Anthony Levandowski, former Google engineer and a pioneer of self-driving car tech, agreed to plead guilty Thursday to stealing trade secrets from the internet giant. CNET reports: Levandowski left Google in 2016 to start his own self-driving truck company, which was quickly acquired by Uber for $680 million. These actions set off a chain of events that led to Google's autonomous vehicle unit, Waymo, suing Uber over alleged theft of self-driving car trade secrets. That lawsuit settled in February 2018 with Uber agreeing to pay Waymo $245 million. The prosecutors indicted Levandowski in August in a suit that involves 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets from Google. The activities allegedly took place as he prepared to leave the search giant to build out Uber's self-driving car operation.

Levandowski pleaded guilty to one count of trade secret theft in an agreement in which federal prosecutors agree to drop the remaining charges, according to a filing with the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California. The plea carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000. "I downloaded these files with the intent to use them for my own personal benefit, and I understand that I was not authorized to take the files for this purpose," Levandowski said in the filing. No sentencing date has yet been scheduled.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Repair specialist iFixit is building a database filled with repair information for the world's hospital equipment in anticipation of the increased demand caused by COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. In particular, it's calling for repair manuals for ventilators and BiPAP machines that can be used as ventilators. iFixit's database can be found here, and the company is calling for people to create new device pages and upload photographs and manuals.

There are currently few sources for repair manuals online. iFixit notes that resources like Frank's Hospital Workshop exist, but these are relatively small operations. Some manufacturers provide easy access to repair manuals on their websites, but others make them harder to find. There are a few different parts to iFixit's campaign beyond assembling a collection of manuals. Once it's got a manual, the company wants to format its information to make it as easy to understand as possible. It plans to break the manuals down into guides for individual repairs, to reformat them to make them more SEO-friendly, and to translate them into other languages. iFixit also wants to put together preventive maintenance guides so technicians can work to keep their equipment in good working order before it reaches the point of breaking down. iFixit is also asking people in the medical community "to provide information about which ventilators are currently in use as well as which parts are most likely to break," the report adds. If you have any manuals to contribute, you can upload them to iFixit directly or email the company.

Russian hacker group Digital Revolution claims to have breached a contractor for the FSB -- Russia's national intelligence service -- and discovered details about a project intended for hacking Internet of Things (IoT) devices. From a report: The group published this week 12 technical documents, diagrams, and code fragments for a project called "Fronton." ZDNet has not seen the documents first hand since they are still password-protected; however, the hackers provided the files to BBC Russia earlier this week. According to screenshots shared by the hacker group, which ZDNet asked security researchers to analyze, and based on BBC Russia's report from earlier this week, we believe the Fronton project describes the basics of building an IoT botnet. The technical Fronton documents were put together following a procurement order placed by one of the FSB's internal departments, unit No. 64829, which is also known as the FSB Information Security Center.

Amazon's Prime Video, the world's second-largest streaming service, is set to join YouTube and Netflix in reducing the speed of its streams across Europe to make sure broadband networks can handle the surge in usage as millions are confined to their homes. From a report: It is understood that the BBC is discussing whether to implement similar temporary measures for the iPlayer, which has the largest UK audience of any streaming service, along with Disney+, which launches across most of western Europe and the UK next week. An Amazon Prime Video spokesman said: "We support the need for careful management of telecom services to ensure they can handle the increased internet demand, with so many people now at home full-time due to Covid-19. Prime Video is working with local authorities and internet service providers where needed to help mitigate any network congestion, including in Europe, where we've already begun the effort to reduce streaming bitrates while maintaining a quality streaming experience for our customers."

The 2020 spring edition of the Pwn2Own hacking contest has come to a close today. This year's winner is Team Fluoroacetate -- made up of security researchers Amat Cama and Richard Zhu -- who won the contest after accumulating nine points across the two-day competition, which was just enough to extend their dominance and win their fourth tournament in a row. From a report: But this year's edition was a notable event for another reason. While the spring edition of the Pwn2Own hacking contest takes place at the CanSecWest cyber-security conference, held each spring in Vancouver, Canada, this year was different. Due to the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak and travel restrictions imposed in many countries around the globe, many security researchers couldn't attend or weren't willing to travel to Vancouver and potentially put their health at risk. Instead, this year's Pwn2Own edition has become the first-ever hacking contest that has been hosted in a virtual setting. Participants sent exploits to Pwn2Own organizers in advance, who ran the code during a live stream with all participants present. During the competition's two-day schedule, six teams managed to hack apps and operating systems like Windows, macOS, Ubuntu, Safari, Adobe Reader, and Oracle VirtualBox. All bugs exploited during the contest were immediately reported to their respective companies.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Two years ago, the eCascadia [the electric version of the Freightliner Cascadia] was nothing more than a PowerPoint presentation -- a virtual rendering to expedite a diesel stalwart into a zero-emissions future for goods movement. Now it's one of several competing models, from start-ups as well as established truck makers, that are gearing up for production next year with real-world testing. Orders have poured in, from companies eager to shave operating costs and curb emissions, for trucks that won't see roads for months or even years. Volvo Trucks North America announced this year that it would test 23 of its VNR battery-electric heavy-duty trucks in and out of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The Washington-based truck maker Kenworth is already there, operating the beginnings of Project Portal, a 10-truck fleet of semis powered with hydrogen fuel cells. And Daimler Trucks North America is making deliveries in 20 of its preproduction eCascadias with two partner companies, Penske Truck Leasing and NFI.

Medium- and heavy-duty trucks are responsible for about 8 percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Electrics not only reduce tailpipe emissions to zero, they cost less to operate. With fewer moving parts, they are also easier to maintain. On average, it costs about $1.38 per mile to operate a diesel truck, according to the trucking information website TruckInfo.net; $70,000 of the $180,000 annual operating cost is fuel, and $15,000 goes toward maintenance. Tesla, by comparison, estimates its electric Semi will cost $1.26 per mile. Electric trucks do, however, cost more to buy upfront. While most manufacturers have yet to set pricing, the longer a truck's range, the more batteries it needs and the more it will cost.Tesla plans to sell its 300-mile-range Semi for $150,000 and 500-mile Semi for $180,000. The price of a new diesel tractor and trailer is about $150,000. [...] The electrification of trucking is rolling out in three distinct phases, starting with medium-duty box trucks and vans, followed by heavy-duty semis used for regional hauling, like the ones Volvo, Kenworth and Daimler are testing at Southern California's ports. "With battery vehicles, it comes down to range, because batteries cost money and they add weight," said Jim Mele, an analyst with Wards Intelligence. "Long haul will probably be the last to see electrification because they'll probably need fuel cells to get the range they need, and those are still in development."

Mixed reality startup Magic Leap is trying to tempt potential buyers with a package for people stuck working from home. The Verge reports: The "Collaboration Package" is a 45-day trial of four Magic Leap headsets, plus access to Spatial, a virtual collaboration program. It costs $5,000, with the option to extend the license or send the headsets back afterward. Spatial creates avatars of users based on photos, then lets them hold meetings with these avatars and virtual screens. It isn't exclusive to Magic Leap or mixed reality headsets; the software also works across computers and phones. But headsets can (in some ways) more realistically simulate sharing a room with a distant colleague.

As millions of Americans hunker down to slow the spread of COVID-19, U.S. broadband networks are seeing a significant spike in usage. While industry insiders say that the U.S. internet should be able to handle the strain overall, broadband availability, affordability, and slow speeds could still pose a serious problem for many housebound U.S. residents. From a report: In a blog post, Cloudflare noted that Seattle, ground zero for the U.S. coronavirus spread, has seen internet usage spike by some 40 percent. Key internet exchanges in cities like Amsterdam, London, and Frankfurt have seen a 10 to 20 percent spike in traffic since around March 9. ISPs use a number of modern network technologies to handle congestion in real time, often letting them intelligently and automatically "deprioritize" the traffic of heavy users in overloaded areas. Even then, the massive surge in usage will likely impact U.S. broadband speeds in the weeks and months to come, industry trackers say. Broadband Now, a company that tracks U.S. broadband availability and speed, told Motherboard that six of the biggest U.S. cities by population have seen little to no change in median speed test results from the past 11 weeks.

Razer CEO Ming-Liang Tan announced on Thursday that the company will shift a number of its manufacturing lines from producing its own products to making surgical masks. Polygon reports: As COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, continues to spread around the world, healthcare officials are reporting shortages of essential resources, including surgical masks. Tan said Razer intends donate up to 1 million masks to healthcare providers globally; its first shipments will go to healthcare authorities in Singapore, where Razer's Southeast Asia headquarters is located.

The Razer CEO said designers and engineers have been working "24-hour shifts" to convert the company's production lines. "While there has been incredible demand for our products during this time with many staying home to avoid the crowds (and to play games), the team at Razer understands that all of us have a part to play in fighting the virus -- no matter which industry we come from," Tan said. He added that "emergency conversion" of Razer's manufacturing lines is the first step in the company's plan. "We are committed to contributing our extra time, resources, effort and talent toward the fight against COVID-19," Tan said. Elon Musk said on Twitter that Tesla "would make ventilators if there is a shortage." This prompted New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio to tweet out the plea: "Our country is facing a drastic shortage and we need ventilators ASAP -- we will need thousands in this city over the next few weeks. We're getting them as fast as we can but we could use your help!"

One of the biggest new additions to Apple's new iPad Pro is a new "Light Detection and Ranging" (LIDAR) system on the rear camera, which Apple argued was the missing piece for revolutionary augmented reality applications. "It claims that by combining the depth information from the LIDAR scanner with camera data, motion sensors, and computer vision algorithms, the new iPad Pro will be faster and better at placing AR objects and tracking the location of people," reports The Verge. "But it doesn't change the fact that, right now, there still aren't a lot of compelling reasons to actually use augmented reality apps on a mobile device beyond the cool, tech-demo-y purposes that already exist." From the report: R apps on iOS today are a thing you try out once, marvel at how novel of an idea it is, and move on -- they're not essential parts of how we use our phones. And nearly three years into Apple's push for AR, there's still no killer app that makes the case for why customers -- or developers -- should care. Maybe the LIDAR sensor really is the missing piece of the puzzle. Apple certainly has a few impressive tech demos showing off applications of the LIDAR sensor, like its Apple Arcade Hot Lava game, which can use the data to more quickly and accurately model a living room to generate the gameplay surface. There's a CAD app that can scan and make a 3D model of the room to see how additions will look. Another demo promises accurate determinations of the range of motion of your arm.

The fact that Apple is debuting the iPad for AR doesn't help the case, either. While Apple has been rumored to be working on a proper augmented reality headset or glasses for years -- a kind of product that could make augmented digital overlays a seamless part of your day-to-day life -- the iPad (in 11-inch and 12.9-inch sizes) is effectively the opposite of that idea. It's the same awkwardness of the man who holds up an iPad to film an entire concert; holding a hardcover book-sized display in front of your face for the entire time you're using it just isn't a very natural use case.

It's possible that Apple is just laying the groundwork here, and more portable LIDAR-equipped AR devices (like a new iPhone or even a head-mounted display) are on their way in the future. Maybe the LIDAR sensor is the key to making more immersive, faster, and better augmented apps. Apple might be right, and the next wave of AR apps really will turn the gimmicks into a critical part of day-to-day life. But right now, it's hard not to look at Apple's LIDAR-based AR push as another hardware feature looking for the software to justify it.

A new DirectX badge is going to start showing up on graphics hardware: It's called DirectX 12 Ultimate, and it denotes support for "ALL next generation graphics hardware features," Microsoft announced today. From a report: DirectX is a collection of application programming languages (APIs) that developers use to communicate with your hardware. You can think of it like a conduit between software (especially games) and hardware. Up until now, DX12 was the latest version, supported in Windows 10 (and also in Windows 7 for some games). Now that distinction belongs to DX12 Ultimate. It's not an overhaul of the API, but a culmination of the latest technologies bundled into one. This notably includes DirectX Raytracing (DXR), variable rate shading (VRS), mesh shaders, and sampler feedback.

One of the reasons Microsoft is doing this is to unify experiences across the PC and its upcoming Xbox Series X, which will launch November 26, 2020 (Thanksgiving Day). "These features represent many years of innovation from Microsoft and our partners in the hardware industry. DX12 Ultimate brings them all together in one common bundle, providing developers with a single key to unlock next generation graphics on PC and Xbox Series X," Microsoft explains. The main benefit for gamers is knowing, at a glance, if the graphics card they are about to buy supports all the latest features. Spotting the DX12 Ultimate badge is the key, and I suspect hardware makers will be quick to promote it. Related to that, Microsoft is pitching this as a way of ensuring "future-proof" feature support. There's no such thing as future proofing, of course, but DX12 Ultimate should remain relevant for at least the next couple of years.

Researchers from Intel and Cornell University trained a neuromorphic chip to learn and recognize the scents of 10 hazardous chemicals. Engadget reports: Using Intel's Loihi, a neuromorphic chip, the team designed an algorithm based on the brain's olfactory circuit. When you take a whiff of something, molecules stimulate olfactory cells in your nose. Those cells send signals to the brain's olfactory system, which then fires off electrical pulses. The researchers were able to mimic that circuitry in Loihi's silicon circuits. According to Intel, the chip can identify 10 smells, including acetone, ammonia and methane, even when other strong smells are present. And, Loihi learned each odor with just a single sample. That's especially impressive, the researchers say, because other deep learning techniques can require 3,000 times more training samples to reach the same level of accuracy. The work has been published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: On Wednesday, Twitter updated its safety policy to prohibit tweets that "could place people at a higher risk of transmitting COVID-19." The new policy bans tweets denying expert guidance on the virus, encouraging "fake or ineffective treatments, preventions and diagnostic techniques" as well as tweets that mislead users by pretending to be from health authorities or experts. In its blog post, Twitter says that it will "require people to remove Tweets" in these cases and we've asked the company for more clarification on what that looks like.

Twitter indicated that it will take context like account history into account in making its enforcement determinations, which it says remain unchanged. As far as having users remove offending tweets, according to the company's existing guidance "When we determine that a Tweet violated the Twitter Rules, we require the violator to remove it before they can Tweet again." A user is notified of this via email and given a chance to delete the tweet or make an appeal. While that is happening, the tweet is hidden from view. Under the ruleset, a tweet that claims "social distancing is not effective" would be subject to removal. Twitter will also require users to delete tweets telling followers to do ineffective or dangerous things like drinking bleach, even if the tweet is "made in jest" because that content can prove harmful when taken out of context. Twitter is banning tweets encouraging people to behave in a way counter to what health authorities recommend. The rules will also prohibit users from playing armchair doctor, as well as making coronavirus claims that single out groups of people based on race or nationality.

Netflix is cutting back on the bandwidth it takes to stream videos to members in the European Union after a European Commission member voiced concerns over network strain. From a report: "Following the discussions between Commissioner Thierry Breton and Reed Hastings -- and given the extraordinary challenges raised by the coronavirus -- Netflix has decided to begin reducing bit rates across all our streams in Europe for 30 days," a Netflix spokesperson told Protocol. "We estimate that this will reduce Netflix traffic on European networks by around 25 percent while also ensuring a good quality service for our members."

Microsoft Teams, which launched worldwide in March 2017, passed 32 million daily active users (DAUs) this month. From a report: A week later, thanks in part to COVID-19, usage had spiked to 44 million DAUs. That's up from 20 million daily active users in November, a 60-110% jump in just four months. Microsoft used the product's three-year anniversary to share the new figures and announce new Teams features targeting "underserved professionals, including firstline and health care workers." Teams is the company's Office 365 chat-based collaboration tool that competes with Slack (12 million DAUs as of October), Facebook's Workplace (3 million paid users as of October), and Google's Hangouts Chat (no user number shared). It's also Microsoft's fastest-growing business app ever. But the company has been criticized for how it calculates its DAU figure, so today it shared its methodology.

theodp writes: In a Medium post, tech-backed Code.org explains how it will be supporting our community during school closures, which includes "a major investment in online education without an in-person instructor" and other offerings. From the signup form for Code Break: "With schools closed and tens of millions of students at home, Code.org is launching Code Break -- a live weekly webcast where our team will teach your children [K-12 computer science] at home while school is closed, and a weekly challenge to engage students of all abilities, even those without computers. [...] Computer science is foundational to all fields of study, but since many schools don't offer it yet, this could be a unique chance to support your child in a fun new learning opportunity."

Interestingly, Code.org will be competing with its own corporate donors for homebound kids' attention. Microsoft is offering limited-time free Minecraft: Education Edition licenses as its way "to help teachers and students stay connected to the classroom" during school closures. And Google has come up with a curated list of distance learning resources for schools affected by COVID-19 (think Google Hangouts and Chromebooks), as has Facebook for Education ("If school is closed, Messenger Kids is a way to continue the social interactions the students might have at school"). Amazon is also pitching CS study for homebound kids: "As classrooms across the U.S. experience educational disruption during the pandemic, Amazon Future Engineer will initially provide free access to our sponsored computer science courses in the United States [thru Aug. 31]. These courses are for independent learners from 6th to 12th grade, or teachers who are teaching remotely to this age group."

schwit1 shares a report from IEEE Spectrum: Here on Earth, our lives have been transformed by the Global Positioning System, fleets of satellites operated by the United States and other countries that are used in myriad ways to help people navigate. Down here, GPS is capable of pinpointing locations with accuracy measured in centimeters. Could it help astronauts on lunar voyages? Kar-Ming Cheung and Charles Lee of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California did the math, and concluded that the answer is yes: Signals from existing global navigation satellites near the Earth could be used to guide astronauts in lunar orbit, 385,000 km away. The researchers presented their newest findings at the IEEE Aerospace Conference in Montana this month.

Cheung and Lee plotted the orbits of navigation satellites from the United States's Global Positioning System and two of its counterparts, Europe's Galileo and Russia's GLONASS system -- 81 satellites in all. Most of them have directional antennas transmitting toward Earth's surface, but their signals also radiate into space. Those signals, say the researchers, are strong enough to be read by spacecraft with fairly compact receivers near the moon. Cheung, Lee and their team calculated that a spacecraft in lunar orbit would be able to "see" between five and 13 satellites' signals at any given time -- enough to accurately determine its position in space to within 200 to 300 meters. In computer simulations, they were able to implement various methods for improving the accuracy substantially from there.

The Steam Game Festival is returning for a spring edition starting today, featuring more than 40 indie games you can preview with free-to-play demos. The Verge reports: Geoff Keighley, The Game Awards executive producer and host, first announced the event yesterday on Twitter, saying it was put together to help feature games from indie developers who lost the opportunity to demo their titles at the now-canceled GDC, which was to take place this week in San Francisco. The Steam Game Festival will run from March 18th to March 23rd. The collection features games from a number of the more well-known indie demo day events, many of which participate every year at GDC. That includes Indie MegaBooth and The Mix, as well as smaller events like Day of the Devs and Wings Fund.

Now that Microsoft and Sony have published the technical specifications of their respective next-gen gaming consoles, we can compare them head-to-head to see which one has the edge. While Sony appears to lag behind Microsoft when it comes to specs, the PS5's speedy custom SSD may be its secret weapon. Engadget reports: Sony's lead PlayStation architect, Mark Cerny, finally gave us an in-depth look at the PS5 in a livestream event, in lieu of a major GDC keynote. [...] Cerny confirms that the PlayStation 5's graphics processor will feature 36 compute units and up to 10.28 teraflops worth of compute performance. That's a bit less than the Xbox Series X's 12-teraflop GPU, but realistically you might not see many differences in performance. There are plenty of other system optimizations, like the company's focus on a custom 825GB SSD, that'll be a huge leap over the PlayStation 4. That SSD will push 5.5 gigabytes per second compared to a mere 50 to 100 MB/s, meaning it can fill the system's 16GB of GDDR6 RAM in two seconds. And on the plus side, Sony will let you plug in a standard NVMe SSD to expand storage while Microsoft will rely on specialized 1TB SSD expansion cards.

Cerny was quick to point out that teraflop numbers are a "dangerous" way to measure absolute levels of performance. A teraflop from the PlayStation 5 translates to much more gaming performance than a teraflop from the PlayStation 4, thanks to the new console's more-efficient architecture. Still, it's not exactly unfair to compare the PS5 to the Xbox Series X, since both systems will be based on AMD's CPUs and GPUs. It's interesting to see how Sony and Microsoft devices take advantage of AMD's hardware. The PS5's eight-core Zen 2 CPU will run up to 3.5GHz with variable frequencies, so it can slow down when necessary. The Xbox Series X, meanwhile, will lock its Zen 2 processor at 3.8GHz, and devs can also choose to run their games at 3.6GHz with hyper threading. Sony also chose to use 36 RDNA 2 compute units running at up to 2.23GHz with a variable frequency while Microsoft stuffed its system with 52 compute units running at 1.825GHz. Cerny argues that running fewer cores at a higher frequency rate is more beneficial than running more cores at a lower rate, since it will lead to a speed bump across many GPU tasks.

Sony definitely has the lead with its custom SSD with 5GB/s of raw bandwidth and 8 to 9GB/s of compressed throughput. The Xbox Series X's SSD will be limited to 2.4GB/s of raw data and 4.8GB/s compressed. Again, while the numbers are significantly different, it's unclear how the performance will vary in real-world use. Microsoft also has a slightly higher GDDR6 memory bandwidth -- 10GB at 560GB/s and 6GB at 336GB/s -- than Sony's 448GB/s, which could make up for the slower storage. As for backwards compatibility, Sony announced that the PlayStation 5 will support PS4 and PS4 Pro games, but the company made no mention of retro PS1, PS2, and PS3 titles. Microsoft, on the other hand, stated that the Xbox Series X will support all games playable on the Xbox One, including those Xbox 360 and original Xbox console titles currently supported through backwards compatibility on the Xbox One.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket overcame a rare in-flight engine failure soon after launch from Florida's Space Coast Wednesday to place 60 satellites in orbit for the company's Starlink Internet network. Spaceflight Now reports: One of the rocket's nine first stage engines shut down prematurely around 2 minutes, 22 seconds, after liftoff from pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, an event visible in a view from a camera streaming live video from the Falcon 9 as it climbed into the upper atmosphere. Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, confirmed in a tweet that the Falcon 9 experienced an "early engine shutdown on ascent, but it didn't affect orbit insertion." The rocket's other Merlin engines fired a little longer to compensate for the loss of thrust. The rest of the Falcon 9's climb into orbit appeared to go according to plan, and the upper stage deployed the 60 Starlink satellites into orbit around 15 minutes after liftoff. "Shows value of having 9 engines!" Musk wrote on Twitter.

The first stage missed a landing attempt on SpaceX's drone ship parked in the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Cape Canaveral, the second time SpaceX has missed a rocket landing in the company's last three missions. It was not immediately clear whether the engine shutdown on ascent affected the recovery attempt. Musk promised a "thorough investigation" of Wednesday's early engine shutdown before the next Falcon 9 launch, and it was not immediately clear whether the inquiry might prompt launch delays.