Month: January 2016

Delphi's autonomous vehicle. (credit: Delphi)

If you want to build a self-driving car and test it on public roads in California, the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles says that every year you have to submit a disengagement report—basically a list of every time the human driver had to take over for the car. This year, Bosch, Delphi, Google, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, and Volkswagen Group were required to submit disengagement reports, and the results are largely what you’d expect from a novel and complicated technology.

Google, as the company that's driven the most miles on public roads in California, said it experienced 341 significant disengagement events over 424,000 miles of driving (PDF). Similarly, Nissan reported that it drove 1,485 miles on public roads in California and it experienced 106 disengagements. Delphi’s two autonomous vehicles drove 16,662 miles and the company reported 405 disengagements. Tesla, for its part, reported no disengagements (PDF) from fully-autonomous mode from the time it was issued a permit to test self-driving cars in California.

While it’s tempting to use those numbers as a comparison point as to how good a company’s autonomous vehicles are, there are many variables that could obscure an otherwise accurate comparison. The numbers only reflect miles driven on California roads and disengagements that happen in that state. If a company primarily tests its public road driving in another state, those numbers won’t be reflected in these reports.

Moonshot Joe. (credit: C-SPAN)

In his final State of the Union address, President Obama announced a “new national effort” to put an end to cancer once and for all—and that effort will be led by Vice President Joe Biden, who last year tragically lost his son Beau to brain cancer at the age of 46.

“It’s personal for me,” Biden wrote in a statement released Tuesday night in conjunction with the President’s address. “But it’s also personal for nearly every American, and millions of people around the world. We all know someone who has had cancer, or is fighting to beat it.”

While the President’s brief remarks about the cancer-busting initiative were vague, Biden revealed in his statement that he has been meeting with researchers, philanthropists, and physicians for months to lay the groundwork for the plan. Last year, Biden personally lobbied for additional federal funding for cancer research. In December, the federal spending bill passed included a $264 million boost to the National Cancer Institute’s budget, which the Vice President praised.

Yahoo's once-iconic San Francisco billboard, pictured here in 2011. (credit: Scott Schiller)

In late 2013, Yahoo was hit with six lawsuits over their practice of using automated scans of e-mail to produce targeted ads. The cases, which were consolidated in federal court, all argued that the privacy rights of non-Yahoo users, who "did not consent to Yahoo's interception and scanning of their emails," were having their rights violated by a multi-billion dollar company.

Now, lawyers representing the plaintiffs are singing a different tune. Last week, they asked US District Judge Lucy Koh to accept a proposed settlement (PDF). Under the proposal, the massive class of non-Yahoo users won't get any payment, but the class lawyers at Girard Gibbs and Kaplan Fox intend to ask for up to $4 million in fees. (The ultimate amount of fees will be up to the judge, but Yahoo has agreed not to oppose any fee request up to $4 million.)

While users won't get any payment, Yahoo will change how it handles user e-mails—but it isn't the change that the plaintiffs attorneys were originally asking for. Yahoo won't stop scanning e-mails, which is what the plaintiffs originally called for. Instead, the company has agreed to make a technical fix about when it scans e-mails. In the settlement (PDF), Yahoo has agreed that e-mail content will be "only sent to servers for analysis for advertising purposes after a Yahoo Mail user can access the email in his or her inbox."

Microsoft's new support policy for Internet Explorer, announced all the way back in 2014, kicks in today. From now on, Microsoft will only support the newest version of Internet Explorer on each supported version of Windows.

Windows Vista, for example, shipped with Internet Explorer and had downloadable updates to Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 9. Today, Microsoft patched Internet Explorer 7, 8, and 9 on Windows Vista. But next month, with the new policy, only Internet Explorer 9 will receive updates. Versions 7 and 8 have dropped out of support. On Windows 7 and 8.1 the only supported version will be Internet Explorer 11.

At the same time, Microsoft is also dropping support for Windows 8. To continue to receive security updates, Windows 8 users will have to install the free Windows 8.1 update (or, of course, the Windows 10 upgrade). That's because Microsoft is treating the 8.1 update as if it were a Service Pack. Microsoft's policy when a Service Pack is released is to support the old version and the new version in parallel for at least 24 months and then force the use of the new version.

Matt Jones shows Ars the CES concept that Jaguar Land Rover and Intel put together, and discusses the company's tech incubator in Portland, Oregon. Video shot/edited by Nathan Fitch (video link)

LAS VEGAS—If you're a car nerd, you may know that Jaguar is based in Coventry, England. If you're a super-duper car nerd like me, you might also know that its main technology center is on a former RAF base in Gaydon, next door to Aston Martin. But did you know that it also has a tech center in Portland, Oregon? At CES we spoke to Matt Jones, director of future technology for Jaguar Land Rover, to find out more.

Last year, a confidential report was leaked that revealed that University of California, Berkeley had conducted an investigation into one of its prominent astronomy researchers and found that he had repeatedly engaged in sexual harassment. The report, however, was kept so confidential that the other faculty in his own department didn't even know about it. After it leaked, they called on him to resign, which he did.

That level of secrecy has now drawn the attention of Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-Calif.). Speier announced today that she would be seeking legislation that would compel universities to make other universities aware of the results of any investigations into violations of federal sexual harassment standards. To bolster her case, she also released a second confidential university report that details how a different astronomer engaged in flagrant sexual harassment, yet continued a successful career at a different university.

University investigations into faculty misconduct (sexual or otherwise) are typically kept confidential because even unfounded allegations can have severe consequences on an academic career. In both of these cases, however, the universities (Berkeley and the University of Arizona) kept the results of the investigation confidential even after the allegations had been substantiated during the investigation.

Amazon is making a serious play for gamers' dollars today, extending a 20 percent discount on all new and pre-release video games to subscribers of the $100/year Amazon Prime service. The discount only applies to physical games (excluding console bundles) and expires two weeks after a game's launch. Discounts will show up once subscribers put the games in their shopping carts.

This new benefit puts Amazon on similar ground to Best Buy, whose Gamers Club Unlocked program provides a similar 20 percent discount on new video games (as well as bonuses on trade-in games and discounts on used games). Best Buy's program cost $120 for a two-year subscription when it launched in 2012, but that subscription now goes for just $30.

Amazon Prime's gaming discounts come on top of free Release Date delivery that Amazon already provides to Prime members for many pre-ordered games. The Prime subscription also comes with benefits including the streaming Prime Video and Prime Music services, cloud photo storage on Prime Photos, and free two-day shipping on most products.

With the flip of two switches, men could one day curb their sperm flow and activate easily reversible birth control, according to ballsy German inventor Clemens Bimek.

Bimek, a carpenter who was frustrated with the lack of male-controlled contraceptives, came up with the idea after watching a television show about anatomy. Determined that his sperm shut-off method would work, the spunky creator patented the idea in 2000 and tested it out on himself (in collaboration with a surgeon) in 2009—and so far so good, he reports. Bimek intends to organize a 25-person clinical trial this year of the method, called the Bimek SLV.

The Bimek valve.

The Bimek SLV works by implanting two devices—shut-off valves—in the scrotum. The valves are each "as small as a gummy bear," according to advertisements, and made of non-magnetic metallic components and a biocompatible polymer already used in medical implants. The devices get attached to the vas deferentia, the two ducts that transfer sperm from the testicles to the urethra. During implantation, each vas deferens is cut and the ends are plugged into the in and out tubes of a valve.