Month: July 2016

Yesterday, streaming music service Spotify went public with complaints that Apple had recently rejected an update to the the company's iOS app. The company's lawyers alleged that blocking the update "raises serious concerns under both US and EU competition law" and "[diminishes] the competitiveness of Spotify on iOS and as a rival to Apple Music." But Spotify offered up only a vague explanation for why the app had been rejected, citing "business model rules."

Today, Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell responded, saying that Spotify's app update violated Apple's App Review guidelines and that the company would gladly approve and distribute the update once the problem had been fixed. The full letter is available in this Buzzfeed report.

"We're disappointed with the public attacks you've made and appreciate the opportunity to set the record straight," writes Sewell to Spotify General Counsel Horacio Gutierrez. "Our guidelines help competition, not hurt it. The fact that we compete has never influenced how Apple treats Spotify or other successful competitors like Google Play Music, Tidal, Amazon Music, Pandora, or the numerous other apps on the App Store that distribute digital music."

In May, we told you of a lawsuit involving a California cop who looked ready to fire his handgun at a man who was filming the Rohnert Park police officer. Last year's standoff happened right outside the resident's house. Claiming civil rights violations, the alleged victim sued (PDF) the officer and police department that is located about an hour north of San Francisco.

The police department and officer, David Rodriguez, have now responded to the lawsuit. They essentially say it was resident Don McComas' fault from the get go and that McComas' own actions outside his house prompted the officer to draw his weapon on the Rohnert Park man.

"And for a third, separate and affirmative defense, these answering defendants allege that the sole proximate cause of the injuries and damages, if any, claimed by plaintiff was the negligence and fault of the plaintiff...," they responded in court documents. (PDF)

According to Re/code, co-founder and chief technology officer of Hyperloop One, Brogan BamBrogan, has stepped down from his position at the company. The startup, which is angling to develop a super-fast enclosed transit system, promoted former Vice President of Engineering Josh Giegel to president of engineering and has given him a seat on the company’s board.

BamBrogan was a former SpaceX employee who temporarily served as Hyperloop One’s CEO until 2015. He joined the company after Shervin Pishevar, the other cofounder, had a conversation with Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. While credited with coming up with a detailed white paper describing how a Hyperloop would work, Musk has declined to throw resources at building a Hyperloop himself, citing his many standing obligations.

Hyperloop One (formerly Hyperloop Technologies) is currently competing with Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) to see who can bring the 700mph magnetically driven rail system to fruition first. Notably, Hyperloop One is structured as a traditional startup, recently raising $80 million from investors including France’s national railway system, SNCF. HTT, on the other hand, depends largely on volunteer time from engineers who are also veterans of NASA, Boeing, Tesla, and SpaceX.

If you were reading Ars about a decade ago, you may remember our extensive coverage of the baffling architecture behind the PlayStation 3's unique Cell processor. Many developers reportedly encountered difficulties trying to program for it effectively. If you haven't read all that, let Ars' Jon Stokes sum it up for you: "...the PlayStation 3 was all about more: more hype, and more programming headaches."

Today, we can add another posthumous log to that already burning fire of developer ire for the PlayStation 3 and the Cell architecture. Polyphony Digital CEO and Gran Turismo series lead Kazunori Yamauchi told IGN this week that working on the PS3 "was really a nightmare for us."

After addressing the slumping sales for the two PS3 editions of the Gran Turismo series, Yamauchi was quick to blame Sony's hardware for at least part of the series' development problems. "The conditions for GT6 were really against us, mainly because the PlayStation 3 hardware was a very difficult piece of hardware to develop for, and it caused our development team a lot of stress," he said.

Thursday marked the official end of the primary mission of NASA's Dawn spacecraft. Dawn demonstrated the potential of ion engines in the exploration of the Solar System, as it was able to rendezvous with and enter orbit around two different asteroids, Vesta and Ceres. Scientifically, its findings have changed what we thought we knew about some of the bodies of the asteroid belt.

Dawn isn't going to shut down now that its mission is over, as it's in reasonable working order and still observing Ceres. But there's a hint that NASA has bigger plans for the spacecraft.

Yesterday, the Jet Propulsion Lab (which operates Dawn) put up and then removed what it calls a "Dawn Journal" entry. The entry described the future plans for Dawn, and they don't involve staying in orbit around Ceres. Instead, the craft's ion engines will be used to gradually nudge it away from Ceres. The low-power, high-efficiency engines will take until the end of the year to get the spacecraft free of the dwarf planet's gravitational pull.

Adnan Syed, the focus of the first Serial podcast back in 2014, has been granted a retrial for the alleged murder of his ex-girlfriend.

Syed's defence lawyers argued in February that his original trial lawyer, Maria Cristina Gutierrez, had failed to cross-examine the state's "cell tower expert" about the reliability of tracking someone's location via cellular network masts. Syed's defence team also presented new evidence, including testimony from Asia McClain, an alibi who said she was chatting with Syed in a library at the time of the crime.

On Thursday, June 30, judge Martin Welch agreed with the defence lawyers and ordered a new trial. In a memo seen by the New York Times, Welch said that Gutierrez failing to question the cell tower expert witness “created a substantial possibility that the result of the trial was fundamentally unreliable.”