Archives 28 August 2024

“Algorithmic price-fixing appears to be spreading to more and more industries,” warns the Atlantic. “And existing laws may not be equipped to stop it.”

They start with RealPage’s rental-property software (pointing out that “a series of lawsuits says it’s something else: an AI-enabled price-fixing conspiracy” and “The lawsuits also argue that RealPage pressures landlords to comply with its pricing suggestions.”) But the most important point is that RealPage isn’t the only company doing this:
Its main competitor, Yardi, is involved in a similar lawsuit. One of RealPage’s subsidiaries, a service called Rainmaker, faces multiple legal challenges for allegedly facilitating price-fixing in the hotel industry. (Yardi and Rainmaker deny wrongdoing.) Similar complaints have been brought against companies in industries as varied as health insurance, tire manufacturing, and meat processing. But winning these cases is proving difficult.

The article notes that “Agreeing to fix prices is punishable with up to 10 years in prison and a $100 million fine.” But it also notes concerns that algorithms could produce price-fixing-like behavior that’s “almost impossible to prosecute under existing antitrust laws. Price-fixing, in other words, has entered the algorithmic age, but the laws designed to prevent it have not kept up.”
Last week, San Francisco passed a first-of-its-kind ordinance banning “both the sale and use of software which combines non-public competitor data to set, recommend or advise on rents and occupancy levels.”

Whether other jurisdictions follow suit remains to be seen.

In the meantime, more and more companies are figuring out ways to use algorithms to set prices. If these really do enable de facto price-fixing, and manage to escape legal scrutiny, the result could be a kind of pricing dystopia in which competition to create better products and lower prices would be replaced by coordination to keep prices high and profits flowing. That would mean permanently higher costs for consumers — like an inflation nightmare that never ends.

A rare bid to break up Alphabet’s Google is one of the options being considered by the Justice Department after a landmark court ruling found that the company monopolized the online search market, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the matter. From the report:
The move would be Washington’s first push to dismantle a company for illegal monopolization since unsuccessful efforts to break up Microsoft two decades ago.

Less severe options include forcing Google to share more data with competitors and measures to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage in AI products, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations. Regardless, the government will likely seek a ban on the type of exclusive contracts that were at the center of its case against Google. If the Justice Department pushes ahead with a breakup plan, the most likely units for divestment are the Android operating system and Google’s web browser Chrome, said the people. Officials are also looking at trying to force a possible sale of AdWords, the platform the company uses to sell text advertising, one of the people said.

A record 15 national heat records have been broken since the start of this year, an influential climate historian has told the Guardian, as weather extremes grow more frequent and climate breakdown intensifies. An additional 130 monthly national temperature records have also been broken, along with tens of thousands of local highs registered at monitoring stations from the Arctic to the South Pacific, according to Maximiliano Herrera, who keeps an archive of extreme events.

He said the unprecedented number of records in the first six months was astonishing. “This amount of extreme heat events is beyond anything ever seen or even thought possible before,” he said. “The months from February 2024 to July 2024 have been the most record-breaking for every statistic.” This is alarming because last year’s extreme heat could be largely attributed to a combination of man-made global heating — caused by burning gas, oil, coal and trees — and a natural El Nino phenomenon, a warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean surface that is associated with higher temperatures in many parts of the world. The El Nino has been fading since February of this year, but this has brought little relief.

“Far from dwindling with the end of El Nino, records are falling at even much faster pace now compared to late 2023,” said Herrera. New ground is broken every day at a local level. On some days, thousands of monitoring stations set new records of monthly maximums or minimums. The latter is particularly punishing as high night-time temperatures mean people and ecosystems have no time to recover from the relentless heat. In late July, for example, China’s Yueyang region sweltered though an unprecedentedly elevated low of 32C during its dark hours, with dangerously high humidity.

Google’s master software for some Android phones includes a hidden feature that is insecure and could be activated to allow remote control or spying on users, according to a security company that found it inside phones at a U.S. intelligence contractor. From a report:
The feature appears intended to give employees at stores selling Pixel phones and other models deep access to the devices so they can demonstrate how they work, according to researchers at iVerify who shared their findings with The Washington Post. The discovery and Google’s lack of explanation alarmed the intelligence contractor, data analysis platform vendor Palantir Technologies, to the extent that it has stopped issuing Android phones to employees, Palantir told The Post.

“Mobile security is a very real concern for us, given where we’re operating and who we’re serving,” Palantir Chief Information Security Officer Dane Stuckey said. “This was very deleterious of trust, to have third-party, unvetted insecure software on it. We have no idea how it got there, so we made the decision to effectively ban Androids internally.” The security company said it contacted Google about its findings more than 90 days ago and that the tech giant has not indicated whether it would remove or fix the application. On Wednesday night, Google told The Post that it would issue an update to remove the application. “Out of an abundance of precaution, we will be removing this from all supported in-market Pixel devices with an upcoming Pixel software update,” said company spokesperson Ed Fernandez. He said distributors of other Android phones would also be notified.

“The post you are seeing now is of a poor man that is being used to generate revenue,” he says in Hindi, pointing with his pen to an image of a skeletal elderly man hunched over being eaten by hundreds of bugs. “The Indian audience is very emotional. After seeing photos like this, they Like, Comment and share them. So you too should create a page like this, upload photos and make money through Performance bonus.”

Data center construction “could delay California’s transition away from fossil fuels and raise electric bills for everyone else,” warns the Los Angeles Times — and also increase the risk of blackouts:
Even now, California is at the verge of not having enough power. An analysis of public data by the nonprofit GridClue ranks California 49th of the 50 states in resilience — or the ability to avoid blackouts by having more electricity available than homes and businesses need at peak hours… The state has already extended the lives of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant as well as some natural gas-fueled plants in an attempt to avoid blackouts on sweltering days when power use surges… “I’m just surprised that the state isn’t tracking this, with so much attention on power and water use here in California,” said Shaolei Ren, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside. Ren and his colleagues calculated that the global use of AI could require as much fresh water in 2027 as that now used by four to six countries the size of Denmark.

Driving the data center construction is money. Today’s stock market rewards companies that say they are investing in AI. Electric utilities profit as power use rises. And local governments benefit from the property taxes paid by data centers.

The article notes a Goldman Sachs estimate that by 2030, data centers could consume up to 11% of all U.S. power demand — up from 3% now. And it shows how the sprawling build-out of data centers across America is impacting surrounding communities:

The article notes that California’s biggest concentration of data centers — more than 50 near the Silicon Valley city of Santa Clara — are powered by a utility emitting “more greenhouse gas than the average California electric utility because 23% of its power for commercial customers comes from gas-fired plants. Another 35% is purchased on the open market where the electricity’s origin can’t be traced.” Consumer electric rates are rising “as the municipal utility spends heavily on transmission lines and other infrastructure,” while the data centers now consume 60% of the city’s electricity.

Energy officials in northern Virginia “have proposed a transmission line to shore up the grid that would depend on coal plants that had been expected to be shuttered.”

In 2022 an Oregon newspaper discovered Google data centers were consuming 29% of one city’s water supply.

“Earlier this year, Pacific Gas & Electric told investors that its customers have proposed more than two dozen data centers, requiring 3.5 gigawatts of power — the output of three new nuclear reactors.”

The tech review world has been full of murky deals between companies and influencers for years, but it appears Google finally crossed a line with the Pixel 9. The company’s invite-only Team Pixel program — which seeds Pixel products to influencers before public availability — stipulated that participating influencers were not allowed to feature Pixel products alongside competitors, and those who showed a preference for competing phones risked being kicked out of the program. For those hoping to break into the world of tech reviews, the new terms meant having to choose between keeping access or keeping their integrity.

The Verge has independently confirmed screenshots of the clause in this year’s Team Pixel agreement for the new Pixel phones, which various influencers began posting on X and Threads last night. The agreement tells participants they’re “expected to feature the Google Pixel device in place of any competitor mobile devices.” It also notes that “if it appears other brands are being preferred over the Pixel, we will need to cease the relationship between the brand and the creator.” The link to the form appears to have since been shut down.

Recall is a Windows service that runs in the background on compatible PCs, continuously taking screenshots of user activity, scanning those screenshots with optical character recognition (OCR), and saving the OCR text and the screenshots to a giant searchable database on your PC. The goal, according to Microsoft, is to help users retrace their steps and dig up information about things they had used their PCs to find or do in the past.

Google has reached a groundbreaking deal with California lawmakers to contribute millions to local newsrooms, aiming to support journalism amid its decline as readers migrate online and advertising dollars evaporate. The agreement also includes a controversial provision for artificial intelligence funding. Politico reports:
California emulated a strategy that other countries like Canada have used to try and reverse the journalism industry’s decline as readership migrated online and advertising dollars evaporated. […] Under the deal, the details of which were first reported by POLITICO on Monday, Google and the state of California would jointly contribute a minimum of $125 million over five years to support local newsrooms through a nonprofit public charity housed at UC Berkeley’s journalism school. Google would contribute at least $55 million, and state officials would kick in at least $70 million. The search giant would also commit $50 million over five years to unspecified “existing journalism programs.”

The deal would also steer millions in tax-exempt private dollars toward an artificial intelligence initiative that people familiar with the negotiations described as an effort to cultivate tech industry buy-in. Funding for artificial intelligence was not included in the bill at the core of negotiations, authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks. The agreement has drawn criticism from a journalists’ union that had so far championed Wicks’ effort. Media Guild of the West President Matt Pearce in an email to union members Sunday evening said such a deal would entrench “Google’s monopoly power over our newsrooms.”
“This public-private partnership builds on our long history of working with journalism and the local news ecosystem in our home state, while developing a national center of excellence on AI policy,” said Kent Walker, chief legal officer for Alphabet, the parent company of Google.

Media Guild of the West President Matt Pearce wasn’t so chipper. He criticized the plan in emails with union members, calling it a “total rout of the state’s attempts to check Google’s stranglehold over our newsrooms.”

Studies have detected tiny shards and specks of plastics in human lungs, placentas, reproductive organs, livers, kidneys, knee and elbow joints, blood vessels and bone marrow. Given the research findings, “it is now imperative to declare a global emergency” to deal with plastic pollution, said Sedat Gundogdu, who studies microplastics at Cukurova University in Turkey. Humans are exposed to microplastics — defined as fragments smaller than 5mm in diameter — and the chemicals used to make plastics from widespread plastic pollution in air, water and even food.

The health hazards of microplastics within the human body are not yet well-known. Recent studies are just beginning to suggest they could increase the risk of various conditions such as oxidative stress, which can lead to cell damage and inflammation, as well as cardiovascular disease. Animal studies have also linked microplastics to fertility issues, various cancers, a disrupted endocrine and immune system, and impaired learning and memory.

To build the massive datacenters generative AI requires, major companies like Amazon and Microsoft “are going nuclear,” reports CIO magazine. AWS:
Earlier this year, AWS paid $650 million to purchase Talen Energy’s Cumulus Data Assets, a 960-megawatt nuclear-powered data center on site at Talen’s Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, nuclear plant, with additional data centers planned — pending approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency… In addition to its purchase of the Cumulus data center, AWS will have access to nuclear energy as part of a 10-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) from the Susquehanna site.

Microsoft:
Last year, Constellation signed a deal giving Microsoft the rights to receive up to 35% of its power from nuclear sources in addition to its existing solar and wind purchases from Constellation for Microsoft’s Boydton, Va., data center. Microsoft has also signed a nuclear carbon credits deal with Ontario Power Generation for its operations in Canada.

The broader industry:
Many of the deals under discussion are with existing nuclear power providers for hyperscalars [large-scale datacenters] to access energy or to employ small module nuclear reactors (SMRs) with smaller carbon footprints that will be annexed to existing nuclear power plants. Nucor, Oklo, Rolls-Royce SMR, Westinghouse Electric, Moltex Energy, Terrestrial Energy, General Electric, Hitachi Nuclear Energy, and X-energy are among the roster of companies with SMRs under development to meet the growing needs of AI data centers…

One energy analyst does not expect nuclear SMRs to be operational until 2030, yet he and many others acknowledge the need for sustainable, carbon-free alternatives to electricity, wind, and solar is very pressing. “Today’s electric grids are struggling to keep up with demand, even as datacenter companies are planning huge new additions to their fleets to power generative AI applications. As a result, companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are increasingly taking matters into their own hands and getting creative. They are now looking at on-site nuclear-based SMRs, and even fusion reactors,” says Peter Kelly-Detwiler, principal of Northbridge Energy Partners. “This global arms race for power arose pretty quickly, and it’s like nothing we have ever seen before.”

In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed regret for not being more vocal about “government pressure” to censor COVID-19-related content. He also acknowledged that Meta shouldn’t have demoted a New York Post story about President Biden’s family before the 2020 election. The Hill reports:
Zuckerberg said senior Biden administration officials “repeatedly pressured” Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to “censor” content in 2021. “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken,” he wrote to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). “Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction — and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” Zuckerberg added.

The Meta CEO also said the company “shouldn’t have demoted” a New York Post story about corruption allegations involving President Biden’s family ahead of the 2020 election while waiting for fact-checkers to review it. The social media company has since updated its policies and processes, including no longer demoting content in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers, he noted. Zuckerberg also said in Monday’s letter that he does not plan to make contributions to local jurisdictions to support election infrastructure this cycle, like he did during the 2020 election.

The contributions, which were “designed to be non-partisan,” were accused of being unfairly distributed between left-leaning and right-leaning areas and labeled “Zuckerbucks” by Republicans. “Still, despite the analyses I’ve seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other,” Zuckerberg said. “My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role.”
House Judiciary Republicans touted the letter as a “big win for free speech,” writing on X: “Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things: 1. Biden-Harris Admin ‘pressured’ Facebook to censor Americans. 2. Facebook censored Americans. 3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

“Mark Zuckerberg also tells the Judiciary Committee that he won’t spend money this election cycle. That’s right, no more Zuck-bucks. Huge win for election integrity,” it added.

People in a quiet neighborhood in Carthage, a town in Moore County, North Carolina, heard a series of six loud pops a few minutes before 8:00 p.m. on Dec. 3, 2022. A resident named Michael Campbell said he ducked at the sound. Another witness told police they thought they were hearing fireworks. The noise turned out to be someone shooting a rifle at a power substation next door to Campbell’s home. The substation, operated by the utility Duke Energy Corp., consists of equipment that converts electricity into different voltages as it’s transported to the area and then steered into individual houses. The shots hit the radiator of an electrical transformer, a sensitive piece of technology whose importance would likely be understood only by utility company employees. It began dumping a “vast amount” of oil, according to police reports. A subsequent investigation has pointed to a local right-wing group, one of a wave of attacks or planned attacks on power infrastructure.

By 8:10 the lights in Carthage went out. Minutes later, a security alarm went off at a Duke Energy substation 10 miles away, this one protected from view by large pine trees. When company personnel responded, they found that someone had shot its transformer radiator, too. Police found shell casings on the ground at the site and noticed someone had slashed the tires on nearby service trucks. The substations were designed to support each other, with one capable of maintaining service if the other went down. Knocking out both facilities prevented the company from rerouting power. Police described the two incidents as a coordinated attack. About 45,000 families and businesses remained dark for four days. This was a burden for area grocery stores and local emergency services. One woman, 87-year-old Karin Zoanelli, died in the hours after the shooting when the blackout caused her oxygen machine to stop operating. The North Carolina Medical Examiner’s office classified the death as a homicide.

The attack on Duke’s facilities in Moore County remains unsolved, but law enforcement officials and other experts suspect it’s part of a rising trend of far-right extremists targeting power infrastructure in an attempt to sow chaos. The most ambitious of these saboteurs hope to usher in societal collapse, paving the way for the violent overthrow of the US government, according to researchers who monitor far-right communities. Damaging the power grid has long been a fixation of right-wing extremists, who have plotted such attacks for many years. They’ve been getting a boost recently from online venues such as “Terrorgram,” a loose network of channels on the social media platform Telegram where users across the globe advocate violent white supremacism. In part, people use Terrorgram to egg one another on — a viral meme shows a stick figure throwing a Molotov cocktail at electrical equipment. People on the forum have also seized on recent anti-immigration riots in the UK, inciting people there to clash with police. In June 2022, months before the Moore County shootings, users on the forum began offering more practical support in the form of a 261-page document titled “Hard Reset,” which includes specific directions on how to use automatic weapons, explosives and mylar balloons to disrupt electricity. One of the document’s suggestions is to shoot high-powered firearms at substation transformers.