Linked List: February 18, 2021

Thursday, 18 February 2021

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Lands on Mars 

Kenneth Chang, reporting for The New York Times:

NASA safely landed a new robotic rover on Mars on Thursday, beginning its most ambitious effort in decades to directly study whether there was ever life on the now barren red planet.

While the agency has completed other missions to Mars, the $2.7 billion robotic explorer, named Perseverance, carries scientific tools that will bring advanced capabilities to the search for life beyond Earth. The rover, about the size of a car, can use its sophisticated cameras, lasers that can analyze the chemical makeup of Martian rocks and ground-penetrating radar to identify the chemical signatures of fossilized microbial life that may have thrived on Mars when it was a planet full of flowing water.

Great landing, and a great day for science.

More here, from NASA’s own website.

‘Smart’ TVs Track Everything You Watch 

Geoffrey Fowler, writing for The Washington Post back in September 2019:

Lately I’ve been on the hunt for what happens to my data behind the cloak of computer code and privacy policies. So I ran an experiment on my own Internet-connected Samsung, as well as new “smart TV” models from four of the best-selling brands: Samsung, TCL Roku TV, Vizio and LG.

I set up each smart TV as most people do: by tapping “OK” with the remote to each on-screen prompt. Then using software from Princeton University called the IoT Inspector, I watched how each model transmitted data. Lots went flying from streaming apps and their advertising partners. But even when I switched to a live broadcast signal, I could see each TV sending out reports as often as once per second.

When tracking is active, some TVs record and send out everything that crosses the pixels on your screen. It doesn’t matter whether the source is cable, an app, your DVD player or streaming box.

Every damn second. Disconnect your TV from the internet and use a set top box or stick with some degree of privacy you can control. Even if you’re not worried about the privacy angle, it’s just a waste of bandwidth. And even if you’re not that concerned with the bandwidth, per se, it’s just obnoxious. It should bother you on an aesthetic sense alone to have a TV set needlessly phoning home constantly to send analytics that don’t help you at all.

Roku Streaming Devices Default to ‘Scary’ Privacy 

Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included project’s take on Roku:

Roku is the nosey, gossipy neighbor of connected devices. They track just about everything! And then they share that data with way too many people. According to Roku’s privacy policy, they share your personal data with advertisers to show you targeted ads and create profiles about you over time and across different services and devices. Roku also gives advertisers detailed data about your interactions with advertisements, your demographic data, and audience segment. Roku shares viewing data with measurement providers who may target you with ads. Roku may share your personal information with third parties for their own marketing purposes. One of the researchers working on this guide said, “It had such a scary privacy policy, I didn’t even connect it to my TV.” Another researcher referred to Roku as a “privacy nightmare.”

You can opt-out, but they won’t ask you. You have to go look for it, which means most Roku users don’t even know they’re being snooped on this way.

Most (all?) major smart TVs are privacy disasters too. Privacy is probably the main Apple TV advantage I didn’t mention the other day when speculating on why Apple TV even still exists. But even on an Apple TV box, you’re at the mercy of each app you use, and the major streaming services all collect information on everything you do. I mean, how else would their recommendation algorithms work? Or even just picking from where you left off in a movie you paused a day or two ago?

But Roku (and similar boxes, and smart TVs) track you at the system level.

I don’t let my LG TV connect to the internet. I mean why would I, if I don’t use its built-in apps for anything?

Apple TV+ Is Now Available on Google TV 

Jonathan Zepp, writing on the Google Blog:

Starting today, the Apple TV app, including Apple TV+, is now globally available on the new Chromecast with Google TV, with more Google TV devices to come. To access the Apple TV app, navigate to the Apps tab or the apps row in the For you tab.

What’s left on the list of devices where Apple TV could be available but isn’t? Nintendo Switch — but they don’t even have Netflix. What else?

‘Facebook Calls Australia’s Bluff’ 

Casey Newton, writing at Platformer:

On Wednesday morning, the splintering arrived: Google cut a deal with News Corp. that will ensure its services continue to be provided in Australia, and Facebook walked away from the bargaining table and began preventing people from sharing news links from Australian publishers around the world.

I think Facebook basically did the right thing, and Google basically did the wrong thing, even though Google had a much tougher call to make. Today, let’s talk about why the tech giants made the decisions that they did, why Australia’s shakedown is rotten, and what’s likely to happen next.

Calling Australia’s bluff is exactly the right framing. What’s surprising is that Australian government officials (and others around the world, like David Cicilline, chairman of the U.S. House Antitrust Subcommittee), didn’t even see it as a bluff that could be called. The mindset behind this law seemed to be that Australia could demand whatever crazy stuff they wanted (like Facebook being required to pay major news organizations just for links to their articles — which the news organizations themselves would be free to post to their own Facebook accounts) and Facebook and Google would just say “OK, sure.”

‘The Bizarre Reaction to Facebook’s Decision to Get Out of the News Business in Australia’ 

Mike Masnick, writing at Techdirt:

First is the link tax. This is fundamentally against the principles of an open internet. The government saying that you can’t link to a news site unless you pay a tax should be seen as inherently problematic for a long list of reasons. At a most basic level, it’s demanding payment for traffic. […] This is like saying that not only should NBC have to run an advertisement for Techdirt, but it should have to pay me for it. If that seems totally nonsensical, that’s because it is. The link tax makes no sense.

And, most importantly, as any economist will tell you, taxing something doesn’t just bring in revenue, it decreases whatever you tax. This is why we have things like cigarette taxes and pollution taxes. It’s a tool to get less of something. So, in this case, Australia is saying it wants to tax links to news on Facebook, and Facebook responds in the exact way any reasonable economist would predict: it says that’s just not worth it and bans links. That’s not incompatible with democracy. It’s not bringing a country to its knees. The country said “this is how much news links cost” and Facebook said “oh, that’s too expensive, so we’ll stop.”

Contrary to the idea that this is an “attack” on journalism or news in Australia, it’s not. The news still exists in Australia. News companies still have websites. People can still visit those websites.

Facebook’s doing the right thing here. Australia’s law is a bad one — it might as well have been written by Rupert Murdoch himself.