Month: September 2023

Enlarge / Google is looking pretty dilapidated these days. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Google is killing off so many products lately we need to do a roundup or we won't get anything else done today. First on the docket is the inevitable death of Google Podcasts. We've been side-eying Google Podcasts ever since Google's new podcast platform, YouTube Podcasts, launched in April. YouTube has been slowly consuming all of Google's media properties, and podcasts completes the trinity along with videos (both amateur and scripted Hollywood content) and music.

Google does not need two podcast apps, so Google Podcasts must die. This was announced on the official YouTube blog, if there was any question about the responsible party. Google Podcasts is getting shut down "later in 2024," but before that, we'll see an expansion of YouTube podcasts, which is currently only available in the US. YouTube says its podcast platform (which is built into the YouTube Music app) will be out "globally" before the end of the year.

Google Podcasts was Google's third podcasting service, after the Google Reader-powered Google Listen (2009–2012) and Google Play Music Podcasts (2016–2020). Google Podcasts technically started in 2016 as a bizarre podcast player that was only accessible via a mobile Google Search. Searching for a podcast in the Google app would show a play button next to episode search results, but there was no way to subscribe to a podcast. Android Google Podcasts finally got podcast-defining subscription support a whopping two years later, but you couldn't really call the service viable until an iOS app finally launched in 2020.

Enlarge / Federal Communication Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, then a commissioner, rallies against repeal of net neutrality rules in December 2017. (credit: Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla)

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel today announced plans to restore net neutrality rules similar to those that were adopted during the Obama era and then repealed by the FCC when Donald Trump was president.

Rosenworcel announced her plans in a speech today, one day after the FCC gained a 3-2 Democratic majority with the swearing-in of Commissioner Anna Gomez. The FCC previously operated with a 2-2 partisan deadlock because the US Senate never voted on whether to confirm President Biden's first nominee, Gigi Sohn.

"This afternoon, I'm sharing with my colleagues a rulemaking that proposes to reinstate net neutrality," Rosenworcel said.

Enlarge / A decent placebo setup for transcranial magnetic stimulation is difficult to distinguish from actual treatment. (credit: Monty Rakusen)

Placebos have occupied an increasingly awkward spot in the medical landscape over the last few decades. Even as placebo-controlled trials have become accepted as the gold standard for evidence, we've grown to appreciate just how powerful the placebo effect can be. Confusing matters further, a new study has expanded on a previous finding: The placebo effect for antidepressant treatments appears to be growing stronger over time.

Earlier work had shown this was happening with placebo pills. The new study shows that it's happening with a treatment called transcranial magnetic stimulation. Fortunately, effective treatments appear to be getting better in parallel, so this hasn't obviously interfered with any results yet.

Stimulating magnets

Transcranial magnetic stimulation is fairly straightforward in principle. It's possible to use magnetic fields to induce currents in many materials. One of the materials where that works is the brain, where neural activity depends on the presence of voltage between a cell and its environment. So, by carefully shaping the magnetic field, it's possible to influence the activity in specific areas of the brain. Critically, this can be done with equipment placed outside the skull and, so, is quite non-invasive compared to many other interventions.

Enlarge / If my dad had been able to show me the intricate dance between smartphone app, car, cable, and station, perhaps my first outing wouldn't have been quite so confusing. (credit: EVgo)

EVgo, one of the nation's largest DC fast charging providers, seems to be coming around to the idea that while having more chargers would be nice, having reliably functioning chargers is more important at the moment. So it's doing something that would be odd for most other companies and announcing its progress in fixing and upgrading its network.

As part of "EVgo ReNew," the company's plan focuses on "overall network performance and the holistic customer experience." EVgo says it "upgraded, replaced, or decommissioned" charging gear at 120 of its more than 850 stations. It has also brought at least one 350 kW charger to nearly all its stations, claims to have cut its average station repair time in half over the last 12 months, and improved its repair parts inventory and customer service staffing. And EVgo says it will track "One & Done" success rates, measuring how many people are able to initiate a charging session on their first attempt.

EV charging reliability has been an issue for a few years now. It's something we wrote (warned, really) about in 2022, and a JD Power study on the EV public charging experience last month showed it's not getting better. EVgo rated a 569 out of 1,000 in that study, roughly midway between ChargePoint at 606 and Electrify America at 538, with all of them dropping from 2022. Tesla, meanwhile, with its nationwide network of Supercharger spots with first-mover placement advantage, rated 739 out of 1,000, unchanged from 2022.

Enlarge / Dave Limp discussing Amazon's coversational AI abilities at Amazon's devices event last week. (credit: Eric Lee for the Washington Post/Getty)

Amazon thinks that in the near future, its Alexa voice assistant will offer enough value that customers will be willing to pay a subscription fee to use it.

After Amazon's devices event last week, when the company showcased generative AI features it's developing for Alexa, Bloomberg asked Dave Limp, SVP of devices and services at Amazon, if there will be a time when Alexa's AI features will require a subscription.

"Yes, we absolutely think that," the executive responded.

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GPUs from all six of the major suppliers are vulnerable to a newly discovered attack that allows malicious websites to read the usernames, passwords, and other sensitive visual data displayed by other websites, researchers have demonstrated in a paper published Tuesday.

The cross-origin attack allows a malicious website from one domain—say, example.com—to effectively read the pixels displayed by a website from example.org, or another different domain. Attackers can then reconstruct them in a way that allows them to view the words or images displayed by the latter site. This leakage violates a critical security principle that forms one of the most fundamental security boundaries safeguarding the Internet. Known as the same origin policy, it mandates that content hosted on one website domain be isolated from all other website domains.

Optimizing bandwidth at a cost

GPU.zip, as the proof-of-concept attack has been named, starts with a malicious website that places a link to the webpage it wants to read inside of an iframe, a common HTML element that allows sites to embed ads, images, or other content hosted on other websites. Normally, the same origin policy prevents either site from inspecting the source code, content, or final visual product of the other. The researchers found that data compression that both internal and discrete GPUs use to improve performance acts as a side channel that they can abuse to bypass the restriction and steal pixels one by one.

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GPUs from all six of the major suppliers are vulnerable to a newly discovered attack that allows malicious websites to read the usernames, passwords, and other sensitive visual data displayed by other websites, researchers have demonstrated in a paper published Tuesday.

The cross-origin attack allows a malicious website from one domain—say, example.com—to effectively read the pixels displayed by a website from example.org, or another different domain. Attackers can then reconstruct them in a way that allows them to view the words or images displayed by the latter site. This leakage violates a critical security principle that forms one of the most fundamental security boundaries safeguarding the Internet. Known as the same origin policy, it mandates that content hosted on one website domain be isolated from all other website domains.

Optimizing bandwidth at a cost

GPU.zip, as the proof-of-concept attack has been named, starts with a malicious website that places a link to the webpage it wants to read inside of an iframe, a common HTML element that allows sites to embed ads, images, or other content hosted on other websites. Normally, the same origin policy prevents either site from inspecting the source code, content, or final visual product of the other. The researchers found that data compression that both internal and discrete GPUs use to improve performance acts as a side channel that they can abuse to bypass the restriction and steal pixels one by one.

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I was preparing to write an intro calling macOS Sonoma—version 14.0 of Apple's desktop operating system, for those of you who can't keep the ever-lengthening list of California codenames straight—a "low-key" or "small" release. Because it definitely feels that way, and it's tempting to think that Apple is taking it easy on new features for older OSes because it's devoting so much internal time to VisionOS and the Vision Pro.

But looking back, I've said something along those lines for each of the last few macOS releases (and several others before that). Honestly, these days, what macOS update hasn't been "low-key"? Every one since Big Sur (11.0) overhauled the UI and added Apple Silicon support has been content to add a few pieces on top of the foundation, fiddle a bit with under-the-hood enhancements and new security measures, maintain feature parity with iOS for the built-in apps, and call it a day. That's what Sonoma does, too.

So macOS Sonoma is a perfectly typical macOS release, a sort of "Ventura-plus" that probably has one or two additions that any given person will find useful but which otherwise just keeps your Mac secure and avoids weird iCloud compatibility problems with whatever software is running on your phone. You probably don't need to run out and install it, but there's no real reason to avoid it if you're not aware of some specific bug or compatibility problem that affects the software you use. It's business as usual for Mac owners. Let's dive in.