Month: May 2016

(credit: Alan Cleaver)

A suburban San Francisco man was sentenced to 12 years in prison Monday following his conviction of robbing a Craigslist patron at gunpoint.

The 38-year-old defendant, Tuan Ngoc Luong, was nabbed last year during a sting operation when he tried to rob an undercover Alameda County sheriff's deputy, according to court documents (PDF). His sentence was lengthy because, in part, he was found guilty of being a convicted felon in possession of a Glock semi-automatic pistol.

The investigation began last year after a man saw a Craigslist advertisement about a car—a 1996 Acura Integra—and contacted the seller, who turned out to be the defendant. The two met at a local Bay Area subway station. During a late-evening test drive, the victim got out of the car to inspect it and wanted to buy it for $1,100. The defendant, who went by the name Michael, "pointed a black semi-automatic handgun at the victim and demanded money," according to a police affidavit.

Over the course of the spring, I had the chance to talk about science journalism at a number of universities. (Thanks to the folks at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Illinois in Chicago for inviting me.) It took about 45 minutes for me to discuss the issues involved and provide a number of examples of things gone badly wrong.

On Sunday, John Oliver managed to cover the same ground and more, and he did it with a lot more flair and humor—all in under 20 minutes. If you have the time, it's well worth a watch.

On Monday, all these science journalism problems were driven home yet again. The University of Gothenburg issued a press release suggesting that hunger influences our decision-making processes. This finding shouldn't be a huge surprise; anything that distracts us seems to influence our ability to make decisions. But the release itself is a perfect example of many of the problems Oliver pointed out.

(credit: Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock)

SAN FRANCISCO—Google lawyer Robert Van Nest delivered a spirited defense to Oracle's accusations to a jury on Tuesday, telling them that Android was no shortcut—it was built with sweat and hard work.

"Google engineers spent several years and hundreds of millions of dollars to create Android using Google know-how," he said. "They created a brand new platform for innovation in smartphones and tablets that was beyond anything any of us had ever seen before."

Van Nest's strategy centered on a few key points. First, the Java language was open and free to use—a gift from creator Sun Microsystems to the world, he said. Sun wanted developers to take up Java and teach it in universities and schools.

Enlarge / Your new spaceship chariot. (credit: Electronic Arts / Bioware)

In a blog post today on MassEffect.com, Bioware General Manager Aaryn Flynn announced the next game in the Mass Effect series has a new release date: early 2017. First teased at E3 in 2014 with a short video and then given a more formal reveal and an official name at last year’s E3, Mass Effect: Andromeda was tentatively targeted at a late 2016 release.

Last month, Electronic Arts CFO Blake Jorgensen appeared to indicate in a financial presentation that Andromeda would arrive during EA’s fourth fiscal quarter, which aligns with the first calendar quarter of 2017. Today’s announcement by Bioware dovetails nicely with that rumor.

We’ve reached out to Bioware with some requests for additional information and a couple of questions, and we’ll update this story if they’re able to reply.

(credit: We Like Cars)

According to sources speaking to Bloomberg on Tuesday, Volkswagen Group is close to proposing a fix for its 3.0L diesel engines found in Audi, Porsche, and VW models that were sold with built-in software that's illegal in the US. These approximately 85,000 cars spew more than the federal legal limit of nitrogen oxide (NO_x) when driven under normal driving conditions. The illegal software helps the cars pass emissions tests when it senses the car is being tested in a lab.

This batch of cars is separate from the nearly 500,000 2.0L diesel engine Volkswagens and Audis found with similar illegal software installed on them. Volkswagen recently said in federal court that it would be buying back those 2.0L cars from their owners after the California Air Resources Board initially rejected Volkswagen’s proposed fix. The buyback plan has not yet been made official, as it’s part of ongoing settlement proceedings.

In all, Volkswagen Group has set aside $18 billion to cover the costs of that buyback plan and associated legal fees.

(credit: Fox16.com)

An Arkansas local judge resigned Monday following an ethics commission inquiry that concluded he had traded sex for reduced sentences and stored pictures of nude defendants on his home computer. The commission alleged he also housed child porn on that computer.

Cross County District Judge Joseph Boeckmann's resignation comes months after the state Judicial Discipline & Disability Commission concluded that the judge gave male defendants a hand-written note in court with his phone number on it instructing them that they could perform a "community service" at his house as part of a "substitutionary" sentence.

In a letter to the judge last week, the commission said it was in the process of recovering some 4,500 photos from the judge's computer.

With a 6.44-inch display, the Mi Max will make anyone's hands look small.

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Overnight, Xiaomi launched the Mi Max, a massive 6.44-inch smartphone, and a new version of its Android skin, MIUI 8.

We'll start with the phone. For RMB1499 ($230/£159) you get a crazy-big 6.44-inch, 1920×1080 (342ppi) display, a Snapdragon 650 SoC, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage (plus a MicroSD slot), a 16MP rear camera, a 5MP front camera, and a 4850 mAh battery. The Snapdragon 650 is a six-core SoC with the usual big.LITTLE architecture, which gives you a set of power-hungry "big" cores for the heavy lifting and a set of "little" cores for low power and idle operations. On the Snapdragon 650, you usually get two 1.8GHz Cortex-A72 cores for the heavy lifting and four 1.2GHz Cortex-A53 cores for the "little" cores, but Xiaomi doesn't have the CPU clock speeds listed.

Things get complicated with the more expensive models, which don't just offer more storage but also upgrade the SoC and RAM. For RMB1699 (~$260/£180) you can upgrade to the 64GB version, which changes the SoC to a Snapdragon 652. The 652 adds an extra two "big" cores over the Snapdragon 650 for an even, eight-core chip with four big cores and four little ones. For RMB1999 (~$307/£212) you can have the 128GB version, which keeps the Snapdragon 652 SoC and adds an extra GB of RAM for 4GB total.