MojoKid writes: Apple has repeatedly asserted its dominance in terms of performance versus competitive mobile platforms. And it has been historically true that, in cross-platform benchmarks, iPhones generally can beat out Android phones in both CPU and GPU (graphics) performance. However, a new benchmark recently released from trusted benchmark suite developer UL Benchmarks sheds light on what could be the iPhone's Achilles' Heel in terms of performance, or more specifically, performance over extended duration.

The new benchmark, 3DMark WildLife, employs Apple's Metal API for rendering and Vulkan on Android devices. In testing at HotHardware, for basic single-run tests, again iPhones trounce anything Android, including flagship devices like the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, ASUS ROG Phone 3 and OnePlus 8. However, in the extended duration WildLife Stress Test, which loops the single test over and over for 20 minutes, the current flagship iPhone 11 Pro and A13 Bionic's performance craters essentially to Snapdragon 865/865+ performance levels, while Android phones like the OnePlus 8 maintain 99+% of their performance. Though this is just one gaming benchmark test that employs the latest graphics technologies and APIs, it's interesting to see that perhaps Apple's focus on tuning for quick bursty workloads (and maybe benchmark optimization too?) falls flat if the current class of top-end iPhone is pushed continuously.

The billionaire chief executive of Ohio-based Reynolds and Reynolds Co, Robert Brockman, has been indicted on charges of tax evasion and wire fraud conducted over "decades." ZDNet reports: The scheme, in which roughly $2 billion was hidden away in offshore accounts and through money laundering, took place between 1999 and 2019, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said on Thursday. According to the indictment (.PDF), the resident of both Houston, Texas, and Pitkin County, Colorado allegedly used a "web" of offshore organizations in Bermuda and Nevis to hide the profits he made from investments in private equity funds.

Brockman squirreled away his capital gains and also tampered with the evidence of his alleged activities, prosecutors say, by methods including backdating records and using "encrypted communications and code words" to communicate with co-conspirators, including the phrases "Permit," "King," and "Redfish." A ranch, luxury home, and yacht were among the purchases apparently made with non-taxed income. US prosecutors also say that between 2008 and 2010, Brockman used a third-party entity to purchase $67.8 million in debt securities from the software company. As CEO, the executive is not permitted to do so without full disclosure as it can have an impact on share prices and trading; however, Brockman allegedly did so without informing sellers.

As a result, approximately $2 billion in income was kept hidden from the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS). In addition, US prosecutors allege that investors in the software firm's debt securities were also defrauded. A federal grand jury in San Francisco, California has issued a 39-count indictment, including seven counts of tax evasion, 20 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, evidence tampering, and destruction of evidence.

Google will officially transition users from Google Hangouts to Google Chat starting next year. The Verge reports: As part of the change, Chat, a messaging service previously only available to customers who pay for Google Workspace (the recent rebranding of G Suite), will become a free service that's available inside of Gmail and in a standalone app. And some Hangouts features will be going away ahead of its disappearance. The transition from Hangouts to Chat will begin sometime in the first half of 2021, when Google will offer tools to help automatically bring your Hangouts conversations, contacts, and chat history to Chat, according to a blog post. It's unclear what steps will be required for that migration, but Google says it will share guidance at some point.

The switch from Hangouts to Chat will take place gradually, and there will be a period of time when both messaging services are still available. Eventually, all free users and Workspace customers will be moved over to Chat. Once that's done, then Chat will fully replace Hangouts. As for why you'd want to upgrade from Hangouts to Chat before you're forced to, there are both carrots and sticks. On the plus side, Google says Chat not only offers features like direct and group conversations you might be familiar with from Hangouts, but it can also let you more easily plan and collaborate with others. Google also announced that it is planning to remove some specific Hangouts features, such as the ability to manage texts and phone calls from Hangouts. They're also planning to remove Google Voice support from Hangouts early next year, as well as no longer letting you call phone numbers from Hangouts.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nikola CEO Mark Russell downplayed the company's Badger pickup truck in comments to the Financial Times on Thursday. "The Badger was an interesting and exciting project to some shareholders, but our institutional shareholders are mostly focused on the business plan," Russell said. "Our core business plan since before we became publicly listed always focused on heavy trucks and hydrogen infrastructure." Russell's comments were published after markets closed on Thursday. Nikola's stock price plunged on Friday morning and is currently down about 14 percent for the day.

Negotiations with General Motors to design and build the truck have dragged on weeks longer than expected. Nikola and GM announced a wide-ranging partnership on September 8. It envisioned GM not only building the Badger but also supplying the batteries and fuel cells that power the trucks. Under the deal, GM would also supply hydrogen fuel-cell technology for Nikola's semi trucks outside the European market. Nikola was supposed to give GM $2 billion worth of stock to license GM's technology, reimburse GM to build out a Badger factory, and then pay GM on a cost-plus basis to assemble the Badger. The value of Nikola's stock soared immediately after the September 8 announcement, but it then tanked after a short-selling firm revealed that Nikola CEO Trevor Milton had lied when he said Nikola's first truck, the Nikola One, was fully functional. Nikola has admitted that a promotional video showed the truck rolling down a hill, not traveling under its own power. The price decline has made GM's expected $2 billion stake in Nikola worth much less.

The Boring Company's Las Vegas Convention Center loop "will not be able to move anywhere near the number of people LVCC wants, and that TBC agreed to," reports TechCrunch. The LVCC wanted transit that could move up to 4,400 people every hour between exhibition halls and parking lots on the Los Vegas Strip. According to planning files reviewed by TechCrunch, "the system might only be able to transport 1,200 people an hour -- around a quarter of its promised capacity." From the report: Fire regulations peg the occupant capacity in the load and unload zones of one of the Loop's three stations at just 800 passengers an hour. If the other stations have similar limitations, the system might only be able to transport 1,200 people an hour -- around a quarter of its promised capacity. If TBC misses its performance target by such a margin, Musk's company will not receive more than $13 million of its construction budget -- and will face millions more in penalty charges once the system becomes operational.

So what is stopping TBC from transporting as many people as both it and the LVCC wants? There are national fire safety rules for underground transit systems that specify alarms, sprinklers, emergency exits and a maximum occupant load, to avoid overcrowding in the event of a fire. Building plans submitted by The Boring Company include a fire code analysis for one of the Loop's above-ground stations. The above screenshot from the plans notes that the area where passengers get into and out of the Tesla cars has a peak occupancy load of 100 people every 7.5 minutes, equivalent to 800 passengers an hour. Even if the other stations had higher limits, this would limit the system's hourly capacity to about 1,200 people.

The plans do not show any turnstiles or barriers to limit entry. Even without the safety restrictions, the Loop may struggle to hit its capacity goals. Each of the 10 bays at the Loop's stations must handle hundreds of passengers an hour, corresponding to perhaps 100 or more arrivals and departures, depending on how many people each car is carrying. That leaves little time to load and unload people and luggage, let alone make the 0.8-mile journey and occasionally recharge.

schwit1 shares a report from Bloomberg: Europe's top aviation regulator said he's satisfied that changes to Boeing Co.'s 737 Max have made the plane safe enough to return to the region's skies before 2020 is out, even as a further upgrade his agency demanded won't be ready for up to two years. After test flights conducted in September, EASA is performing final document reviews ahead of a draft airworthiness directive it expects to issue next month, said Patrick Ky, executive director of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. That will be followed by four weeks of public comment, while the development of a so-called synthetic sensor to add redundancy will take 20 to 24 months, he said. The software-based solution will be required on the larger 737 Max 10 variant before its debut targeted for 2022, and retrofitted onto other versions.

The Google Cloud team revealed today a previously undisclosed DDoS attack that targeted Google service back in September 2017 and which clocked at 2.54 Tbps, making it the largest DDoS attack recorded to date. From a report: In a separate report published at the same time, the Google Threat Threat Analysis Group (TAG), the Google security team that analyzes high-end threat groups, said the attack was carried out by a state-sponsored threat actor. TAG researchers said the attack came from China, having originated from within the network of four Chinese internet service providers (ASNs 4134, 4837, 58453, and 9394). Damian Menscher, a Security Reliability Engineer for Google Cloud, said the 2.54 Tbps peak was "the culmination of a six-month campaign" that utilized multiple methods of attacks to hammer Google's server infrastructure.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Earlier, Microsoft released the source for Windows Calculator. And now, that calculator app has been ported to Linux by Uno Platform. Best of all, it's insanely easy to install as it is packaged in Snap format. "The good folks in the Uno Platform community have ported the open-source Windows Calculator to Linux. And they've done it quicker than Microsoft could bring their browser to Linux. The calculator is published in the snapstore and can be downloaded right away," explains Rhys Davies, Product Manager, Canonical.

Reclaim the Records -- a group of activist genealogists, historians, journalists, teachers -- has filed what may be the largest Freedom Of Information Act Request of all time. The group wants the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to release billions of digital images and their associated metadata to the public. From a report: NARA is a government agency that preserves and archives the American government's historical records. It's also supposed to increase public access to those records. To accomplish that goal, NARA partnered with private companies such as genealogical website Ancestory.com to digitize and upload census records, immigration records, and other historical documents. Digitizing these records is a massive task, one NARA likely couldn't accomplish on its own. In exchange for its help, NARA granted the private companies limited exclusivity to the records. That means that billions of documents related to America's history are behind paywalls on sites like Ancestry, FamilySearch, and Fold3.

According to the agreements, the sites were supposed to open up their digitized archive to the public after an exclusivity period of 3 - 5 years. "In practice, this simply hasn't happened," Reclaim the Records said in a blog post announcing the FOIA. "NARA has never actually posted online the vast majority of these records that were digitized through their partnership program, not to their Catalog nor indeed anywhere else where the public might be able to freely access and download the now-digital records. This remains the case today, even when the embargo periods for many of these record sets have been expired for more than a decade, sometimes two decades." Most of these are stored behind Ancestry.com's paywall, in part because Ancestry purchased several of the other sites that NARA had made deals with when they were still independent.

British Airways has been fined $26m by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for a data breach which affected more than 400,000 customers. From a report: The breach took place in 2018 and affected both personal and credit card data. The fine is considerably smaller than the $236m that the ICO originally said it intended to issue back in 2019. It said "the economic impact of Covid-19" had been taken into account. However, it is still the largest penalty issued by the ICO to date. The incident took place when BA's systems were compromised by its attackers, and then modified to harvest customers' details as they were input. It was two months before BA was made aware of it by a security researcher, and then notified the ICO.

France and the Netherlands have proposed stricter EU rules to oversee large technology firms, such as Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon. From a report: In a joint document, seen by CNBC and due to be sent to the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, the two countries suggested that an EU authority should be able to control the market position of these large tech platforms. "Our common ambition is to design a framework that will be efficient enough to address the economic footprint of such actors on the European economy and to be able to 'break them open,'" Cedric O, the secretary of state for digital transition in France, said in a statement. "Access to data, to services, interoperability ... these are efficient tools that we should be able to use, with a tailor-made approach, in order to tackle market foreclosure and ensure freedom of choice for consumers," he added. The EU, arguably at the forefront of regulation in this space, has intensified talks regarding Big Tech and the competitive landscape over the last 12 months. In addition to pursuing anti-trust investigations on some of the largest firms, the Commission is also working on data protection rules.

Uber said it is working to hire 225 engineers in India, strengthening its tech team in the key overseas market months after it eliminated thousands of jobs globally. From a report: The move comes as several high-profile engineers have left Uber India in recent months to join Google and Amazon, among other tech giants. A senior engineer who recently left Uber told TechCrunch that many of his peers had lost confidence in Uber's future prospects in the country. [...] In July, news outlet The Information described Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi's plan to move engineering roles to India as a cost-saving measure. The report said Khosrowshahi's plan had sparked internal debates. Thuan Pham, Uber's longtime chief technology officer, who left the company earlier this year, reportedly cautioned that hiring more engineers so quickly in India would "require accepting lower-quality candidates." Further reading: Nearly 70,000 Tech Startup Employees Have Lost Their Jobs Since March (July 2020).

An anonymous reader shares a report: Brian Armstrong, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, revealed in a late September blog post that the company would prohibit employees from debating political or social issues, deeming this a "distraction" from the company's mission. Armstrong doubled down on his position during a virtual all-hands held on October 1, billed as an "AMA" (for "ask me anything"), from which Motherboard obtained audio. The AMA was meant to further explain the company's new "apolitical" direction for those who might consider accepting a severance package that was offered to any employee who felt "uncomfortable." Executives also explained when and where dissent would be appropriate, and explained why they required employees to delete specific political Slack messages. This, at a company that works with cryptocurrencies intended to replace government banking systems in order to create a more free world. During the meeting, Armstrong claimed there is a "silent majority" at Coinbase that agreed with his decision but feared reprisal from colleagues. Armstrong and Coinbase leadership, however, failed to soothe fears that this policy would police employees if they voiced opinions that did not align with Armstrong or this "silent majority."

One former Coinbase employee who left the company after the AMA and to whom Motherboard provided anonymity due to fear of industry reprisal said that these assurances were insufficient and workers feared surveillance and censorship. These fears are not unfounded. Emile Choi, Coinbase's chief operating officer, explained that at least two employees were asked to delete Slack posts, and that HR head L.J. Brock "proactively reached out to employees to explain why their posts would be taken down. He had a very productive conversation with both of them and they understood the context," she said. One employee asked if Coinbase leadership thought that this was "taking away employee power to start a discussion except with 300 character questions" in an AMA format. "It seems like Coinbase is stunting internal discussion." Choi said that the entire executive team was aligned on Armstrong's post and policy, and that the new "culture is focused on what unites us and what we face in the world, which is building toward our mission," Choi said. "The goal was not intended to be harsh, it wasn't intended to land in a way where people felt they were being policed."

schwit1 shares a report from UPI: NASA will fund a project by Nokia to build a 4G cellular communication network on the moon with $14.1 million, the space agency announced. That project was part of $370 million in new contracts for lunar surface research missions NASA announced Wednesday. Most of the money went to large space companies like SpaceX and United Launch Alliance to perfect techniques to make and handle rocket propellant in space. The space agency must quickly develop new technologies for living and working on the moon if it wants to realize its goal to have astronauts working at a lunar base by 2028, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a live broadcast.

Space traffic experts are tracking two pieces of orbital garbage that appear to be careening toward each other: A defunct Soviet satellite and a discarded Chinese rocket booster that are expected to nearly miss each other -- with a slight chance of colliding -- Thursday evening. CNN reports: No one knows for sure if the objects will collide, and near-misses happen in space all the time. But LeoLabs, a California-based startup that uses ground-based radars to track spaceborne objects, is putting the odds of collision at 10% or more. That's high, but not uncommon LeoLabs CEO Daniel Ceperley told CNN Business on Thursday. "Multiple times a week we're seeing dead satellites come within 100 meters of each other, moving at tremendous speeds," Ceperley said. The company decided to raise public awareness about this particular event, he said, because the two objects are both large -- and likely to create an enormous debris field if they collide -- and because they're in an area of orbit that's still relatively clean compared to nearby orbits. The company is also trying to raise more general public awareness about the debris problem, he said.

The Soviet satellite, which launched to space in 1989 and was used for navigation, weighs nearly 2,000 pounds and is 55 feet long, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. And the rocket booster, part of a Chinese Long March launch vehicle that likely launched in 2009, is about 20 feet long. Neither of the objects is still in use. If the rocket and satellite do collide, it would be the first time in more than a decade that two objects spontaneously collided in space -- a situation space traffic experts have hoped desperately to avoid.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: On Thursday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said that the agency will seek to regulate social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter at the behest of the Trump administration's executive order signed earlier this year. "Members of all three branches of the federal government have expressed serious concerns about the prevailing interpretation of the immunity set for in Section 230 of the Communications Act. There is bipartisan support in Congress to reform the law," Pai said in a statement Thursday. "Social media companies have a First Amendment right to free speech. But they do not have a First Amendment right to a special immunity denied to other media outlets, such as newspapers and broadcasters."

On Thursday, Pai said that the commission's general counsel said that "the FCC has the legal authority to reinterpret Section 230." He continued, "Consistent with this advice, I intend to move forward with a rulemaking to clarify its meaning." "Pai's decision to move forward with rulemaking follows a series of moderation decisions on Wednesday made by Facebook and Twitter against a New York Post article regarding former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, who has been the subject of political attacks from the right throughout the 2020 presidential election," the report adds.

Facebook reduced the reach of the story, while Twitter banned linking to the story entirely. "These moves from Facebook and Twitter incited an outcry over conservative bias from Republicans," reports The Verge.

Google has started to shut down parts of its 9-year-old music service as it transitions people to YouTube Music. Ars Technica reports: The gradual shutdown started on Monday with the death of the Google Play Music Store, which previously let you purchase music for playback and download, as opposed to the all-you-can-eat rental services that dominate the music landscape today. Google's Music store was a section of the Google Play Store, which now just shows a message saying the feature has been removed. Google is getting out of the business of selling music entirely and now only offers a rental service through YouTube Music.

The other big feature shutdown is music playback on Google Home and Nest Audio speakers. While the Google Music app still works and you can start a playback through Chromecast, you're no longer able to start music by voice through Google Assistant devices. If you dig into the Google Assistant settings (that means opening the Google app on your phone, then hitting "More," then "Settings," then "Google Assistant," "Services," and finally "Music") you'll find that the "Google Play Music" option has completely disappeared. Now the only supported services for voice commands are YouTube Music, Pandora, Deezer, and Spotify. [...] Google Music is scheduled to completely shut down sometime this month. Right now, the only thing left is streaming via the smartphone app and the Google Music website.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: If you've been hiding under a rock -- and who could blame you these days? -- you may have missed how totally Kubernetes now dominates container orchestration. One way to quickly get up to speed on Kubernetes is with Canonical's MicroK8s. This is an easy-to-run and install mini-version of Kubernetes. And now Canonical has added autonomous high availability (HA) clustering to it. [...] Now, with HA, MicroK8s is ready to move from Internet of Things (IoT) implementations, testing out Kubernetes implementations on a workstation, or simply learning Kubernetes to bigger, better cloud jobs.

With the new MicroK8s release, HA is enabled automatically once three or more nodes are clustered, and the data store migrates automatically between nodes to maintain a quorum in the event of a failure. Designed as a minimal conformant Kubernetes, MicroK8s installs, and clusters easily on Linux, macOS, or Windows. To work, a HA Kubernetes cluster needs three elements. Here's how it works in MicroK8s:

-There must be more than one worker node. Since MicroK8s uses every node as a worker node, there is always another worker available so long as there's more than one node in the cluster.
-The Kubernetes API services must run on one or more nodes so that losing a single node would not render the cluster inoperable. Every node in the MicroK8s cluster is an API server, which simplifies load-balancing and means we can switch instantaneously to a different API endpoint if one fails.
-The cluster state must be in a reliable datastore. By default, MicroK8s uses Dqlite, a high-availability SQLite, as its datastore.

There are reports of an unidentified person flying in a jetpack near Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) -- the second such incident in two months. The BBC reports: A China Airlines crew said it saw what appeared to be someone in a jetpack on Wednesday at 6,000ft (1,829m), seven miles (11km) north-west of LAX, the Federal Aviation Administration said. The FBI is investigating the incident, as well as a similar one in September. It is not clear if either incident posed any danger to aircraft.

The China Airlines flight reported what it believed to be a person flying in a jetpack at 13:45 local time (20:45 GMT) on Wednesday, the FAA said. It said it then alerted enforcement agencies, who are now investigating the incident. "The FBI is in contact with the FAA and is investigating multiple reports of what, according to witnesses, appeared to be an individual in a jetpack near LAX," FBI Los Angeles Field Office spokeswoman Laura Eimiller was quoted as saying by US media. The airport authorities have so far made no public comment on the issue.

Quest 2 is the first Oculus headset to require a Facebook account at launch. False positives from its account verification system may be leaving some buyers with no choice but to return it. UploadVR reports: We're seeing reports from Quest 2 buyers who aren't on Facebook finding difficulty creating an account. Facebook's account verification system -- reportedly administered by a machine learning agent -- may ask for photographic evidence of identity. That evidence seems to be reviewed by a human, since it can apparently take weeks to process. Others trying to re-activate old accounts to use their brand new Quest 2 also report instant suspensions. Trying to create a new account also fails.

If the review fails or your account is suspended, there appears to be no recourse for appeal. Multiple buyers called the system a "paperweight" in their emails to us about their interactions with customer service and what they feel like they can do with the latest VR headset on the market. In an emailed statement, a Facebook spokesperson said Quest 2 customers should contact Oculus Customer support to work through issues. Facebook claimed to only have "a very small number" of Oculus users running into login issues. Among the screenshots from Twitter and Reddit users reporting issues are Oculus Support agents supposedly saying they're unable to help with Facebook account issues.