Month: January 2016

(credit: Thomas Hawk)

The US Department of Justice has sued Volkswagen Group (PDF) in a Michigan District Court on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), alleging that the automaker installed illegal defeat devices on almost 600,000 diesel passenger vehicles.

The lawsuit is the latest chapter in the fallout since the EPA published a notice of violation in September accusing Volkswagen of installing software on many of its diesel vehicles that would stop the car’s emissions control system from working properly during normal driving, but engage the emissions control system while the car was being tested in a lab, effectively helping Volkswagen cheat air quality regulators in the US.

A press release from the EPA said that approximately 499,000 diesel cars with 2.0 liter engines were found to have defeat devices, and some 85,000 cars with 3.0 liter engines were similarly implicated. The complaint filed by the Department of Justice suggests that the software to defeat the emissions control system in 2.0 and 3.0 liter cars was slightly different, however.

T-Mobile USA CEO John Legere announces Binge On. (credit: T-Mobile USA)

T-Mobile USA's controversial "Binge On" program is throttling all HTML5 video streams and direct video downloads to about 1.5Mbps, according to tests run by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Binge On, unveiled in November, is enabled by default for all T-Mobile customers and downgrades video resolution to 480p in order to reduce data usage. Companies that cooperate with T-Mobile can stream video without counting against customers' high-speed data limits. That means you can watch Netflix, HBO, Hulu, and about another 20 services without using up your data.

But all video is downgraded, regardless of whether it gets a data cap exemption, which has led to a rift between T-Mobile and Google's YouTube.

An Ascending Technologies Falcon 8 octocopter drone in flight, with Intel inside. (credit: Ascending Technologies)

In an effort to bolster its position in the growing "Internet of Things" market and the exploding unmanned air vehicle market, Intel is acquiring German drone company Ascending Technology. The purchase was announced today in a blog post by Josh Walden, Intel's senior vice president and general manager of the company's New Technology Group.

Ascending had previously partnered with Intel to use Intel's RealSense real-time depth sensing technology as part of its "sense and avoid" software, which helps drones detect objects and navigate around them safely. That software development is a key reason for the acquisition, Walden wrote. "With Ascending Technologies, Intel gains expertise and technology to accelerate the deployment of Intel RealSense technology into the fast growing drone market segment," he said. "We plan for the Ascending Technologies team to continue supporting their current customers while also collaborating with Intel’s Perceptual Computing team to develop UAV technology that can help drones fly with more awareness of their environments."

Ascending is focused on "professional" drones. The company sells unmanned systems packages based on its Falcon 8 drone for tasks like surveying, professional photography, and "precision agriculture" (using optical and infrared sensors to monitor crop growth, soil properties, and the need for application of fertilizer and pesticides). Ascending also offers a number of research-oriented drones for universities and robotics development laboratories, and the company's research drones are all based on Intel processors.

There are several devices sold under the "HD Fury" brand. But lawyers working for Warner Bros. and Digital Copy Protection say that only this device, the "Integral 4K60 4:4:4 600MHz," can break the HDCP 2.2 copy protection that protects 4k video. (credit: HD Fury)

The device shown above is a $199 video peripheral that Warner Brothers doesn't think should have been in anyone's Christmas stocking. Until just hours ago, it was available for online purchase.

The devices, sold by an organization called HD Fury, allowed HD video to be moved around and displayed on devices that wouldn't normally be equipped to handle the content. To do that, the devices stripped out the entertainment industry's copy protection, called HDCP. The "HD Fury Integral," pictured above, was able to strip out even the newest version, HDCP 2.2, which protects Ultra HD or "4K" video content.

Stripping out that copy protection is a brazen violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, according to lawyers for Warner Brothers and Digital Content Protection (DCP), the company that licenses HDCP. Warner and DCP filed a lawsuit (PDF) on December 31 against LegendSky, the owner of HD Fury. The plaintiffs' lawyers say LegendSky is "a business or an individual located in China."

Climate science attempts to answer a lot of questions, but Earth’s population probably cares about just one of them: what is the amount of global warming we should expect from a given amount of greenhouse gas emissions?

There are a variety of metrics researchers use to describe that variable, differing mainly in how long you give the climate system to equilibrate. One handy metric is called the “transient climate response to cumulative carbon emissions”—TCRE for short. Given a total amount of CO₂ emitted up until a point in time, this relationship tells you about how much warming will have already occurred.

It’s a straightforward and (nearly) linear relationship that was highlighted in the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Find your place on the graph by totaling up historical CO₂ emissions and you get an idea of how much of the “carbon budget” remains before you reach, say, 2°C warming.

On Monday, General Motors and ride-sharing company Lyft announced a new partnership to develop a network of driverless taxis. GM has invested $500 million in Lyft as part of a $1 billion funding round. The partnership includes a seat for GM on Lyft’s board of directors.

Neither Lyft nor GM mentioned how soon they expected to realize their driverless taxi dream. In a press release, GM said it would work with Lyft to "leverage GM’s deep knowledge of autonomous technology.” Lyft, for its part, promised "to build a network of on demand autonomous vehicles that will make getting around more affordable, accessible and enjoyable."

GM’s labs have been testing the waters with autonomous concept cars, even hinting in October that the company’s strategy in 2016 would be “aggressive” and would include a fleet of self driving Chevrolet Volts. Lyft declined to comment publicly on how a fleet of driverless taxis would impact current Lyft drivers.