Month: September 2016

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Andy Cross)

AT&T's court victory over the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) this week had the immediate effect of helping the carrier avoid punishment for throttling the Internet connections of customers with unlimited data plans. The judges' decision could also have a long-term impact on the FTC's ability to enforce consumer protection laws.

The FTC's charter from Congress already prohibited the FTC from regulating common carriers, a designation that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has long applied to AT&T and other phone companies. But the FTC thought it could police non-common carrier activities regardless of whether another part of a company's business falls under the FCC's common carrier designation.

When the FTC sued AT&T in October 2014, the company was a common carrier for phone service but not for Internet access. The FTC argued that it could regulate AT&T's non-common carrier mobile data business, but AT&T argued that it was entirely exempt from FTC jurisdiction because it was a common carrier for voice service.

Enlarge / Marcel Lehel Lazar, 44, known online as "Guccifer," was sentenced to 52 months in prison on Thursday. (credit: NBC News/YouTube)

The Romanian hacker who helped expose Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of private e-mail as secretary of state was sentenced Thursday to 52 months in prison in connection to an admission that he broke into about 100 Americans' e-mail accounts. The compromised accounts included celebrities, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and family members of former Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, and Sidney Blumenthal, a political advisor whom Clinton corresponded with using her private e-mail account.

Marcel Lehel Lazar, a 44-year-old cab driver known by the handle Guccifer, conducted his crimes at home and was extradited to the US this year. He pleaded guilty to identity theft and federal hacking charges.

Guccifer had claimed he hacked into Clinton's private e-mail server at her New York residence. But he has never been charged for that, and he has never divulged the contents of the alleged hack. However, the hacker did reveal private documents from other hacks, including self portraits painted by George W. Bush. He also leaked memos Blumenthal sent Clinton to her private e-mail account. This eventually exposed the fact that Clinton used that account as secretary of state for personal and private businesses instead of using her government account for official business.

Nintendo hosted another of its YouTube-only press conferences on Thursday, but if you came expecting news about the forthcoming Nintendo NX console, too bad; that's coming later this year (possibly this month). This presentation instead focused on the Nintendo 3DS system, and its announcements of early-2017 software may mark the portable console's last hurrah before the launch of the NX, which is rumored to be a home/portable hybrid.

Leading off the news was a still-unnamed, side-scrolling version of Pikmin. The long-running "garden strategy" series has been reimagined as a puzzle-platformer with Lemming-like elements—meaning that your main character, Olimar, will throw different-colored Pikmin to solve small puzzles and progress through linear levels. The brief demo footage looked pretty rough, with simple puzzles, low-poly characters, and a rough frame rate, so we imagine there's a lot to be done on this game before its "spring 2017" launch. This may very well be the upcoming Pikmin game that series creator Shigeru Miyamoto has been teasing for some time—unless there's another Pikmin coming to NX, at any rate.

Also launching in that vague "spring" window is Mario Sports Superstars, which looks like a last-gasp mash-up of other Mario-branded "action sports" games. At least it won't be small, as the game appears set to feature full takes on the Mario Tennis, Mario Golf, and Mario Sluggers games—along with the first 11-on-11 Mario soccer mode and Mario's first-ever horse-racing game. Sadly, this release won't include a refresh of the three-on-three, arcade-minded Mario Strikers soccer game, but it will at least feature online multiplayer. Still, this looks mostly like a "greatest hits" bundle of older 3DS games to prolong the aging 3DS' lifespan a few more months.

Enlarge / Paul K. Martin, nominee for inspector general at NASA, answers questions during his confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in 2009. (credit: NASA)

Lots of rumors have swirled about further delays to NASA's commercial crew program, and now the agency's own inspector general has confirmed these setbacks in a new, critical report on progress toward first flights of Boeing's Starliner and SpaceX's Dragon crew capsules.

In the new review, Inspector General Paul Martin writes, "The Commercial Crew Program continues to face multiple challenges that will likely delay the first routine flight carrying NASA astronauts to the ISS until late 2018—more than 3 years after NASA’s original 2015 goal."

Officially, NASA has maintained that it expects to have at least one test launch of a crew vehicle from US soil by the end of 2017 and regular flights by early 2018.

Enlarge / One of the extra-crispy Galaxy Note 7s after a charging accident. (credit: BusinessKorea )

Samsung's latest flagship, the Galaxy Note 7, recently began shipping out to carriers and countries around the world. Now Samsung's plans for the super-premium smartphone are being delayed after several reports from customers that the device "exploded" while charging.

The Galaxy Note 7 is the first Samsung phone to ship with USB Type-C connector. To ease the transition to the new standard, Samsung included a Micro-USB to USB Type C adapter in the box. This adapter could be to blame, or it could be faulty chargers—or the batteries themselves. Samsung SDI Co Ltd, one of the suppliers for the Note 7 battery, told Reuters that it had seen no evidence that its batteries were to blame.

Samsung has acknowledged the reports, with a representative telling The Korea Times, "We have acquired the handsets, which our customers say burst into flames while charging, to identify the reason. We will come up with a fix as soon as the investigation is finished. We suspended the supply of the phones earlier this week so as to double-check their safety." Another representative told the Yonhap News Agency that "[The] Results of the investigation and relevant countermeasures will be made public this weekend or early next week at the latest."

Enlarge (credit: Intel)

Intel put most of its marketing and PR muscle for IFA this year behind Kaby Lake, the tweaked 4K-friendly version of its flagship Skylake architecture. But you'll only see those chips if you're buying midrange and high-end laptops—slower, lower-end stuff often comes with Celeron and Pentium chips derived from the lower-performance, lower-power Atom chips, and Intel has quietly announced some of those this week, too.

Anandtech has the details on the new 14nm CPUs, dubbed "Apollo Lake." These are a replacement for the Braswell architecture, and they include both the new "Goldmont" CPU architecture and new GPUs that use Intel's Gen 9 integrated GPU execution units (EUs). Gen 9 is the same GPU architecture used in Skylake.

There are a total of six chips, three J-series chips for desktops and three N-series chips for laptops. The key specs are outlined in the table below, but the most important takeaway is that the chips either consume more power or run at lower clock speeds than previous-generation Braswell chips. And at either 6 or 10W, it's worth noting that the chips' TDPs are all higher than the 4.5W Kaby Lake Y-series CPUs.