Bandcamp at Centre of Dispute Between Epic Games and Google

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you’d told us that Bandcamp’s acquisition by Epic Games would lead fairly swiftly to an argument with a tech giant, our money would have been on that giant being Apple. Nope. Epic Games is seeking a court injunction against Google, over changing rules on its Google Play Store for Android. Bandcamp CEO Ethan Diamond blogged about the dispute overnight, noting that since 2015, Bandcamp has used its own billing system to process payments made for music and merch within its Android app. “However, Google is now modifying its rules to require Bandcamp (and other apps like it) to exclusively use Google Play Billing for payments for digital goods and services, and pay a revenue share to Google,” wrote Diamond. “If Google’s policy changes stand, beginning on June 1st, we would have to either pass Google’s fees on to consumers (making Android a less attractive platform for music fans), pass fees on to artists (which we would never do), permanently run our Android business at a loss, or turn off digital sales in the Android app.” Diamond also said that the new policy could see a delay in payments for artists and labels, from the current 24-48 hours to “15 to 45 days after a sale,” while Epic’s filing notes that Google’s system can’t be used for purchases of physical items (merch and physical music), which would force it to use two separate payment systems anyway.

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Android’s App Store Privacy Section Starts Rolling Out Today

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Following in the footsteps of iOS 14, Google is rolling out an app privacy section to the Play Store on Tuesday. When you look up an app on the Play Store, alongside sections like “About this app” and “ratings and reviews,” there will be a new section called “Data privacy & security,” where developers can explain what data they collect. Note that while the section will be appearing for users starting today, it might not be filled out by developers. Google’s deadline for developers to provide privacy information is July 20. Even then, all of this privacy information is provided by the developer and is essentially working on the honor system.

Here’s how Google describes the process to developers: “You alone are responsible for making complete and accurate declarations in your app’s store listing on Google Play. Google Play reviews apps across all policy requirements; however, we cannot make determinations on behalf of the developers of how they handle user data. Only you possess all the information required to complete the Data safety form. When Google becomes aware of a discrepancy between your app behavior and your declaration, we may take appropriate action, including enforcement action.”

Once the section is up and running, developers will be expected to list what data they’re collecting, why they’re collecting it, and who they’re sharing it with. The support page features a big list of data types for elements like “location,” “personal info,” “financial info,” “web history,” “contacts,” and various file types. Developers are expected to list their data security practices, including explaining if data is encrypted in transit and if users can ask for data to be deleted. There’s also a spot for “Google Play’s Families Policy” compliance, which is mostly just a bunch of US COPPA and EU GDPR requirements. Google says developers can also indicate if their app has “been independently validated against a global security standard.”

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Biden Administration Begins $3 Billion Plan for Electric Car Batteries

The Biden administration plans to begin a $3.1 billion effort on Monday to spur the domestic production of advanced batteries, which are essential to its plan to speed the adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy. The New York Times reports: President Biden has prodded automakers to churn out electric vehicles and utilities to switch to solar, wind and other clean energy, saying the transitions are critical to eliminating the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. In the wake of surging energy prices caused largely by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, administration officials also have described the transition to clean energy as a way to insulate consumers from the fluctuation of global oil markets and achieve true energy independence. Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary, last week called renewable energy “the greatest peace plan this world will ever know.” Yet currently, lithium, cobalt and other minerals needed for electric car batteries and energy storage are processed primarily in Asia. China alone controls nearly 80 percent of the world’s processing and refining of those critical minerals.

Ms. Granholm plans to announce the funding plan on Monday during a visit to Detroit, a senior administration official said. The $3.1 billion in grants, along with a separate $60 million program for battery recycling, is an effort to “reduce our reliance on competing nations like China that have an advantage over the global supply chain,” according to a Department of Energy statement. The funding is aimed at companies that can create new, retrofitted or expanded processing facilities as well as battery recycling programs, officials with the Department of Energy said. The grants will be funded through the $1 trillion infrastructure law, which includes more than $7 billion to improve the domestic battery supply chain.

Venkat Srinivasan, director of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science at Argonne National Laboratory, told the panel that the United States “can become a dominant force in energy storage technology” and has a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to seize the moment.” Between electric vehicles and grid storage, the market for lithium-ion batteries in the United States is expected to increase by a factor of 20 to 30 in the next decade but a secure domestic supply chain is needed, Dr. Srinivasan said. The Biden administration wants half of all new vehicles sold in the United States to be electric by 2030. The president also has issued procurement guidelines to transform the 600,000-vehicle federal fleet, so that all new cars and trucks purchased by the federal government by 2035 are zero-emission.

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Google Makes $100,000 Worth of Tech Training Free To Every US Business

Alphabet’s Google will provide any U.S. business over $100,000 worth of online courses in data analytics, design and other tech skills for their workers free of charge, the search company said on Monday. Reuters reports: The offer marks a big expansion of Google’s Career Certificates, a program the company launched in 2018 to help people globally boost their resumes by learning new tools at their own pace. Over 70,000 people in the United States and 205,000 globally have earned at least one certificate, and 75% receive a benefit such as a new job or higher pay within six months, according to Google.

The courses, designed by Google and sold through online education service Coursera, each typically cost students about $39 a month and take three to six months to finish. Google will now cover costs for up to 500 workers at any U.S. business, and it valued the grants at $100,000 because people usually take up to six months to finish. Lisa Gevelber, founder of Grow with Google, the company unit overseeing certificates, said course completion rates are higher when people pay out of pocket but that the new offer was still worthwhile if it could help some businesses gain digital savvy. Certificates also are available in IT support, project management, e-commerce and digital marketing. They cover popular software in each of the fields, including Google advertising services.

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Staff At London Law Firm Can Work From Home Full-Time — If They Take 20% Pay Cut

Staff at a top London law firm have been told they can work from home permanently â” but they will have to take a 20% pay cut. The Guardian reports: Managing partners at Stephenson Harwood are offering lawyers and other staff the option as City firms try to move beyond solely office-based working in a post-pandemic cultural shift to flexible and remote models. Junior lawyers at the company have starting salaries of 90,000 pounds, meaning anyone taking up the officer would lose about 18,000 pounds. Stephenson Harwood, one of the top 50 highest earning legal firms in the UK and with its headquarters in London, employs more than 1,100 people and has offices in Paris, Greece, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea. A spokesperson for the firm told the Times that the new working policy would apply to staff at its London office and most of the company’s international offices. Partners will not be eligible, though. Full equity partners receive an average of 685,000 pounds annually.

The new salary sacrifice for full remote working policy is being introduced after the company’s experience of recruiting lawyers during the coronavirus pandemic who were not based in London, where living costs tend to be higher. However, the company said it expected only a few staff to take up the full-time work from home option because “for the vast majority of our people, our hybrid working policy works well.” Staff already have the option of working remotely for two days a week. “Like so many firms, we see value in being in the office together regularly, while also being able to offer our people flexibility,” the spokesman said.

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Chrome’s Latest Update: 30 Security Fixes and Bug Details Kept ‘Restricted’

Hot Hardware warns that on Tuesday, the Stable Channel for Chrome’s desktop edition “had an update on April 26, 2022. That update includes 30 security fixes, some of them so bad that Google is urging all users to update immediately.”

The release notes for Google’s Chrome v101.0.4951.41 for Windows, Mac, and Linux has a long list of bug fixes; you can view it here. However, there’s also a key statement in that page.
“Note: Access to bug details and links may be kept restricted until a majority of users are updated with a fix. We will also retain restrictions if the bug exists in a third party library that other projects similarly depend on, but haven’t yet fixed….”

Effectively the the non-developer translation of the quote above is that something so significant was found, the details are being kept hidden.

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Google Rewards Employees Returning to Office with Private Lizzo Concert

As an apparent reward for returning to the office, thousands of Google employees were treated to a private Lizzo concert at the Shoreline Amphitheatre near Google’s headquarters, reports CNBC:

Google implemented a return-to-office policy starting in early April, requiring employees to go to physical facilities at least three days a week. Staffers pushed back on the mandate and the prospect of navigating traffic jams, after they worked efficiently for so long at home while the company enjoyed some of its fastest revenue growth of the past 15 years….

Google had delayed its return plans on multiple occasions, due mostly to surges in Covid-19 case numbers. But this time, the company stuck to its reopening schedule. In the early days back, employees were greeted with marching bands on campus, as well as photo booths, celebratory food and visits from prominent politicians.

“Thank you for being back!” Lizzo said. “Thank you for surviving! Google, we back, bitch!!” […] She inserted the company’s name into her popular song “Boys,” changing the lyrics from “I heard you a freak, too” to “I heard you a freak, Google!”

After two and a half years “of protecting others and ourselves but also being very disconnected,” Lizzo told the crowd, “It’s so incredible to see how connected we are right now!” CNBC reports.
Someone in the crowd shouted back, “Propaganda! Propaganda!”

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Sale of Bored Apes’ Metaverse Land Made Gas Fees Skyrocket Past $3,000

There’s a new metaverse project from the creators of the “Bored Apes Yacht Club” NFTs. Last night they held a “virtual land” sale, reports Bloomberg, raising nearly a third of a billion dollars.
At about the same time, Mashable noticed something else happening:

If you were trying to complete a transaction on the Ethereum network last night, you might have been taken aback by the ridiculously high gas fees you saw.

For example, one user purchased a $25 NFT on Saturday evening. Their total price? $3,325. That’s $3,300 just in fees.
Every transaction on their blockchain incurs a fee (which rises based on the number of concurrent transactions), the article points out. “Ethereum transactions can fail if a user doesn’t pay enough in gas fees. When this happens, not only does the transaction not go through, but the user is still charged the gas fee.”
“Ethereum proved unusable for hours due to its inability to distribute the load…” reports CNET. “Someone tweeted a picture of them trying to send $100 in crypto from one wallet to another, showing it required $1,700 in gas fees….

“Over $175 million was spent on gas alone.”

Mashable adds:

An overwhelmed Ethereum Network….caused fees to skyrocket to astronomically high amounts…. One cryptocurrency advocate noticed that from just the Bored Ape’s NFT sale, approximately $100 million were wasted during the first hour of the “land” sale in gas fees alone.
As mentioned earlier, transactions can often fail when the Ethereum network is facing unusually high traffic. And last night, many people paid thousands in gas fees for transactions that didn’t even go through.
Yuga Labs says it will refund users those fees, but it’s unclear just how the company plans to do that. Also, Yuga Labs will ostensibly only cover the fees from failed transactions directly involving the company. If you’re a user who was attempting an unrelated transaction, you can say goodbye to those thousands in lost fees….
However, there was at least one winner from the Saturday night sale: Yuga Labs. The owner of the Bored Ape Yacht Club brand raked in $285 million from the NFT sale.

Transaction costs just to mint the Otherdeed NFTs after the launch “reached $123 million,” reports Bloomberg, “with each Otherdeed requiring about $6,000, or two Ether, in transaction fees to mint, according to data from Etherscan — or more than the price of the deed itself.”
Yuga Labs apologised on Twitter for “turning off the light on Ethereum”, and suggested the possibility of establishing an ApeCoin blockchain.

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Fedora’s Lead Speaks on the Popularity of Linux and the Importance of Open Source

Fedora project leader Matthew Miller spoke to TechRepublic’s Jack Wallen this week, sharing some thoughts on the future of Linux — and on open source in general:
Matthew Miller: I think it’s a lost cause to try to “sell” our quirky technology interest to people who don’t see it already. We need to take a different approach…. I think our message, at its root, has to be around open source…. [W]ith Linux, when you install an open-source distro, you’re not just part of a fan community. You’re part of a colossal, global effort that makes software more available to everyone, makes that software better and better, and makes the whole world better through sharing… Just by using it you’re sharing in this amazing undertaking, part of a move away from scarcity to an economy based on abundance….
Jack Wallen: What’s the biggest difference in Linux today vs. Linux of 10 years ago?

Matthew Miller: I think first we have to start with just the amazing ubiquity of it. Ten years ago, it was cute to find a TV that ran Linux. Now, not only is it definitely powering your TV, you’ve probably got Linux running on your lightbulbs! It’s everywhere. And while Linux had pushed proprietary Unix from the server room, ten years ago Windows-based servers were pushing back. The cloud changed that — now, the cloud is Linux, almost completely. (Anything that isn’t is a legacy app that it was too much trouble to port!) From tiny devices to the most powerful mainframes and supercomputers: Linux, Linux, Linux….

Jack Wallen: If Linux has an Achilles’ heel, what is it?

Matthew Miller: Linux and the whole free and open-source software movement grew up with the rise of the internet as an open communication platform. We absolutely need that to continue in order to realize our vision, and I don’t think we can take it for granted.

That’s more general than an Achilles’ heel, though, so right now let me highlight one thing that I think is troubling: Chrome becoming the dominant browser to the point where it’s often the only way to make sites work. Chromium (the associated upstream project) is open source, but isn’t really run as a community project, and, pointedly, very very few people run Chromium itself. I’d love to see that change, but I’d also like to see Firefox regain a meaningful presence.
Miller also said Fedora’s next release is focused on simplicity. (“When the OS gets in the way, it drops from the conversation I want to have about big ideas to … well, the boring technical details that people never want to deal with”)
And he also shared his thoughts on what Linux needs most. “What I’d really like to see more of are more non-technical contributors. I mean, yes, we can always benefit from more packagers and coders and engineers, but I think what we really need desperately are writers, designers, artists, videographers, communicators, organizers and planners. I don’t think big companies are likely to provide those things, at least, not for the parts of the Linux world which aren’t their products.”
“We need people who think the whole grand project I’ve been talking about is important, and who have the skills and interests to help make it real.”

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50 Years After Walking on the Moon, an Astronaut Anticipates Our Return

In 1972 — half a century ago — Charles Moss Duke walked on the moon.
Now 86 years old, he’s ready for America to get back to exploring the moon, reports the Associated Press:
Duke said he does not begrudge NASA for ending the Apollo program to focus on space shuttles, the international space station and other missions in more remote parts of space. But he looks forward to future missions that build off of what he and others have learned from their time on the moon, which called “a great platform for science.”

Duke also noted that he’s encouraged by the commercial partnerships that have developed around space exploration, like Space X and Blue Origin [and the companies he describes in their video as “the others”]. Those options, he said, “make space available for more people and more science and engineering and unmanned stuff.”

“That compliment is going to be really important in the future,” Duke went on.

The article notes the first of NASA’s huge Space Launch System rockets is scheduled to blast off later this year, “with crewed flights planned subsequently.” In the video interview, Duke adds that “With Artemis, NASA is going to be focused on deep space, to the moon and beyond, and I’m excited about that…”

“The more people we get into space, and can see the beauty of the earth — and the incredible emotion that you [feel] when you see the earth hung in the blackness of space — it’s going to affect a lot of people.”

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