 The European Commission is issuing antitrust charges against Apple over concerns about the company’s App Store practices. The Commission has found that Apple has broken EU competition rules with its App Store policies, following an initial complaint from Spotify back in 2019. Specifically, the Commission believes Apple has a “dominant position in the market for the distribution of music streaming apps through its App Store.” The EU has focused on two rules that Apple imposes on developers: the mandatory use of Apple’s in-app purchase system (for which Apple charges a 30 percent cut), and a rule forbidding app developers to inform users of other purchasing options outside of apps. The Commission has found that the 30 percent commission fee, or “Apple tax” as it’s often referred to, has resulted in higher prices for consumers. “Most streaming providers passed this fee on to end-users by raising prices,” according to the European Commission. “Apple’s rules distort competition in the market for music streaming services by raising the costs of competing music streaming app developers,” says a statement from the Commission. “This, in turn, leads to higher prices for consumers for their in-app music subscriptions on iOS devices.” The EU has also sent Apple a statement of objections, which is essentially a list of how the Commission believes Apple has violated competition rules. This is the initial, formal stage of antitrust proceedings against Apple, and the company will have the chance to respond to the Commission’s list of objections within the next 12 weeks. This specific case is limited to Apple’s App Store practices for music streaming, and the EU is investigating additional separate cases on ebooks and the App Store in general. “This is not the last case we will have when it comes to the App Store,” said European commissioner Margrethe Vestager in a press conference this morning. Vestager also revealed the Commission is taking an interest in Apple’s policies around games on the App Store. “We also take an interest in the gaming app market,” said Vestager, responding to a question about the money involved in gaming apps on the App Store. “That’s really early days when it comes to that,” Microsoft called on regulators to investigate the App Store last year, just a couple of months before a public spat with Apple over its xCloud game streaming service. Apple now faces a fine of up to 10 percent of its annual revenue if it’s found guilty of breaking EU rules, which could be as high as $27 billion based on Apple’s annual revenue of $274.5 billion last year. Apple could also be forced to change its business model, which has more damaging and lasting effects than a fine. Spotify has welcomed the initial charges. “Ensuring the iOS platform operates fairly is an urgent task with far-reaching implications,” says Horacio Gutierrez, Spotify’s chief legal officer. “The European Commission’s statement of objections is a critical step toward holding Apple accountable for its anticompetitive behavior, ensuring meaningful choice for all consumers and a level playing field for app developers.” Central to this entire case is the 30 percent cut that Apple takes on subscriptions. Companies like Netflix and Spotify have long opposed this so-called Apple tax, but Apple has argued that the revenue contributes toward the costs of maintaining the App Store and enforcing its various content, privacy, and security policies. Spotify previously claimed that Apple uses its App Store to stifle innovation and limit consumer choice in favor of its own Apple Music service. That complaint was followed up with a similar one by Rakuten, alleging that it’s anti-competitive for Apple to take a 30 percent commission on ebooks sold through the App Store while promoting its own Apple Books service. Epic Games also joined many developers and companies opposing Apple’s App Store policies and filed an antitrust complaint with the EU earlier this year. It’s part of an ongoing dispute with Apple after the Fortnite developer publicly criticized Apple’s App Store policies around distribution and payments. This resulted in Epic attempting to circumvent Apple’s 30 percent cut on in-app purchases in Fortnite, and Apple quickly removing the game from its App Store. For more please visit OUR FORUM.
 In the age of remote work, it's easier than ever to blur the lines between our personal and professional tech. Maybe it's sending personal texts or emails from your work phone, editing personal documents or photos on your work laptop, or joining a virtual happy hour with friends from your work tablet. None of these actions may sound like a particularly risky activity, but as a former "IT guy" I'm asking, nay pleading, with you to stop doing them. At least the potentially more hazardous activities, such as storing personal data on your work machine or storing sensitive company data on your personal devices. Do it for the security of your employer. But more importantly, do it for the safety, privacy and wellbeing of yourself, your family and friends. Cybersecurity incidents can have serious negative consequences for both your employer and you. And even if an actual security breach or data leak doesn't occur, you could be reprimanded, demoted, fired, sued or even criminally prosecuted. Take the case of former CIA director John M. Deutch. In 1996, as Deutch was leaving his position as Director of Central Intelligence, he asked if he could keep his government-issued computers because they contained his personal financial information, and he did not own a personal computer to which the data could be transferred. (This seems incomprehensible today, but it was very common at the time.) The government agreed to loan the computers to Deutch basically under the condition that he become an unpaid government consultant, not use the computers for personal work and buy a computer to which he could transfer his personal data. Fast forward a few years and it's discovered that the government computers, now at Deutch's Maryland home, had been connected to the Internet and that their hard drives contained classified information. Deutch also told government investigators that family members had access to the computers, including his wife, who "used this computer to prepare reports relating to official travel" with Deutch and another family member who used the computer "to access a university library." It was also reported at the time, that the "other family member" was Deutch's son, who in addition to accessing those university resources also visited several "high-risk" porn sites, one of which had placed cookies on the computer. A survey conducted in August 2020 by antivirus vendor Malwarebytes asked respondents how they used their work devices. The company found that 53% reported sending or receiving personal email, 52% read news, 38% shopped online, 25% accessed their social media and 22% downloaded or installed non-company software. And then of course there's the flip side, using a personal device for work. A report from cybersecurity vendor Morphisec released in June 2020 found that 56% of employees reported using their personal computer as their work device. And according to a 2020 survey by antivirus software maker Kaspersky, 57% of respondents said they checked work email on their personal smartphone and 36% did work on their personal laptop or desktop. Only 30% said they never used a work device for personal activities. Keep in mind however, survey respondents don't always provide completely accurate data. They may have forgotten past events or omit information due to embarrassment or fear of potential negative consequences. As such, I suspect these figures undercount the number of folks who are actually blending their work and personal tech. Even if nothing "bad" happens, there are still headaches from blurring the lines between your personal and professional tech. What happens when you get a new machine? What happens if you change jobs? In both cases you'll need to clean your personal data off the work machine before you give it back to IT. And depending how much personal data has accumulated on the device and how you've organized it, the process can be extremely complicated and take a significant amount of time. Also, simply copying and deleting the personal data won't completely protect your privacy. To really keep your personal information personal, you'd need to wipe the machine's hard drive or physically destroy the drive, something which will likely raise red flags with your company's IT department. You also run the risk of losing access to your data permanently if you fail to copy it all and the machine's drive is wiped or destroyed as part of your employer's computer equipment disposal policy.Further details can be found on OUR FORUM.
 Google has decided that YouTube demands such a huge transcoding workload that it needs to build its own server chips. The company detailed its new "Argos" chips in a YouTube blog post, a CNET interview, and in a paper for ASPLOS, the Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems Conference. Just as there are GPUs for graphics workloads and Google's TPU (tensor processing unit) for AI workloads, the YouTube infrastructure team says it has created the "VCU" or "Video (trans)Coding Unit," which helps YouTube transcode a single video into over a dozen versions that it needs to provide a smooth, bandwidth-efficient, profitable video site. Google's Jeff Calow said the Argos chip has brought "up to 20-33x improvements in computing efficiency compared to our previous optimized system, which was running software on traditional servers." The VCU package is a full-length PCI-E card and looks a lot like a graphics card. A board has two Argos ASIC chips buried under a gigantic, passively cooled aluminum heat sink. There's even what looks like an 8-pin power connector on the end because PCI-E just isn't enough power. Google provided a lovely chip diagram that lists 10 "encoder cores" on each chip, with Google's white paper adding that "all other elements are off-the-shelf IP blocks." Google says that "each encoder core can encode 2160p in real-time, up to 60 FPS (frames per second) using three reference frames." The cards are specifically designed to slot into Google's warehouse-scale computing system. Each computes cluster in YouTube's system will house a section of dedicated "VCU machines" loaded with the new cards, saving Google from having to crack open every server and load it with a new card. Google says the cards resemble GPUs because they are what fit in its existing accelerator trays. CNET reports that "thousands of the chips are running in Google data centers right now," and thanks to the cards, individual video workloads like 4K video "can be available to watch in hours instead of the days it previously took." Factoring in the research and development on the chips, Google says this VCU plan will save the company a ton of money, even given the below benchmark showing the TCO (total cost of ownership) of the setup compared to running its algorithm on Intel Skylake chips and Nvidia T4 Tensor core GPUs. Because YouTube is the world's biggest video site, keeping it running was originally seen as an impossible task until Google bought the company in 2006. Since then, Google has aggressively fought to keep the site's cost down, often reinventing Internet infrastructure and copyright in order to make it happen. Today, the primary infrastructure problem YouTube needs to solve for end-users is providing video that works just right for your device and bandwidth while maintaining quality. That means using a codec that is supported by your device and picking a resolution that matches your display (and not blowing up your Internet connection with a massive file). For Google, that means transcoding a single video into a lot of other videos. You can see part of this work yourself just by clicking on the gear for an 8K video, where you'll see nine total resolutions created from a single upload: 144p, 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, 1440p, 2160p, and 4320p. These are all different video files, and everyone needs to be created from the original 8K uploaded file—and keep in mind, this is just for your specific device. Google also needs to offer some of those nine resolutions in multiple codecs, which dictate how the video is compressed on its way over the Internet. The company wants to offer videos in the most advanced, efficient codec available to save on bandwidth, which is a massive part of YouTube's costs. Decoding a video codec gobbles up processing power, though, and on cheaper mobile devices, decoding won't happen smoothly and efficiently without dedicated hardware acceleration support for each new codec. That means Google only gets to use the best codecs on new devices, and it needs to keep copies of the video around in older codecs for older devices. Today, modern devices usually get the efficient VP9 codec, while the more compatible H.264 is kept around for devices that aren't on the cutting edge. No one truly knows the depths of YouTube's video codec selection, but the site also generally supports devices going back almost 10 years, including "low-resolution flip phones," according to the ASPLOS paper. So there are some pre-H.264 codecs, like 3GP, for ancient devices. Learn more by visiting OUR FORUM.
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