Day: March 23, 2019

The Federal Communications Commission has settled a case over its refusal to comply with a public records request, agreeing to pay $43,000 to a journalist who sued the commission.

Freelance writer Jason Prechtel filed a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request with the FCC in mid-2017, asking for data that would identify who made bulk comment uploads in the proceeding that led to the repeal of net neutrality rules. Prechtel was trying to research comments that were falsely attributed to people without their knowledge.

The FCC didn’t comply with the request and allegedly didn’t even approve or deny the FoIA request within the legally allotted timeframe, so Prechtel sued the commission in September 2017. One year later, a US District Court judge presiding over the case ordered the FCC to stop withholding certain records sought by Prechtel, although the ruling didn’t give Prechtel everything he asked for.

A settlement agreement filed in court this week says the FCC agreed to pay Prechtel $43,000 to cover his attorneys’ fees and court costs. Chairman Ajit Pai’s FCC did not admit any wrongdoing, but the settlement has resulted in the case being closed.

Comment fraud under investigation

As Gizmodo noted in a story about the settlement yesterday, “The data Prechtel ultimately obtained through the case formed the basis of a Gizmodo report last month—which he coauthored—that revealed how investigators had linked various entities, including a prominent Washington, DC, publication, to potentially millions of fraudulent comments submitted during the 2017 net neutrality rollback.”

Those investigators were from the New York attorney general’s office, which also faced FCC stonewalling when it sought data including the same comment records obtained by Prechtel. The AG’s office eventually determined that up to 9.5 million comments were submitted using stolen identities, and it’s still investigating. The FBI is also reportedly investigating the use of stolen identities in public comments on the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality rules.

The Gizmodo/Prechtel story last month said that API logs obtained through the FoIA lawsuit provided details on each time an organization submitted comments using the FCC’s API system. “What’s more, [the logs] include the IP addresses of the uploaders themselves, as well as timestamps that record, down to the millisecond, precisely when floods of comments came pouring in from any given source,” the article said.

CQ Roll Call’s advocacy arm was among those using the system to submit comments supporting repeal of net neutrality rules. CQ Roll Call was working on behalf of a client, which the Gizmodo/Prechtel story says may have been a conservative nonprofit called the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF).

CFIF arranged for the upload of anti-net neutrality comments that said, “The unprecedented regulatory power the Obama Administration imposed on the Internet is smothering innovation, damaging the American economy and obstructing job creation.” CFIF has denied submitting comments under people’s names without their knowledge.

Net neutrality advocacy groups such as Fight for the Future also used the FCC API system to demonstrate support for keeping net neutrality rules.

In a separate case that’s still ongoing, the FCC refused a New York Times request for records that the Times believes might shed light on Russian interference in the net neutrality repeal proceeding. The FCC last week asked a US District Court judge for a summary judgment in that case.

I’m a PC gamer through and through, but I rarely game at my PC anymore. Instead, I play PC games on my iPad, with the help of a brilliant controller called the Gamevice.

That’s right, I said PC games. Despite being designed for mobile gaming, the App Store and Google Play ecosystem is in a tough spot. Both are flooded with free-to-play nonsense and half-assed spinoffs of console games, with quality premium titles dwindling in popularity. But the utility of these controllers goes far, far beyond App Store games and Fortnite, and it’s why the Gamevice is one of my favorite gaming accessories around.

The Gamevice Basically Turns Your Phone or Tablet Into a Nintendo Switch

There are plenty of mobile-focused gaming controllers out there, from the $50 SteelSeries Nimbus to the more Xbox-like PXN Speedy which allows you to clip in your phone. But these are bulky, and in many cases—like the Nimbus—they assume you’re going to prop up your device on a table.

I’ve never found that to be a particularly easy or enjoyable experience, which is why the Gamevice is so alluring. Rather than making yet-another-standalone-gamepad, Gamevice created a two-piece controller held together by a rubber strip, allowing you to “dock” it on the sides of your phone or tablet—much like the Nintendo Switch. They have versions for the iPhone, Galaxy, and Pixel line of phones, which fold up neatly and fit right in your bag, as well as versions for different iPad models that are a bit less portable, but give you a great big screen for your games. They’re more expensive than typical gamepads, ranging from $60 for the phone models to $100 for the iPad models, but boy are they worth it.

All Gamevice models plug into the USB or Lightning port on the bottom of your device, ensuring a reliable hardwire connection instead of Bluetooth, and negating the need to charge your phone and your gamepad. Each Gamevice has a USB or Lightning pass-through port for charging your phone, as well as a traditional headphone jack—huzzah! Each model is a bit different, and has its own benefits and quirks—the iPhone version has a little slider to ensure your phone fits in perfectly, while the Pixel version stretches to auto-size itself to your phone. The Pixel version also uses a more squared-off design with black-and-white buttons that are a bit louder and clickier than the already-kind-of-loud iOS versions, plus slightly different shaped analog sticks and an extra menu button. The button noise is probably my only real gripe with the Gamevice, as it’s a bit annoying to other people in the room when I’m playing, though the tactile feedback is nice.

Despite their minor differences, though, all of the models I’ve tested have worked quite reliably once your phone or tablet recognizes them. My iPad Gamevice sometimes requires reconnecting when an app doesn’t register its presence, but I’m pretty sure this is iOS’ fault and not Gamevice’s. Ultimately, the vice design alone makes it the best game controller for phones and tablets.

It Isn’t Just for Mobile Games: Play AAA Titles on Your Phone and Tablet, Too

That’s all fine and dandy, but if you aren’t a fan of mobile games, you can still make use of the Gamevice.

Here’s the real reason I use this thing: I’m tired of playing games at my computer. I sit in a desk all day, and it’s really hard to motivate myself to sit at a desk all evening too, even for fun. I want to melt into the couch like the T-1000 after a long hard day and get sucked into another world. I could get a console, but then I’d have to fight my wife for the TV—a battle which I’d surely lose every time. I cycled more iOS games into my backlog, and some are quite decent—there’s a good crop of indie titles and older console ports on mobile, not to mention a few good AAA options like République (despite its minor flaws) and Fortnite (which just received gamepad support for its mobile version). You can see all the Gamevice-compatible games on Gamevice Live, but chances are, you’ll eventually be left wanting more like I did.

That’s where Moonlight comes in. This open-source app (for iOS, Android, Chrome, and other platforms) reverse engineers NVIDIA’s GameStream tech, allowing you to stream a game from your PC to your phone, tablet, or laptop—the gaming PC does all the heavy graphical work, but you can play it on any screen in the house, as long as your gaming PC has an NVIDIA card. If you don’t have an NVIDIA card, Steam Link is a slightly less mature app that does something similar on Android (Apple has rejected its iOS version for the time being). Or, if you don’t have a gaming PC at all, you could use a service like Shadow to stream games from a cloud server, or the newly-released PS4 Remote Play to stream games from a PlayStation 4.

In other words: you aren’t limited to mobile games on your mobile device. With the right setup, you can stream just about any AAA console or PC title to your tablet, hook up a controller, and turn it into the ultimate portable couch gaming machine.

Since discovering this, the Gamevice has become the saving grace of my gaming life. I still have to play some games at my PC—I’m absolutely terrible at first-person shooters unless I have a mouse and keyboard—but controller-friendly games like Rocket League, The Witcher series, the Middle-Earth series, and others feel right at home with a controller on my iPad. I can plug in the Gamevice, set up shop on the couch or in bed, and play to my heart’s content without fighting for the TV. And after getting used to that, it’s really, really hard to go back to sitting upright at my desk.

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