An anonymous reader shares a report: When Facebook hosted an internal competition a few years ago to develop new product ideas, a handful of employees teamed up to build a robot named Max. Shaped like a small, upside-down bowl, Max was designed to be a companion -- a physical device humans could talk to that could detect their mood, according to two people familiar with the hackathon project. The creators gave Max little ears and whiskers so the device would be more fun and approachable, like a cat. Max never evolved beyond the hackathon. But engineers and researchers at the company, now called Meta Platforms, are still grappling with the thorny problem the experimental robot cat was designed to combat: loneliness.

Meta, with a mission to help people connect online, has discovered through internal research that its products can just as easily have an isolating effect. As the company struggles to retain and add users for its already-massive social networks, making sure those people are happy is key to Meta's financial success. Loneliness has come into sharper focus at Meta during the Covid-19 pandemic, as people use its social media apps as alternatives to in-person experiences. Meta has promoted its role as a digital connector, running ads touting its groups and messaging products. "We change the game when we find each other," reads a tagline for one of its recent commercials. But internally, employees are questioning their products' impact on mental health.

Remember when Google threatened to leave Australia if the country implemented a "news media bargaining code" forcing social media platforms to pay news publishers? Wired reports: Google and Facebook did not leave; they paid up, striking deals with news organizations to pay for the content they display on their sites for the first time. The code was formally approved on March 2, 2021... One year after the media code was introduced, Google has 19 content deals with news organizations and Facebook has 11, according to [Australia's communications minister Paul] Fletcher. Now countries around the world are looking at Australia's code as a blueprint of how to subsidize the news and stop the spread of "news deserts" — communities that no longer have a local newspaper.

Canada is expected to propose its own version in March. Media associations in both the U.S. and New Zealand are calling for similar policies. Reports suggest the UK culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, is also planning to require platforms to strike cash-for-content deals.

The international interest has prompted fierce debate about how well Australia's code works.

"We know it works, we can see the evidence," says Fletcher. He points to how the deals are funding journalism in rural areas. Broadcaster The ABC said its deals with Facebook and Google enabled it to hire 50 regional journalists. Google, however, disagrees. It has accused the media code of stifling media diversity by giving media giants a better deal than smaller publishers. "The primary benefactors of such a code would be a small number of incumbent media providers," Google said in a submission to the U.S. Copyright Office, which is currently reviewing its own media laws....

The criticism of Australia's system focuses on its lack of transparency, which means that media companies cannot compare notes on the deals they are offered and there is a lack of clarity on which outlets are entitled to negotiate.... Concerns about the code's flaws are leaking into Canada, where Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party is drafting its own Australia-style legislation. "We're locking down the incumbent publishers, and we're locking down Google and Facebook's dominance as opposed to countering the dominance that exists on both sides," says Dwayne Winseck, journalism professor at Canada's Carleton University.... Yet Canada's news industry is willing to overlook these limitations because it considers the cash as a lifeline, according to Paul Deegan, president and chief executive of News Media Canada.... They are running out of time to save some of the media landscape, he explains — 40 newspapers have closed permanently since the start of the pandemic. "We've got a number of titles and even chains of titles that are quite literally teetering on the brink."

Deegan agrees the code isn't perfect. This is not a magic bullet, he says, "this is a badly needed Band-Aid."

Reuters reports: YouTube on Saturday barred Russian state-owned media outlet RT and other Russian channels from receiving money for advertisements that run with their videos, similar to a move by Facebook, after the invasion of Ukraine.

Citing "extraordinary circumstances," YouTube said in a statement that it was "pausing a number of channels' ability to monetize on YouTube, including several Russian channels affiliated with recent sanctions." Ad placement is largely controlled by YouTube. Videos from the affected channels also will come up less often in recommendations, YouTube spokesperson Farshad Shadloo said.

He added that RT and several other channels would no longer be accessible in Ukraine due to "a government request...." YouTube previously has said that it does not treat state-funded media channels that comply with its rules any differently than other channels when it comes to sharing ad revenue.

Meta Platforms Inc, owner of Facebook, on Friday barred Russian state media from running ads or generating revenue from ads on its services anywhere in the world.
CNN's Ukraine-Russia updates point out that YouTube's actions follow a warning letter to YouTube's parent company Alphabet on Friday by Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner. "Warner said his staff was able to find instances of RT's monetization on YouTube, and that he had alerted the Departments of Justice and Treasury to a report about YouTube allowing sanctioned entities to monetize on YouTube as well. "

Secret recordings of a surveillance firm's presentation show how much iCloud data Apple surrenders to law enforcement with a warrant -- though it's Google and Facebook that can track a suspect to within three feet. Apple Insider reports: PenLink is a little-known firm from Nebraska which earns $20 million annually from helping the US government track criminal suspects. PenLink also sells its services to local law enforcement -- and it's from such a sales presentation that details of iCloud warrants has emerged. According to Forbes, Jack Poulson of the Tech Inquiry watchdog attended the National Sheriff's Association winter conference. While there, he secretly recorded the event.

During the presentation, PenLink's Scott Tuma described how the company works with law enforcement to track users through multiple services, including the "phenomenal" Apple with iCloud. Apple is open about what it does in the event of a suboena from law enforcement. It's specific about how it will not unlock iPhones, for instance, but it will surrender information from iCloud backups that are stored on its servers. "If you did something bad," said Tuma, "I bet you I could find it on that backup." Tuma also says that in his experience, it's been possible to find people's locations through different services, although not through iCloud. "[Google] can get me within three feet of a precise location," he said. "I cannot tell you how many cold cases I've helped work on where this is five, six, seven years old and people need to put [the suspect] at a hit-and-run or it was a sexual assault that took place." It's also possible for law enforcement and firms like PenLink which help them, to get location data from Facebook and Snapchat. [...]

Facebook's parent company Meta said Friday that Russia will hit its services with restrictions after the social media giant refused authorities' order to stop fact-checkers and content warning labels on its platforms. From a report: "Ordinary Russians are using our apps to express themselves and organize for action," Meta's Nick Clegg said in a statement. "We want to continue to make their voices heard."

Ukrainian cybersecurity officials have warned that Belarusian state-sponsored hackers are targeting the private email addresses of Ukrainian military personnel. From a report: Announcing the activity in a Facebook post, Ukraine's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) said that a mass phishing campaign is targeting the private i.ua and meta.ua accounts belonging to Ukrainian military personnel. "After the account is compromised, the attackers, by the IMAP protocol, get access to all the messages," it added. "Later, the attackers use contact details from the victim's address book to send the phishing emails." CERT-UA has attributed the ongoing campaign to the UNC1151 threat group, which Mandiant formally linked to the Belarusian government in November 2021. Mandiant also linked the state-backed cyber-espionage group to the Ghostwriter disinformation campaign, which has been involved in spreading anti-NATO rhetoric and hack-and-leak operations throughout Europe. "The Minsk-based group 'UNC1151' is behind these activities. Its members are officers of the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Belarus," CERT-UA wrote.

Social media users could be cut off from other accounts on platforms such as Twitter if they do not sign up for ID verification, under government proposals to tackle anonymous trolls. From a report: Popular services including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram will be required to give users the option to opt in or opt out from receiving messages, replies and content from unverified or anonymous accounts. Verified users could also block unverified or anonymous accounts from seeing their content under the opt in/opt out proposals. This means people or organisations without verified accounts -- symbolised by a blue tick on Twitter and Instagram -- would be blocked from communicating with, or being seen by, accounts that have opted out from interactions with unverified sources.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said platforms had a number of options for verifying users, including using government-issued ID such as a passport to open an account or using two-factor authentication, where a platform sends a prompt to a user's mobile phone. The new system will be introduced under the online safety bill, which requires tech firms to protect users from harmful content or face the threat of substantial fines imposed by Ofcom, the communications regulator. The culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, said: "Tech firms have a responsibility to stop anonymous trolls polluting their platforms." She added: "People will now have more control over who can contact them and be able to stop the tidal wave of hate served up to them by rogue algorithms."

Facebook parent company Meta Platforms is building a digital voice assistant to help people interact hands-free with physical devices, such as the company's Portal video-calling device and, eventually, augmented-reality glasses. From a report: Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said the company is building the assistant in preparation for the so-called metaverse, a more immersive version of the internet that will let people interact online through virtual and AR glasses. Digital assistants will need to "learn the way humans do" to help users navigate this new online world, Zuckerberg said during a presentation on Wednesday. "When we have glasses on our faces, that will be the first time an AI system will be able to really see the world from our perspective -- see what we see, hear what we hear and more," Zuckerberg added, saying he hopes to eventually build AI assistants that can "move between virtual and physical worlds." The AI assistant doesn't have a name, but Meta is calling the effort "Project CAIRaoke."

Protocol reports that Qualcomm will finally jump on the AV1 video codec bandwagon next year. Ars Technica reports: AV1 is the web's next open, royalty-free video codec, and widespread adoption will require hardware support from the world's chip vendors. Qualcomm's 2022 flagship SoC, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip, doesn't support AV1. Samsung's Exynos 2200 managed to ship the video codec this year in international versions of the Galaxy S22, while the MediaTek Dimensity 1000 SoC has been shipping in phones for over a year now with AV1 support. Apple is a founding member of the AV1 Alliance, but its devices also don't support the codec yet.

The report says Qualcomm's "upcoming flagship Snapdragon mobile processor" -- model number "SM8550" -- will support AV1. That would probably be called the "Snapdragon 8 Gen 2" SoC, due out in 2023. Wide adoption of AV1 seems inevitable, though it is taking a while. The codec is a successor to Google's VP8 and VP9 codecs and is being built by the Alliance for Open Media. The alliance's lineup is a who's who of tech companies, with founding members like Amazon, Apple, ARM, Facebook, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, Nvidia, and Samsung. Netflix and Google's YouTube are both making AV1 support "a requirement" for future products that want to support either video service. That should motivate just about every hardware and software vendor out there to get the job done. Aside from being open source and royalty-free, the report notes that the newer AV1 codec also has the benefit of being 30% more efficient than H.265.

Facebook is under renewed scrutiny, accused of continuing to allow activists to incite ethnic massacres in Ethiopia's escalating war. From a report: Analysis by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) and the Observer found Facebook is still letting users post content inciting violence through hate and misinformation. This is despite being aware it helps directly fuel tensions, prompting claims of inaction and indifference against the social media giant. The investigation tracked down relatives who have linked Facebook posts to the killings of loved ones. One senior member of Ethiopia's media accused the firm of "standing by and watching the country fall apart." The accusations arrive amid intensifying focus on Facebook's content moderation decisions, with it previously being accused of playing a role in the ethnic persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar.

theodp writes: Tech-bankrolled nonprofit Code.org is inviting kids to join the Coldplay Dance Party, explaining in a Medium post that "we've teamed up with award-winning band Coldplay to launch a global campaign that celebrates music and computer science." Teachers and students are encouraged to "share your creations for Code.org and Coldplay to see!" on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, although a footnote warns: "In most countries, use of social media is not permitted for underage students [Dance Party targets kindergarten thru high school students]. Do not post videos or photos of students without the permission of a parent or guardian." From the announcement: "Coldplay and Code.org believe in the power of computer science education for every student, in every classroom around the world. That's why we're teaming up to inspire students everywhere to code and dance [YouTube] -- let's celebrate the magic of computer science and music! Join the party by using Code.org's Dance Party activity to code your own choreography to Coldplay's "Higher Power." Get creative with classic moves, and have fun with new album-inspired visuals and dancer formations! Post or submit your creations for Coldplay and Code.org to see, and we'll share the best ones on social media [GitHub]. Plus, you'll get a chance to win tickets to see Coldplay on tour, or a chance for your classroom to video chat with the band." "This is a new creative way to continue introducing people to play with and dance around the practice of programming," Google AI Chief Jeff Dean tweeted to his 200K+ Twitter followers. "Since it launched in 2018 [in partnership with Amazon]," Code.org exclaimed in its Medium post, "Dance Party has engaged more than 5.7 million students!"

Slashdot reader McGruber shares a scathing column from New York magazine arguing that "There has never been a self-immolation quite like Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg's social-media company has lost more than half a trillion dollars in market value since its August peak — about half of that vaporized in a single day, the biggest drop ever — as it starts to weaken from the constant siege of competitors and dissenters without and within.

"The fallout is so bad that Meta, once the sixth-largest company in the world by market capitalization, has fallen out of the top ten, replaced by two computer-chip makers, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, and the Chinese e-commerce company Tencent..."

They're calling it "an ignominious fall from a rarefied group of world-dominating companies." Facebook's once unbeatable ad-tracking system — the engine that made it a more than $1 trillion company — has effectively been neutralized by the likes of Apple, which allows users to block the company's trackers. (Google is set to start phasing in similar protections to its users over the next two years.) Facebook's user base has started to shrink after revelations by whistleblowers and leaks that showed how harmful social media could be to teen users, who are flocking to less toxic competitors like TikTok anyway. And Zuckerberg — clearly bored with the company he founded 18 years ago — has shifted his vision into an immersive version of the internet, complete with headsets and digital avatars, that he calls the metaverse, an ambition that sets up Facebook's competition not with another Silicon Valley company but with reality itself....

Apple and Google have decided they're going to allow their users to disable code that tracks people across the internet, which happens to be good for their business model. According to The Wall Street Journal, the fallout has been so severe that advertisers are shifting their entire ad budgets to Google since Facebook is no longer profitable.
The article's final point is that in the middle of all this, Zuckerberg has committed the company to a "metaverse" future — even though Wall Street investors seem almost unanimously unconvinced.

"Clearly, Zuckerberg has plenty of money to burn on his ambitions, but what's less clear is if he'll be able to bring back the armies of people who once believed in his ability to conquer the world."

It's the 25th anniversary of Slate.com, and writer William Saletan reflects on the last quarter century. "Print magazines that scorned internet journalism collapsed or faded (it's hard to believe now, but in the '90s, people thought your article wasn't real if it wasn't on paper), while new websites popped up to challenge us. In the struggle for survival, many outlets withered and died. But Slate adapted and grew..."

But he also shares what worries him now about the online world we're living in: I don't see people learning from, or even recognizing, their mistakes. I see them caricaturing and gloating over the mistakes of others. In the old days, there was a lot of hope that the information age would make us smarter. It didn't. Instead, high-speed communication, combined with algorithms that discern our biases and feed us what we want, helped us sort ourselves into echo chambers. On Twitter, Facebook, Slack, and other platforms, we've formed like-minded battalions that quickly spot the other side's sins and falsehoods but are largely blind to our own.

I don't mean to suggest that tribalism is new or that it's always political. In the late '90s, when Microsoft was on trial for antitrust violations, Slate's top editors — all of whom drew Microsoft paychecks and had Microsoft stock options — were almost comically unanimous in their motivated reasoning. Their politics ranged from progressive to neoliberal to libertarian, but their behavior was essentially identical: They summoned all of their intellectual power, which was prodigious, and used it to poke holes in the antitrust case — in effect, to defend Microsoft.
Saletan argues that while the internet makes it easy to venture out from a "bubble" of viewpoints, too many idealists "insulated themselves from engagement with fundamentally opposing views...."

"So that's what I've learned in my time here: seek out other perspectives, study your failures, and try to become wiser every day."

The Washington Post reports: Google announced it will begin the process of getting rid of long-standing ad trackers on its Android operating system, upending how advertising and data-collection work on phones and tablets used by more than 2.5 billion people around the world.

Right now, Google assigns special IDs to each Android device, allowing advertisers to build profiles of what people do on their phones and serve them highly targeted ads. Google will begin testing alternatives to those IDs this year and eventually remove them completely, the company said in a Wednesday blog post. Google said the changes will improve privacy for Android users, limiting the massive amounts of data that app developers collect from people using the platform.

But the move also could give Google even more power over digital advertising, and is likely to deepen concerns regulators have already expressed about the company's competitive practices... It made $61 billion in advertising revenue in the fourth quarter of 2021 alone....

The announcement comes over a year after Apple began blocking trackers on its own operating system, which runs on its iPhones, giving customers more tools to limit the data they share with app developers.... Google contrasted its plan with Apple's, saying it would make the changes over the next two years, working closely with app developers and the advertising industry to craft new ways of targeting ads and measuring their effectiveness before making any drastic changes.

"We realize that other platforms have taken a different approach to ads privacy, bluntly restricting existing technologies used by developers and advertisers," said Anthony Chavez, vice president of product management for Android security and privacy, in the blog post. "We believe that without first providing a privacy-preserving alternative path such approaches can be ineffective and lead to worse outcomes for user privacy and developer businesses."
The Post also includes this quote from the chief security office of Mozilla (which began restricting ad tracking in Firefox several years ago). "Google's two year plan is too long. People deserve better privacy now."

Since being rolled out to users in the U.S. and Canada, Meta's social VR platform for the Quest headset, Horizon Worlds, has grown its monthly user base by a factor of 10x to 300,000 people. "Meta spokesperson Joe Osborne confirmed the stat and said it included users of Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues, a separate app for attending live events in VR that uses the same avatars and basic mechanics," reports The Verge. "The number doesn't include Horizon Workrooms, a VR conferencing experience that relies on an invite system." From the report: Before its December rollout, Horizon Worlds was in a private beta for creators to test its world-building tools. Similarly to how the gaming platform Roblox or Microsoft's Minecraft works, Horizon Worlds lets people build custom environments to hang out and play games in as legless avatars. Meta announced this week that 10,000 separate worlds have been built in Horizon Worlds to date, and its private Facebook group for creators now numbers over 20,000 members.

Meta still hasn't disclosed how many Quest headsets it has sold to date, which makes it hard to gauge Horizon's success relative to the underlying hardware platform it runs on. But several third-party estimates peg sales at over 10 million for the Quest. Zuckerberg recently said that Meta would release a version of Horizon for mobile phones later this year to "bring early metaverse experiences to more surfaces beyond VR."

"So while the deepest and most immersive experiences are going to be in virtual reality, you're also going to be able to access the worlds from your Facebook or Instagram apps as well, and probably more over time," the CEO said on Meta's last earnings call. Bringing Horizon to mobile would position it as even more of a competitor to Rec Room, a well-funded, social gaming app with 37 million monthly users across gaming consoles, mobile phones, and VR.

Microsoft last month received a US patent covering modifications to a data-encoding technique called rANS, one of several variants in the Asymmetric Numeral System (ANS) family that support data compression schemes used by leading technology companies and open source projects. The Register reports: The creator of ANS, Jaroslaw Duda, assistant professor at Institute of Computer Science at Jagiellonian University in Poland, has been trying for years to keep ANS patent-free and available for public use. Back in 2018, Duda's lobbying helped convince Google to abandon its ANS-related patent claim in the US and Europe. And he raised the alarm last year when he learned Microsoft had applied for an rANS (range asymmetric number system) patent.

Now that Microsoft's patent application has been granted, he fears the utility of ANS will be diminished, as software developers try to steer clear of a potential infringement claim. "I don't know what to do with it -- [Microsoft's patent] looks like just the description of the standard algorithm," he told The Register in an email. The algorithm is used in JPEG XL and CRAM, as well as open source projects run by Facebook (Meta), Nvidia, and others. "This rANS variant is [for example] used in JPEG XL, which is practically finished (frozen bitstream) and [is] gaining support," Duda told The Register last year. "It provides ~3x better compression than JPEG at similar computational cost, compatibility with JPEG, progressive decoding, missing features like HDR, alpha, lossless, animations. "There is a large team, mostly from Google, behind it. After nearly 30 years, it should finally replace the 1992 JPEG for photos and images, starting with Chrome, Android."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has confirmed to TechCrunch that Jeren A. Miles, who had been a manager of global community development, is no longer employed by the company after a video went viral on YouTube, which was then reposted on Reddit and other sites, featuring him in a sting operation conducted by amateurs with the intent of catching paedophiles.

The two-hour video, posted by an amateur group called PCI Predator Catchers Indianapolis on its YouTube page, does not depict Miles caught in any sex act, nor admitting to any specific sex act, nor admitting to intending to carry out any sex act. And it is not clear what the legal ramifications of this will be, if any. But it does feature two people questioning Miles, who in the course of the interrogation admits to having graphic and inappropriate communications with a 13-year-old boy. It's a damning enough exchange that Miles has subsequently deleted his social profiles on sites like Facebook and Twitter, and -- whether he was fired or resigned voluntarily -- Miles has left his role at Facebook over the matter. "The seriousness of these allegations cannot be overstated. The individual is no longer employed with the company. We are actively investigating this situation and cannot provide further comment at this time," said a statement from a Meta spokesperson.

Mark Zuckerberg showed off a cartoon version of himself in a virtual world at an event in October as he outlined the company's new focus for the next decade. Zuckerberg demonstrated a bunch of things his virtual avatar could do. But one thing that is still far beyond the capabilities of Meta's current virtual reality is rendering and handling legs or feet. CNN: Meta has been considering for years how to make avatars more realistic. In an Instagram AMA (Ask Me Anything) session earlier last week, Andrew Bosworth, Meta's VP of Reality Labs and incoming CTO, acknowledged the difficulty of the task while saying the company is considering how to solve it. "Tracking your own legs accurately is super hard and basically not workable just from a physics standpoint with existing headsets," Bosworth said.

Companies can track a person's upper body reasonably well with a headset and controllers, but actual leg tracking is practically non-existent in virtual reality right now -- at least when it comes to the kind of VR you're likely to use in your living room. Some apps, such as VRChat, do let people have full-body avatars, but they tend to use software to approximate lower-body motions; it can be silly-looking at best and disconcerting (or even sickening) at worst. Despite all the progress made in perfecting the technology behind VR headsets in recent years, it's still tricky to perfectly track your legs in real life and recreate the same movements in VR without setting up an array of sensors on or around your body. Still, several VR experts told CNN Business they think it's important to bring legs into virtual spaces.

If you live in New York and drive a loud car, you could receive a notice from the city's Department of Environmental Protection telling you your car is too loud. Not because a police officer caught your noisy car, but because a computer did. Road & Track reports: A photo of an official order from the New York City DEP was published to Facebook by a page called Lowered Congress on Monday, directed at a BMW M3 that may have been a bit too loud. The notice reads as follows: "I am writing to you because your vehicle has been identified as having a muffler that is not in compliance with Section 386 of the Vehicle and Traffic Law, which prohibits excessive noise from motor vehicles. Your vehicle was recorded by a camera that takes a pictures of the vehicle and the license plate. In addition, a sound meter records the decibel level as the vehicle approaches and passes the camera."

The order goes on to tell the owner to bring their car to a location specified by the DEP -- a sewage treatment plant, to be precise -- for inspection. Show up, and you'll have the opportunity to get the car fixed to avoid a fine -- much like California's "fix-it" ticket system. The document also informs the owner that if they fail to show up, they could face a maximum fine of $875, plus additional fines for continuing to ignore the summons.

A New York City DEP spokesman confirmed to Road & Track via email the system is part of a small pilot program that's been running since September 2021. From the description above, it sounds like it works much like a speed camera that automatically records a violation and sends it to you in the mail by reading your license plate. Instead of a speed gun, this new system uses a strategically placed sound meter to record decibel levels on the road, matching it to a license plate using a camera. [...] The program will be reevaluated on June 30, according to the DEP. From there it'll likely either be expanded or taken out of commission.

Google said on Wednesday that it was working on privacy measures meant to limit the sharing of data on smartphones running its Android software. But the company promised those changes would not be as disruptive as a similar move by Apple last year. From a report: Apple's changes to its iOS software on iPhones asked users for permission before allowing advertisers to track them. Apple's permission controls -- and, ultimately, the decision by users to block tracking -- have had a profound impact on internet companies that built businesses on so-called targeted advertising. Google did not provide an exact timeline for its changes, but said it would support existing technologies for at least two more years.

This month, Meta, the company founded as Facebook, said Apple's privacy changes would cost it $10 billion this year in lost advertising revenue. The revelation weighed on Meta's stock price and led to concerns about other companies reliant on digital advertising. Anthony Chavez, a vice president at Google's Android division, said in an interview before the announcement that it was too early to gauge the potential impact from Google's changes, which are meant to limit the sharing of data across apps and with third parties. But he emphasized that the company's goal was to find a more private option for users while also allowing developers to continue to make advertising revenue.