New research claims that of five major Big Tech firms, Google tracks more private data about users than any other -- and Apple tracks the least. AppleInsider reports: Apple has previously introduced App Tracking Transparency specifically to protect the privacy of users from other companies. However, a new report says that Apple is also avoiding doing any more tracking itself than is needed to run its services. According to StockApps.com, Apple "is the most privacy-conscious firm out there." "Apple only stores the information that is necessary to maintain users' accounts," it continues. "This is because their website is not as reliant on advertising revenue as are Google, Twitter, and Facebook."

The StockApps.com report does not list what it describes as the "data points" that Big Tech firms collect for every user. However, it says they include location details, browser history, activity on third-party websites, and in Google's case, also emails in Gmail. It also doesn't detail its methodology, but does say that it used marketing firm digitalinformationworld to investigate Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Of these five, Google reportedly tracks 39 separate data points per user, while Apple tracks only 12. Unexpectedly, Facebook is stated as tracking only 14 data points, while Amazon tracks 23, and Twitter tracks 24.

Chinese search engine giant Baidu revealed its first quantum computer on Thursday and is ready to make it available to external users, joining the global race to apply the technology to practical uses. Reuters reports: The Baidu-developed quantum computer, dubbed "Qianshi," has a 10-quantum-bit (qubit) processor, Baidu said in a statement. The Beijing-based company has also developed a 36-qubit quantum chip, it said. Governments and companies around the world for years have touted the potential of quantum computing, a form of high-speed calculation at extraordinarily cold temperatures that will bring computers to unprecedented processing speeds. However, current real-world applications in the field are still very basic and limited to a small group of early clients.

It turns out, software testers are relying more on automation than ever before, driven by a desire to lower testing costs and improve software quality and user experience. VentureBeat shares the findings from a new report by Kobiton: Kobiton asked 150 testers in companies with at least 50 employees across a range of industries. [...] For context, there are two kinds of software testing: manual and automated. Manual is still common but it's not ideal for repetitive tests, leading many testers to choose automation, which can expedite development and app performance. To wit, 40% of testers responding to Kobiton's study said their primary motivation for using automation is improving user experience. "In a study we conducted two years ago, half the testers we asked said their automation programs were relatively new, and 76% said they were automating fewer than 50% of all tests," said Kevin Lee, CEO of Kobiton. "Nearly 100% of testers participating in this year's study are using automation, which speaks to how far the industry has come."

Testing managers are prioritizing new hires with automation experience, too. Kobiton's study found that automation experience is one of the three skills managers are most interested in. And how is automation being used? A plurality (34%) of respondents to Kobiton's survey said they are using automation for an equal mix of regression and new feature testing. And it's made them more efficient. Almost half (47%) of survey respondents said it takes 3-5 days for manual testing before a release, whereas automated tests can have it done in 3-6 hours.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN Travel: The future of environmentally friendly travel might just be here -- and it's Germany that's leading the charge, with the first ever rail line to be entirely run on hydrogen-powered trains, starting from Wednesday. Fourteen hydrogen trains powered by fuel cell propulsion will exclusively run on the route in Bremervorde, Lower Saxony. The 93 million euro ($92.3 million) deal has been struck by state subsidiary Landesnahverkehrsgesellschaft Niedersachsen (LVNG), the owners of the railway, and Alstom, builders of the Coradia iLint trains. The Elbe-Weser Railways and Transport Company (EVB), which will operate the trains, and gas and engineering company Linde, are also part of the project.

The trains, five of which which debut Wednesday, will gradually replace the 15 diesel trains that currently run on the route, with all 14 running exclusively by the end of the year. Just 1 kilo of hydrogen fuel can do the same as around 4.5 kilos of diesel. The trains are emissions-free and low-noise, with only steam and condensed water issuing from the exhaust. They have a range of 1,000 kilometers (621 miles), meaning they can run for an entire day on the network on a single tank of hydrogen. A hydrogen filling station has already been established on the route. The trains can go at a maximum of 140 kph, or 87mph, though regular speeds on the line are much less, between 80-120 kph.

The kingdom of Google's third major operating system, Fuchsia, is growing a little wider today. ArsTechnica: 9to5Google reports Google completed the rollout of Fuchsia to the Google Nest Hub Max. Along with the original Nest Hub/Google Home Hub, that puts two of Google's three smart displays on the new OS, with the one holdout being the 2nd Gen Nest Hub. The Nest Hub Max is the first device running Fuchsia that Google is currently selling -- the Home Hub only got Fuchsia after it had been discontinued. The Google smart display user interface is written in Flutter, a Google programming language designed for portability, which runs on Android, iOS, Fuchsia, and the weird cast platform Nest Hubs typically use. So it's not right to describe the user interface as "similar" after the OS swap -- it's the exact same code because Flutter runs on nearly everything.

You are getting a slightly newer code version, though, and it comes with a Bluetooth menu. If you dive into the settings and hit "about device," you'll see a "Fuchsia Version" field that will say something like "6.20211109.1.3166243." It's a bit weird to do an entire OS switch to the futuristic, secretive Fuchsia project and then have basically nothing to show (or say) for it in terms of obvious improvements in performance or security. You can dive into the minutia of the Fuchsia source code, but it continues to be a mystery in terms of what practical benefits it offers consumers. Google never talks about Fuchsia, so not much is known about what, exactly, Google is accomplishing here.

An anonymous reader shares a report: While mostly of benefit to server administrators with large fleets of hardware, Linux 6.1 aims to make it easier to help spot problematic CPUs/cores by reporting the likely socket and core when a segmentation fault occurs, which can help in spotting any trends if routinely finding the same CPU/core is causing problems. Queued up now in TIP's x86/cpu branch for the Linux 6.1 merge window in October is a patch to print the likely CPU at segmentation fault time. Printing the likely CPU core and socket when a seg fault occurs can be beneficial if routinely finding seg faults happening on the same CPU package or particular core.

A year ago, it was nearly impossible to buy a GeForce GPU for its intended retail price. Now, the company has the opposite problem. From a report: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during the company's Q2 2023 earnings call yesterday that the company is dealing with "excess inventory" of RTX 3000-series GPUs ahead of its next-gen RTX 4000 series release later this year. To deal with this, according to Huang, Nvidia will reduce the number of GPUs it sells to manufacturers of graphics cards and laptops so that those manufacturers can clear out their existing inventory. Huang also says Nvidia has "instituted programs to price position our current products to prepare for next-generation products."

When translated from C-suite to English, this means the company will be cutting the prices of current-generation GPUs to make more room for next-generation ones. Those price cuts should theoretically be passed along to consumers somehow, though that will be up to Nvidia's partners. Nvidia announced earlier this month that it would be missing its quarterly projections by $1.4 billion, mainly due to decreased demand for its gaming GPUs. Huang said that "sell-through" of GPUs, or the number of cards being sold to users, had still "increased 70 percent since pre-COVID," though the company still expects year-over-year revenue from GPUs to decline next quarter.

The way Google calculates the climate impact of your flights has changed, the BBC has discovered. From the report: Flights now appear to have much less impact on the environment than before. That's because the world's biggest search engine has taken a key driver of global warming out of its online carbon flight calculator. "Google has airbrushed a huge chunk of the aviation industry's climate impacts from its pages" says Dr Doug Parr, chief scientist of Greenpeace. With Google hosting nine out of every 10 online searches, this could have wide repercussions for people's travel decisions. The company said it made the change following consultations with its "industry partners." It affects the carbon calculator embedded in the company's "Google Flights" search tool.

If you have ever tried to find a flight on Google, you will have come across Google Flights. It appears towards the top of search results and allows you to scour the web for flights and fares. It also offers to calculate the emissions generated by your journey. Google says this feature is designed "to help you make more sustainable travel choices." Yet in July, Google decided to exclude all the global warming impacts of flying except CO2. Some experts say Google's calculations now represent just over half of the real impact on the climate of flights.

Google-owned navigation service Waze is shutting down its six-year-old carpooling service, citing shifting commuting patterns as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. From a report: Starting in September, the company will begin the process of winding down its carpooling service, which had been available in the US, Brazil, and Israel. Waze said it will explore other ways it can help serve the 150 million customers worldwide that use its navigation app. "While Waze was predominantly a commuting app pre-COVID, today the proportion of errands and travel drives have surpassed commutes," the company said in a statement provided to The Verge. "This means we have an opportunity to find even more impactful ways to bring together a global community to share real-time insights and help each other outsmart traffic -- this is what has always made Waze truly special." First launched in the Bay Area in 2016, Waze Carpool eventually expanded to all 50 states in the US as well as Brazil and Waze's country of origin, Israel. The service was different from carpooling services offered by Uber and Lyft insofar as it let nonprofessional drivers offer rides to people traveling on a similar route for a nominal fee. In 2018, the company launched its own standalone carpool app.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Google has breached a European Union court ruling by sending unsolicited advertising emails directly to the inbox of Gmail users, Austrian advocacy group noyb.eu said on Wednesday in a complaint filed with France's data protection watchdog. The Alphabet unit, whose revenues mainly come from online advertising, should ask Gmail users for their prior consent before sending them any direct marketing emails, noyb.eu said, citing a 2021 decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJUE).

While Google's ad emails may look like normal ones, they include the word "Ad" in green letters on the left-hand side, below the subject of the email, noyb.eu said in its complaint. Also, they do not include a date, the advocacy group added. "It's as if the postman was paid to remove the ads from your mailbox and put his own instead," said Romain Robert, program director at noyb.eu, with reference to Gmail's anti-spam filters that put most unsolicited emails in a separate folder. While any CNIL decision would be only applicable in France, it could compel Google to review its practices in the region.

The New York State Senate just introduced a bill that aims to improve safety around massive trucks and SUVs. Autoblog reports: Manhattan State Senator Brad Hoylman introduced the bill, which includes language requiring the NY DMV to dictate specific rules for vehicles over 3,000 pounds. One new regulation would be that the drivers of such cars have "direct visibility of pedestrians, cyclists, and other vulnerable road users from the driver's position." It's not clear exactly what enforcing that legislation would entail. However, the meat of Hoylman's bill centers on advanced safety technology. A summary of the legislation states, "Studies have shown that Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) alone can reduce traffic fatalities by 20%. This, in addition to Advanced Emergency Braking (AEB), Emergency Lane Keeping Systems (ELKS), drowsiness and distraction recognition technology, and rear-view cameras, would help prevent crashes from occurring in the first place."

If you've never heard of ISA, you're not alone. The term is pretty broad in what it encompasses, including speed limit recognition and alerts, speed assist, and speed limiting. The tech is common in Europe, where automakers like Ford offer it in several models. Ford's flavor of speed limiting allows drivers to set a maximum speed and automatically limit the vehicle to within five mph of the posted speed limit. It's optional, however, so drivers can turn it off when desired. If passed, the legislation would require automakers to include those advanced driver assistance systems as standard equipment in new vehicles from 2024 on.

Continuing the focus on delivering the world's fastest internet speeds that led Chattanooga's municipal utility to launch America's first comprehensively available Gig-speed internet service (2010) and the first 10-Gig internet service (2015), EPB has launched the nation's first community-wide 25 gigabits per second (25,000 Mbps) internet service. Chattanoogan reports: It is set to be available to all residential and commercial customers over a 100 percent fiber optic network with symmetrical upload and download speeds. Through a partnership with Hamilton County and the city of Chattanooga, the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Convention Center is EPB's first 25 Gig customer, making it the first convention center worldwide to offer such blazingly fast speeds over a broadband network. With this technology, the Convention Center will be able to simultaneously provide high bandwidth connectivity to thousands of smart devices to draw business conferences, e-gaming competitions, live streaming events and more.

Hamilton County and the city of Chattanooga have each dedicated $151,000 in infrastructure funding for a total of $302,000 to cover the cost of installing new networking equipment and Wi-Fi access points throughout the convention center as well as much of the cost of providing multi-gig connectivity for the next five years. Once the new equipment is installed, visitors will be able to benefit from high-speed connectivity throughout the facility.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: California is expected to put into effect on Thursday its sweeping plan to prohibit the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, a groundbreaking move that could have major effects on the effort to fight climate change and accelerate a global transition toward electric vehicles. The rule, issued by the California Air Resources Board, will require that 100 percent of all new cars sold in the state by 2035 be free of the fossil fuel emissions chiefly responsible for warming the planet, up from 12 percent today. It sets interim targets requiring that 35 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the state by 2026 produce zero emissions. That would climb to 68 percent by 2030. The restrictions are important because not only is California the largest auto market in the United States, but more than a dozen other states typically follow California's lead when setting their own auto emissions standards.

California's action comes on top of an expansive new climate law that President Biden signed last week. The law will invest $370 billion in spending and tax credits on clean energy programs, the largest action ever taken by the federal government to combat climate change. Enactment of that law is projected to help the United States cut its emissions 40 percent below 2005 levels by the end of this decade. Still, it will not be enough to eliminate U.S. emissions by 2050, the target that climate scientists say all major economies must reach if the world is to avert the most catastrophic and deadly impacts of climate change. To help close the gap, White House officials have vowed to couple the bill with new regulations, including on automobile tailpipe emissions. They have also said that reducing emissions enough to stay in line with the science also will require aggressive state policies. Experts said the new California rule, in both its stringency and reach, could stand alongside the Washington law as one of the world's most important climate change policies, and could help take another significant bite out of the nation's emissions of carbon dioxide. The new rule is also expected to influence new policies in Washington and around the world to promote electric vehicles and cut auto pollution. "This is huge," said Margo Oge, an electric vehicles expert who headed the EPA's transportation emissions program under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. "California will now be the only government in the world that mandates zero-emission vehicles. It is unique."

Both government and criminal hacking groups are still targeting Hikvision cameras with a vulnerability from 2021, according to reports from several security researchers. From a report: Cybersecurity firm CYFIRMA released a report this week saying Russian cybercriminal forums are awash with hackers looking to collaborate on exploiting Hikvision cameras using the command injection vulnerability CVE-2021-36260. "Specifically in the Russian forums, we have observed leaked credentials of Hikvision camera products available for sale," the company's researchers said. "These can be leveraged by hackers to gain access to the devices and exploit further the path of attack to target an organization's environment." CYFIRMA reported they found that more than 80,000 Hikvision cameras are still vulnerable to the critical command injection flaw, which carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of 10. Of the more than 80,000 vulnerable cameras, more than 100 nations and 2,300 organizations are impacted.

Canalys' North American smartphone market share numbers are out, and the big mover for Q2 2022 is once again Google, which is seeing huge growth numbers thanks to the Pixel 6. Last quarter, Canalys had Google up 380 percent year over year, and this quarter, the company is up 230 percent! ArsTechnica adds: That sounds incredibly successful, but this is Google's tiny hardware division we're talking about, so it's all relative success. The company is now at 2 percent North American market share, having shipped 800,000 devices for Q2 2022. Along with last quarter, Google is now regularly hitting whole-digit market share numbers. That's good enough for fifth place, behind Apple (52 percent), Samsung (26 percent), Lenovo/Motorola (9 percent), and TCL (5 percent). Canalys also has a list of the best-selling models. The top five are all iPhones, of course, with the base model iPhone 13 taking the top spot, followed by the super-cheap iPhone SE. The iPhone 13 Mini, which is rumored to be selling so poorly that there won't be an iPhone 14 Mini, took the ninth spot. The first Android phone on the list, the flagship Galaxy S22 Ultra, clocks in at No. 6.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Silicon Valley startup Sanas has a lofty goal: to make call center workers sound white and American, no matter the country they're from. And that's just the beginning of their grand plan. The voice tech company's website features a photo of a smiling man, cropped so you only see a disembodied, toothy grin. Underneath the anonymous mouth, a demo invites you to "Hear the Magic" of Sanas. As you press play, you hear one side of a simulated conversation; a man with an Indian accent reads a familiarly tortured call center script about a missing package. Click the "With Sanas" slider, and the voice transforms instantly into something slightly robotic, a tad uncanny and unmistakably white. Since its August 2021 launch, Sanas has been showered with funding by investors. Amid a trying time for the tech industry, the "accent translation" company -- founded by three former Stanford students, Maxim Serebryakov, Shawn Zhang and Andres Perez Soderi -- snagged a $32 million Series A funding round in June 2022, which they claim is the largest ever for a speech technology service. One press release boasts that investors who tried the service called it "magical."

Eventually, the company wants to expand beyond call centers by changing accents on consumer video and audio calls; Sanas has even mentioned an interest in film and TV. New voices are in the works, too: Someday, workers' accents may be "translated" into a Southern drawl for a caller in Louisville, or a Midwestern lilt for someone in Cleveland, instead of the more generic Standard American English, colloquially known as white person voice. "We don't want to say that accents are a problem because you have one," Sanas president Marty Sarim told SFGATE. "They're only a problem because they cause bias and they cause misunderstandings." The tacit promise of Sanas seems to be that callers will be more polite -- and more amenable to being helped -- if they think the person on the other end is more like them.

Ethereum's developers have officially confirmed September 6 as the date for Ethereum's long-anticipated transition from proof of work to proof of stake, known as The Merge. From a report: "Following years of hard work, Ethereum's proof-of-stake upgrade is finally here!" the Ethereum Foundation wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. "The successful upgrade of all public testnets is now complete, and The Merge has been scheduled for the Ethereum mainnet." The Merge will be split into two upgrades, called Bellatrix and Paris. Bellatrix is timed to occur at 11:34 AM UTC on September 6 and Paris will be triggered sometime between September 10 and September 20, according to the blog post. Proof of stake relies on validators instead of miners. Instead of expending lots of computing power, like proof-of-work miners do, proof-of-stake validators lock up sums of money to prove their trustworthiness to the network. The switch has been a long-held goal for Ethereum's developers. In the final testing step, the Goerli testnet successfully merged on August 10.

Sony's PlayStation VR2 headset is coming in "early 2023," according to posts the company made on Twitter and Instagram. The Verge reports: While the company released details of the headset's design earlier this year, it still hasn't announced a price. It is, however, promising a lot for the PlayStation VR2 -- it'll feature displays that add up to 4K resolution and can run at 90 or 120Hz, have a 110-degree field of view, and use foveated rendering, which renders certain parts of the image as sharper than others to make things easier for the computer (or, in this case, the PlayStation 5). The company also says the headset connects to your console with a single USB C cable. Sony has already announced it will have a lineup of about 20 "major" games available when it launches. The titles include games set in the Horizon and Walking Dead universes, as well as VR versions of No Man's Sky and Resident Evil Village.

Unlike the original PlayStation VR headset, the PS VR2 won't use a camera connected to your console to track your movements. Instead, it'll use inside-out tracking, similar to the Quest 2, where cameras on the headset itself are in charge of the motion tracking. This means that the PS VR2 will also be able to let you see your surroundings while you're wearing the headset. Sony also says that the PlayStation 5 will let you broadcast yourself playing VR games, though you will have to have a PlayStation HD camera connected. Sony has also shown off the orb-shaped controllers, which will have adaptive triggers and haptic feedback like what's offered with Sony's DualSense controller for the PS5. They'll also have finger-touch detection, which can sense where you rest your thumb, index, or middle fingers without having to press anything.

Meta will now allow users of its Quest VR headsets to log in with a new Meta account instead of a Facebook account, the company announced on Tuesday. The Verge reports: The company had said in July that this change would be rolling out in August, and it marks a shift from an unpopular policy announced in 2020 that required users to log in to their headsets with a Facebook account instead of a separate Oculus account. Users can create Meta accounts through the Meta mobile app using an email address, Facebook account, or Instagram account. Once you create a Meta account, you'll need to set up a linked Meta Horizon social profile that will be used in VR. As with Facebook accounts before, you'll need one of these accounts to use a Quest headset.

"Our new Meta account structure gives you more flexibility and control, letting you choose how you do and don't show up -- and whether Facebook and / or Instagram is part of your experience in VR and other surfaces where you use your Meta Horizon profile," Meta says in its blog post. If you want to set up a Meta account, the company has instructions in the blog post and in a video. If you are still using an Oculus account, you'll be able to do so until January 1st, 2023. After that date, you'll need to make a Meta account. The company says the option to make a Meta account and a Meta Horizon profile is rolling out now, so if you aren't able to just yet, you should be given the option soon.

Google Research has released an open source project it calls MultiNerf that does an "out of this world" job at removing digital noise from pictures, according to TechCrunch. "The algorithms run on raw image data and adds AI magic to figure out what footage 'should have' looked like without the distinct video noise generated by imaging sensors."

"I can write a million words about how awesome this is," writes TechCrunch's Haje Jan Kamps. You can see how Nerf performs in the dark in this YouTube video.