Month: January 2016

(credit: Sal)

On Tuesday, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) rejected Volkswagen Group’s proposed fixes for 2.0L diesel engines that were caught with software to cheat the cars’ emissions control systems.

CARB’s decision (PDF) only applies to 75,688 California cars, but this afternoon the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is also demanding that Volkswagen put forth proposals to fix the diesel vehicles caught with so-called defeat devices, agreed with CARB's decision. In a statement, the EPA said that to-date, the Germany automaker "has not submitted an approvable recall plan to bring the vehicles into compliance and reduce pollution.”

Volkswagen has been scrambling to avoid regulatory blowback, lawsuits, and consumer outrage since the EPA issued a notice of violation (NOV) in September, accusing the automaker of installing defeat devices on diesel vehicles made after 2009. Volkswagen was eventually forced to admit that some 11 million vehicles worldwide could have the defeat device software on them. The software increases emissions by up to 40 times the limit allowed by US regulators when the car is being driven under normal conditions.

(credit: EA)

EA is shaking up the market for downloadable PC games with a new subscription-based service that apes some of the most popular features of console offerings like PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live Gold. On Tuesday, the company made a surprise announcement of EA Origin Access for PC—not to be confused with the similarly named, entirely different offering on Xbox One consoles.

The new PC service will set players back $5 per month in exchange for access to full-game downloads from the "EA Vault," which currently includes 15 games, so long as they maintain a paid EA Origin Access subscription. Only one of those Vault titles, Battlefield Hardline, came out last year; the rest are "legacy" titles from the past few years, including Dragon Age: Inquisition, Battlefield 3 and 4, and the 2013 reboot of SimCity (all sans DLC). EA promises to add more Vault games on a monthly basis, including third-party offerings.

The service's FAQ claims that "some" EA Vault games will work offline, so long as players "periodically reconnect to Origin," but it doesn't clarify which games or how long "periodic" means. More troubling is the site's lack of confirmation about whether or not Vault games ever expire for paying members; on the comparable PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live Games with Gold services, members receive permanent access to unlocked games, so long as they maintain paid subscriptions. We have asked EA representatives to clarify this point, and we will update this report if we receive a response.

"Perhaps you should switch to another cable company… oh, that's right, we're the only one in town." (credit: Viacom)

Republicans in Congress are advancing a bill that could strip the Federal Communications Commission of authority to protect consumers from unreasonable broadband prices. Democrats and consumer advocates warn that the bill could help Internet service providers overcharge customers and impose unfair data caps.

When the FCC reclassified broadband as a common carrier service in order to impose net neutrality rules, the commission declined to impose traditional rate regulation in which telecommunications providers would have to seek permission before raising prices. But the reclassification allows customers to complain about prices, with the FCC judging on a case-by-case basis whether a price or pricing practice is "unjust" or "unreasonable."

Republicans led a hearing today on a few bills, including the "No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act," which would do exactly what its title says by forbidding the FCC from regulating rates charged for Internet service. Republicans have said they're simply trying to put into law a promise made by President Obama and FCC Chairman Wheeler that the commission won't require ISPs to face the rate-of-return regulation traditionally applied to telephone service. Passing a law would prevent future FCC chairpersons from using a different strategy.

(credit: Fortinet)

Less than a month after Juniper Network officials disclosed an unauthorized backdoor in the company's NetScreen line of firewalls, researchers have uncovered highly suspicious code in older software from Juniper competitor Fortinet.

The suspicious code contains a challenge-and-response authentication routine for logging into servers with the secure shell (SSH) protocol. Researchers were able to unearth a hard-coded password of "FGTAbc11*xy+Qqz27" (not including the quotation marks) after reviewing this exploit code posted online on Saturday. On Tuesday, a researcher posted this screenshot purporting to show someone using the exploit to gain remote access to a server running Fortinet's FortiOS software.

This exploit code provides unauthorized SSH access to devices running older versions of FortiOS. (credit: Full Disclosure mailing list)

This partially redacted screenshot purports to show the exploit in action. (credit: @dailydavedavids)

Ralf-Philipp Weinmann, a security researcher who helped uncover the innerworkings of the Juniper backdoor, took to Twitter on Tuesday and repeatedly referred to the custom SSH authentication as a "backdoor." In one specific post, he confirmed he was able to make it work as reported on older versions of Fortinet's FortiOS.

Video shot/edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

Wearables are becoming more common, but smart clothing—arguably the most wearable wearables—remains somewhat obscure. Sensoria Fitness was one of the first companies on the smart clothing scene, and now it has a family of smart socks, shirts, and bras meant for those who are serious about fitness. The $199 smart socks have sensors embedded in them to collect running data, and the $139 smart bra has a built-in heart rate monitor ideal for heart rate zone training. While smart clothing may seem like a no-brainer for fitness buffs, execution is key: do these smart garments add enough value to training to be worth the price? And are they worth buying instead of other fitness trackers that collect the same stats?

Design: Comfortable, but a little embarrassing

Sensoria did its best to design its smart clothing as conventionally as possible. The socks look fairly simple at first glance, except for the thumb-sized strip attached near the top with the magnetic nodes that connect to the modules. This strip is made of a flexible, rubber-like material, and it's sewn into the fabric of the sock in order to move and bend along with the rest of the garment.

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our partners at TechBargains, we have a ton of new deals to start 2016 off right! One of the highlights is a sale on Dell's newest UltraSharp monitors, but it won't last long. For one day only, you can get Dell's 32-inch 4K UltraSharp IPS monitor with 99.5 percent Adobe RGB coverage for just $1,349, down hundreds of dollars from its original price of $1,799. Dell also has price drops on other high-quality monitors. This sale ends tomorrow, so don't wait to snatch up the monitor that could carry you through the rest of the new year.

As usual, we have a number of laptop, desktop, smartphone, and accessories deals below.

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In Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the absolute lowest strata of the community is occupied by cheaters. No matter the game, we all know the pain of going up against an obvious cheater: that person who makes the lives of other players a misery, and griefs them just for kicks. This isn't like being at the whim of some hacker who shows off by messing with the game—you're at the mercy of the weasels who bought or subscribed to their script to "win."

It is that shared hatred of cheaters that Valve taps into with Overwatch, its new crowdsourced anti-cheating tool. Overwatch, which lets experienced players like myself ban other players, works so well because we know what it's like to be on the receiving end of a wall-hacking charlatan. We know that a competitive match of CS:GO is on average a 45-minute commitment, and we know that abandoning it will result in punishment from teammates and game alike. We know that if we can keep CS:GO free of cheaters, the game—and the community—will be all the better for it.

The Overwatch

As the competitive first-person-shooter (it had over nine million unique players last month) CS:GO naturally attracts cheaters. Valve's solution is a simple one: let the players police themselves. The Overwatch gives "qualified" players—those that that have fulfilled certain criteria, such as a minimum rank and a minimum number of games—to take on the ultimate counter-terrorist role and strike the ban-hammer down on those that see through walls, or auto-aim their way to a string of unbelievable headshots. Putting the power to rid the game of cheaters in the hands of those who, by and large, are competitive-minded and thus inclined to hate those that break the rules, has proven to be a smart decision, even if it didn't always seem like it.