Month: August 2016

(credit: Getty Images | Yuri_Arcurs)

The cable industry's majority share of US broadband subscribers rose again last quarter, as Comcast and Charter gained nearly 500,000 subscribers, combined, while phone companies AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, and Frontier all lost Internet customers.

The 14 largest ISPs, accounting for 95 percent of the US market, gained 192,510 Internet customers in Q2 2016, bringing the total to 91.9 million, Leichtman Research Group reported today. Cable companies accounted for all of the gains, adding 553,293 subscribers for a new total of 57 million. The phone companies lost 360,783 subscribers, bringing them down to 34.9 million. Phone companies' losses more than doubled since Q2 2015, when they lost about 150,000 subscribers.

"Over the past year, cable companies have added about 3.5 million broadband subscribers, while telcos have had net losses of about 500,000 broadband subscribers," the group's president, Bruce Leichtman, said in the press release.

In June, Microsoft announced its plans to build a single platform suitable for virtual reality, augmented reality, and any other system that mixes computer-generated and real-world content.

At IDF in San Francisco today, Microsoft's Terry Myerson said that the Windows Holographic experience, including the shell used on the HoloLens hardware, will be made available as an update to the standard Windows 10 desktop operating system some time next year.

Currently, the HoloLens runs a specialized variant of Windows. Desktop Windows offers many of the same APIs as the HoloLens, but the 3D user interface that mixes existing 2D apps with new 3D ones is only available on the augmented reality headset. Next year's update will make it available to all, opening it up not just to Microsoft's standalone device but also to hardware such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive that provide tethered virtual reality.

(credit: Intel)

The still-young virtual reality headset wars have a new competitor, though it's being sold as more of a "mixed reality" solution than purely VR. At the Intel Developer Forum today, the company announced Project Alloy, an untethered headset that packs everything into a single head-mounted display without the need for a PC or a mobile phone.

In addition to the battery, display, and computing resources needed to run the headset, Project Alloy will also include Intel's Real Sense motion tracking system, which will use cameras and sensors to map the world around you and track your hands without the need for gloves or handheld controllers. The system can also see real-world objects and integrate them into the virtual world, as shown in a demo where the user opened a real door and saw his boss' face appear in the virtual world (hence the "mixed reality" moniker Intel stressed in its presentation).

Alloy will be integrated with Microsoft's Windows Holographic platform, which will itself be available on all Windows 10 PCs next year. Intel also said it plans to release the Alloy hardware specs under an open source license at some point, letting others essentially use it as a reference design for their own hardware.

Middle-market SUVs might not set the heart racing, but just one model within this ubiquitous SUV segment means more—more volume, more customers—than the latest hypercar that 100 people might actually buy. Realize this and you awaken to the far greater statistical relevance of the plain old SUV. SUVs make the automotive world go 'round far more than exotics.

Couple that ubiquity with a hybrid drivetrain and it starts to get interesting. Hybridize a small car and you might increase fuel efficiency from 40 to 50MPG. But many more people drive big 15MPG SUVs than small efficient cars, and a hybrid SUV that delivers 20MPG actually involves a bigger improvement from the starting point. The stakes are higher.

Which brings us to Toyota's Highlander. A mainstay of that ever-present strain of suburban SUVs, the Highlander offers a luxuriously impressive inside and comes close to elegance on the outside. Where Lexus has adorned all its recent cars and SUVs with the sharp-edged—and polarizing—corporate "spindle" grille and highly angular overall styling, it's possible that the Highlander gets you most of the way to Lexus luxury but without the fussiness. Actually, it's more than possible.

(credit: Brandon Anderson)

An internal database used by California's police agencies chronicles some 150,000 suspected gang members. However, the CalGang database is so riddled with errors that its authenticity, and its ability to help the authorities fight gang violence, is now being questioned by the state's auditor.

Consider that an audit of the crime-fighting database—which points to gang member booking photographs, birth dates, race, gender, known addresses, tattoos, convictions, interactions with police, and so on—listed 42 people under the age of one as suspected gang members.

"We found 42 individuals in CalGang who were supposedly younger than one year of age at the time of entry—28 of whom were entered for 'admitting to being gang members,'" Elaine Howle, the state's top auditor, wrote in a recent review of the database, which is administered by police agencies across California's 58 counties.