Month: February 2016

Ron Garan at the One Young World summit. (credit: Fragile Oasis)

One of the most frustrating things about being an astronaut, fliers often say, is being unable to share the incredible experience of seeing our world from above with the rest of us. Astronauts go to space and then come back talking about things like seeing no borders, spaceship Earth, and the need to protect our planet both because of its beauty and fragility.

Perhaps no astronaut has taken this to heart more than Ron Garan, who left NASA in 2014 to work full time on sharing this unique perspective of the planet. Garan believes deeply in the “transformative power” of the big picture and how it compels people to address the challenges facing humanity back on Earth.

But Garan’s websites, book, and documentary film can do only so much to help people see this bigger picture. Each medium has its limitations. Really, there’s no substitute for being there and seeing it with one's own eyes. So on Tuesday, Garan announced he’s joining World View, a company that will use balloons to loft passengers above 100,000 feet, as the company’s chief pilot.

BARCELONA—You might not have heard of Xiaomi, or used any of its products before. And even if you have, you might be wondering why one of China's largest smartphone makers—which historically hasn't sold to the US and Europe—is here at MWC to talk about its new flagship smartphone, the Mi 5. The answer, it seems, isn't to launch a dramatic assault on the Western market in the same way Huawei has, but rather to warn the likes of Apple and Samsung that Xiaomi is coming, and people are going to love it.

In a surprisingly slick, if odd press conference—VP Hugo Barra glided through the room on one of Xiaomi's own Ninebot mini scooters—the company pitted its new Android-based Mi 5 phone against the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S7 and iPhone 6S. And on paper at least, Apple and Samsung have plenty to worry about. The Mi 5 sports the latest Snapdragon 820 SoC running at 2.2GHz, a 5.15-inch 1080p edge-to-edge display, up to 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, up to 128GB of UFS 2.0 storage, a 16MP f/2.0 camera with 4-axis OIS (a first, it claims), NFC, a fingerprint scanner, 3000mAh battery, and a gorgeous metal and glass (or ceramic) body.

The price for that little lot? An impressive 2,600 yuan ($354, €321) for the high-end 128GB model with a ceramic body, and 1,999 yuan ($262, €238) for the entry-level version with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. A 64GB version will also be available. All will have black, gold, and white colour options, and all will ship with Android 6.0 running Xiaomi's MIUI 7 interface. The phones will be sold direct from Xiaomi's website in China on March 1, making the Mi 5 one of the first commercially available phones with Qualcomm's latest SoC.

Ben Wizner is an ACLU attorney who we're sure the government views as a "worthy fuckin' adversary." (credit: Cyrus Farivar)

DAVIS, Calif.—Ben Wizner, a top attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, is probably best known for being one of the lawyers representing Ed Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor.

On Tuesday, he told Ars that representing the world's most famous whistleblower has consumed a substantial portion of his professional life over the last 2.5 years. But he framed his passion for civil liberties and fighting surveillance as part of a larger struggle that continues to play out as to the proper balance between not only surveillance and privacy but also between surveillance and democracy itself.

Wizner was in this college town outside Sacramento to speak at the University of California, Davis law school as part of an ongoing public lecture series on surveillance. (Full disclosure: yours truly spoke as part of the same series last year.) In a 30-minute talk followed by questions from an audience primarily made up of law students, Wizner outlined a history of surveillance in America, going back to the 1971 Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI and extending through to the Snowden-era NSA.