Month: September 2016

Enlarge / Old Man Winter returns. Be very, very afraid. (credit: Farmer's Almanac)

United Airlines may rank last among traditional carriers in customer satisfaction studies, but the company wants you to know that it's looking at ways to improve passenger service. That includes offering better options to customers during the stressful time of inclement weather.

During an interview with David Brancaccio of the public radio program Martketplace, United Chief Executive Officer Oscar Munoz offered an example of how the company is using Farmer's Almanac to put better plans in place during weather disruptions this winter:

Q. We get that you can't control the weather, but when flights do get canceled or they run late, passengers can see if an airline responds in an orderly way, or in a haphazard way. Are you making progress there?

A. Oh, absolutely. I think the hardest thing that historically the industry may have relied upon is the fact that we can't control weather, we can't control air traffic control and use that at the end of the day as an excuse. Things do happen. We know they happen. We don't know exactly when they're going to happen. But we should definitely be prepared. A very quick example: Farmer's Almanac is calling for a very nasty winter. Particularly in Chicago, one of our main hubs. So as we speak, our operating team is hard at work as to how are we going to accommodate passengers. Not our aircraft, not the operations behind it, but the humans that fly us. That's what the important difference is at United.

It should go without saying, but Farmer's Almanac has no credibility in the meteorological science community. Its seasonal forecasts are made by "Caleb Weatherbee," who is described on the publication's website as the official forecaster for the Farmers' Almanac. The site explains: "His name is actually a pseudonym that has been passed down through generations of Almanac prognosticators and has been used to conceal the true identity of the men and women behind our predictions."

Enlarge / The DirecTV app for iPhone.

AT&T is now exempting DirecTV streaming video from data caps on AT&T's mobile Internet service.

AT&T purchased DirecTV in July 2015 and today pushed an update to the DirecTV iPhone app to implement the data cap exemption. "Now you can stream DirecTV on your devices, anywhere—without using your data. Now with AT&T," the app's update notes say under the heading "Data Free TV." This feature requires subscriptions to DirecTV and AT&T wireless data services.

It sounds like the data cap exemption may not apply to all data downloaded by the app, as the update notes further say that "Exclusions apply & may incur data usage." The service is also "Subject to network management, including speed reduction." We've asked AT&T for more information and will provide an update if we receive one.

On June 30, 2016, a costly battle took place in Eve: Online. An alliance of players calling themselves the Imperium—assisted by allies in the game's low security region—destroyed four Titan-class ships (the game's largest and most expensive), and inflicted damage worth half a trillion of the in-game currency (ISK) on their enemies in the Money Badger Coalition (MBC). This battle was one of the largest since the so-called Bloodbath of B-R5RB in 2014, which resulted in losses of 11 trillion ISK—worth roughly $300,000 (£228,000) in real-world money.

The Imperium’s recent assault on the MBC is hardly a left-field event; Eve players blast the hell out of each other on an almost daily basis. But this battle was special; it took place just days after the MBC declared that they had won once and for all the game's latest large-scale war, with forum posts, fan sites, and Facebook feeds featuring links showing how the Imperium and its allies had been driven back across Eve's map of space. The MBC was gleeful in its declaration of victory in the months-long struggle it had taken to calling "World War Bee;" it was over and MBC had won.

"Our goal was to dismantle the CFC coalition [a looser collection of groups accounting for over 40,000 players, including the Imperium]," says Killah Bee, a fleet commander in Pandemic Legion, which is part of the MBC. "We dismantled the coalition—the only thing left is the Imperium, the others have left—and we freed the north [territories]. That's what we set out to do."

The sale of a computer equipped with pre-installed software isn't an unfair commercial practice because most customers prefer to buy a laptop they can use straight away, Europe’s top court has ruled in a victory for Sony.

"Failure to indicate the price of each item of pre-installed software" isn't misleading, the Court of Justice of the European Union added in its ruling (PDF) on Wednesday.

The CJEU was asked to intervene after French citizen Vincent Deroo-Blanquart took Sony to court for failing to reimburse the cost of pre-installed software—Windows Vista Home Premium operating system—that he did not wish to use on a laptop.

Enlarge (credit: Andrew Williams)

Gordon Murray spent decades designing F1 cars. Later, he turned his hand to roadgoing supercars as one of the lead designers behind the iconic McLaren F1 and Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. More recently, he reimagined the city car. While not in production, the T27 is a tiny electric car for one rider—think G-Wiz, but slightly less embarrassing. Now, Murray is trying something rather different again in the form of the Ox, a flat-pack truck that can handle the roughest of terrain, and drive through one metre of water.

And yes, you read that right, the truck comes flat-packed.

Not available in IKEA

The Ox isn't the sort of thing you pick up in Ikea though. It's intended for developing countries, primarily those in Africa, where access to reliable, affordable transport is difficult. And while the Ox isn't not meant the likes of you or I, its design is ingenious.

High speed, high-resolution.

After more than four months as an open beta, Forza Motorsport 6 Apex will finally offer steering wheel support. On Tuesday, Microsoft announced an update to the much-heralded PC version of its in-house racing franchise. As a result, racing wheels from Logitech and Thrustmaster are now supported by the game—but if you've got a fancy Fanatec rig, you might have to be patient a little while longer.

The list of supported wheels includes the extremely popular Logitech G25 and G27, as well as the latest G29 and G920 models. Plenty of Thrustmaster products will also now work with Apex, including most of the company's Xbox One-compatible offerings. But it will be late September before updates to both Windows 10 and Apex allow Fanatec wheels to work with the game, according to Microsoft.

Racers planning on using an H-pattern shifter may also have a wait on their hands. Although there's already support for these peripherals if they come from Logitech (other than the G29), owners of other brands will need yet another update to the game before they function.