Transportation

Boeing Wants To Build Its Next Airplane in the 'Metaverse' (reuters.com) 81

In Boeing's factory of the future, immersive 3-D engineering designs will be twinned with robots that speak to each other, while mechanics around the world will be linked by $3,500 HoloLens headsets made by Microsoft. From a report: It is a snapshot of an ambitious new Boeing strategy to unify sprawling design, production and airline services operations under a single digital ecosystem -- in as little as two years. Critics say Boeing has repeatedly made similar bold pledges on a digital revolution, with mixed results. But insiders say the overarching goals of improving quality and safety have taken on greater urgency and significance as the company tackles multiple threats.

The planemaker is entering 2022 fighting to reassert its engineering dominance after the 737 MAX crisis, while laying the foundation for a future aircraft program over the next decade -- a $15 billion gamble. It also aims to prevent future manufacturing problems like the structural flaws that have waylaid its 787 Dreamliner over the past year. "It's about strengthening engineering," Boeing's chief engineer, Greg Hyslop, told Reuters in his first interview in nearly two years. "We are talking about changing the way we work across the entire company." After years of wild market competition, the need to deliver on bulging order books has opened up a new front in Boeing's war with Europe's Airbus, this time on the factory floor.

Microsoft

Microsoft Moves More Settings Away from the Control Panel on Windows 11 (windowscentral.com) 115

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft started shifting options from the Control Panel to the Settings app in Windows 8. The company has gradually moved settings away from the Control Panel since then. Quite a few options migrated over with the rollout of Windows 11, but a recent Insider build of Windows 11 moved a small handful of settings to the Settings app. Microsoft outlined the changes in the release notes of Windows 11 build 22509, which came out on December 1, 2021. The moves garnered attention from several outlets over the last week:

1. We have moved the advanced sharing settings (such as Network discovery, File and printer sharing, and public folder sharing) to a new page in Settings app under Advanced Network Settings.
2. We've made some updates to the device specific pages under Printers & Scanners in Settings to show more information about your printer or scanner directly in Settings when available.
3. Some of the entry points for network and devices settings in Control Panel will now redirect to the corresponding pages in Settings.

Music

Apple Is Rebuilding Apple Music As a Full Native App (9to5mac.com) 38

Apple is rebuilding Apple Music as a full native app with the first beta of macOS Monterey 12.2. 9to5Mac reports: Back in 2019, when Apple introduced macOS Catalina, the well-known iTunes was replaced by the Music app to better reflect the company's strategy on iOS and tvOS. However, although under a new name, the Music app on macOS retained the iTunes backend, which was basically a bunch of web content loaded into an app. While this works for most users, having web content within apps makes the experience less fluid. Luckily Apple is finally changing this with macOS Monterey 12.2 beta, which includes some big changes to the Music app backend.

As first noted by Luming Yin on Twitter, Apple Music in macOS 12.2 beta now uses AppKit -- which is macOS' native interface framework. 9to5Mac was able to confirm based on macOS code that the Music app is now using JET, which is a technology created by Apple to turn web content into native apps. Some parts of the Music app were already native, such as the music library. But now Mac users will notice that searching for new songs in Apple Music is much faster as the results pages are displayed with a native interface instead of as a webpage. Scrolling between elements has also become smoother with the beta app, and trackpad gestures are now more responsive.

Medicine

Fossil Fuel Combustion Kills More Than 1 Million People Every Year, Study Says (arstechnica.com) 151

An anonymous reader writes: Burning fossil fuels kills more than 1 million people ever year, according to a new study that examined the worldwide health effects of fine particulate pollution, also known as PM2.5. Coal, which produces sooty, particulate-laden pollution, is responsible for half of those deaths, while natural gas and oil are responsible for the other half. Some 80 percent of premature deaths due to fossil fuel combustion takes place in South Asia or East Asia, the report said. Because fine particulate pollution can be so easily inhaled and swept into the bloodstream, it is responsible for a range of diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, COPD, lung cancer, and stroke. More recently, researchers have found links between PM2.5 and other, less obvious diseases like kidney failure and Parkinson's. People who have experienced long-term exposure to PM2.5 are also at greater risk of hospitalization if they fall ill with COVID.

The researchers gathered monthly pollution and source data from 1970 to 2017 and ran it through a global air-quality model in conjunction with satellite data. The result was a global map of outdoor PM2.5 with a resolution of about 1 km^2. From there, they estimated the average outdoor exposure for people living in various parts of the world. The study was coordinated by the nonprofit Health Effects Institute, and its coauthors were Randall Martin, a professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at Washington University, and Michael Brauer, a professor of population and public health at the University of British Columbia. In regions like South Asia and East Asia and some Eastern and Central European countries, coal causes a majority of the premature deaths that result from fossil fuel combustion. That's due in part to those regions' reliance on coal and because their regulations are typically not as stringent as elsewhere. In regions like North America and Western Europe, which are less reliant on coal, oil and natural gas cause the majority of deaths from fossil fuel-related particulate pollution. Even in the US, a country with relatively stringent clean air laws, fine particulate pollution from fossil fuels is responsible for about 20,000 deaths annually, according to the study.

Social Networks

TikTok Is Testing a Desktop Streaming Software Called TikTok Live Studio (techcrunch.com) 13

TikTok is testing a Windows program called TikTok Live Studio that will let users watch them play video games live on TikTok. TechCrunch reports: Once downloaded to your desktop, the program allows users to log in with their TikTok account and stream directly to TikTok Live. Within the program, you can communicate with viewers through the chat feature, and you can stream content from your computer, your phone or a gaming console. TikTok told TechCrunch that this program is currently available only in a handful of Western markets for a few thousand users. [...] Live Studio isn't guaranteed to roll out, the company told TechCrunch -- whenever TikTok tests a feature, that doesn't mean it's here to stay forever. But if we do see a true launch of TikTok Live Studio, the platform will study what creators are using the software for, then tailor it to better suit those use cases. [...] This streaming software could also mark an opportunity for TikTok to reach more desktop users.
Security

Google Says NSO Pegasus Zero-Click 'Most Technically Sophisticated Exploit Ever Seen' (securityweek.com) 106

wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Security researchers at Google's Project Zero have picked apart one of the most notorious in-the-wild iPhone exploits and found a never-before-seen hacking roadmap that included a PDF file pretending to be a GIF image with a custom-coded virtual CPU built out of boolean pixel operations. If that makes you scratch your head, that was exactly the reaction from Google's premier security research team after disassembling the so-called FORCEDENTRY iMessage zero-click exploit used to plant NSO Group's Pegasus surveillance tool on iPhones.

"We assess this to be one of the most technically sophisticated exploits we've ever seen," Google's Ian Beer and Samuel Grob wrote in a technical deep-dive into the remote code execution exploit that was captured during an in-the-wild attack on an activist in Saudi Arabia. In its breakdown, Project Zero said the exploit effectively created "a weapon against which there is no defense," noting that zero-click exploits work silently in the background and does not even require the target to click on a link or surf to a malicious website. "Short of not using a device, there is no way to prevent exploitation by a zero-click exploit," the research team said.

The researchers confirmed the initial entry point for Pegasus was Apple's proprietary iMessage that ships by default on iPhones, iPads and macOS devices. By targeting iMessage, the NSO Group hackers needed only a phone number of an AppleID username to take aim and fire eavesdropping implants. Because iMessage has native support for GIF images (especially those that loop endlessly), Project Zero's researchers found that this expanded the attack surface and ended up being abused in an exploit cocktail that targeted a security defect in Apple's CoreGraphics PDF parser. Within Apple's CoreGraphics PDF parser, the NSO exploit writers abused Apple's implementation of the open-source JBIG2, a domain specific image codec designed to compress images where pixels can only be black or white. Describing the exploit as "pretty terrifying," Google said the NSO Group hackers effectively booby-trapped a PDF file, masquerading as a GIF image, with an encoded virtual CPU to start and run the exploit.
Apple patched the exploit in September and filed a lawsuit seeking to hold NSO Group accountable.
Businesses

Reddit Files To Go Public (cnbc.com) 33

Reddit on Wednesday announced that it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public. CNBC reports: The social media company did not make the filing publicly available. The company also did not say how many shares would be offered nor the price range for the proposed offering. Although Reddit was created in 2005, it has taken a unique road toward going public.

Conde Nast Publications acquired Reddit in 2006. The social media services remained a part of the publication company until it was made an independent subsidiary in 2011. Since then, it raised a series of funding rounds from venture capital firms. Most recently, the company announced that it had raised a $700 million round in August 2021 at a valuation of more than $10 billion.

The Internet

Comcast Will Keep Data Caps Out of the Northeast In 2022 (lightreading.com) 26

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Light Reading: Comcast confirmed that it won't activate data caps and usage-based broadband policies in its Northeast division in 2022, effectively extending an earlier delay to keep the policy out of the region through the end of 2021. There's still no telling whether Comcast will revisit the plan for 2023 and beyond. "We don't have plans to implement our data usage plan in our Northeast markets in 2022 at this time," a Comcast official told Light Reading. Word of Comcast's latest decision follows one made in February 2021 to delay the implementation of data usage and capping policies in its Northeast division until 2022.

Comcast had activated usage-based policies in its Northeast division (which includes parts of 13 states and Washington, D.C., and areas where the cable op competes with the cap-free Verizon Fios service) in early 2021. But Comcast put the policy back on ice there after catching heat from lawmakers about introducing the policy during a pandemic that had forced people to work and school from home and vastly increase their broadband data consumption. Comcast's data usage policies are still active in its Central and West divisions. Comcast restored and updated its data usage policies in July 2020, raising the monthly limit to 1.2 terabytes -- 200 gigabytes more than the 1TB limit that was in place prior to the original COVID-19 outbreak.
"Under the current plan, residential broadband customers who exceed 1.2TB of data per month are charged $10 for each additional bucket of 50GB, up to a maximum of $100 per month (Comcast's maximum data overage charge prior to the pandemic was $200)," the report notes. "Comcast also sells a standalone unlimited data option that costs an additional $30 per month."
Google

Google Faces Huge Fines in Russia as Putin Ally Wins Lawsuit (bloomberg.com) 48

Alphabet's Google is facing potentially heavy fines in Russia after a court ruled it must unblock the YouTube account of a TV channel owned by a sanctioned ally of President Vladimir Putin. From a report: The Moscow Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld an April ruling that ordered the U.S. technology giant to restore the Tsargrad account or face a daily fine, the channel said in a statement Thursday. Settlement talks between the two sides failed to yield a deal in August. Russia has stepped up confrontation with foreign social media and internet companies in what the government calls a campaign to uphold its digital sovereignty. Regulators have levied fines and slowed content in a bid to force companies including Google and Twitter to delete posts encouraging unauthorized protests and other material deemed illegal. In September, Google and Apple removed a protest-voting app from their Russian stores as parliamentary elections got underway after the authorities threatened to imprison their local staff. Google now faces a daily fine of 100,000 rubles ($1,360), which will double each week that the company refuses to comply. Tsargrad said the court capped the total fine at 1 billion rubles in the first nine months and then it will be allowed to grow further. Under Russian law, there's no upper limit on the potential fines.
Businesses

Sidewalk Labs Products Will Be Folded Into Google Proper (engadget.com) 4

Alphabet's smart city project is winding down and Google will take over its products. From a report: Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff announced the news in a letter, in which he noted he is stepping down for health-related reasons. A spokesperson confirmed to Engadget that Sidewalk Labs products will be folded into Google, though Alphabet plans to spin out Canopy Buildings as a separate company. "Starting next year, Sidewalk products Pebble, Mesa, Delve, and Affordable Electrification will join Google, becoming core to Google's urban sustainability product efforts," Doctoroff wrote. "These products will continue to be led by Sidewalk Labs President of Urban Products Prem Ramaswami and Chief Technology Officer Craig Nevill-Manning, both Google alumni, and the teams will continue to execute on their vision and serve customers."
Social Networks

Federal Court Blocks Texas' Unconstitutional Social Media Law (eff.org) 292

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: On December 1, hours before Texas' social media law, HB 20, was slated to go into effect, a federal court in Texas blocked it for violating the First Amendment. Like a similar law in Florida, which was blocked and is now pending before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the Texas law will go to the Fifth Circuit. These laws are retaliatory, obviously unconstitutional, and EFF will continue advocating that courts stop them. In October, EFF filed an amicus brief against HB 20 in Netchoice v. Paxton, a challenge to the law brought by two associations of tech companies. HB 20 prohibits large social media platforms from removing or moderating content based on the viewpoint of the user. We argued, and the federal court agreed, that the government cannot regulate the editorial decisions made by online platforms about what content they host. As the judge wrote, platforms' right under the First Amendment to moderate content "has repeatedly been recognized by courts." Social media platforms are not "common carriers" that transmit speech without curation.

Moreover, Texas explicitly passed HB 20 to stop social media companies' purported discrimination against conservative users. The court explained that this "announced purpose of balancing the discussion" is precisely the kind of government manipulation of public discourse that the First Amendment forbids. As EFF's brief explained, the government can't retaliate against disfavored speakers and promote favored ones. Moreover, HB 20 would destroy or prevent the emergence of even large conservative platforms, as they would have to accept user speech from across the political spectrum. HB 20 also imposed transparency requirements and user complaint procedures on large platforms. While these kinds of government mandates might be appropriate when carefully crafted -- and separated from editorial restrictions or government retaliation -- they are not here. The court noted that companies like YouTube and Facebook remove millions of pieces of user content a month. It further noted Facebook's declaration in the case that it would be "impossible" to establish a system by December 1 compliant with the bill's requirements for that many removals. Platforms would simply stop removing content to avoid violating HB 20 -- an impermissible chill of First Amendment rights.

Privacy

Biometrics Company Clear Is Bringing Its Airport Scanners To Retail Stores (wsj.com) 30

Clear Secure, an identification services company known for its expedited screening product for air travelers, is bringing its biometric sign-up scanners to locations beyond airports. The Wall Street Journal reports: The company has temporarily installed the biometrics machines this month inside a Showfields Inc. interactive mall and at a Rimowa Distribution Inc. luggage store in New York City as well as a Rimowa in San Francisco. Clear's main product, Clear Plus, checks travelers' identities at airport security using biometrics such as iris scans, and lets them skip the wait for agents to check their photo IDs. Enrollment typically begins online but customers usually must go to a Clear airport location to scan their biometrics. Annual memberships cost $179.

Clear created the temporary installations to showcase its technology more widely and to expose consumers to its products beyond travel, said Caryn Seidman Becker, chief executive of the company. Other products include Clear Stadium Access, a product that lets people skip long lines at sports and entertainment venues. The pop-ups are also offering Clear gift cards, a first for the company. The company also wanted to address pent-up demand from consumers who traveled less during the pandemic, Ms. Seidman Becker said.

Communications

US Airlines Warn 5G Wireless Could Cause Havoc With Flights (reuters.com) 89

Major U.S. air carriers warned on Wednesday that plans by AT&T and Verizon to use spectrum for 5G wireless services could be highly disruptive to air travel and cost air passengers $1.6 billion annually in delays. Reuters reports: Trade group Airlines for America (A4A) said if a new Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) directive for addressing potential interference from wireless transmissions had been in effect in 2019 "approximately 345,000 passenger flights, 32 million passengers, and 5,400 cargo flights would have been impacted in the form of delayed flights, diversions, or cancellations." At a hearing Wednesday, senators urged airlines to work to find a resolution. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said the 5G wireless issue "is the biggest and most damaging potential issue facing us. We want nothing more than to work to a solution." Southwest Airlines Chief Executive Gary Kelly said the FAA directive "would significantly impact our operations once it is deployed on Jan. 5." The wireless carriers are set to begin using the spectrum in just three weeks. Last week, the FAA issued new airworthiness directives warning interference from 5G wireless spectrum could result in flight diversions.

The aviation industry and FAA have raised significant concerns about potential interference of 5G with sensitive aircraft electronics like radio altimeters. In November, AT&T and Verizon agreed to delay the commercial launch of C-band wireless service until Jan. 5 after the FAA raised concerns. They also adopted precautionary measures for six months to limit interference. The FAA directives order revising airplane and helicopter flight manuals to prohibit some operations requiring radio altimeter data when in the presence of 5G C-Band wireless broadband signals. Aviation industry groups said they were insufficient to address air safety concerns. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, who did not immediately comment on the airlines' analysis, has said she believes the issues can be resolved and spectrum safely used.

IT

Coinbase Mistakenly Told Some Customers They Were Billionaires (mashable.com) 31

For a brief moment, their worlds had changed. From a report: On Tuesday afternoon a Coinbase "display issue" changed the balances of an untold number of customers' accounts -- making many of them billionaires in the process. Billionaires on paper, that is, because as Coinbase hastily pointed out in a statement on Twitter, no real trading was affected by the glitch. "We're aware some customers are seeing inflated values for non-tradable crypto assets on Coinbase.com and Coinbase Wallet," read the Coinbase statement acknowledging the error. "This is a display issue only and does not impact trading." But that message came too late for those who saw their inflated accounts and, if even only for a heart-stopping minute, thought they were rich.
Businesses

Silicon Valley's Voice in Washington Dissolves (politico.com) 14

The Internet Association, once branded as Silicon Valley's most important trade group in Washington, is shutting down. From a report: The organization offered no specific reason for its decision to disband, which POLITICO had reported Tuesday night. But the group has struggled with financial woes after Microsoft pulled its support earlier this year, and it has fought to maintain relevance on Capitol Hill despite being torn by competing pressures from its huge and smaller member companies on issues like antitrust. The group also faced internal growing pains under new leadership, as POLITICO reported earlier this year.

"Our industry has undergone tremendous growth and change since the Internet Association was formed almost 10 years ago, and in line with this evolution, the Board has made the difficult decision to close the organization at the end of this year," the organization said in a statement Wednesday. It added: "IA has made great progress on its mission to foster innovation, promote economic growth, and empower people through a free and open internet." IA, a nine-year-old group that once called itself "the unified voice of the internet economy," was previously a powerhouse in Washington, even as member companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon fell out of favor on both sides of the aisle.

Privacy

Apple Removes All References To Controversial CSAM Scanning Feature From Its Child Safety Webpage (macrumors.com) 36

Apple has quietly nixed all mentions of CSAM from its Child Safety webpage, suggesting its controversial plan to detect child sexual abuse images on iPhones and iPads may hang in the balance following significant criticism of its methods. From a report: Apple in August announced a planned suite of new child safety features, including scanning users' iCloud Photos libraries for Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), Communication Safety to warn children and their parents when receiving or sending sexually explicit photos, and expanded CSAM guidance in Siri and Search. Following their announcement, the features were criticized by a wide range of individuals and organizations, including security researchers, the privacy whistleblower Edward Snowden, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Facebook's former security chief, politicians, policy groups, university researchers, and even some Apple employees.
Google

Why Google Has Sat on the Web3 Sidelines (bloomberg.com) 56

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google doesn't accept cryptocurrencies for ad buying, its payments service or its app store. Until recently, Google had banned several categories of crypto ads. Google hasn't touched NFTs. In a recent interview with Bloomberg Television, Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai copped that he "dabbled" in crypto, but didn't own any. Some staffers at Google have also dabbled with the technology, according to multiple current and former employees at the company. Still, Google hasn't laid out a plan for inserting itself into web3. A Google spokesperson said its mobile payments service is "working with several companies" such as Coinbase, Bitpay and Gemini "to support crypto cards, which transact in fiat currencies."

There are a few reasons Google might not want to dive into the new arena -- one is defensive. Web3 evangelists see the technology as "decentralized," controlled by its many participants. They draw stark contrasts to the business models of Google, Facebook and Amazon. These boosters see the blockchain as inherently trustworthy, unlike the current web titans. "Can't do evil > don't be evil," tweeted Chris Dixon, an Andreessen Horowitz partner, in a clear dig at Google. And many Silicon Valley visions for web3 activity, search engines and media decidedly don't involve advertising, Google's main business. But the company isn't completely averse to cryptocurrency. Google has been willing to take crypto money for its cloud business. In September, the division signed a deal with Dapper Labs, a Canadian blockchain company. It also has agreements with Hadera, Block.one and others. Given web3's escalating computing demands, Google will certainly look to ink more of these. (Google will have to weigh crypto's energy needs versus the company's zero-emissions targets.) In some ways, the wait-and-see strategy is typical of Pichai, who has a more deliberate management style than his predecessors. And that doesn't mean the company isn't quietly exploring the technology.

Google

Google Is Building a New AR Device and OS (arstechnica.com) 20

According to job listings on LinkedIn, Google appears to be working on an augmented reality device and operating system to pair with it. Ars Technica reports: On LinkedIn, operating system engineering director Mark Lucovsky announced that he has joined Google. He previously headed up mixed reality operating system work for Meta, and before that he was one of the key architects of Windows NT at Microsoft. "My role is to lead the Operating System team for Augmented Reality at Google," he wrote. He also posted a link to some job listings at Google that give the impression Google is getting just as serious about AR as Apple or Meta.

As 9to5Google discovered, one of the listings ("Senior Software Developer, Embedded, Augmented Reality OS") described Google's objective in clear terms: "Our team is building the software components that control and manage the hardware on our Augmented Reality (AR) products. These are the software components that run on the AR devices and are the closest to the hardware. As Google adds products to the AR portfolio, the OS Foundations team is the very first software team to work with new hardware." Other job listings say new hires will be working on an "innovative AR device." And one specifies that Google is "focused on making immersive computing accessible to billions of people through mobile devices." The roles are largely in the United States, but some are located in Waterloo, Ontario -- the HQ of Canadian smart glasses maker North, which Google acquired in 2020.

The Internet

What Is Web3 and Why Should You Care? (gizmodo.com) 113

Gizmodo's David Nield explains what Web3 is, what it will mean for the future, and how exactly the third-generation internet differs from the first two. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from his report: Let's cut to the chase: For Web3 evangelists, it's a revolution; for skeptics, it's an overhyped house of cards that doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. [...] As you might remember if you're of a certain age, Web 1.0 was the era of static webpages. Sites displayed news and information, and maybe you had your own little corner of the World Wide Web to show off your personal interests and hobbies. Images were discouraged -- they took up too much bandwidth -- and video was out of the question. With the dawn of the 21st century, Web 1.0 gave way to Web 2.0 -- a more dynamic, editable, user-driven internet. Static was out and webpages became more interactive and app-like (see Gmail, for example). Many of us signed up for social media accounts and blogs that we used to put our own content on the web in vast amounts. Images and video no longer reduced sites to a crawl, and we started sharing them in huge numbers. And now the dawn of Web3 is upon us. People define it in a few different ways, but at its core is the idea of decentralization, which we've seen with cryptocurrencies (key drivers of Web3). Rather than Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook (sorry, Meta) hoarding everything, the internet will supposedly become more democratized.

Key to this decentralization is blockchain technology, which creates publicly visible and verifiable ledgers of record that can be accessed by anyone, anywhere. The blockchain already underpins Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, as well as a number of fledging technologies, and it's tightly interwoven into the future vision of everything that Web3 promises. The idea is that everything you do, from shopping to social media, is handled through the sane secure processes, with both more privacy and more transparency baked in. In some ways, Web3 is a mix of the two eras that came before it: The advanced, dynamic, app-like tech of the modern web, combined with the decentralized, user-driven philosophy that was around at the start of the internet, before billion- and trillion-dollar corporations owned everything. Web3 shifts the power dynamic from the giant tech entities back to the users -- or at least that's the theory.

In its current form, Web3 rewards users with tokens, which will eventually be used in a variety of ways, including currency or as votes to influence the future of technology. In this brave new world, the value generated by the web will be shared out between many more users and more companies and more services, with much-improved interoperability. NFTs are closely linked to the Web3 vision. [...] For our purposes here, the link between cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and Web3 is the foundation: the blockchain. Throw in some artificial intelligence and some machine learning to do everything from filter out unnecessary data to spot security threats, and you've got just about every emerging digital technology covered with Web3. Right now Ethereum is the blockchain attracting the most Web3 interest (it supports both a cryptocurrency and an NFT system, and you can do everything from make a payment through it to build an app on it).

Intel

Intel's Mystery Linux Muckabout is a Dangerous Ploy at a Dangerous Time (theregister.com) 80

Open source is no place for secrets. From a report: This is a critical time for the Good Chip Intel. After the vessel driftied through the Straits of Lateness towards the Rocks of Irrelevance, Captain Pat parachuted into the bridge to grab the helm and bark "Full steam ahead!" Its first berth at Alder Lake is generally seen as a return to competitive form, but that design started well before Gelsinger's return and there's still zero room for navigational errors in the expeditions ahead. At least one of the course corrections looks a bit rum. Intel has long realised the importance of supporting open source to keep its chips dancing with Linux. Unlike the halcyon days of Wintel dominance, though, this means being somewhat more open about the down-and-dirty details of exactly how its chips do their thing. You can't sign an NDA with the Linux kernel.

Chipmakers are notoriously paranoid: Silicon Valley was born in intrigue and suspicion. Despite Intel's iconic CEO Andy Grove making paranoia a corporate mantra, Intel became relatively relaxed. Qualcomm and Apple would throw you into their piranha pools merely for asking questions if they could, while Intel has learned to give as well as take. But it may be going back to bad habits. One of the new things not open to discussion is something called Software Defined Silicon (SDSi), about which Intel has nothing to say. Which is odd because it has just submitted supporting code for it to the Linux kernel. The code itself doesn't say anything about SDSi, instead adding a mechanism to control whatever it is via some authorised secure token. It basically unlocks hardware features when the right licence is applied. That's not new. Higher performance or extra features in electronic test equipment often comes present but disabled on the base models, and the punter can pay to play later. But what might it mean in SDSi and the Intel architecture?

It is expensive for Intel and OEMs alike to have multiple physical variants of anything; much better if you make one thing that does everything and charge for unlocking it. It's a variant of a trick discovered by hackish school kids in the late 1970s, where cheaper Casio scientific calculators used exactly the same hardware as the more expensive model. Casio just didn't print all the functions on the keyboards of the pleb kit. Future Intel chips will doubtless have cores and cache disabled until magic numbers appear, and with the SoC future beckoning that can extend to all manner of IO, acceleration, and co-processing features. It might even be there already. From engineering, marketing, and revenue perspectives, this is great. Intel could make an M1-like SoC that can be configured on the fly for different platforms, getting the design, performance, and fab efficiencies that Apple enjoys while making sense for multiple OEMs. There could be further revenue from software upgrades, or even subscription models.

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