Month: December 2015

Uber is partnering with Enterprise to rent cars to potential Uber drivers for $210 a week in a pilot program that’s launching this week in Denver, Colorado.

The ride-share service is targeting potential drivers who either don’t have a car or whose car can’t be used under Uber’s standards—drivers’ cars must be in good condition and under 15 years old.

Uber already has a car leasing program that it runs in partnership with Xchange Leasing in a dozen major markets around the country. But the Enterprise partnership seems to be targeting a more flexible, short-term kind of driver, someone who might only want to drive for Uber for a month rather than six months. The rental, however, can be extended as long as the driver wants (and as long as the driver is in good standing with Uber and Enterprise).

From the disposable lids on our morning cup of coffee to bags filled with goodies from our shopping sprees, we interact with plastics on a daily basis. Most of these plastics are now recycled or made from fossil fuels. But that's not how plastics started.

When they were first developed, plastics were made from natural sources. Later, plastics were made from chemically modified materials that were still derived from natural sources. It took until roughly a century ago for fully synthetic plastics to be designed, and synthetic plastics now dominate the market. But increasing concerns over sustainability and depleting petroleum resources have shifted our focus back to plastics derived from natural sources.

When it comes to replacing petroleum-derived chemicals, the Department of Energy has ranked the biomass-derived compounds best suited for the job. At the top of the list is succinic acid, a white, odorless solid. One interesting downstream chemical that can be made using succinic acid is a 4-carbon cyclic chemical called γ-butyrolactone (γ-BL).

A Texas company is suing some of the biggest names in tech and retail, claiming their HTTPS websites infringe an encryption patent titled "Auto-Escrowable and Auto-Certifiable Cryptosystems." CryptoPeak Solutions has filed about six dozen cases in all, and they began hitting the patent-troll friendly venue of the Eastern District of Texas in July.

The patent's abstract describes the invention, granted in 2001:

A method is provided for an escrow cryptosystem that is overhead-free, does not require a cryptographic tamper-proof hardware implementation (i.e., can be done in software), is publicly verifiable, and cannot be used subliminally to enable a shadow public key system. A shadow public key system is an unescrowed public key system that is publicly displayed in a covert fashion. The keys generated by the method are auto-recoverable and auto-certifiable (abbrev. ARC). The ARC Cryptosystem is based on a key generation mechanism that outputs a public/private key pair and a certificate of proof that the key was generated according to the algorithm. Each generated public/private key pair can be verified efficiently to be escrowed properly by anyone. The verification procedure does not use the private key. Hence, the general public has an efficient way of making sure that any given individual's private key is escrowed properly, and the trusted authorities will be able to access the private key if needed. Since the verification can be performed by anyone, there is no need for a special trusted entity, known in the art as a “trusted third party”. The cryptosystem is overhead free since there is no additional protocol interaction between the user who generates his or her own key, and the certification authority or the escrow authorities, in comparison to what is required to submit the public key itself in regular certified public key systems. Furthermore, the system is designed so that its internals can be made publicly scrutinizable (e.g., it can be distributed in source code form). This differs from many schemes which require that the escrowing device be tamper-proof hardware.

The latest batch of cases was lodged November 25. The cases name AT&T, Costco, Expedia, GoPro, Groupon, Netflix, Pinterest, Shutterfly, Starwood Hotels, Target, and Yahoo, among others. All the lawsuits include virtually identical language.

Two releases ago, Fedora 21 introduced its namesake project's "Fedora Next" plan. The goal was simple—bring the massive, sprawling entity that is Fedora into some neatly organized categories that would clearly define the project's aims. And since Next launched, Fedora has been busy doing just that. The results are impressive, and it feels like the distro has found a renewed sense of purpose.

Fedora Next's structure is like a series of concentric rings where each ring is supported by the one inside it. At the center are the core components of the system, APIs that applications hook into, and so on. On the outside are the visible layers that users interact with, what Fedora calls "Environments."

For the recently unveiled Fedora 23, these Environments consist of Workstation (Desktop), Server, and Cloud. It's the same Environment trio that Fedora offered in its two prior releases. While Cloud still has the feel of an also-ran, the Workstation and Server releases see quite a few new packages. That's especially true for the GNOME-based Workstation, and luckily the changes are largely welcome.

AT&T is trying to nudge customers on grandfathered unlimited data plans to switch to ones with limited data. But the company's latest move isn't all that punitive: AT&T is raising the price, but for the first time in seven years, and by only $5 a month.

The $30-per-month plan will cost $35 starting in February, AT&T announced. The change will affect a few million customers.

Compared to AT&T's years-long history of throttling customers on the old unlimited plans (which aren't offered to new customers), the price increase is pretty tame. It's also still cheap compared to Verizon, which recently raised its unlimited price from $30 to $50 a month. (The AT&T and Verizon prices don't include what customers pay for voice calls and text messaging, which can bring the total bill closer to the $80-100 range.)

After about 25 to 30 hours of solid work, Xenoblade Chronicles X finally becomes a video game. Before that point, the game exists not to be enjoyed but to rhythmically clobber you into a biomass able to be sculpted into someone capable of playing the remainder of Xenoblade Chronicles X.

X, like its predecessor, is a sort of single-player-only take on the massively multiplayer experience, enabling players to traipse among colossal, uninhibited plains full of creatures that someone, somewhere, probably wants you to kill. But while most modern MMOs will guide you through some semblance of order or direction, X's world is an undirected mishmash.

More than you can possibly comprehend

Xenoblade Chronicles X starts with your protagonist and a whole mess of other poor unfortunates having crash-landed on the planet Mira. Earth is gone thanks to a passing intergalactic war that destroyed your home world as mere collateral damage. Thankfully, a few human cities managed to depart the atmosphere in search of new, habitable worlds.

Battles in Xenoblade Chronicles X play out in real time, in the sense that you can move your character around at will. While you can use any ability you have selected for whatever class you have selected, it's often a better idea to just let the game choose for you.