Month: September 2016

In a US federal civil rights lawsuit, a Connecticut man has shared footage to bolster his claims that police illegally confronted the pedestrian because he was filming one of them. Authorities seized Michael Picard's camera and his permitted pistol, and the officers involved then accidentally recorded themselves allegedly fabricating charges against the man.

Picard's police encounter began as he was protesting a sobriety checkpoint while lawfully carrying a handgun in a holster. The plaintiff often protests near sobriety checkpoints in the Hartford region and is known by locals and police in the area, according to court documents. "Cops Ahead: Keep Calm and Remain Silent," read the 3-foot-by-2-foot sign Picard held up to motorists ahead of the checkpoint in West Hartford last year.

According to the lawsuit, trooper John Barone walked up to Picard and said "someone called in" a complaint about a man "waving a gun and pointing it at people." It's a claim the lawsuit alleges is fabricated. The lawsuit also states that Barone "swatted" the digital camera out of Picard's hands and onto the ground, at which point the battery dislodged. Barone seized Picard's pistol and "took the handgun permit out of Picard's pants pocket," according to the suit.

Enlarge (credit: Google Fiber)

As the Nashville Metro Council prepares for a final vote to give Google Fiber faster access to utility poles, one council member is sponsoring an alternative plan written by AT&T and Comcast.

The council has tentatively approved a One Touch Make Ready (OTMR) ordinance that would let a single company—Google Fiber in this case—make all of the necessary wire adjustments on utility poles itself. Ordinarily, Google Fiber must wait for incumbent providers like AT&T and Comcast to send construction crews to move their own wires, requiring multiple visits and delaying Google Fiber's broadband deployment. The pro-Google Fiber ordinance was approved in a 32-7 preliminary vote, but one of the dissenters asked AT&T and Comcast to put forth a competing proposal before a final vote is taken.

The new proposal from council member Sheri Weiner “call[s] for Google, AT&T, Comcast and Nashville Electric Service to create a system that improves the current process for making utility poles ready for new cables,” The Tennessean reported last week. “Weiner said AT&T and Comcast helped draft the resolution she proposes.”

Enlarge (credit: US Air Force)

The US Air Force has picked a name to go with the number for its next long-range bomber—even though it will be nearly a decade before the aircraft comes into service. After sifting through 2,100 unique names submitted in a contest run by the Air Force Global Strike Command (the successor to the Strategic Air Command), the Air Force's leadership selected "Raider" as the official name for the B-21.

Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James, who revealed the B-21 designation for the winning Long Range Strike Bomber (LRSB) design from Northrop Grumman in February, announced the name at the Air Force Association's Air, Space, and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, this morning. The name honors Doolittle's Raiders, the Army Air Forces bomber group that launched a surprise attack against Japan on April 18, 1942—flying B-25 bombers off the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. The last surviving member of Doolittle's Raiders, Lt. Colonel Richard Cole, joined James on stage for the naming announcement, along with the two airmen who had submitted the name.

On its current course, the B-21—which bears a distinct resemblance to Northrop Grumman's last long-range stealth bomber, the B-2 Spirit—will not reach "initial capability" until the mid-2020s. Based on well-established technology, the Raider is supposed to be a more modest investment for the Air Force than previous major aircraft programs (such as the B-2, the F-22 Raptor, and F-35 Lightning II—all of which ran far over budget). The initial development contract is for $21 billion, with a purchase of up to 100 aircraft to follow at a fly-away cost of $511 million each (based on Northrop's bid). Even at its reduced cost, the program forced the Air Force to reduce the number of F-35s it plans to purchase in order to operate within budget constraints.

Enlarge (credit: LA Sheriff's Department)

It was just before dawn on September 9 in Lancaster, California, a small city on the northern edge of Los Angeles County. Dozens of sheriff’s deputies had been deployed several hours earlier to apprehend a gunman believed to have been responsible for an attempted murder, among other crimes, in the city during the previous day.

The man, Ray B. Bunge, had fled into a pitch-black open field and had barricaded himself in what authorities described as a “small dugout dirt berm with shrubs and fencing wire around him.” The previous day, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) had brought in a helicopter equipped with an infrared camera overhead, and a personnel carrier was set up in front of him.

In total, there were approximately 40 deputies on scene. After several orders to surrender throughout the night, Bunge did not comply. At his feet lay a shotgun—despite his shooting spree earlier in the day, he hadn’t fired a single shot toward law enforcement.

Ars visits The Coalition in Vancouver, BC. Video shot by Sam Machkovech, edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

VANCOUVER, BC—The future of high-end PC gaming is looking good thanks to graphics APIs like DirectX 12 and Vulkan, which let game engines more directly access multi-threaded processes in your hungry gaming computer's CPU and GPU. As of right now, however, neither API has been heavily tested in the public gaming market. Vulkan's biggest splashes to date have included noticeable-if-incremental bumps for games like Dota 2 and this year's Doom reboot, while DX12 has been applied to PC versions of existing Xbox One games—meaning that we've seen those games jump up to impressive 4K resolutions, but we haven't seen similar jumps in geometry or other major effects.

This fall, Microsoft is finally taking the DX12 plunge with a deluge of "Xbox Play Anywhere" game launches, including this week's Forza Horizon 3, but arguably the biggest DX12er of the bunch is October's Gears of War 4. I wouldn't have made that statement before game developer The Coalition unveiled the game's DirectX 12 version for the first time, but after seeing what the company had to offer, I was amazed. Here, finally, was a Gears of War game that looked as stunning as the original did during its era—you know, so long as you can afford the game's "recommended" PC build spec.

(credit: Aurich Lawson)

Microsoft is closing the London office that was home to part of its Skype development, causing the loss of 220 jobs. A further 300 people are losing their jobs in Redmond as Microsoft makes cuts that were previously announced in July. In a statement, the company said:

Microsoft is consolidating offices across London, moving employees to Microsoft’s new office at Paddington. As part of this effort, Microsoft reviewed some London-based roles and made the decision to unify some engineering positions, potentially putting at risk a number of globally focused Skype and Yammer roles. We are deeply committed to doing everything we can to help those impacted through this process. Microsoft will be entering into a consultation process and offer new opportunities, where possible.

Sources close to the matter tell us that another factor may have been influential in the decision to shut down the London Skype office. Currently, the company has the traditional Windows desktop app; the new Universal Windows Platform app for Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, Xbox, and Skype; the Skype Web client; and a Web-based standalone app for Linux (which apparently also has internal builds that run on Windows, too). Skype also has mobile apps for iOS and Android in addition to a macOS client.

This is an excessive number of clients, and what we're hearing is that Microsoft's solution is to develop yet another client, codenamed "Skype for Life." This one client will be cross-platform, covering not just Windows but Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android.