Month: June 2016

On Tuesday, Amazon began announcing settlement payments to customers who bought e-books between April 2010 and May 2012. (Some less-literate Ars staffers, like Nate Anderson, got as little as $1, while others, like yours truly, got more than $48.)

The funds are coming from Apple as part of an antitrust lawsuit that was settled earlier this year.

“You don't have to do anything to claim your credit, we have already added it to your Amazon account," reads the e-mail. "We will automatically apply your available credit to your purchase of qualifying items through Amazon, an Amazon device or an Amazon app.”

After six years of litigation, Sony is now agreeing to pay the price for its 2010 firmware update that removed support for the Linux operating system in the PlayStation 3.

Sony and lawyers representing as many as 10 million console owners reached the deal on Friday. Under the terms of the accord, (PDF) which has not been approved by a California federal judge yet, gamers are eligible to receive $55 if they used Linux on the console. The proposed settlement, which will be vetted by a judge next month, also provides $9 to each console owner that bought a PS3 based on Sony's claims about "Other OS" functionality.

The deal also provides up to $2.25 million in attorneys' fees for the lawyers who brought suit. Under the plan, gamers eligible for a cash payment are "all persons in the United States who purchased a Fat PS3 model in the United States between November 1, 2006, and April 1, 2010." The accord did not say how much it would cost Sony, but the entertainment company is expected to pay out millions.

Nuclear power plants are the only current source of low-carbon electricity that can be built just about anywhere. But the Fukushima disaster has raised some significant questions about the wisdom of putting plants just anywhere. Now, after a decades-long battle, a plant in California that sits near several fault lines will not be relicensed when its current certifications expire in the middle of next decade. The decision will bring an end to nuclear power in the golden state, which has the most aggressive climate goals in the US.

At the time Fukushima occurred, California had two licensed nuclear reactors. But a faulty refurbishment had put the San Onofre in limbo; due to the uncertainty, its owners eventually decided to permanently shutter the plant. That left Diablo Canyon as the only operational plant in the state. That site had been controversial since before the plant was operational, as it is situated near several fault lines and on the coast; Fukushima did little to allay those fears.

Diablo Canyon's two reactors were scheduled to be relicensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2024 and 2025. Now, in a deal negotiated between the utility and environmental groups, that relicensing won't occur. The deal calls for the lost generating power to be replaced by a mix of renewable energy, grid-scale storage, and efficiency measures.

On Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration unveiled its long-anticipated rules for commercial use of small consumer drones. The rules call for a new "remote pilot certificate," a blanket ban on night flights, and a requirement that all flights remain below 400 feet or within 400 feet of a structure.

Under the new operational rules, which take effect in August 2016, drone pilots must be at least 16 years old or be supervised by an adult with a remote pilot certificate. The pilot must also maintain "visual line of sight" with the drone at all times, among other requirements. (Personal, or hobbyist, use rules remain unchanged.)

"This is a huge day for the industry!" Lisa Ellman, a drone lawyer with Hogan Lovells, told Ars. "Long term, this is going to be seen as a watershed moment—the flood gates will now be opened and drone use will be broadly authorized for commercial industry, so we can take advantage of all of their safety and efficiency benefits."

If you ask the Internet what’s wrong with you when you’re not feeling well, it’s bound to break the news that you’ve probably got cancer or perhaps some rare, terminal disease. It doesn’t matter that you just have a mundane, generic symptom. You likely only have a few months left and you should start getting your affairs in order. Sincere condolences, poor Internet user.

With the Web brimming with such bum medical advice—alarming patients and irking doctors worldwide—Google is now rolling out new search tools to try to strip away the medical malarkey or at least shove it down deep in search results.

In the next few days, the Internet giant will be adding in new digital cards that should pop up above common results when you search for terms like “stomach ache” and “skin rash.” The cards are said to contain accurate medical information about common ailments, created with the help of doctors from Harvard Medical School and the Mayo Clinic.

The Federal Communications Commission plan to boost competition in the cable set-top box market may need some changes to shore up enough votes.

While Chairman Tom Wheeler and his Democratic majority led a 3-2 vote on the proposal in February, Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel is pushing for changes before it hits a final vote.

Now that the FCC has received public comments on the plan, "It has become clear the original proposal has real flaws and, as I have suggested before, is too complicated. We need to find another way forward," Rosenworcel said in a statement published by Broadcasting & Cable yesterday.

Google's two-factor authentication system (2FA) is a great way to secure your account, but in the past it has relied on codes from the Google Authenticator app or the presence of a USB security dongle. There's now a new method called "Google Prompt," which, like many other 2FA systems, just uses a simple push notification. When it's time to sign in, just enter your password, and you'll get a pop-up message on your phone asking you if you want to sign in. Press "yes," and you're in.

If you want to set this up yourself, just go to the "Security" section of your Google Account settings. Click on the "2-Step Verification" section, and there should be a new option called "Google Prompt." The option works on Android and iOS (provided you have an iPhone 5S or later). Of course Google recommends you have some kind of secure lock screen if you're going to use this feature, as is standard with other forms of phone-based 2FA. Enabling Google Prompt will automatically disable "Sign in with your phone," which used a similar prompt as a password replacement.

If you aren't using 2FA on your Google account, you have no excuse now, since the push notification makes 2FA faster and easier than ever.