Nielsen on Thursday announced that it had moved a step closer toward cracking one of the great questions of the modern entertainment world: How big, exactly, is streaming? From a report: Nielsen, the 98-year-old research firm that for decades has had an effective monopoly on measuring TV ratings in the United States, has a new metric that it says allows it to make an apples-to-apples comparison, on a percentage basis, of how many people are streaming shows and films on their TVs versus how many are watching traditional cable and broadcast channels. For the time being, Nielsen reports, people are spending more time watching TV the old-fashioned way -- but streaming is gaining fast. On Thursday, the firm reported that 64 percent of the time American viewers used their television sets in May 2021 was spent watching network and cable TV, while they watched streaming services about 26 percent of the time. Another 9 percent of the time, they were using their TV screens for things like video games or watching programs or films they had saved on DVR. The streaming share is increasing rapidly. It stood at about 20 percent last year, Nielsen said; in 2019, it was about 14 percent. A Nielsen spokesman said that the firm anticipates the streaming share could go up to about 33 percent by the end of the year. Netflix and YouTube are the streaming leaders, the research firm said, with each capturing 6 percent of total TV time. They are trailed by Hulu (3 percent), Amazon (2 percent) and Disney+ (1 percent). Nielsen calls its new metric The Gauge. It comes in addition to its previous method of measuring how many people are watching streaming platforms, which relies on audio-recognition software included in Nielsen devices that are now in 38,000 households across the country. Both metrics measure only what is viewed on television screens and do not count what is watched on phones or laptops.

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A weakness in the algorithm used to encrypt cellphone data in the 1990s and 2000s allowed hackers to spy on some internet traffic, according to a new research paper. Motherboard: The paper has sent shockwaves through the encryption community because of what it implies: The researchers believe that the mathematical probability of the weakness being introduced on accident is extremely low. Thus, they speculate that a weakness was intentionally put into the algorithm. After the paper was published, the group that designed the algorithm confirmed this was the case. Researchers from several universities in Europe found that the encryption algorithm GEA-1, which was used in cellphones when the industry adopted GPRS standards in 2G networks, was intentionally designed to include a weakness that at least one cryptography expert sees as a backdoor. The researchers said they obtained two encryption algorithms, GEA-1 and GEA-2, which are proprietary and thus not public, "from a source." They then analyzed them and realized they were vulnerable to attacks that allowed for decryption of all traffic. When trying to reverse-engineer the algorithm, the researchers wrote that (to simplify), they tried to design a similar encryption algorithm using a random number generator often used in cryptography and never came close to creating an encryption scheme as weak as the one actually used: "In a million tries we never even got close to such a weak instance," they wrote. "This implies that the weakness in GEA-1 is unlikely to occur by chance, indicating that the security level of 40 bits is due to export regulations." Researchers dubbed the attack "divide-and-conquer," and said it was "rather straightforward." In short, the attack allows someone who can intercept cellphone data traffic to recover the key used to encrypt the data and then decrypt all traffic. The weakness in GEA-1, the oldest algorithm developed in 1998, is that it provides only 40-bit security. That's what allows an attacker to get the key and decrypt all traffic, according to the researchers.

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Websites of dozens of financial institutions and airlines in Australia and the United States were briefly down on Thursday, in the second major blackout in just over a week caused by a glitch in an important piece of internet infrastructure. From a report: Server-related glitches at content delivery network provider Akamai had hampered services at Australian banks, while many U.S. airlines, including American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, also reported an hour-long outage. The disruption linked to technical issues at Akamai follows an outage at rival Fastly that affected a number of popular websites last week. The impacted platform is now up and running, an Akamai spokesperson said, adding that the company was "continuing to validate services." The outage was caused by a bug in Akamai's software that has since been fixed, and was not caused by a cyber-attack or vulnerability, the spokesperson added.

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Google said Thursday it's funding a project to increase Linux security by writing parts of the operating system's core in the Rust programming language, a modernization effort that could bolster the security of the internet and smartphones. From a report: If the project succeeds, it'll be possible to add new elements written in Rust into the heart of Linux, called the kernel. Such a change would mark a major technological and cultural shift for an open-source software project that's become foundational to Google's Android and Chrome operating systems as well as vast swaths of the internet. Miguel Ojeda, who's written software used by the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator and worked on programming language security, is being contracted to write software in Rust for the Linux kernel. Google is paying for the contract, which is being extended through the Internet Security Research Group, a nonprofit that's also made it easier to secure website communications through the Let's Encrypt effort. Adding Rust modules to the Linux kernel would improve security by closing some avenues for hackers can use to attack phones, computers or servers. Since it was launched in 1991, Linux has been written solely in the powerful but old C programming language. The language was developed in 1972 and is more vulnerable to hacks than contemporary programming languages.

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For three years until his departure this January, Simon McLaren served as the director of communications for Blade, the urban aviation startup that went public earlier this year at a valuation of more than $800 million. His work in that time was largely what you'd expect of a company spokesperson -- except for the fact that Simon McLaren doesn't actually exist. Business Insider reports: After Insider sought to verify McLaren's identity, Blade CEO Rob Wiesenthal admitted in an interview that McLaren was a made-up persona invented by him and his colleagues, and that Wiesenthal masqueraded as McLaren in telephone conversations with news outlets. The ruse lasted for years, duped numerous journalists, and included a puzzling public drama around McLaren's purported departure from Blade. None of it was real. Numerous news outlets quoted Simon McLaren as though he were a real spokesperson. McLaren has no substantial online presence outside of a Blade email address, a Twitter account created last December, and a Medium profile created last November. His personal website, created this January, was registered through a proxy, and he uses a 1966 photo of British racing driver Graham Hill across his accounts in place of a profile picture. Still, McLaren has been treated as a real human by a variety of news outlets since his apparent debut in the pages of Vanity Fair in 2018. Serving as the institutional voice of Blade in stories about the company's compliance with federal regulations, medical supply shuttles, and negotiations with the town of East Hampton, McLaren has been quoted by the New York Times, the New York Post, Curbed, the Washington Post, Fox Business, and CNN.

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On Friday, Volkswagen disclosed a data breach that it said affected 3.3 million customers and interested buyers. On Monday, hackers put the data stolen from the car maker on sale on a notorious hacking forum. From a report: In the sales listing reviewed by Motherboard, a hacker that goes by 000 wrote that the data included email addresses and Vehicle Identification Numbers (VIN). The hacker also posted two samples of the data, which included full names, email addresses, mailing addresses, and phone numbers. The type of data seems to align with what Volkwagen admitted was stolen. In a website set up by a cybersecurity vendor on behalf of the car maker, Volkswagen said that "the majority" of affected data included: "first and last name, personal or business mailing address, email address, or phone number. In some instances, the data also included information about a vehicle purchased, leased, or inquired about, such as the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), make, model, year, color and trim packages." But for 90,000 victims, the data also included "more sensitive information relating to eligibility for a purchase, loan, or lease. Nearly all of the more sensitive data (over 95%) consists of driver's license numbers," according to the company, which added that the majority of data pertains to Audi customers and interested buyers in the US and Canada only. The company also said it believes the data was left unsecured by a vendor. (Audi is owned by the Volkswagen Group.) "There were also a very small number of dates of birth, Social Security or social insurance numbers, account or loan numbers, and tax identification numbers," the website read.

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The coelacanth was thought to live for about 20 years, but a new study suggests it's nearer 100.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google CEO Sundar Pichai last month previewed an artificial intelligence model that he said would enable people to have open-ended conversations with technology. But current and former employees who have worked with the language model say enabling coherent, free-flowing and accurate dialogue between humans and technology remains a tall order. As a result, Google is taking a more incremental step in conversational AI by preparing to teach foreign languages through Google Search [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], according to people involved in the work. The project, referred to internally as Tivoli, grew out of its Google Research unit and is likely to be rolled out later this year. It will initially work over text, and the exact look and feel of the instruction couldn't be learned. Googlers are also discussing ways to eventually add the functionality to its voice assistant and YouTube product lines. In YouTube, for example, it could generate language quizzes where viewers record themselves after watching a video and the AI provides an assessment of how they performed. A Google spokesperson did not have a comment. Teaching foreign languages allows Google to move more fluid, conversational AI beyond silly exchanges to a practical-use but low-stakes case, the people said. Using the wrong tense or phrase would be unlikely to cause serious harm to users. AI researchers have for decades worked to foster dialogue between computers and humans that feels real, picks up the nuance of how people communicate and simplifies tasks. Such aspirational technology has been featured in movies like "Her" in which a man communicates with -- and falls in love with -- a virtual assistant.

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The U.S. and European Union plan to cooperate more on technology regulation, industrial development and bilateral trade following President Biden's visit, in a bid to help Western allies better compete with China and Russia on developing and protecting critical and emerging technologies. From a report: Central to the increased coordination will be a new high-level Trade and Technology Council the two sides unveiled Tuesday. The aim of the TTC is to boost innovation and investment within and between the two allied economies, strengthen supply chains and avert unnecessary obstacles to trade, among other tasks. "You see the possibility for alignment," said European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager in an interview. In a sign of both sides' aspirations for the council, it will be co-chaired on the U.S. side by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai. The EU side will be co-chaired the Ms. Vestager, the bloc's top competition and digital-policy official, and fellow Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis, who handles trade. As the EU's top antitrust enforcer, Ms. Vestager has gained prominence for her cases against U.S. tech giants including Apple, Google parent Alphabet and Facebook. Former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump both said her policies unfairly targeted American companies. Ms. Vestager has said her work doesn't single out any nationality. The TTC, which is slated to hold its first meeting in the fall and oversee many working groups, will allow the EU and U.S. to focus on cooperation, she said. Both sides stressed they would maintain regulatory autonomy within their respective legal systems.

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Thanks to John Naughton for the link to this piece by Walter Vannini that explains how coding is not "fun." It's a good read. One way to experience how much there is to "coding" (a terrible word for what devs do) have a look at a completed piece of code, and see if you can make sense of it. Even someone who knows the language it's written in will have a hard time, unless it's written with readability in mind, and even then, not without a lot of head-scratching. It's not like anything else you've done, and if someone tells you it's fun and easy and interactive, please ask them if they have done it. The answer is no, because no one who has ever completed a piece of software that other people use would say it's anything other than a slog. The rewards can be great, don't get me wrong, but you have to invest a lot of yourself before you get them.

Canadian company General Fusion is set to build a $400m fusion demonstrator near Oxford.

Pie charts and scatter plots seem like ordinary tools, but they revolutionized the way we solve problems. From a report: John Carter has only an hour to decide. The most important auto race of the season is looming; it will be broadcast live on national television and could bring major prize money. If his team wins, it will get a sponsorship deal and a chance to start making some real profits for a change. There's just one problem. In seven of the past twenty-four races, the engine in the Carter Racing car has blown out. An engine failure live on TV will jeopardize sponsorships -- and the driver's life. But withdrawing has consequences, too. The wasted entry fee means finishing the season in debt, and the team won't be happy about the missed opportunity for glory. As Burns's First Law of Racing says, "Nobody ever won a race sitting in the pits." One of the engine mechanics has a hunch about what's causing the blowouts. He thinks that the engine's head gasket might be breaking in cooler weather. To help Carter decide what to do, a graph is devised that shows the conditions during each of the blowouts: the outdoor temperature at the time of the race plotted against the number of breaks in the head gasket. The dots are scattered into a sort of crooked smile across a range of temperatures from about fifty-five degrees to seventy-five degrees. The upcoming race is forecast to be especially cold, just forty degrees, well below anything the cars have experienced before. So: race or withdraw? This case study, based on real data, and devised by a pair of clever business professors, has been shown to students around the world for more than three decades. Most groups presented with the Carter Racing story look at the scattered dots on the graph and decide that the relationship between temperature and engine failure is inconclusive. Almost everyone chooses to race. Almost no one looks at that chart and asks to see the seventeen missing data points -- the data from those races which did not end in engine failure.

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Dilbert readers - Please visit Dilbert.com to read this feature. Due to changes with our feeds, we are now making this RSS feed a link to Dilbert.com.

Industry analysts believe that the global chip shortage is creating the perfect environment for counterfeit semiconductors to enter the market. From a report: With demand looking unlikely to calm down, analyst firm Gartner estimates that the semiconductor shortage will last well into 2022, and has warned equipment manufacturers that wafer orders could come with up to 12 months of lead time in the coming months. For some companies, this will mean finding an alternative way of stocking up on chips or shutting down production lines. In other words, the current times are opening up a golden opportunity for electronic component counterfeiters and fraudsters to step in. "If next week, you need to get 5,000 parts or your line will shut down, you will be in a situation of distress purchase and you will put your guard down," Diganta Das, a researcher in counterfeit electronics at the Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE), tells ZDNet. "You won't keep to your rules of verifying the vendor or going through test processes. This is likely to become a big problem." As part of his research, Das regularly monitors counterfeit reporting databases like ERAI, and although it is too early to notice a surge, he is confident that the number of reports will start growing in the next six months as companies realize they have been sold illegal parts. The problem, of course, is unlikely to affect tech giants whose reliance on semiconductors is such that they have implemented robust supply chains, and will typically only purchase components directly from chip manufacturers. Those at risk rather include low-volume manufacturers whose supply chain for semiconductors is less established -- but it could include companies in sectors that are as critical as defense, healthcare and even automotive.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: By late January 2021, some 55 vessels were crowded around the LA and Long Beach ports, reportedly sitting in the ocean for up to two weeks. FreightWaves noted that it took longer for some of these ships just to get unloaded than it was for them to cross the Pacific. Why is there a delay to unload these ships? The boom in demand is, of course, one leading reason. American ports are also seeing a shortage of labor. There's an ongoing shortage of the longshoremen who who undertake the critical task of getting these containers off the ship and onto trucks or trains. Dozens were quarantined due to the coronavirus at varying points last year. Above all, when something goes astray with ocean shipping, there's a major butterfly effect. A ship that's unloaded two weeks late in Los Angeles is also going to be two weeks late when it arrives back in, say, Chittagong, Bangladesh to load up on IKEA furniture. The ship before that may have been two weeks late, too, so the carrier might just cancel the ship IKEA was expecting space on, Sundboell said. Then IKEA will have to scramble for another way to move your nightstand -- and potentially every order they had after that, which will now be pushed down the road. Halfway into 2021, the situation has not improved. There's another shortage giving rise to our shortages: A lack of shipping containers. Or rather, a lack of containers where they need to be.

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