While I sort through whatever is happening with GPT-4, today’s scheduled post is two recent short stories about restaurant selection.

Tyler Cowen says that restaurants saying ‘since year 19xx’ are on net a bad sign, because they are frozen in time, focusing on being reliable.

For the best meals, he says look elsewhere, to places that shine brightly and then move on.

I was highly suspicious. So I ran a test.

I checked the oldest places in Manhattan. The list had 15 restaurants. A bunch are taverns, which are not relevant to my interests. The rest include the legendary Katz’s Delicatessen, which is still on the short list of very best available experiences (yes, of course you order the Pastrami), and the famous Keen’s Steakhouse. I don’t care for mutton, but their regular steaks are quite good. There’s also Peter Lugar’s and PJ Clarke’s. There were also two less impressive steakhouses. Old Homestead is actively bad, and Delmonico’s was a great experience because we went to The Continental and then to John Wick 3 but is objectively overpriced without being special.

Those are all ‘since 18xx,’ so extreme cases. What about typical cases?

Unfortunately, getting opening date data is tricky. Other lists I found did not actually correspond to when places opened all that well. I wasn’t able to easily test more systematically. Looking at ‘places you like the most’ has obvious bias issues. The one I love most opened in 1978. Others were newer but mostly not that recent. However I’ve had a lifetime to find them, so a question is, how fast and completely do I evaluate new offerings?

My guess is that:

  1. Most new restaurants are below average, and also rather uninteresting. The average new (non-chain) restaurant is higher quality now than in the past, but it is also less interesting.

  2. Average (mean or median) quality increases with age, at least initially, due to positive selection via survivorship. If a place folds quickly, you usually did not miss very much.

  3. Older places are selected for because they reward repeat business and being a regular. Thus, if you are trying places in your area, you should be sure to try such places, because there could be high value in being that regular. But in your area you should be checking out essentially all plausible options over time. The primary question to ask is, what is the upside of trying this? The best upside is not the best one time experience, it is a place you can add to your rotation that brings something new to the table.

  4. A place that survives will on average become a slightly worse choice over time, as the alternatives improve and it attempts to largely stay the same, once they get the kinks out in their early period.

  5. The places you love, in particular, will get worse for you, in particular, over time, because any change to them or to you will tend to be bad for the match, and also alternatives will improve.

  6. The very best food experiences require novelty of some kind from your perspective, it is true. So there is a certain kind of experience for which you want to try the new, but you have to be in strong exploration mode.

  7. But also very old restaurants often do something unique or uniquely well and have survived because of it, so they can offer a unique experience as well. The most unique things won’t be so old, but on average older things will be more unique.

  8. You can get a better advance read on older places than you can on new places.

  9. In expectation, all else being equal, selection effects dominate, older has higher EV. This is true even if your priority ‘your experience today, right now.’

  10. However all else is not equal, and the more additional filtering work you do the more you should end up going to relatively new places.

The good news here is that I strongly think Emmett Shear is centrally wrong.

Nick: I hate how well DoorDash ratings correlate with the restaurants I spent 10yrs searching out all the hidden gems i had are 4.9 and only the only false positive is Sweet Maple.

Emmett Shear: Yelp has destroyed the joy of exploration and discovery in exchange for efficiency and quality, and I’m not sure it’s a good trade in the end. Yes, I know I could just not look. But knowing it’s there and I could just look makes trying and it turning out meh just feel bad.

Zvi: This is so bizarre to see. Yelp ratings seem awful to me I use Google Maps instead, but beyond that it is the ratings that enable exploration to be worthwhile. You learn what is worth exploring! It’s great. Another tactic that you can use that I enjoy sometimes: Explore, then once you are physically looking at the place and it looks promising, check online before actually going in, and to get ideas on what to order. Best of both worlds.

Sophia: people claim often that the overall quality improvements over decades from yelp making it hard to run a bad restaurant are huge, which seems really good to me.

Emmett Shear later clarified that his theory is that Yelp is good when hipsters dominate the rankings inputs, but poor when tourists do so.

Exploration and discovery is vastly better, easier and more rewarding in the review era than it was in the pre-review era. The joy is higher, not lower. It is your choice how much exploration you still want to do versus exploitation, and how many risky ‘hidden gems’ you want to seek out and test. As I note, one good tactic is to literally walk the streets anyway, see what is available, only then use online to verify.

Also, one can test Nick’s theory that the ratings are actually indicative.

As a baseline, let’s use this market as a source of places that I think were valuable to find, plus anything I pick up along the way that seems like an oversight on that list. Any exploration procedure should place a high priority in find them. Google Maps ratings will often fail entirely to differentiate these places from other similar places that I like less. The ratings are highly valuable, but they do not let you not do the work, especially for ethnic restaurants, where ‘do they handle delivery and customer service well’ is a huge portion of the rating.

We also want to check false positives. That is mostly rarer, if you have an exceptional rating you are probably good, but it does not reliably make you great on number alone.

So let’s check. Will DoorDash or Yelp do better? I am doing this hungry.

The average rating on DoorDash of the places that were there was 4.64. That is a good rating. But it is not an exceptional rating. The default filter is to only show you places at 4.5 or higher. The signal here seems to be filtering out of places that have big issues, but it does not seem good at identifying exceptional things. The places the app was suggesting were not differentiable via rating.

What about Yelp? I had it search my area. Of the first 10 hits, there was one legit hit, and multiple places I know are mediocre, but also they are clearly not sorting by rating there. Sorting by highest rating got a bunch of places with a small number of ratings that I did not recognize.

When I looked at the Yelp ratings of my top places, the ratings of the top half of that list (5.0s) averaged 4.0, and the ratings of the bottom half of that list (not 5.0s) also averaged 4.0. There did not seem to be a pattern based on whether tourists would dominate. My model continues to say that Yelp has its finger on the scale, and that is why the ratings are not so useful, but to be clear I do not have proof.

Looking at specific places made it very clear, once again, that Yelp ratings are worthless. They do not even have vague agreement among different outposts of the same chain (Naya) where I have always had entirely undifferentiated experiences.

Certainly none of this constitutes sufficiently good evidence that one can afford to cease exploring. Or on the flip side, be tempted into foregoing the joys of exploration. You still have to use your wits, learn to read the signs, adjust for your preferences, and then eat around and find out.

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