CERN physicists find hint of Higgs boson

Researchers at the CERN particle accelerator have found "intriguing hints" of the Higgs boson, a moment of major progress in years of previously unfruitful searching for the elusive subatomic particle.

The search for the Higgs boson is the top priority of CERN's massive and expensive Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland. Its Atlas experiment showed a statistically suspicious increase in activity that indicates the Higgs could be pinned down with a mass of 126 giga-electron-volts, and showing some important agreement, its independent CMS experiment found a possible result nearby at 124GeV.

"We observe an excess of events around mass of about 126 GeV," CERN physicist and Atlas leader Fabiola Gianotti said in slides presented today at a CERN seminar to physicists who applauded her results. That equates to about 212 quintillionths of a gram; by comparison, a proton is more than 100 times lighter with a mass of 0.938GeV.

Her small sentence carries big import for physics. That's because the Higgs boson, thought by some to endow other particles with mass, is a key missing ingredient in physicists' understanding of what makes the universe tick. It's predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics, but no one has been able to confirm its existence or nature.

"The Higgs could be the first link in a chain of discovery. This is what we hope," said Guido Tonelli of the Universita degli Studi di Pisa and leader of the CMS project, in a news conference after the seminar. Another year of continued data gathering should be enough to provide a conclusive answer on this particular matter, the physicists said.

Gianotti called the findings "beautiful results" at the seminar, but stopped well short of declaring victory because there's not enough data for statistical certainty. "It's too early to draw definite conclusions...We believe we have built a solid foundation on the exciting months to come."

Finding the Higgs boson is essentially a matter of checking for a variety of events--or their absence. The LHC's detectors have been gradually ruling out ranges of possible mass for the Higgs boson.
"The window for the Higgs mass gets smaller and smaller," and today we saw "intriguing hints" of its possible nature, said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. "We have not found it yet. We have not excluded it yet. Stay tuned for next year."

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The Higgs boson isn't observed directly, but rather is detected by extremely rare side effects of collisions between protons smashing into each other. To increase the likelihood of collisions, the LHC operators have been gradually increasing the beam intensity.

Gianotti also said the CMS results predict with a 95 percent confidence level that the Higgs boson has a mass between 115.5GeV and 131GeV.

Another experiment, the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), also helped narrow down the possible mass of the Higgs boson. Its results showed with a 95 percent confidence level that the particle can't be between 127GeV and 600GeV, Tonelli said.

The CMS experiment also found "a modest excess of events" that could be evidence of the Higgs boson between 115GeV and 127GeV, Tonelli said in a presentation at the seminar. "The excess is most compatible with a Standard Model Higgs hypothesis in the vicinity of 124GeV and below, but the statistical significance is not large enough to say anything conclusive."

One of the big mysteries that physicists hope to plumb with the Higgs is an idea called supersymmetry. The Standard Model predicts a wide range of particles, of which the Higgs is the last to be pinned down. But with supersymmetry, each of the conventional elementary particles in the standard model, including the Higgs, has a companion. If there's only one Higgs boson, it's part of the Standard Model. But with supersymmetry, there have to be at least five Higgs bosons. Supersymmetry would double the number of particles to resolve physics problems in a similar way that the prediction--and later discovery--of antimatter did decades ago.

If the Higgs boson weighs about 125GeV, it would match many physicists' general expectations--but also carry some importance. That's because it's at the light end of the range of possibilities, and physicists believe a particle that light needs another particle from the sypersymmetry collection to anchor it.

"Our expectation is that you have something heavy. It could be something related to SUSY," Tonelli said, referring to the nickname for supersymmetry theory. "Or maybe not," he added.

When it comes to mass, physicists liken the Higgs boson to groupies at a party. Heavy particles interact strongly with Higgs bosons, equivalent to a lot of people swarming a celebrity and making it harder for the famous person to start moving and, once moving, harder to stop. Particles with little mass are those that interact weakly with Higgs bosons, making them more fleet-footed.

"A heavier particle is nothing more that one than has more interactions with the Higgs particle as it passes through the vacuum," said Lawrence Sulak, chairman of Boston University's physics department.
If the Higgs boson is precisely measured in the next year, the LHC can be used to look further down the same pathway, Tonelli added, possibly finding supersymmetric particles--"if they are in the energy range of the LHC."
Such particles would likely be vastly heavier--many thousands, perhaps millions, of GeVs, he said.
That would be quite a coup: supersymmetric particles are a possible explanation for dark matter, material that in the universe outweighs the ordinary matter of which we're made but that generally interacts with ordinary matter only through gravitational pull.


To find harder particles, CERN plans an LHC upgrade that will let protons be smashed together at twice today's energy level. "Hopefully we'll explore a large region of masses," Tonelli said. And then, the supersymmetry work can begin in earnest. "A lot of parameters are still open, a lot of SUSY models are still open and are waiting to be excluded or confirmed," he said.

The LHC is a huge, phenomenally complex instrument built in a circular subterranean tunnel 27 kilometers in circumference. It can accelerate protons fast enough that, when they collide, they reproduce energy levels found only in the earliest moments of the universe after the Big Bang.

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New version of SOPA copyright bill, old complaints

A new version of the Stop Online Piracy Act appears to be no more popular than the last one was.

In an effort to head off mounting criticism before a vote on the legislation this Thursday, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today announced a series of tweaks (PDF) to SOPA, which is backed by Hollywood and major record labels but opposed by Internet firms and the Consumer Electronics Association.

But Smith, who heads the House Judiciary committee, stopped short of altering the core of SOPA--meaning that allegedly piratical Web sites could still be made to vanish from the Internet. Deep packet inspection could still be required. (See CNET's FAQ on SOPA.)

"There are still significant problems with the approach," said Public Knowledge attorney Sherwin Siy. The revised version of SOPA "continues to encourage DNS blocking and filtering, which should be concerning for internet security experts and human rights activists alike," he said. DNS stands for the Domain Name System.

Ryan Radia, associate director of technology studies at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, says SOPA v2.0 is "better than the old one, and more carefully written in several places." But, Radia says, "it's still a very bad bill."

The changes streamline and narrow other portions of the bill, especially those that allow copyright and trademark holders to file their own private lawsuits against suspected pirates. Now their target must, in some but not all cases, actually be "offering goods or services in violation" of U.S. intellectual property laws, a change from the previous wording that was more vague. The target also must be offshore.

SOPA v2.0 also takes more careful aim at Google, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, and other search providers. Previously the definition included a service that "searches, crawls, categorizes, or indexes information," which could have included thousands, or perhaps millions, of other Web sites with search boxes as well.

"Our staff and Chairman Smith have been working closely with stakeholders and other members over the past few weeks to strengthen the bill and address legitimate concerns from groups who are interested in working with Congress to combat foreign rogue websites," an aide to Smith wrote in an e-mail message circulated obtained by CNET. "The below changes reflect many of those conversations and result in a bill with even broader industry and bipartisan support."

The Recording Industry Association of America, a staunch SOPA supporter, applauded the changes in a press release from Chairman Cary Sherman:

    This legislation is now more focused on the bad actors and provides additional safeguards for legitimate operators. These changes are reflective of the cooperative efforts led by the chairman's office and exercised by the creative communities and responsible intermediaries who all agree that overseas rogue sites cause serious damage to American innovation and jobs, and who recognize that the status quo is simply not working. For those who continue to blindly criticize or suggest ineffective alternatives, it's becoming ever more apparent that they simply want to defend the status quo because it helps their bottom line.

Other changes that have been made to SOPA v2.0:

• An ad network or payment processor forced to cut off service previously was guaranteed the ability to "determine the means to communicate such action" to its customers. That language has disappeared.

• A committee of federal agencies, which includes the Department of Homeland Security, "shall conduct a study" on how SOPA affects "the deployment, security, and reliability of the domain name system and associated Internet processes."

• The definition of an "Internet site" that could be the subject of legal action for allegedly infringing activities has been altered. The previous wording said a "portion thereof" could be taken offline; now it explicitly refers to "a specifically identified portion of such site," which could mean a URL or subdomain, such as news.cnet.com.

• What Smith's aides are calling a "savings clause." It's in response to criticism from technologists warning of SOPA's impact on DNS, and says that blocking orders should not "impair the security or integrity of the domain name system or of the system or network operated by" the company required to comply.

• Banks and credit unions appear to be exempted from being targeted as a "payment network provider."

Meanwhile, concern over the concept of taking suspected pirate domains offline is growing. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has proposed an article page blackout as a way to put "maximum pressure on the U.S. government" in response to SOPA. This follows a similar protest in October by Wikipedia's Italian site.

Alex Macgillivray, Twitter's general counsel, posted an analysis on his personal Web site about how SOPA could affect average Internet users. If someone uses Web sites to store photos, documents, or blog posts on a Web site that's accused under SOPA of copyright infringement, those files "can be obliterated from his view without him having any remedy," Macgillivray writes.

During a speech in Washington, D.C. today, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt slammed SOPA, according to a report at TheHill.com. "They should not criminalize the intermediaries," Schmidt reportedly said. "They should go after the people that are violating the law."

The Motion Picture Association of America responded in a statement from Michael O'Leary, senior executive vice president for Global Policy and External Affairs, saying: "There is broad recognition that all companies in the Internet ecosystem have a serious responsibility to target criminal activity. This type of rhetoric only serves as a distraction and I hope it is not a delaying tactic."

SOPA represents the latest effort from the MPAA, the RIAA, and their allies to counter what their members view as rampant piracy on the Internet, especially offshore sites such as ThePirateBay.org. The measure would allow the Justice Department to seek a court order to be served on search engines, Internet providers, and other companies.

Two opponents of SOPA, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), have proposed an alternative called the OPEN Act, which targets only Internet ad networks and "financial transaction providers" such as credit card companies. It's not without its own critics: Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, has posted a lengthy critique.

Smith, the House Judiciary chairman, is planning a committee vote on SOPA this Thursday. The next step would be for the bill to go to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives for a full vote, which would happen next year at the earliest.

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Apple: Five predictions for 2012

Expecting something from Apple can be a dangerous game, but that doesn't mean it's not fun to try and read the tea leaves every once in a while.

Below are five things I think we can expect from Apple next year. Some of these are based on a long ramp-up of rumors and telltale signs from this year, with others outright speculation from trends and the company's product release habits.

It's worth pointing out that Apple's usual lack of predictability is what makes it such an interesting company to watch. Nowhere was that more clear than what happened with the iPhone 4S. While most of the press and rumor blogs were anticipating a full overhaul of the iPhone's hardware, we got a souped up iPhone 4 instead. Sure, Siri turned out to be pretty cool, but many were expecting something else.

Now, without further ado...

1. No TV set, yet
The rumored product that's spent most of 2011 as an abstraction of data points is almost certainly on its way to being a real thing, but likely won't be seen next year.

In the recently released biography of late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, author Walter Isaacson noted Jobs' efforts on making an easy-to-use TV set that is integrated with the company's various products and services. "I'd like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use," Jobs told Isaacson. "It would be seamlessly synched with all of your devices and with iCloud. It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it."

Of course how far along Apple really was in that endeavor remains a significant question. In an interview with CNET, Isaacson said Apple wasn't "close at all," and that "it was very theoretical." In late October, Bloomberg claimed that the company had already turned to one of the founding team members of the iPod and iTunes Music Store to get a TV set out the door. More recently, Jefferies & Company analyst Peter Misek claimed that Apple was tapping Sharp for display panels in order to make a TV for a mid-2012 release.

But that estimate seems awfully bullish, especially given where Apple's home entertainment landscape currently sits. For better or worse, the Apple TV box remains a hobby product for the company. No doubt it will become more capable in future iterations, but what many are expecting with a TV set would be something that leapfrogs that effort. Will Apple deliver that in 2012? My guess is no.

2. Siri opened up to developers
The sassy voice assistant has been a breakout hit for Apple since its introduction with the iPhone 4S in October, but it's missing something big. Apple's current implementation is limited to Web queries from partners like Wolfram Alpha and Yelp, along with Apple's own apps. What's missing is a way to hook it into the half a million or so apps that are on the App Store.

Much as those very same apps helped expand what one could do with the iPhone itself, creating voice plug-ins for apps could very well be the next step in making Siri a more useful service.

It took Apple a little less than four months after the launch of the original iPhone to announce a software developer kit, a move that led to the App Store in 2008. In Siri's case, the apps are already there, as are the tools to make them. However Siri does most of its magic on Apple's servers, and is currently limited to the iPhone 4S.

Would developers take on extra work for just one device? They certainly did that with the iPhone 4 and its move to a Retina Display, as well as the iPad and its bigger resolution.

3. The end of the Mac Pro
Desktop sales just weren't what they used to be compared to when Apple introduced the original design of the Mac Pro (then the Power Mac G5) in mid-2003. While Mac hardware sales have grown considerably since then, notebooks have been the belle of the ball since they surpassed the company's sales of desktop computers in 2004. Those same notebook units now face cannibalization from Apple's iPad, which itself blew past Mac sales last year.

So why keep the Mac Pro around? It certainly links back to Apple's roots in providing designers and professionals with beefy workstations. But it's one of the only products in Apple's lineup that just doesn't fit in anymore. Apple's Macs are basically sealed up, and need to be taken to a repair professional for anything outside of swapping out the RAM. By comparison, the Mac Pro lets you open up the side and fiddle around with the inside bits. That's the standard for PC manufacturers, but Apple's made a hefty business out of doing things the other way around.

An anonymously sourced report from AppleInsider in October suggested that Apple's seen a sharp decline in sales of the workstations, which begin at $2,499 in the U.S., and that the drop has led executives to reconsider whether it's worth continuing to invest in the product. Lending further credence to that idea is the fact that Apple hasn't given the line a proper overhaul since before it made the move to Intel processors, instead putting its focus on updates to its Mac Mini, iMac and MacBook portable lines.

The real question is how the Mac Pro will take its bow. Will Apple announce its demise, or simply replace that spot in its product line with something else?

4. Apple ditches Google for Maps
Google's been closely tied to Apple's iOS since the first iPhone was unveiled, but that could change next year if the company ends up introducing its own mapping service. Why would Apple do that? Tensions between the Apple and Google have increased in recent years with the rise of Android, Google's mobile operating system.

Making matters more interesting was Apple's acknowledgement that it was collecting traffic data "to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years." That sounds more like a layer on top of an existing mapping service than a standalone service of its own. Yet, Apple acquired C3 Technologies this year, the third such mapping company it's bought up, and one that specializes in eye-pooping 3D imagery.

Something that throws some cold water on this prediction is that Apple renewed its deal with Google to use its mapping service earlier this year, but we don't know how long that's good for.

5. A truly new iPhone
Apple's released a new iPhone every year since its introduction, making this one a bit of a no-brainer. So far that cycle's consisted of a steady stream of internal tweaks, with every other year including a full-scale overhaul. The iPhone 4 was the last such big change to Apple's iPhone design formula, with the 4S getting speedier guts.

Yet before the 4S launched, the rumors were hot and heavy with Apple pushing out a drastic design change. That device never materialized, putting all bets on it arriving next year.

So what features will it have? The big thing to expect is a larger screen. The traditional 3.5-inch displays have served Apple well, but other manufacturers have bumped up to the 4-inch range, with some going bigger. Other things to put on that list include a jump to 4G networking, near-field communications (NFC) for transferring information between devices, and of course the usual tweaks to the camera and processor.

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Skyrim beats out Modern Warfare 3 as most-played game

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was nearly universally beloved by reviewers, and it appears gamers had a similar affinity for the title.

The average gamer played Skyrim for 23 hours in its first week on store shelves and averaged three hours of playtime per sitting, making it the most-played game this year, according to data complied by gaming network Raptr. The game was also the most-played role-playing game this year, beating out Dragon Age 2 with six times more playtime.

Raptr tracks user activity on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. Users can find out what their friends are up to on those platforms and chat with them through the service. Raptr also includes Facebook and Twitter integration, as well as support for several instant-messaging platforms.

Skyrim's achievement is quite impressive if one considers that it only launched last month. However, unlike many of the top games this year, Skyrim is designed to keep people engaged for an inordinate amount of time. Completing the main storyline can take dozens of hours, and the sheer number of side-quests allows users to play the game indefinitely.

Looking beyond Skyrim, Raptr found that Modern Warfare 3 was the most-played shooter on the year, with gamers averaging of 20.45 hours of playtime the first week it was available.

The critically acclaimed Batman: Arkham City was the most-played open-world game and Rockstar's L.A. Noire took top honors among new franchises released this year.

"2011 is turning out to be a boon for gamers, and our awards highlight how gamers are investing the most amount of their precious time playing every day," Raptr CEO Dennis Fong said in a statement.

Raptr's finding were based on the total amount of playtime the network's 10 million users engaged in the first week a game was available; total playtime over its first month of availability; and the average play session during a game's first 30 days on store shelves.

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HP tosses WebOS out of frying pan into the open-source fire

 Hewlett-Packard's decision to release WebOS as open-source software doesn't bode well for the future of the project.

There are two common outcomes when companies convert a complicated proprietary project into open-source software. One is that a vibrant community of contributors grows up around the project, expanding its abilities, broadening its popularity, and making it into a better component of a broader technology package.
The other is that the project, tossed over its sponsor's transom, sinks beneath the waves.

I think HP would like the first outcome based on Chief Executive Meg Whitman's high hopes: "By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open-source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices." But I expect the second is more likely.

HP tried shopping WebOS around, but finding the options unappealing, bet on a less conventional direction. But here's the big cautionary tale that leads me to my pessimism: Symbian.

That operating system began as a proprietary project, but Nokia and its backers, presumably seeing the sustained success of the Linux project, took it in the open-source direction. It was too little, too late, though. Developers weren't interested enough in building Symbian.

So even if HP tries to keep WebOS as an actively developed operating system for tablets, for example, it may be open-source in name only. It wouldn't be the first time somebody threw a party and nobody came.
WebOS didn't have a glorious future in any case. HP acquired WebOS with its $1.2 billion Palm purchase last year, but short-lived CEO Leo Apotheker decided to ditch WebOS and the mobile devices it powered. When Whitman took over, she decided to review the company's options, and HP announced the plan today after weeks of deliberation.

HP's promise to keep developers actively working on WebOS sounds more like the plan for the Linux-based MeeGo OS that Nokia pushed aside in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone: The operating system now merely has an "opportunity to significantly improve applications and Web services for the next generation of devices." That's not the kind of statement that tells developers they need to divert any of the attention already devoted to iOS, Android, and possibly Windows Phone, Windows 8, and Blackberry 10.
There are other open-sourcing failures, too. Sun Microsystems switched StarOffice into the open-source OpenOffice.org, but the code base was messy enough and the developers controlling enough that outsiders were repelled. The project muddled along for years, prodding Microsoft Office only as far as opening up its file formats. It was only when Oracle acquired Sun and ran roughshod over the project that some developers cared enough to fork the code base and try to strike off on their own with LibreOffice.
After that, Oracle washed its hands of the affair and foisted it on the Apache Software Project, which oversees many open-source projects. IBM remains interested, but OpenOffice.org doesn't have bright prospects. Sun's Java and Solaris open-source projects were equally fraught.

AOL got farther when it created Mozilla to open-source Netscape's once-proprietary browser. But it took more than half a decade of work before Firefox clawed its way to relevance, and that only happened with a complacent Microsoft that parked Internet Explorer.

It's possible WebOS could fuel some organic, grass-roots mobile OS project--especially given WebOS' Web-like app programming model--but the mobile OS teams at Apple, Google, and Microsoft are about as far from dormant as is possible right now.

Why ever would a company want to release a once-valuable asset as open-source software that anyone can use for free? Or for that matter, contribute resources to an open-source project at all?
There can be good reasons. One of them is undermining your competitors. If you can build a vibrant community around a free product that your competitor charges for, you can steal a little of that competitor's thunder.

Yahoo, for example, supports the Apache open-source Hadoop project that competes with Google's in-house equivalent, MapReduce, for analyzing mammoth data sets. Yahoo may not have vanquished Google, but Hadoop is catching on widely and reducing Google's competitive advantage by making it easier for rivals to match its abilities. Even Microsoft is embracing Hadoop.

So might open-source WebOS exert some pressure on the incumbent mobile operating systems? I don't think it likely.

That's because the key to relevance in the OS world is apps. An operating system still can be useful to power slot machines, electronic billboards, and factory-floor robots. Old-school phones had all they needed--a dialer, address book, and text-messaging interface. But if you want your OS to shape the future of mobile devices, you need an OS that lets people play games and post status updates. WebOS, open-source or not, lacks that support.

Note that there's already an open-source mobile OS out there today that has plenty of apps: Android.
After Google releases Android versions' source code, academics, Amazon, CyanogenMod programmers, or third-tier device makers sink their teeth into it and build their own versions of the operating system.

It's true that it's not a terribly communal effort, though. Only after Google is finished planning and developing Android internally does it release the source code. Android 3.x, aka Honeycomb, never even made it to the open-source state. Google isn't violating any licenses, but it's not showing much interest in sharing control over Android.

Perhaps WebOS will shame Google into letting some others into the Android party, especially if an open-source WebOS becomes a fruitful proving ground for new mobile technology that shows Google that Android could benefit from a broader perspective.

I wouldn't bet on it, though. And even if it does, that's pretty small consolation for HP.

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Twitter to newbies: Try it, you'll like it

PARIS--Power users have criticized Twitter's new design, but the company made its choices carefully about what to spotlight and what to hide in the new interface.

"When you're trying to simplify a product, you have to make some tough decisions," said Ryan Sarver, Twitter's director of platform, at the LeWeb conference here today. Thus, direct access to direct messages and Twitter user lists got pushed deeper into the interface.

"They are still one click away and part of the product," Sarver said. "We wanted to focus on the main timeline, the ability to connect, and the ability to discover great new content."

Twitter wanted its service to be better for new users, and an empty text box where they can publish a tweet is a bad start, he said. Instead, they need to be able to find content--thus the emphasis on the "discovery" section marked with the # symbol.

"Engagement is getting someone to sign up, to create a timeline" that shows tweets of people they follow, Sarver said. "Eventually they start to retweet, to favorite, then they start tweeting."

The new interface also unifies the experience across the Web, iOS Twitter app and Android Twitter app. People who want to try it can download the mobile versions or sign up at fly.twitter.com.

It's not been well received in some circles. Of the 791 ratings in Apple's App store, the app has 418 one-star reviews. Sarver, though said of the feedback, "I'd say very positive."

Twitter also has launched a new version of its power-user software, TweetDeck, for Mac users. It drops the Adobe AIR software foundation with a native design--but it also drops features some people cared about. Of its 85 ratings, the most common is one star, with 25 people giving it the lowest score.

The service is growing fast. Twitter now has 100 million active users who collectively produce 250 million tweets per day, Sarver said. The company itself now has 700 employees.

Twitter has began a program called promoted tweets last year to let advertisers reach Twitter users. Sarver said the company is happy with the program but is proceeding cautiously, even though it brings in revenue that's essential for a start-up to survive.

"Revenue is like air. You need it to live. But it's not the point of living," Sarver said. "The early numbers from putting promoted tweets in the timeline [are] insane. We have 5 percent engagement compared to display ads with 0.03 or 0.05 percent. We'll scale that up in an interesting, careful way."

The redesign brings brand pages to Twitter, giving companies an anchor on the site beyond just a few words and a list of tweets.

"We don't call them brand pages, because those same features will be available to all users at some point," Sarver said. "We're starting with a few advertisers now."

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Twitter redesign hands-on: What to expect in mobile apps, Web

Twitter is also rolling out its first branded pages, which--not to put too fine a point on it--look like a blatant borrowing from the Facebook playbook. (See above for one major example.) Twitter, of course, isn't entirely a tool for geeks. Its role in the Arab Spring has been well documented, and it's delivering hundreds of billions of tweets every day. But it's also still searching for a meaningful business model to justify that $6 billion private market valuation. (It's raised $800 million to date). Jack Dorsey, Twitter's executive chairman, spoke at the same conference where I met up with Parker. At his panel, he said Twitter's business model was based largely on "serendipity." The new Twitter promotes "simplicity meets serendipity," which, at first glance, looks terrific from a user's perspective. The implied business message, however, is that it's dialing back on the serendipity part.

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