Month: February 2016

(credit: shiftstigma)

A US appeals court on Wednesday upheld the $450 million settlement that Apple agreed to (PDF) in an antitrust lawsuit over e-book price-fixing. After a district court found Apple liable for antitrust violations, the company settled for $450 million, but one consumer challenged that settlement figure, saying it was decided prematurely and was too low to represent a fair deal for e-book buyers.

Back in 2012, the Department of Justice followed a class-action lawsuit accusing Apple and five publishers (Penguin, HarperCollins, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan) of conspiring to offer e-books at price points between $12.99 and $14.99—well above Amazon’s $9.99 e-books. The publishers settled but Apple held out, and in June 2014 a Manhattan district court judge ruled that Apple was indeed violating antitrust law. Apple appealed the ruling, but it worked out a settlement deal later that year—if the company went through the appeals process and lost, it would pay $400 million to consumers in cash and e-book credits and $50 million to the plaintiff’s lawyers. But if Apple won a retrial, it would only pay $50 million to consumers and $20 million to lawyers. And if the decision were overturned on appeal, Apple would pay nothing.

Objector-Appellant John Bradley, a consumer who purchased e-books, appealed the District Court’s decision to approve the $450 million settlement that Apple agreed to. Bradley challenged "the fairness, reasonableness, and adequacy of the Settlement,” arguing that Apple should pay more for its alleged role in the scheme.

These moai on Easter Island were so imposing that Europeans couldn't believe they'd been created by just a couple thousand people. (credit: Arian Zwegers)

Hundreds of years ago, an advanced, seafaring civilization called Rapa Nui built more than 800 monuments that were so massive and ambiguous that they remain a mystery to this day. The Easter Island statues, or moai, are enormous stone figures placed along the coastline as if surveying the island's interior lands. One of archaeology's greatest mysteries is what happened to the Rapa Nui of Easter Island.

Now, new evidence from archaeological investigations has overturned a popular myth about the demise of the Rapa Nui civilization on the island. For centuries, observers believed that the Rapa Nui suffered a catastrophic population crash. But there is no scientific evidence to support this idea, say a group of researchers in the latest issue of the journal Antiquity. That story about environmental collapse and warfare you read about in Jared Diamond's bestseller Collapse? Totally wrong.

Origins of the myth

First of all, the Rapa Nui haven't been wiped off the face of the Earth: the Rapa Nui people still make up over half the Polynesian population today. Their ancestors likely arrived on Easter Island, now part of Chile, roughly a millennium ago. They came in the sophisticated canoes that allowed Polynesians to bring their cultures to dozens of islands in the Pacific Ocean, from Hawaii to Samoa and New Zealand. And they also brought their moai, many of which were quarried on other islands that the Rapa Nui controlled.

Enlarge / Dell's old Latitude E6410 becomes a modern Chromebook. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

A few months ago, we wrote about CloudReady, a version of the open source Chromium OS from Neverware that can transform older Windows PCs into what are essentially Chromebooks (give or take a couple of media codecs and other features). Neverware takes the Chromium OS code provided by Google and does all the hard work of testing and maintaining driver compatibility and providing updates, the same things that Google handles for actual Chromebooks. The OS is aimed at schools that either want to move to Chromebooks but can't afford the cost of all-new hardware or schools that have already begun a transition to Chromebooks but want to repurpose old hardware they already have.

Today, Neverware announced a new version of CloudReady aimed at schools and individuals who want to try the software on their PCs without losing the capability to run Windows. CloudReady version 45.3 can be installed on any system with an existing UEFI-mode installation of Windows 7, 8, or 10 and 32GB of free disk space. You can find detailed installation directions on Neverware's site.

The UEFI requirement means that the list of PCs that support dual-booting is much shorter than the normal CloudReady support list, so this won't be of much use to people with older BIOS-based PCs and Windows installations. But if you happen to have a device on the list, and you want to give the software a spin, you can download the free version from Neverware's site. The fully featured version that supports Google's Chrome OS management console costs $59 per machine for an unlimited license or $25 for a one-year license.

Rex Gray @ Flickr

This 1963 VW Beetle is now fully electric.

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Was your first car a Volkswagen Beetle? Do you pine after it while simultaneously wanting something a little more environmentally friendly than the old, air-cooled, flat four engine? Good news! Zelectric Motors in San Diego is here to save the day. The company is in the business of restoring old VW Beetles, Microbuses, Karmann Ghias, and Things, updating them with fully electric powertrains.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing in the car world. Car makers will happily dust off an old classic and use it as the base for a concept car, safe in the knowledge that it will grab headlines and the attention of potential customers with fond memories of the originals. Volkswagen is particularly good at this tactic, selling thousands upon thousands of modern Beetles that call back to the rear-engined classic.

But modern interpretations aren't everyone's cup of tea, so there's a growing industry of companies ready to update your beloved classic for you. Porschephiles can spend big bucks with Magnus or Singer, Jaguar E-type fanatics have Eagle, and you can now even buy a brand new Delorean DMC. But if your taste runs to the original people's car, you need to speak to Zelectric.