Month: March 2023

Enlarge (credit: Getty)

HP customers are showing frustration online as the vendor continues to use firmware updates to discourage or, as users report, outright block the use of non-HP-brand ink cartridges in HP printers. HP has already faced class-action lawsuits and bad publicity from Dynamic Security, but that hasn't stopped the company from expanding the practice.

Dynamic Security is a feature used by HP printers to authenticate ink cartridges and prevent use of cartridges that aren't HP-approved. As the company explains:

"Dynamic security relies on the printer’s ability to communicate with the security chips or electronic circuitry on the cartridges. HP uses dynamic security measures to protect the quality of our customer experience, maintain the integrity of our printing systems, and protect our intellectual property.

Enlarge / The Google integration monster rises with a new face. (credit: 123pendejos / Ron Amadeo / OpenAI)

Years ago, circa 2011, Google was in a panic. Facebook was on the rise and Google was convinced the social network would soon swallow everything. To fight this blue scourge, then-Google CEO Larry Page issued a decree to his many employees: Your bonuses are now tied to Google's success in social! Build social features into everything! That memo resulted in a lot of ham-fisted social integrations across Google that were widely hated by the user base. YouTube comments were tied to Google+, and the site was flooded with spam. Making a new Gmail address also required making a Google+ account. Google Search got little "+1" buttons, and generally anonymous usage of Google products was impossible due to the "real name" policy. And that's just the Google+ stuff—earlier this memo resulted in a social network being built into Gmail called "Google Buzz" that all users were initially forced to join.

That forced integration strategy was an abject failure, and after a few years of Google's social panic, all of Google+'s integrations were removed, and the service was eventually shut down. That past failure isn't stopping Google from pulling out that losing playbook for its next great panic: Bloomberg's Julia Love and Davey Alba are reporting that Google wants to build ChatGPT-style features into everything. According to the article, Google has issued "a directive that all of its most important products—those with more than a billion users—must incorporate generative AI within months."

We wrote last month that Google's ChatGPT panic seemed a lot like its response to Google+, and several employees relayed that same sentiment to Bloomberg. Just like with G+, the report added that "current and former employees say at least some Googlers’ ratings and reviews will likely be influenced by their ability to integrate generative AI into their work."

Enlarge / Lithium ore sits waiting for processing. (credit: Bloomberg Creative Photos)

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has some car troubles. One of President Joe Biden’s major initiatives, the law was intended to foster activities that are both good for the economy and green. As such, it contains stipulations about the manufacturing of EVs—particularly that their batteries come from local sources or free-trade partners. But there are some issues with the availability of critical minerals that meet the "local" criteria and some vagueness on important terminology, according to a recent paper.

Higher standards

The IRA was signed into law in August of last year. It includes a provision that gives tax credits to producers that use critical minerals that come from the US or some of its close trade partners. In particular, to get the credits, an electric vehicle—which needs to be fully electric—would need to have a battery in which 80 percent of the market value of its critical minerals is sourced from within the US. Alternatively, this benchmark could be reached using minerals sourced from free-trade partners, or the minerals could hail from elsewhere but be processed in the US.

This is an increase over the requirements (40 percent) for receiving previous incentives. In theory, purchasing one of the vehicles eligible for a tax credit would be more affordable for many consumers.

Enlarge / FBI Director Christopher Wray, left, and National Security Agency Director Gen. Paul Nakasone, testify during the Senate Select Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats on Wednesday, March 8, 2023. (credit: Tom Williams / Contributor | CQ-Roll Call, Inc.)

At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing yesterday, FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed for the first time that the agency has in the past purchased the location data of US citizens without obtaining a warrant, Wired reported.

This revelation, which has alarmed privacy advocates, came after Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) asked Wray directly, “Does the FBI purchase US phone-geolocation information?” Wray’s response tiptoed around the question but provided a rare insight into how the FBI has used location data to surveil Americans without any court oversight.

“To my knowledge, we do not currently purchase commercial database information that includes location data derived from Internet advertising,” Wray said. “I understand that we previously—as in the past—purchased some such information for a specific national security pilot project. But that’s not been active for some time.”

Enlarge / The Akuvox E11 (credit: Akuvox)

The Akuvox E11 is billed as a video door phone, but it’s actually much more than that. The network-connected device opens building doors, provides live video and microphone feeds, takes a picture and uploads it each time someone walks by, and logs each entry and exit in real time. The Censys device search engine shows that roughly 5,000 such devices are exposed to the Internet, but there are likely many more that Censys can’t see for various reasons.

It turns out that this omnipotent, all-knowing device is riddled with holes that provide multiple avenues for putting sensitive data and powerful capabilities into the hands of threat actors who take the time to analyze its inner workings. That’s precisely what researchers from security firm Claroty did. The findings are serious enough that anyone who uses one of these devices in a home or building should pause reading this article, disconnect their E11 from the Internet, and assess where to go from there.

The 13 vulnerabilities found by Claroty include a missing authentication for critical functions, missing or improper authorization, hard-coded keys that are encrypted using accessible rather than cryptographically hashed keys, and the exposure of sensitive information to unauthorized users. As bad as the vulnerabilities are, their threat is made worse by the failure of Akuvox—a China-based leading supplier of smart intercom and door entry systems—to respond to multiple messages from Claroty, the CERT coordination Center, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency over a span of six weeks. Claroty and CISA publicly published their findings on Thursday here and here.

Enlarge / A BMW worker assembles an iX battery pack at the BMW factory in Dingolfin, Germany. (credit: BMW)

Half of all new cars and light trucks sold in the US in 2030 should be zero-emissions vehicles, according to the White House's climate goals. California has set 2035 as the cutoff date for a ban on new gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicles within the state's borders. 2040 looks like the drop-dead date for new fossil fuel vehicles in some of Europe—not to mention a highly ambitious date of 2030 in the United Kingdom—and automakers on all continents are preparing all-electric lineups as they start to sunset internal combustion engine product lines.

But a survey of the auto industry conducted by ABB Robotics and Automotive Manufacturing Solutions finds some pessimism about whether those goals will be achievable. When asked if "it's realistic to shift to 100 percent electric vehicle production to meet the different regional targets from 2030 to 2040," only 11 percent said, "Yes, definitely"; fewer than 10 percent of European respondents believed the targets were realistic, compared with 12 percent in North America and 17 percent in Asia.

Another 28 percent said, "Yes, but it won't be easy." That left more than half of survey respondents believing that 2030–2040 is too soon for a move to entirely electric fleets. Forty-one percent said, "Possibly, but not by the target dates," leaving just 18 percent who could never see the end of the internal combustion engine.

Enlarge / Epic Games Store Epic Games Store Epic Games Store Epic Games Store Epic Games Store Epic Games Store... (credit: Epic)

Epic has just made it much easier for small and individual developers to get their titles on the Epic Games Store. The company's self-publishing tools, which came out of closed beta Thursday, allow any developer to submit their game to Epic's platform for a $100-per-game fee.

Since its late-2018 launch with a small, curated selection of games, the Epic Games Store has slowly expanded to include nearly 2,000 titles. But those games have been selected by Epic for inclusion based on a "high quality standard," as Epic's Tim Sweeney put it to Ars in 2019, leading to the publication of a number of "how to get published on the Epic Games Store" tutorials.

"We're not going to be that sort of venue [that accepts everything] because we don't think we can help those games to reach users," Sweeney told Ars in 2019. "So it's going to be driven by quality."