S-Slass, which is available electrified but not yet fully electric, managed a 3-percent rise to 13,359. BMW’s 7-Series dropped 13 percent to 11,735. In the States, Tesla sold 28,800 Model S models, easily topping
, JATO Dynamics analyst Felipe Munoz said, “This is an alarm for the traditional automakers such as Mercedes. It says a smaller but smarter brand such as Tesla can beat them at home.”
European brands do have Tesla-fighters in development, and to use an ice hockey comparison, it’s been easier for Tesla to score into an empty goal; it’ll be more difficult when goalkeepers like the
North Korea’s hacking abilities are even stronger than we thought
http://ift.tt/2GuruaI
Russians accused of information warfare used tech to whip up controversy and cover their tracks
US Special Counsel Robert Mueller (pictured above) has charged 13 Russians and three organizations, including the Internet Research Agency, with alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Misinformation, Inc.: The meddling was widely known,… Read more
US Special Counsel Robert Mueller (pictured above) has charged 13 Russians and three organizations, including the Internet Research Agency, with alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Misinformation, Inc.: The meddling was widely known, but the indictment provides new insights into how it worked. Russians visited the US in 2014 to conduct research and then built a sophisticated operation that included sizable departments handling search optimization, data analytics, and IT. One project had 80 people working on it.
Purple gain: The Russians concentrated on influencing opinion in so-called “purple states,” such as Colorado, Virginia, and Florida, where the electoral gap between Republicans and Democrats was slim.
Virtual Americans: To hide their origins, the Russians rented space on servers based in the US and set up a virtual private network so that it looked as if messages were coming from within the country.
That’s not all, folks: Mark Weatherford, a former senior official at the Department of Homeland Security, says it’s pretty rare for the US to indict foreign nationals for information warfare. But he thinks we’ll see more such cases as technological advances make it easier to work out who’s behind online propaganda efforts.
Tech
via Technology Review Feed – Tech Review Top Stories http://ift.tt/1XdUwhl
A bump fire stock in action. GIF Source: Lisa Jean
Headlines are blaring: “Trump moves to ban bump stocks,” and gun enthusiasts are wasting no time stockpiling for the apocalypse. Slide Fire, the primary manufacturer of the accessory that effectively turns a semi-automatic weapon into a machine gun, has been hit with a flood of traffic and its website is currently down.
Following the murder of 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida by a lone gunman carrying a high-powered assault rifle, the Trump administration has offered little comfort and few solutions for the country going forward. Over the weekend, he used the shooting victims as a human shield to create some sort of doubt about the FBI’s Russia investigation, and his staff characterized the tragedy as a “reprieve” from the bad publicity they’d faced over the last week. But as the student survivors have chosen to voice their support for gun control and criticize Trump’s lack of action, he’s apparently now feeling the pressure to at least give the illusion that he takes the situation seriously.
On Tuesday, Trump claimed that he sent a memo to the Justice Department “directing the attorney general to propose regulations that ban all devices that turn legal weapons into machine guns.”
While there are a number of legal devices on the market that can make a semi-automatic weapon act as if it were fully-automatic, “bump fire stocks” are the most well known. These devices replace the stock on a gun and simulate automatic fire rates with a sliding mechanism that takes advantage of the gun’s natural recoil. The shooter keeps their finger in place and lets the motion of the gun do the pulling.
You might recall that bump stocks were a big topic following the shooting in Las Vegas last October that left 58 people dead and 851 others injured. Even conservative lawmakers like Paul Ryan seemed open to a ban on bump stocks. The NRA called for the ATF to “review whether these devices comply with federal law.” They do comply with current US law, and—as the NRA acknowledged in its statement— the ATF has confirmed this twice before. Lawmakers and gun organizations successfully deflected and nothing has been done.
Now we’re onto a new mass shooting, but this one didn’t involve bump stocks. But that old ban people wanted? Well, it’s suddenly back in the news. And the ceaselessly terrified crowd that hoards guns every time it hears the phrase “background check” is bombarding Slide Fire’s site to get its hands on the apparently soon-to-be-banned device. Considering that Slide Fire was just running a President’s Day promotion with the coupon code “MAGA,” it seems safe to say that this time the push for a ban will be as real as the last one.
Shadow virtualizes a high-end gaming PC on your desktop clunker
http://ift.tt/2EW9UiE
In the early days of computing, local storage and processing weren’t actually a thing. Instead, your individual computer acted as a terminal, pulling data from a central processing server. Well, the French startup Blade likes it that way and has released a similar system but with a 21st-century twist. Its cloud-computing system, dubbed Shadow, can impart the performance of a $2,000 high-end gaming rig onto any internet-connected device with a screen. And now the company is bringing Shadow to California.
The Shadow system has already found widespread adoption throughout France and most recently made its US debut at CES last month. The idea is relatively simple: instead of having to buy, maintain and upgrade your own hardware, you pay Blade a monthly subscription to use theirs. It’s a concept similar to what NVIDIA did with its GeForce NOW cloud service, Parsec or HP’s Omen PCs, save for the fact that those three are dedicated to gaming while Shadow enables users to run everything from Steam to Photoshop to a host of other business-related applications.
The company has partnered with Microsoft, NVIDIA, AMD and Equinix to create a remote Windows 10 PC that you can access over the internet. At the remote server farm, each of these systems boasts a dedicated NVIDIA graphics card capable of handling 1080p at 144Hz or 4K at 60Hz. For processing, the system relies on eight dedicated threads on an Intel Xeon processor (the equivalent of an Intel Core i7) as well as offering 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
Therefore, it doesn’t matter what hardware you’re using to access the service. Shadow can run on Macs, Chromebooks, Windows PCs, Android, iOS, and a variety of smart TV platforms. However, this does lead to a paradox. Sure, Shadow can deliver 4K quality video streams over the internet, but if you’re trying to watch it on an old 720p monitor, you’re going to be watching that stream in 720p.
Luckily, that doesn’t seem to apply to the rest of the capabilities. Since the Shadow system is, in essence, a remote desktop, it doesn’t matter how old, underpowered or decrepit the device is you’re running it on, just how good the screen is. In fact, at CES, Blade managed to run the Shadow service on Razer’s new phone, running full PC games (e.g., Battlefront II) on the device at 2K resolution and 120 Hz.
What’s also cool is that you’re able to switch back and forth between operating systems on the fly. Say you’re virtualizing the Shadow’s Windows 10 desktop on your Mac. Since the Windows 10 OS is running remotely (only using the Mac’s video driver to decode signal), it doesn’t take up any of the Mac’s other local resources. There is no slowdown in the macOS due to the Windows 10 desktop (and vice versa) and you can toggle between them instantly.
And if you don’t want to deal with your own hardware at all but still have a solid monitor, the company also offers a standalone Shadow device (think: a Roku-like box that streams computing capability instead of video), which can be hooked up to said monitor. Then all you need is a keyboard, a mouse, and a Steam account.
And a baller internet connection. That’s the other drawback of this system. In order to work, the Shadow needs a steady 15Mbps connection, preferably via ethernet. So if you’re like me and are hamstrung by slow internet speeds in your apartment complex, you simply can’t use this service. The company is working on expanding its capability to serve slower internet connections, but at this time does insist that you be running at 15 Mbps or higher. Unfortunately, the Shadow system does not yet support multi-monitor displays either, nor can it currently handle VR applications.
Then there’s the price. Shadow will cost you $35 a month with a year-long contract, $40 a month with a three-month commitment, or $50 to use it for a month with no strings attached. That’s a pretty hefty fee for the ability to remotely rent someone else’s computer.
Still, if the idea of ditching your PC for the cloud sounds like a win to you, it’s a service worth checking out. I was afforded early access to the service as part of my demo and used it to play a few rounds of Dragon Ball FighterZ on my MacBook Pro using a Bluetooth Xbox controller. I was blown away by both the visual quality (see gallery above) and the control’s responsiveness. It’s like I was playing it on my PS4 — crisp clean graphics, with zero lag, jittering or stuttering.
But big whoop, right? The 2018 MBP is a pretty beefy laptop anyway, what with its Retina display. So, I loaded the Shadow service on my older Nexus 6P and launched the game again. The results were the same (see below): crisp graphics, smooth animations, and zero lag. It honestly looked better than the last few episodes of Dragon Ball Super I’ve streamed from Crunchyroll.
Shadow launches on February 21st in California and will expand throughout the continental US by summer of 2018 as the company completes construction on seven server farms localized throughout the nation.
Unlimited Plan Comparison: Verizon vs. AT&T vs. T-Mobile vs. Sprint (Feb 2018 Update)
http://ift.tt/2CaqDxK
Now that we’re a full year into the return of unlimited data on almost all US wireless carriers, it’s time for an update on the current unlimited data plans from Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint. Like we did last February and then again in August, we’ve got it all laid out for you in a comparison table below.
Unlimited Data Plans Comparison
Verizon
AT&T
T-Mobile
Sprint
Price
Go Unlimited: $75 for 1 line, $65/line for 2 lines, $40/line for 4 lines
Beyond Unlimited: $85 for 1 line, $80/line for 2 lines, $50/line for 4 lines
Autopay required
Taxes and fees not included
Unlimited Choice: $60 for 1 line, $115 for 2 lines, plus $20 for lines 3-10
Unlimited Plus: $90 for 1 line, $145 for 2 lines, plus $20 for lines 3-10
Autopay required
Taxes and fees not included
T-Mobile One: $70 for 1 line, $120 for 2 lines
T-Mobile One Plus: Same price + $10/line/mo
T-Mobile One Plus International: Same price + $25/line/mo
Autopay required
Taxes and fees included
Unlimited Freedom Promo: $60 for 1 line, $100 for 2 lines, $0 for line 3-5
Unlimited Freedom (in 12 months): $60 for line 1, $100 for 2 lines, $30 per line 3 and 4
Autopay required
Data
Go Unlimited: Unlimited data with throttling in congested areas per line any time
Beyond Unlimited: Premium Unlimited data with throttling in congested areas per line after 22GB
Unlimited Choice: Unlimited data at 3Mbps max speed
Unlimited Plus: Unlimited data with throttling in congested areas per line after 22GB
Unlimited data with network management per line after 50GB
Unlimited data with throttling in congested areas per line after 23GB
-Music streaming throttled to 1.5Mbps
-Gaming throttled to 8Mbps
Hotspot
Go Unlimited: Unlimited at 600kbps
Beyond Unlimited: 15GB 4G LTE speeds per line; 600kbps after
Unlimited Choice: No tethering
Unlimited Plus: 10GB 4G LTE per line; 128Kbps speeds after
T-Mobile One: Unlimited at 3G speeds (512kbps)
T-Mobile One Plus: 10GB 4G LTE per line; 3G speeds after
T-Mobile One Plus International: Unlimited 4G LTE data
10GB 4G LTE data per line; 2G speeds after
Video Quality
Go Unlimited: DVD-quality (480p)
Beyond Unlimited: HD-quality (720p)
Unlimited Choice: Up to 480p
Unlimited Plus: Stream video in HD quality, when available; customer can throttle with Stream Saver
T-Mobile One: Up to 480p
T-Mobile One Plus and Plus International: Unlimited HD+ video streaming
Up to 1080p video
Canada and Mexico Roaming
Go and Beyond Unlimited: Unlimited calling and texting to and from, plus 512MB/day 4G LTE data in either country (2G after)
Unlimited Choice and Plus: Unlimited calling, texting, and data to and from; need to turn on free Roam North America feature.
T-Mobile One and One Plus: Unlimited calling and texting; up to 5GB 4G LTE
T-Mobile One Plus International: Unlimited talk, text, and 4G LTE data
Free text and data up to 2G speeds
Other Bonuses
Verizon Up rewards program
Unlimited Choice: Free HBO; Save $15/mo on DirecTV Now
Unlimited Plus: Free HBO; Save $15/mo on DirecTV Now
T-Mobile One: Unlimited texting and 1 hour free WiFi on GoGo flights; Free Netflix (with 2+ lines)
T-Mobile One Plus and International: Unlimited in-flight WiFi on GoGo flights
I’m not sure if this is good news or not, but there are few changes since that last update. In fact, the only notable changes were to pricing from a couple of carriers (T-Mobile and Sprint) that were likely the result of promo pricing expiring. Verizon and AT&T both stayed the same since that last comparison.
Outside of pricing, we’ve got a clearer breakdown of T-Mobile’s Canada/Mexico roaming, as well as their hotspot availability and caps depending on which version of T-Mobile ONE you subscribe to.
I can tell you that as someone who tests networks a lot, I use both Verizon and T-Mobile. I like both. In Portland, T-Mobile has been better for me, mostly because of where I live. But when I leave the city, I often make sure I grab my Verizon phone because I know their network reach is the best there is. I know that doesn’t help you much, I’m just pointing out that those ideas about each network that have persisted for years are still very much a part of the equation.
In terms of value, they are all pretty similar. T-Mobile’s ONE plan starts out low, but as you upgrade to ONE Plus for the 4G LTE hotspot, you start creeping up quickly to Verizon and AT&T’s top tier plans. Your best bet to decide is to find the phone you want at the best price and then see which carrier has the best coverage map for the areas you live in. Coverage will always be king.
Uber will save you a few bucks if you just walk up the road
http://ift.tt/2FjuJT2
Uber
On Wednesday, Uber announced a new feature, where riders “wait a few minutes before their trips begin, and then walk a short distance to a nearby spot for pick up and drop off.” If that sounds awfully similar to a bus, you’re not entirely wrong.
Uber calls it “Express Pool,” an offshoot of an Uber option known as simply, “Pool,” which allows Uber riders to save a few bucks by sharing rides (thus usually taking a little more time).
Express Pool, meanwhile, simply calculates what is ostensibly a more efficient route and asks the rider to walk a few minutes away.
When Ars tried it from one residential neighborhood of Oakland to downtown (just a few miles away), it shaved about $1.50 off of what otherwise would have been a $7 Pool ride or an $8.90 UberX ride. By comparison, a local bus ride for the same route is $2.25.
“Walking and waiting help us make more optimal matches and provide better, straighter, faster routes with fewer detours, delivering an even more affordable and consistent option than POOL to consumers,” Uber wrote in a blog post on Wednesday morning.
The company says the service has been tested in San Francisco and Boston; it is also available in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Denver as of Wednesday. Miami, Philadelphia and Washington, DC will be added Thursday, with more cities to follow.
Game industry pushes back against efforts to restore gameplay servers
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A group of video game preservationists wants the legal right to replicate “abandoned” servers in order to re-enable defunct online multiplayer gameplay for study. The game industry says those efforts would hurt their business, allow the theft of their copyrighted content, and essentially let researchers “blur the line between preservation and play.”
In 2015, the Librarian of Congress issued a limited exemption to the DMCA, allowing gamers and researchers to circumvent technological prevention measures (TPMs) that require Internet authentication servers that have been taken offline. Despite strong pushback from the Entertainment Software Association at the time, the Register of Copyrights argued that the abandonment of those servers “preclude[s] all gameplay, a significant adverse effect.”
But while getting around defunct server authentication checks in games is now legally OK in most cases, the Register stopped short of allowing gamers and researchers to recreate the centralized gameplay servers that are needed to play many games online. That’s why the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment (MADE) is leading the charge for what it calls a “modest” expansion of the DMCA exemption in order to “preserve abandoned online video games in playable form.”
While existing law allows for easy preservation of local multiplayer games and LAN titles, MADE argues the law needs to “address technological change” by recognizing that many if not most multiplayer games these days are only playable via centrally controlled online servers. And when the servers needed to play these online games go down, MADE argues, the games themselves “turn to digital dust” and become practically useless to libraries, archives, museums, and others seeking to preserve them for future generations.
Making these games playable after those original servers go down often requires breaking apart existing client and/or server code, in order to “implement new, interoperable software components as part of the game’s architecture,” MADE points out. But those efforts are illegal under the DMCA, meaning museums and other legitimate preservation groups can’t assist in grassroots hacking efforts like those trying to restore stripped online functionality to Wii and Nintendo DS games.
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), which represents many major game publishers, argues that simulating proprietary server code in this way requires copying large parts of the “expressive nature” of the games in question—server-hosted content that often was never distributed to the public. MADE argues, though, that restoring online functionality focuses more on the “functional aspects” of the game, which is usually allowed under fair use exemptions.
Preservation or “recreational gameplay”?
Those legal technicalities aside, MADE argues that simply being able to view videos and read descriptions of “abandoned” online gameplay is not enough for researchers. Being able to actually play online games as they were originally designed can be useful for anthropological studies, psychological experiments, cultural appreciation, and even for design students looking to see how technical limitations were overcome, the museum argues.
The ESA, though, thinks this argument “should be viewed with considerable skepticism,” pointing out that MADE “cites no specific example of serious scholarly work following from its preservation activities. To the contrary, it is clear from MADE’s website that at its museum, public recreational play predominates over serious scholarship.”
This gets to the heart of the ESA’s argument against an expanded DMCA exemption; namely, the industry’s fear that such efforts will go beyond mere “preservation” in research institutions and expand to allow the general public to log in to these old games once again. While MADE says explicitly in its comment that “preserved game architecture will not be distributed or made available to the public ‘outside the premises’ of a library, archives, or museum,” the ESA sees this as improbable, to say the least.
“It is unlikely that anyone, including proponents, would invest thousands of hours of labor over a period of years merely because a scholar someday may wish to study the game,” the ESA writes. “To the contrary, it is likely that the institutions and volunteers involved want to enable recreational gameplay.”
Historians have brought back online games like LucasArts’
Habitat
for public use, with the original publisher’s cooperation.
“The proposal to enable online gameplay highlights that the proponents’ real goal is to allow a public audience—and not just serious scholars—to play online video games,” the industry argument continues. “There is abundant evidence that when the proponents desire to enable play of online video games, their vision is not to allow a university faculty member and her graduate student to play an online game from a reading room populated by scholars. They appear interested in allowing the public to play video games.”
What’s more, the ESA is concerned about over MADE’s request to expand the DMCA exemption to “affiliate archivists” who don’t work directly for a preservation institutions. MADE describes these affiliates as the hobbyists and volunteers that help break open old code and create emulators that allow defunct titles to function again after the original publishers abandon them. MADE says it wants to be able to work with such affiliates “under supervision… in line with good preservation practice.”
The ESA, though, worries this would open a large loophole to let the public flood onto these restored gameplay servers. Under the exemption, the ESA warns, museums and institutions could simply start calling vast swathes of the public “affiliates” and thus give them access to the renewed online gameplay. Those “affiliates” would have no legally enforceable restrictions, the ESA argues, which could “invite substantial mischief.”
“It is reasonable to expect that if this proposal were adopted, affiliates would be gamers who want to play video games,” the organization writes. MADE’s proposal fails to “even approximate comparable protections” to ensure that these outside contractors aren’t simply seeking to “promote infringement.”
The ESA argues that products like the SNES Classic show that publishers still get value from “abandoned” products and have economic incentive to preserve them (and decide on their release schedule).
Would restoring defunct online games hurt the bottom line for game publishers? MADE argues, by definition, that “there is little-to-no market for unsupported, unplayable titles.” By abandoning the online servers for a game, MADE writes, the publisher has “essentially vacated” the market for the title, proving they saw “little-to-no commercial value” in it.
In its response, though, the ESA argues that “the decision whether to discontinue or reissue particular game titles generally should lie with the copyright owner.” Just because an online server is down for now, they argue, doesn’t mean the original publisher won’t want to restore that server in the future for their own monetary gain. This kind of renewal is rare, but it has happened for games like Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Blizzard’s eventual restoration of “vanilla” World of Warcraft.
“Re-release cycles have long been common in the markets for motion pictures, television programming and sound recordings,” the ESA points out. “If a cable TV network decided to discontinue the service of providing a particular channel, nobody would think that it was noninfringing for libraries and fans across the country to band together to reproduce copies of the shows… and recreate for a public audience the experience of watching the channel as such; yet that’s effectively what is being proposed here.”
Worse than that, though, the ESA argues that re-enabling online features for old games “places the copyright owner in the position of having its current releases and rereleases compete with unauthorized access to its older games, and also may diminish consumer demand for subscriptions to legitimate video game networks.” In other words, if multiplayer access is restored for these older games, people might be less likely to buy or subscribe to newer ones.
The complete arguments go into much more arcane detail over the definition of a “transformative use,” the possible consequences of encouraging jailbroken consoles to re-enable online play, and what exactly counts as a “non-commercial” preservation. Reading over both arguments, though, it feels like preservationists and the industry are talking past each other a bit.
Where one side seeks limited, private access to historical gameplay, the other fears a slippery slope leading to public distribution of hacked-open servers. Where one side see games sitting unplayable for lack of attention from their makers, the other sees a valuable back catalog “vault” it should be able to open and close at will.
The Copyright Office will host another round of public comments and public hearings on this issue in the coming months before making its recommendations for any new exemptions by October. Based on the arguments here, the results of that decision are likely to be heavily disappointing for one side or the other.
