Month: July 2016

Verizon's new prepaid plans. Customers enrolled in auto-pay get an extra 1GB per month. (credit: Verizon Wireless)

Verizon Wireless recently unveiled some new postpaid data plans with features popularized by T-Mobile USA, including rollover data and unlimited data that lets customers stay connected at slower speeds after using up their high-speed allotments.

Verizon today announced similar changes to its prepaid offerings with "Always-On Data" that throttles speeds to 128kbps after customers have used up all their high-speed data. While throttled data is less pleasant to use, it's a good alternative to automatic overage fees. Instead of automatically being charged extra after exceeding a data cap, customers can choose whether slow speeds are good enough for the rest of the month or whether they'll purchase more high-speed data. 

While the Always-On Data feature costs an extra $5 a month for most postpaid plans, it will be included at no extra charge in the standard prepaid prices. While Verizon raised its postpaid prices and data allotments earlier this month, the prices and data allotments of the prepaid plans are staying the same after today's announcement. It'll remain $60 a month for 6GB of data (or 5GB if customers don't enable auto-pay) and $45 for 3GB (or 2GB without automatic monthly payments enabled). The prices include mobile hotspot usage and unlimited talk and text. But unlike postpaid plans, prepaid still doesn't have rollover data.

The new mobile client. (credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft's preview of the new, modern, Universal Windows Platform (UWP) version of the Skype client received a big upgrade today: it's now available for devices running Windows 10 Mobile as well as Windows 10 PCs.

In addition to supporting Windows phones, the client has been given a big functional upgrade as Microsoft continues to rebuild all the old Skype client's functionality within the new app. Calls to landlines, voicemails, screen sharing, and integrated translation of audio and video calls are all now available. The company says that the new client is faster, too.

Overall, the development of Microsoft's Skype client continues to confuse since the strategy at large remains unclear. The company initially developed a (rather feature deficient) Windows 8-style Skype client, but in June last year Microsoft said that client was to be discontinued.

Today, Google released a new version of the Android N Developer Preview to the world. This is the fifth and final developer preview before the consumer release of Android 7.0 Nougat, which is scheduled for some time in Q3.

There doesn't seem to be a ton of changes, but this release offers a "near-final" look at Android 7. Google is encouraging developers to test their apps against this version and stomp out any bugs before the final release. Android N brings a split screen mode, a notification panel redesign, additions to Doze power saving, and a ton of other changes developers need to account for. The Play Store is already able to accept apps targeting Android N, so once the testing is done, developers are encouraged to publish their Android N apps.

As usual, the Developer Preview is available via OTA update for devices in the Android Beta Program or you can flash a system image.

Lucasarts

Doesn't look good, R2.

3 more images in gallery

The nascent world of virtual reality already has its fair share of satisfying sword-fighting games, but let's not kid ourselves: our ideal VR sword would glow and make a cool "whoosh, whoosh" sound with every swing. That's why we're stoked about today's biggest HTC Vive release: Trials on Tatooine, the first official Star Wars VR experience.

Even better, it's free—which will make its admittedly tiny amount of content a little bit easier to swallow.

If this VR experience sounds familiar, that's because Lucasarts demoed SW:ToT behind closed doors at March's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. There, both Kyle Orland and I got to fake like we had warped to Tatooine to help original-trilogy-era Han Solo in a pinch. During the five-minute demo, we stood right beneath the Millennium Falcon's landing zone—which, wow, there are few words to capture that feeling of nerdy presence—and then helped Solo by patching together parts of a circuit board with our hands.

Enlarge / Fire up your updaters. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Apple has just released a new round of updates for all of its platforms, including OS X 10.11.6 and iOS 9.3.3. All are minor updates that focus mostly on fixing bugs, as most of Apple's attention has turned to the new major versions of its operating systems that are due in the fall. Both iOS 10 and macOS Sierra are currently available as public betas.

OS X 10.11.6 fixes a bug in user accounts with parental controls enabled that could prevent settings from being saved, and it also addresses a problem with SMB network shares that could keep certain kinds of devices from accessing them. The update tackles a handful of business-centric features, too. The OS boots a bit faster when connecting to a NetBoot server, and the release fixes both startup issues with OS X 10.11.4 and 10.11.5 NetBoot images and a problem with Active Directory authentication.

iOS 9.3.3 includes nonspecific bug fixes, as do the watchOS 2.2.2 and tvOS 9.2.1 updates for Apple's other iOS-adjacent platforms. iOS 9.3.3 is available for all devices that support iOS 9, including the iPhone 4S and newer; iPad 2 and newer; all iPad Minis and iPad Pros; and the fifth- and sixth-generation iPod Touches. A list of all security holes patched in OS X, iOS, tvOS, and watchOS can be found on Apple's security update page.

(credit: Jason Farrar)

The Federal Communications Commission is trying once again to limit the prices prisoners and their families pay for phone calls, proposing a new, higher set of caps in response to the commission's latest court loss.

A March 2016 federal appeals court ruling stayed new rate caps of 11¢ to 22¢ per minute on both interstate and intrastate calls from prisons. The stay remains in place while appeals from prison phone companies are considered, but FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn last week proposed new caps of 13¢ to 31¢ per minute in an apparent attempt to satisfy prison phone companies and the courts.

Prison phone companies Global Tel*Link (GTL) and Securus Technologies had argued that the FCC's limits fell short of what the companies are contractually obligated to pay in "site commissions" to correctional facilities. The new Wheeler and Clyburn proposal still wouldn't ban the commissions or limit what prisons can charge companies for site access. However, they say that the caps of 13¢ to 31¢ per minute account "for the possibility that jails and prisons bear legitimate costs in providing access to ICS [inmate calling services]."

Once a channel is cut into the graphene, a molybdenum disulfide crystal can grow within it. (credit: Berkeley Lab)

The features we're making in current semiconductor materials are shrinking to the point where soon, they will be just a handful of atoms thin. Unfortunately, the behavior you get from bulk materials is often different from what you see when there are just a few atoms present, and quantum effects begin to dominate. There is an alternative, however: start with a material that is already incredibly small and has well-defined properties. Graphene, for example, is a sheet of carbon just one atom thick, and it's an excellent conductor; a variety of similar materials have been also developed.

It's a big challenge to manipulate these things that are just one atom thick, so it's really hard to put together any sort of circuitry based on these materials. Now, however, researchers have figured out how create a template where single-atom-thick materials will grow to create functional circuitry.

As we noted above, graphene is an excellent conductor of electrons, so the authors of the new paper decided to use it to create wiring. But getting sheets of graphene lined up to consistently create the wiring of even simple circuitry has been nearly impossible. The authors didn't even try. Instead, they took a larger sheet of graphene, dropped it onto silicon dioxide, and then etched away any material they didn't want. The etching involved a plasma of oxygen ions, which burned channels in the graphene that were about 15µm wide.