Tim Belzer – Page 26

Former Apple hardware chief Dan Riccio is retiring

Apple, apple vision pro, Dan Riccio, executives, John Ternus, Tech, Vision Products Group / Tim Belzer / October 10, 2024

Dan Riccio, one of Apple’s most prominent executives for more than two decades, will retire from the company this month, according to a report in Bloomberg that cites people with knowledge of the move.

Reportedly, Riccio has said he has been planning his retirement for the past five years, and his last day will be Friday, October 11.

Riccio began working at Apple in 1998, and by 2012, he had become the chief of hardware engineering. In that role, he oversaw several major hardware developments for Apple, including AirPods, the evolution of the modern iPhone, the iPad Pro, and more.

He held the title of senior vice president of hardware engineering during that time, then moved into a new role within the company in January of 2021. The public at first only knew that he was working on a “new project” at that time, but before long it became clear the project in question was what became the Vision Pro, Apple’s augmented-reality headset that launched this February.

The group that produced the Vision Pro is called the Vision Products Group within the company; that’s the 2,000-engineer-strong group Riccio has overseen since 2021. He was also involved in developing Project Titan, Apple’s smart car initiative that was eventually abandoned.

Former Apple hardware chief Dan Riccio is retiring Read More »

DOJ proposes breakup and other big changes to end Google search monopoly

android, Antitrust law, chrome, duckduckgo, Google, google search monopoly, microsoft, mozilla, online search industry, Policy, search engines, us department of justice / Tim Belzer / October 9, 2024

Google called the DOJ extending search remedies to AI “radical,” an “overreach.”

The US Department of Justice finally proposed sweeping remedies to destroy Google’s search monopoly late yesterday, and, predictably, Google is not loving any of it.

On top of predictable asks—like potentially requiring Google to share search data with rivals, restricting distribution agreements with browsers like Firefox and device makers like Apple, and breaking off Chrome or Android—the DOJ proposed remedies to keep Google from blocking competition in “the evolving search industry.” And those extra steps threaten Google’s stake in the nascent AI search world.

This is only the first step in the remedies stage of litigation, but Google is already showing resistance to both expected and unexpected remedies that the DOJ proposed. In a blog from Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company accused the DOJ of “overreach,” suggesting that proposed remedies are “radical” and “go far beyond the specific legal issues in this case.”

From here, discovery will proceed as the DOJ makes a case to broaden the scope of proposed remedies and Google raises its defense to keep remedies as narrowly tailored as possible. After that phase concludes, the DOJ will propose its final judgement on remedies in November, which must be fully revised by March 2025 for the court to then order remedies.

Even then, however, the trial is unlikely to conclude, as Google plans to appeal. In August, Mozilla’s spokesperson told Ars that the trial could drag on for years before any remedies are put in place.

In the meantime, Google plans to continue focusing on building out its search empire, Google’s president of global affairs, Kent Walker, said in August. This presumably includes innovations in AI search that the DOJ fears may further entrench Google’s dominant position.

Scrutiny of Google’s every move in the AI industry will likely only be heightened in that period. As Google has already begun seeking exclusive AI deals with companies like Apple, it risks appearing to engage in the same kinds of anti-competitive behavior in AI markets as the court has already condemned. And giving that impression could not only impact remedies ordered by the court, but also potentially weaken Google’s chances of winning on appeal, Lee Hepner, an antitrust attorney monitoring the trial for the American Economic Liberties Project, told Ars.

Ending Google’s monopoly starts with default deals

In the DOJ’s proposed remedy framework, the DOJ says that there’s still so much more to consider before landing on final remedies that it reserves “the right to add or remove potential proposed remedies.”

Through discovery, DOJ said that it plans to continue engaging experts and stakeholders “to learn not just about the relevant markets themselves but also about adjacent markets as well as remedies from other jurisdictions that could affect or inform the optimal remedies in this action.

“To be effective, these remedies… must include some degree of flexibility because market developments are not always easy to predict and the mechanisms and incentives for circumvention are endless,” the DOJ said.

Ultimately, the DOJ said that any remedies sought should be “mutually reinforcing” and work to “unfetter” Google’s current monopoly in general search services and general text advertising markets. That effort would include removing barriers to competition—like distribution and revenue-sharing agreements—as well as denying Google monopoly profits and preventing Google from monopolizing “related markets in the future,” the DOJ said.

Any effort to undo Google’s monopoly starts with ending Google’s control over “the most popular distribution channels,” the DOJ said. At one point during the trial, for example, a witness accidentally blurted out that Apple gets a 36 percent cut from its Safari deal with Google. Lucrative default deals like that leave rivals with “little-to-no incentive to compete for users,” the DOJ said.

“Fully remedying these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow,” the DOJ warned.

To dislodge this key peg propping up Google’s search monopoly, some options include ending Google’s default deals altogether, which would “limit or prohibit default agreements, preinstallation agreements, and other revenue-sharing arrangements related to search and search-related products, potentially with or without the use of a choice screen.”

A breakup could be necessary

Behavior and structural remedies may also be needed, the DOJ proposed, to “prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search and Google search-related products and features—including emerging search access points and features, such as artificial intelligence—over rivals or new entrants.” That could mean spinning off the Chrome browser or restricting Google from preinstalling its search engine as the default in Chrome or on Android devices.

In her blog, Mulholland conceded that “this case is about a set of search distribution contracts” but claimed that “overbroad restrictions on distribution contracts” would create friction for Google users and “reduce revenue for companies like Mozilla” as well as Android smart phone makers.

Asked to comment on supposedly feared revenue losses, a Mozilla spokesperson told Ars, “[We are] closely monitoring the legal process and considering its potential impact on Mozilla and how we can positively influence the next steps. Mozilla has always championed competition and choice online, particularly in search. Firefox continues to offer a range of search options, and we remain committed to serving our users’ preferences while fostering a competitive market.”

Mulholland also warned that “splitting off” Chrome or Android from Google’s search business “would break them” and potentially “raise the cost of devices,” because “few companies would have the ability or incentive to keep them open source, or to invest in them at the same level we do.”

“We’ve invested billions of dollars in Chrome and Android,” Mulholland wrote. “Chrome is a secure, fast, and free browser and its open-source code provides the backbone for numerous competing browsers. Android is a secure, innovative, and free open-source operating system that has enabled vast choice in the smartphone market, helping to keep the cost of phones low for billions of people.”

Google has long argued that its investment in open source Chrome and Android projects benefits developers whose businesses and customers would be harmed if those efforts lost critical funding.

“Features like Chrome’s Safe Browsing, Android’s security features, and Play Protect benefit from information and signals from a range of Google products and our threat-detection expertise,” Mulholland wrote. “Severing Chrome and Android would jeopardize security and make patching security bugs harder.”

Hepner told Ars that Android could potentially thrive if broken off from Google, suggesting that through discovery, it will become clearer what would happen if either Google product was severed from the company.

“I think others would agree that Android is a company that is capable [being] a standalone entity,” Hepner said. “It could be independently monetized through relationships with device manufacturers, web browsers, alternative Play Stores that are not under Google’s umbrella. And that if that were the case, what you would see is that Android and the operating system marketplace begins to evolve to meet the needs and demands of innovative products that are not being created just by Google. And you’ll see that dictating the evolution of the marketplace and fundamentally the flow of information across our society.”

Mulholland also claimed that sharing search data with rivals risked exposing users to privacy and security risks, but the DOJ vowed to be “mindful of potential user privacy concerns in the context of data sharing” while distinguishing “genuine privacy concerns” from “pretextual arguments” potentially misleading the court regarding alleged risks.

One possible way around privacy concerns, the DOJ suggested, would be prohibiting Google from collecting the kind of sensitive data that cannot be shared with rivals.

Finally, to stop Google from charging supra-competitive prices for ads, the DOJ is “evaluating remedies” like licensing or syndicating Google’s ad feed “independent of its search results.” Further, the DOJ may require more transparency, forcing Google to provide detailed “search query reports” featuring currently obscured “information related to its search text ads auction and ad monetization.”

Stakeholders were divided on whether the DOJ’s initial framework is appropriate.

Matt Schruers, the CEO of a trade association called the Computer & Communications Industry Association (which represents Big Tech companies like Google), criticized the DOJ’s “hodgepodge of structural and behavioral remedies” as going “far beyond” what’s needed to address harms.

“Any remedy should be narrowly tailored to address specific conduct, which in this case was a set of search distribution contracts,” Schruers said. “Instead, the proposed DOJ remedies would reshape numerous industries and products, which would harm consumers and innovation in these dynamic markets.”

But a senior vice president of public affairs for Google search rival DuckDuckGo, Kamyl Bazbaz, praised the DOJ’s framework as being “anchored to the court’s ruling” and appropriately broad.

“This proposal smartly takes aim at breaking Google’s illegal hold on the general search market now and ushers in a new era of enduring competition moving forward,” Bazbaz said. “The framework understands that no single remedy can undo Google’s illegal monopoly, it will require a range of behavioral and structural remedies to free the market.”

Bazbaz expects that “Google is going to use every resource at its disposal to discredit this proposal,” suggesting that “should be taken as a sign this framework can create real competition.”

AI deals could weaken Google’s appeal, expert says

Google appears particularly disturbed by the DOJ’s insistence that remedies must be forward-looking and prevent Google from leveraging its existing monopoly power “to feed artificial intelligence features.”

As Google sees it, the DOJ’s attempt to attack Google’s AI business “comes at a time when competition in how people find information is blooming, with all sorts of new entrants emerging and new technologies like AI transforming the industry.”

But the DOJ has warned that Google’s search monopoly potentially feeding AI features “is an emerging barrier to competition and risks further entrenching Google’s dominance.”

The DOJ has apparently been weighing some of the biggest complaints about Google’s AI training when mulling remedies. That includes listening to frustrated site owners who can’t afford to block Google from scraping data for AI training because the same exact crawler indexes their content in Google search results. Those site owners have “little choice” but to allow AI training or else sacrifice traffic from Google search, The Seattle Times reported.

Remedy options may come with consequences

Remedies in the search trial might change that. In their proposal, the DOJ said it’s considering remedies that would “prohibit Google from using contracts or other practices to undermine rivals’ access to web content and level the playing field by requiring Google to allow websites crawled for Google search to opt out of training or appearing in any Google-owned artificial-intelligence product or feature on Google search,” such as Google’s controversial AI summaries.

Hepner told Ars that “it’s not surprising at all” that remedies cover both search and AI because “at the core of Google’s monopoly power is its enormous scale and access to data.”

“The Justice Department is clearly thinking creatively,” Hepner said, noting that “the ability for content creators to opt out of having their material and work product used to train Google’s AI systems is an interesting approach to depriving Google of its immense scale.”

The DOJ is also eyeing controls on Google’s use of scale to power AI advertising technologies like Performance Max to end Google’s supracompetitive pricing on text ads for good.

It’s critical to think about the future, the DOJ argued in its framework, because “Google’s anticompetitive conduct resulted in interlocking and pernicious harms that present unprecedented complexities in a highly evolving set of markets”—not just in the markets where Google holds monopoly powers.

Google disagrees with this alleged “government overreach.”

“Hampering Google’s AI tools risks holding back American innovation at a critical moment,” Mulholland warned, claiming that AI is still new and “competition globally is fierce.”

“There are enormous risks to the government putting its thumb on the scale of this vital industry—skewing investment, distorting incentives, hobbling emerging business models—all at precisely the moment that we need to encourage investment, new business models, and American technological leadership,” Mulholland wrote.

Hepner told Ars that he thinks that the DOJ’s proposed remedies framework actually “meets the moment and matches the imperative to deprive Google of its monopoly hold on the search market, on search advertising, and potentially on future related markets.”

To ensure compliance with any remedies pursued, the DOJ also recommended “protections against circumvention and retaliation, including through novel paths to preserving dominance in the monopolized markets.”

That means Google might be required to “finance and report to a Court-appointed technical committee” charged with monitoring any Google missteps. The company may also have to agree to retain more records for longer—including chat messages that the company has been heavily criticized for deleting. And through this compliance monitoring, Google may also be prohibited from owning a large stake in any rivals.

If Google were ever found willfully non-compliant, the DOJ is considering a “range of provisions,” including risking more extreme structural or behavioral remedies or enduring extensions of compliance periods.

As the remedies stage continues through the spring, followed by Google’s prompt appeal, Hepner suggested that the DOJ could fight to start imposing remedies before the appeal concludes. Likely Google would just as strongly fight for any remedies to be delayed.

While the trial drags on, Hepner noted that Google already appears to be trying to strike another default deal with Apple that appears pretty similar to the controversial distribution deals at the heart of the search monopoly trial. In March, Apple started mulling using Google’s Gemini to exclusively power new AI features for the iPhone.

“This is basically the exact same anticompetitive behavior that they were found liable for,” Hepner told Ars, suggesting this could “weaken” Apple’s defense both against the DOJ’s broad framework of proposed remedies and during the appeal.

“If Google is actually engaging in the same anti-competitive conduct and artificial intelligence markets that they were found liable for in the search market, the court’s not going to look kindly on that relative to an appeal,” Hepner said.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

DOJ proposes breakup and other big changes to end Google search monopoly Read More »

Google identifies low noise “phase transition” in its quantum processor

Computer science, error rate, Google, NISQ, quantum computing, quantum mechanics, Science / Tim Belzer / October 9, 2024

Noisy, but not that noisy

Benchmark may help us understand how quantum computers can operate with low error.

Image of a chip above iridescent wiring.

Google’s Sycamore processor. Credit: Google

Back in 2019, Google made waves by claiming it had achieved what has been called “quantum supremacy”—the ability of a quantum computer to perform operations that would take a wildly impractical amount of time to simulate on standard computing hardware. That claim proved to be controversial, in that the operations were little more than a benchmark that involved getting the quantum computer to behave like a quantum computer; separately, improved ideas about how to perform the simulation on a supercomputer cut the time required down significantly.

But Google is back with a new exploration of the benchmark, described in a paper published in Nature on Wednesday. It uses the benchmark to identify what it calls a phase transition in the performance of its quantum processor and uses it to identify conditions where the processor can operate with low noise. Taking advantage of that, they again show that, even giving classical hardware every potential advantage, it would take a supercomputer a dozen years to simulate things.

Cross entropy benchmarking

The benchmark in question involves the performance of what are called quantum random circuits, which involves performing a set of operations on qubits and letting the state of the system evolve over time, so that the output depends heavily on the stochastic nature of measurement outcomes in quantum mechanics. Each qubit will have a probability of producing one of two results, but unless that probability is one, there’s no way of knowing which of the results you’ll actually get. As a result, the output of the operations will be a string of truly random bits.

If enough qubits are involved in the operations, then it becomes increasingly difficult to simulate the performance of a quantum random circuit on classical hardware. That difficulty is what Google originally used to claim quantum supremacy.

The big challenge with running quantum random circuits on today’s hardware is the inevitability of errors. And there’s a specific approach, called cross-entropy benchmarking, that relates the performance of quantum random circuits to the overall fidelity of the hardware (meaning its ability to perform error-free operations).

Google Principal Scientist Sergio Boixo likened performing quantum random circuits to a race between trying to build the circuit and errors that would destroy it. “In essence, this is a competition between quantum correlations spreading because you’re entangling, and random circuits entangle as fast as possible,” he told Ars. “We use two qubit gates that entangle as fast as possible. So it’s a competition between correlations or entanglement growing as fast as you want. On the other hand, noise is doing the opposite. Noise is killing correlations, it’s killing the growth of correlations. So these are the two tendencies.”

The focus of the paper is using the cross-entropy benchmark to explore the errors that occur on the company’s latest generation of Sycamore chip and use that to identify the transition point between situations where errors dominate, and what the paper terms a “low noise regime,” where the probability of errors are minimized—where entanglement wins the race. The researchers likened this to a phase transition between two states.

Low noise performance

The researchers used a number of methods to identify the location of this phase transition, including numerical estimates of the system’s behavior and experiments using the Sycamore processor. Boixo explained that the transition point is related to the errors per cycle, with each cycle involving performing an operation on all of the qubits involved. So, the total number of qubits being used influences the location of the transition, since more qubits means more operations to perform. But so does the overall error rate on the processor.

If you want to operate in the low noise regime, then you have to limit the number of qubits involved (which has the side effect of making things easier to simulate on classical hardware). The only way to add more qubits is to lower the error rate. While the Sycamore processor itself had a well-understood minimal error rate, Google could artificially increase that error rate and then gradually lower it to explore Sycamore’s behavior at the transition point.

The low noise regime wasn’t error free; each operation still has the potential for error, and qubits will sometimes lose their state even when sitting around doing nothing. But this error rate could be estimated using the cross-entropy benchmark to explore the system’s overall fidelity. That wasn’t the case beyond the transition point, where errors occurred quickly enough that they would interrupt the entanglement process.

When this occurs, the result is often two separate, smaller entangled systems, each of which were subject to the Sycamore chip’s base error rates. The researchers simulated this by creating two distinct clusters of entangled qubits that could be entangled with each other by a single operation, allowing them to turn entanglement on and off at will. They showed that this behavior allowed a classical computer to spoof the overall behavior by breaking the computation up into two manageable chunks.

Ultimately, they used their characterization of the phase transition to identify the maximum number of qubits they could keep in the low noise regime given the Sycamore processor’s base error rate and then performed a million random circuits on them. While this is relatively easy to do on quantum hardware, even assuming that we could build a supercomputer without bandwidth constraints, simulating it would take roughly 10,000 years on an existing supercomputer (the Frontier system). Allowing all of the system’s storage to operate as secondary memory cut the estimate down to 12 years.

What does this tell us?

Boixo emphasized that the value of the work isn’t really based on the value of performing random quantum circuits. Truly random bit strings might be useful in some contexts, but he emphasized that the real benefit here is a better understanding of the noise level that can be tolerated in quantum algorithms more generally. Since this benchmark is designed to make it as easy as possible to outperform classical computations, you would need the best standard computers here to have any hope of beating them to the answer for more complicated problems.

“Before you can do any other application, you need to win on this benchmark,” Boixo said. “If you are not winning on this benchmark, then you’re not winning on any other benchmark. This is the easiest thing for a noisy quantum computer compared to a supercomputer.”

Knowing how to identify this phase transition, he suggested, will also be helpful for anyone trying to run useful computations on today’s processors. “As we define the phase, it opens the possibility for finding applications in that phase on noisy quantum computers, where they will outperform classical computers,” Boixo said.

Implicit in this argument is an indication of why Google has focused on iterating on a single processor design even as many of its competitors have been pushing to increase qubit counts rapidly. If this benchmark indicates that you can’t get all of Sycamore’s qubits involved in the simplest low-noise regime calculation, then it’s not clear whether there’s a lot of value in increasing the qubit count. And the only way to change that is to lower the base error rate of the processor, so that’s where the company’s focus has been.

All of that, however, assumes that you hope to run useful calculations on today’s noisy hardware qubits. The alternative is to use error-corrected logical qubits, which will require major increases in qubit count. But Google has been seeing similar limitations due to Sycamore’s base error rate in tests that used it to host an error-corrected logical qubit, something we hope to return to in future coverage.

Nature, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07998-6 (About DOIs).

John is Ars Technica’s science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots.

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X reinstated in Brazil after Musk pays fines, agrees to follow local laws

brazil x, elon musk brazil, Policy / Tim Belzer / October 9, 2024

Brazil’s Supreme Court is allowing Elon Musk’s X to resume operations, apparently ending a months-long battle after the social network paid over $5 million in fines and reluctantly agreed to suspend accounts accused of spreading disinformation.

The court yesterday issued a press release announcing the reinstatement, saying that X has complied with all the orders it previously defied. Brazil Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered that the suspension be ended and that telecom agency Anatel take steps to allow the platform’s return.

The dispute began in April, when X refused to suspend certain accounts belonging to supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro. X, formerly Twitter, was banned in Brazil for over a month. Internet providers, including Musk’s Starlink service, were ordered to block the social network.

In late August, X claimed the orders violate Brazil’s own laws and said it would defy them even if it meant being shut down. “Unlike other social media and technology platforms, we will not comply in secret with illegal orders. To our users in Brazil and around the world, X remains committed to protecting your freedom of speech,” the company said at the time.

X now accepts “boundaries of the law”

X also said that de Moraes targeted the platform “simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.” Now that it has suspended the accounts, X said it is still fighting for free speech “within the boundaries of the law.”

“X is proud to return to Brazil,” the company’s Global Government Affairs account said yesterday. “Giving tens of millions of Brazilians access to our indispensable platform was paramount throughout this entire process. We will continue to defend freedom of speech, within the boundaries of the law, everywhere we operate.”

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Apple brings years-old features to iCloud web interface

Apple, dark mode, iCloud, iCloud.com, Tech / Tim Belzer / October 8, 2024

In a rare event, Apple has rolled out substantial updates to the web-based iCloud interface meant to allow users to access Apple services like Mail and Photos when they’re away from a Mac, iPad, or iPhone.

The flagship addition is dark mode; it “will automatically match your device settings with a Light Mode or Dark Mode color scheme,” Apple explains as part of the update.

There is also now a way to customize the background for the iCloud web interface—specifically, you can choose between several colors.

A few apps received features that have been available on iOS and macOS for a while. For example, the Notes web app now supports pinned notes, and iCloud Drive supports shared views.

If you think all that seems like it’s pretty basic and late to the game, you’re not wrong.

The iCloud web interface has long seemed like an afterthought for Apple, and it has always been far behind Apple’s native software platforms in terms of features. How far behind? Well, consider this: dark mode was previously added to iOS way back in iOS 13.

Apple’s narrative to investors has long said that its services like iCloud are key to making up for slowed hardware sales in the mature smartphone market. To that end, the company has made this web interface available and has brought some of its services like Music and TV+ to other platforms like Windows and Android.

However, there seem to be limits to that. As noted, iCloud for web has historically been a subpar experience, and other key services like Messages have not been made available on other platforms at all, possibly to avoid losing the social lock-in advantage of Messages for iOS. (Messages is notably absent in the web app.)

Still, it’s nice to see any movement at all here. While iCloud.com gets infrequent and small updates, it remains actively supported at a basic level.

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Judge orders Google to distribute third-party app stores on Google Play

epic games, Google Play Store, google play store injunction, Policy / Tim Belzer / October 8, 2024

Injunction in Epic case gives rival app stores three years to catch up to Google.

Google Play gift cards available for sale in a store.

Google Play gift cards in a shop in New York on July 5th, 2024.

A federal judge yesterday ordered Google to open up the Google Play Store and its collection of apps to third-party app stores as part of a US-wide injunction stemming from Epic Games’ antitrust victory over the company. The injunction is scheduled to take effect on November 1, though Google will have up to eight months to implement certain provisions.

For three years, Google will have to let third-party Android app stores access the Google Play Store’s catalog of apps “so that they may offer the Play Store apps to users,” said the injunction issued by US District Judge James Donato of the Northern District of California.

App developers will have some control over which app stores their software is distributed on. “Google will provide developers with a mechanism for opting out of inclusion in catalog access for any particular third-party Android app store,” the injunction said.

Google will be required to allow distribution of third-party Android app stores through the Google Play Store, making it easier for users to install different app stores without sideloading. Donato further prohibited Google from requiring the use of its own billing system for apps distributed on the Google Play Store, including for in-app purchases.

Some provisions relate to deals with phone makers and carriers that may offer devices with preinstalled app stores. “For a period of three years ending on November 1, 2027, Google may not condition a payment, revenue share, or access to any Google product or service, on an agreement with an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) or carrier to preinstall the Google Play Store on any specific location on an Android device,” the injunction said. A similar condition applies to any “agreement with an OEM or carrier not to preinstall an Android app distribution platform or store other than the Google Play Store.”

Judge gives competitors three years to catch up

In an order explaining the injunction, Donato said he limited the requirements to three years “because the provisions are designed to level the playing field for the entry and growth of rivals, without burdening Google excessively. As competition comes into play and the network effects that Google Play unfairly enjoys are abated, Google should not be unduly constrained as a competitor.”

At trial, the jury ruled in Epic’s favor on its Sherman Act claims of monopolization, unlawful restraint of trade, and tying. Donato explained that a remedy in antitrust cases “is not limited simply to prohibiting conduct found to be anticompetitive. Rather, the Court has discretion to fashion a remedy directed to the effect of the anticompetitive conduct.”

Epic was “illegally and unfairly foreclosed from using its own in-app billing services while distributing its Fortnite app through the Google Play Store because of Google’s anticompetitive practices,” and “illegally and unfairly foreclosed from competing in the market for Android in-app billing services for digital goods and services transactions,” Donato wrote.

Donato added that the “harms are ongoing and cannot be made right simply by Google writing Epic a large check.” The injunction is in the public interest because it will help restore “free and unfettered competition,” he wrote. Google is also “enjoined from sharing Play Store revenues with current or potential Android app store rivals, and from imposing contractual terms that condition benefits on promises intended to guarantee Play Store exclusivity.”

Donato’s order said that Google on several occasions “fired a blunderbuss of comments and complaints that are underdeveloped and consequently unhelpful in deciding the issues.” He also rejected some of Epic’s proposals because they would have “threatened a degree of judicial oversight that would amount to micromanagement of Google’s business. It is not for the Court to decide the day-to-day business issues of Android app distribution and in-app billing.”

Google plans appeal

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney wrote that the injunction “means all app developers, store makers, carriers, and manufacturers have 3 years to build a vibrant and competitive Android ecosystem with such critical mass that Google can’t stop it.”

Google issued a response saying it will appeal the underlying verdict and “will ask the courts to pause Epic’s requested changes, pending that appeal.”

The court-ordered “changes would put consumers’ privacy and security at risk, make it harder for developers to promote their apps, and reduce competition on devices,” Google VP of Regulatory Affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland wrote. “Ultimately, while these changes presumably satisfy Epic, they will cause a range of unintended consequences that will harm American consumers, developers and device makers.”

Mulholland also said the injunction will “undercut Android’s ability to compete with Apple’s iOS.”

“These Epic-requested changes stem from a decision that is completely contrary to another court’s rejection of similar claims Epic made against Apple—even though, unlike iOS, Android is an open platform that has always allowed for choice and flexibility like multiple app stores and sideloading,” she wrote.

Judge dismisses Google arguments

Donato’s order allows Google to impose security restrictions on third-party apps, but he said that Google must show that any restrictions are necessary.

“As Google has suggested, there are potential security and technical risks involved in making third-party apps available, including rival app stores,” Donato wrote. “The Court is in no position to anticipate what those might be, or how to solve them. Consequently, Google will have room to engage in its normal security and safety processes. To the extent Google imposes requirements along these lines on rival app stores, it will… bear the burden when challenged of establishing that the requirements were strictly necessary to achieve safety and security for users and developers.”

The injunction, Donato wrote, “must not only prohibit the specific anticompetitive conduct that Google engaged in, but also undo the consequence of Google’s ill-gotten gains.” But the requirements, such as the one forcing Google to let third-party app stores access the Google Play Store catalog, have some limits:

The injunction must bridge the moat. Even so, the catalog access provision is narrowly tailored to remediate the unfairly enhanced network effects Google reaped without unfairly penalizing its success as a first mover. To that end, if a rival app store does not have a relationship with a developer and so cannot fulfill a download request by a user, the rival will direct the download request to the Google Play Store. In that case, the Google Play Store will fulfill the download request and keep the associated revenue, if any, and the download will be made pursuant to the Google Play Store’s policies. All that the catalog access does is level the playing field for a discrete period of time so that rival app stores have a fighting chance of getting off the ground despite network effects and the disadvantage of offering a “catalog of app/games” that is too “limited” to attract users and developers in a two-sided market.

Donato is giving Google eight months to implement the technology needed to allow distribution of third-party app stores through Google Play, and eight months to give third-party stores access to the Google Play Store catalog of apps.

“Google will have up to eight months from the date of this order to implement the technology and procedures necessary to comply with this provision, and the three-year time period will start once the technology and procedures are fully functional,” he wrote. A technical committee will oversee the process, “with the Court serving as the final word when necessary.”

Donato’s 17-page order did not address every one of Google’s arguments, because the judge decided some of them were too weak to warrant a response. “As noted, Google’s modus operandi in this case has been to deluge the Court in an ocean of comments, many of which were cursory and undeveloped. The Court declines to take up Google’s objections that were not fully developed in their presentation to the Court,” he wrote.

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

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Elon Musk’s X loses battle over federal request for Trump’s DMs

Donald Trump, elon musk, government data requests, January 6, Policy, presidential record act, Stored Communications Act, Twitter, X, x corp / Tim Belzer / October 7, 2024

Prosecutors now have a “blueprint” to seize privileged communications, X warned.

Last year, special counsel Jack Smith asked X (formerly Twitter) to hand over Donald Trump’s direct messages from his presidency without telling Trump. Refusing to comply, X spent the past year arguing that the gag order was an unconstitutional prior restraint on X’s speech and an “end-run” around a record law shielding privileged presidential communications.

Under its so-called free speech absolutist owner Elon Musk, X took this fight all the way to the Supreme Court, only for the nation’s highest court to decline to review X’s appeal on Monday.

It’s unclear exactly why SCOTUS rejected X’s appeal, but in a court filing opposing SCOTUS review, Smith told the court that X’s “contentions lack merit and warrant no further review.” And SCOTUS seemingly agreed.

The government had argued that its nondisclosure order was narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest in stopping Trump from either deleting his DMs or intimidating witnesses engaged in his DMs while he was in office.

At that time, Smith was publicly probing the interference with a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election, and courts had agreed that “there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that disclosing the warrant” to Trump “‘would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation’ by giving him ‘an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates,” Smith’s court filing said.

Under the Stored Communications Act (SCA), the government can request data and apply for a nondisclosure order gagging any communications provider from tipping off an account holder about search warrants for limited periods deemed appropriate by a court, Smith noted. X was only prohibited from alerting Trump to the search warrant for 180 days, Smith said, and only restricted from discussing the existence of the warrant.

As the government sees it, this reliance on the SCA “does not give unbounded, standardless discretion to government officials or otherwise create a risk of ‘freewheeling censorship,'” like X claims. But the government warned that affirming X’s appeal “would mean that no SCA warrant could be enforced without disclosure to a potential privilege holder, regardless of the dangers to the integrity of the investigation.”

Court finds X alternative to gag order “unpalatable”

X tried to wave a red flag in its SCOTUS petition, warning the court that this was “the first time in American history” that a court “ordered disclosure of presidential communications without notice to the President and without any adjudication of executive privilege.”

The social media company argued that it receives “tens of thousands” of government data requests annually—including “thousands” with nondisclosure orders—and pushes back on any request for privileged information that does not allow users to assert their privileges. Allowing the lower court rulings to stand, X warned SCOTUS, could create a path for government to illegally seize information not just protected by executive privilege, but also by attorney-client, doctor-patient, or journalist-source privileges.

X’s “policy is to notify users about law enforcement requests ‘prior to disclosure of account information’ unless legally ‘prohibited from doing so,'” X argued.

X suggested that rather than seize Trump’s DMs without giving him a chance to assert his executive privilege, the government should have designated a representative capable of weighing and asserting whether some of the data requested was privileged. That’s how the Presidential Records Act (PRA) works, X noted, suggesting that Smith’s team was improperly trying to avoid PRA compliance by invoking SCA instead.

But the US government didn’t have to prove that the less-restrictive alternative X submitted would have compromised its investigation, X said, because the court categorically rejected X’s submission as “unworkable” and “unpalatable.”

According to the court, designating a representative placed a strain on the government to deduce if the representative could be trusted not to disclose the search warrant. But X pointed out that the government had no explanation for why a PRA-designated representative, Steven Engel—a former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel who “publicly testified about resisting the former President’s conduct”—”could not be trusted to follow a court order forbidding him from further disclosure.”

“Going forward, the government will never have to prove it could avoid seriously jeopardizing its investigation by disclosing a warrant to only a trusted representative—a common alternative to nondisclosure orders,” X argued.

In a brief supporting X, attorneys for the nonprofit digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wrote that the court was “unduly dismissive of the arguments” X raised and “failed to apply exacting scrutiny, relieving the government of its burden to actually demonstrate, with evidence, that these alternatives would be ineffective.”

Further, X argued that none of the government’s arguments for nondisclosure made sense. Not only was Smith’s investigation announced publicly—allowing Trump ample time to delete his DMs already—but also “there was no risk of destruction of the requested records because Twitter had preserved them.” On top of that, during the court battle, the government eventually admitted that one rationale for the nondisclosure order—that Trump posed a supposed “flight risk” if the search warrant was known—”was implausible because the former President already had announced his re-election run.”

X unsuccessfully pushed SCOTUS to take on the Trump case as an “ideal” and rare opportunity to publicly decide when nondisclosure orders cross the line when seeking to seize potentially privileged information on social media.

In its petition for SCOTUS review, X pointed out that every social media or communications platform is bombarded with government data requests that only the platforms can challenge. That leaves it up to platforms to figure out when data requests are problematic, which they frequently are, as “the government often agrees to modify or vacate them in informal negotiations,” X argued.

But when the government refuses to negotiate, as in the Trump case, platforms have to decide if litigation is worth it, risking sanctions if the court finds the platform in contempt, just as X was sanctioned $350,000 in the Trump case. If a less restrictive alternative was determined appropriate by the courts, such as appointing a trusted representative, platforms would never have had to guess when data requests threaten to expose their users’ privileged information, X argued.

According to X, another case like this won’t come around for decades, where court filings wouldn’t have to be redacted and a ruling wouldn’t have to happen behind closed doors.

But the government seemingly persuaded the Supreme Court to decline to review the case, partly by arguing that X’s challenge to its nondisclosure order was moot. Responding to X’s objections, the government had eventually agreed to modify the nondisclosure order to disclose the warrant to Trump, so long as the name of the case agent assigned to the investigation was redacted. So X’s appeal is really over nothing, the government suggested.

Additionally, the government argued that “this case would not be an appropriate vehicle” for SCOTUS’ review of the question X raised because “no executive privilege issue actually existed in this case.”

“If review of the underlying legal issues were ever warranted, the Court should await a live case in which the issues are concretely presented,” Smith’s court filing said.

X is likely deflated by SCOTUS’ call declining to review X’s appeal. In its petition, X claimed that the court system risked providing “a blueprint for prosecutors who wish to obtain potentially privileged materials” and “this end-run will not be limited to federal prosecutors,” X warned. State prosecutors will likely also be emboldened to do the same now that the precedent has been set, X predicted.

In their brief supporting X, EFF lawyers noted that the government already has “far too much authority to shield its activities from public scrutiny.” By failing to prevent nondisclosure orders from restraining speech, the court system risks making it harder to “meaningfully test these gag orders in court,” EFF warned.

“Even a meritless gag order that is ultimately voided by a court causes great harm while it is in effect,” EFF’s lawyers said, while disclosure “ensures that individuals whose information is searched have an opportunity to defend their privacy from unwarranted and unlawful government intrusions.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Elon Musk’s X loses battle over federal request for Trump’s DMs Read More »

Smart TVs are like “a digital Trojan Horse” in people’s homes

ads, FCC, ftc, generative ai, Policy, streaming, Tech, TVs / Tim Belzer / October 7, 2024

Similarly, the report’s authors describe concerns that the CTV industry’s extensive data collection and tracking could potentially have a political impact. It asserts that political candidates could use such data to run “covert personalized campaigns” leveraging information on things like political orientations and “emotional states”:

With no transparency or oversight, these practices could unleash millions of personalized, manipulative and highly targeted political ads, spread disinformation, and further exacerbate the political polarization that threatens a healthy democratic culture in the US.

“Potential discriminatory impacts”

The CDD’s report claims that Black, Hispanic, and Asian-Americans in the US are being “singled out by marketers as highly lucrative targets,” due to fast adoption of new digital media services and brand loyalty. Black and Hispanic communities are key advertising targets for FAST channels, per the report. Chester told Ars:

There are major potential discriminatory impacts from CTV’s harvesting of data from communities of color.

He pointed to “growing widespread racial and ethnic data” collection for ad targeting and marketing.

“We believe this is sensitive information that should not be applied to the data profiles used for targeting on CTV and across other platforms. … Its use in political advertising on CTV will enable widespread disinformation and voter suppression campaigns targeting these communities,” Chester said.

Regulation

In a letter sent to the FTC, FCC, California attorney general, and CPPA , the CDD asked for an investigation into the US’ CTV industry, “including on antitrust, consumer protection, and privacy grounds.” The CDD emphasized the challenges that streamers—including those who pay for ad-free streaming—face in protecting their data from advertisers.

“Connected television has taken root and grown as an unregulated medium in the United States, along with the other platforms, devices, and applications that are part of the massive internet industry,” the report says.

The group asks for the FTC and FCC to investigate CTV practices and consider building on current legislation, like the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act. They also request that antitrust regulators delve deeply into the business practices of CTV players like Amazon, Comcast, and Disney to help build “competition and diversity in the digital and connected TV marketplace.”

Smart TVs are like “a digital Trojan Horse” in people’s homes Read More »

Medicine Nobel goes to previously unknown way of controlling genes

Biology, evolution, gene regulation, microRNA, Nobel prize, Science / Tim Belzer / October 7, 2024

Based on the stereotypical hairpin structure, researchers have scanned genomes and found over 38,000 likely precursors; nearly 50,000 mature microRNAs have been discovered by sequencing all the RNA found in cells from a variety of species. While found widely in animals, they’ve also been discovered in plants, raising the possibility that they existed in a single-celled ancestral organism.

While some microRNA genes, including lin-4 and let-7, have dramatic phenotypes when mutated, many have weak or confusing effects. This is likely in part due to the fact that a single microRNA can bind to and regulate a variety of genes and so may have a mix of effects when mutated. In other cases, several different microRNAs may bind to the same messenger RNA, creating a redundancy that makes the loss of a single microRNA difficult to detect.

Nevertheless, there’s plenty of evidence that, collectively, they’re essential for normal development in many organisms and tissues. Knocking out the gene that encodes the Dicer protein, which is needed for forming mature microRNAs, causes early embryonic lethality. Knockouts of the gene in specific cell types cause a variety of defects. For example, B cells never mature if Dicer is lost in that cell lineage, and a knockout in nerve cells causes microcephaly and limiting branching of connections among neurons, leading the animals to die shortly after birth.

This being the Medicine prize, the Nobel Committee also cite a number of human genetic diseases that are caused by mutations in microRNA genes.

Overall, the award highlights just how complex life is at the cellular level. There’s a fair number of genes that have to be made by every cell simply to enable their survival. But as for the rest, they exist embedded in complex regulatory networks that interact to ensure that proteins are made only where and when they’re needed, and often degraded if they somehow get made anyway. And every now and then, fundamental research in an oddball species is still telling us unexpected things about those networks.

Medicine Nobel goes to previously unknown way of controlling genes Read More »

Author name: Tim Belzer