Month: October 2016

Enlarge / This is the one that burned a little girl in Minnesota. (credit: KSTP.com)

Samsung is still facing a serious issue with the Galaxy Note 7. After a worldwide recall due to explosive batteries, the company has been trying to get replacement models back into the hands of consumers and back on store shelves. However, even with a significant amount of replacement devices out in the wild, reports are coming in that the "safe" replacements are still exploding.

So far we've seen six such reports this week, with five claimed to be replacement devices and one with an unknown replacement status:

• A "safe" Note 7 that caught fire on a parked Southwest Flight, triggering an evacuation of the airplane.
• A "safe" Note 7 filled a Kentucky bedroom with smoke at 4am, sending the owner to the hospital after he started vomiting "a lot of black stuff."
• A "safe" Note 7 melted in Minnesota and burned a 13-year-old girl's hand.
• A "safe" Note 7 exploded in Taiwan while inside a woman's pants pocket.
• A Note 7 caught fire in a South Korean baseball stadium. The owner says the unit is "a new one."
• A Note 7 caught fire in a South Korean Burger King. It's unknown if it's a replacement or not, but the majority of devices in South Korea have been replaced.

The Kentucky case is probably the worst. The phone caught fire October 4th and the owner contacted Samsung, but the public didn't hear about it until October 8th. The owner told CBS affiliate WKYT that he felt Samsung was helping him, until he mistakenly received the following text from a Samsung representative:

Nathan Mattise

AUSTIN, Texas—Not only do genres run the gamut at Fantastic Fest, the ways they are presented do, too. It's common to see mashups (like Anne Hathaway + kaiju = Colossal) or films with the same basic premise ("documentary about movie posters and artists" executed in totally different ways.

So it should come as no surprise that Fantastic Fest's animated films also embrace this ethos—these aren't your typical Disney-style, kid-friendly cartoons. Three in particular stood out among what we saw: The Red Turtle, Nova Seed, and My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea. And the only thing these films seem to have in common is their choice to eschew live-action.

Regular Ars Technica readers probably have no use for a new Roku device—or, at least, not in 2016. If you haven't already watched media-streaming apps on your television using a game console, an HTCP computer, or the TV's pre-installed software, then chances are you're using a first-, second-, or third-generation Roku already (or one of its rivals, including Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, and Apple TV).

But the cord-cutting revolution continues apace, and Roku still has plenty of potential customers to lure away from cable-TV subscriptions and toward its streaming ecosystem. The company clearly doesn't believe that a one-size-fits-all approach will attract enough fourth-gen customers, so it recently introduced a whopping six new models. The cheapest of those, the Roku Express, was the first to land at Ars Technica HQ.

Enlarge (credit: Cyrus Farivar)

Since 2013, I have followed the saga of Cody Wilson, the pioneer behind 3D-printed firearms. The Austin, Texas-based digital gunsmith famously demonstrated in March 2013 that it’s possible to build the lower receiver of an AR-15 on a 3D printer.

"Download this gun," he told me by phone back then.

Since then, Wilson has gone on to build a one-shot pistol dubbed the "Liberator." He moved on to two generations of CNC mills that could help citizens manufacture metal guns at home. (Those remain on sale—Wilson said he's sold over 2,000 of the latest Ghost Gunner 2.)

Enlarge (credit: 2016 Wizards of the Coast / Tyler Jacobson)

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games. Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com.

I had a magic turtle and mystical hawk in my hands when I saw a woman in a white crop top walking by through the window. I was in The Uncommons, a game store café in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, playing at a pre-release event for the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering’s newest expansion set, Kaladesh. It was 2 a.m. Saturday morning, and the café was full of people making their first plays with cards inspired by a fictional land whose cities run on “aether,” the preferred electricity-with-benefits of sorcery engineers.

The woman looked in at us at cramped tables set along an entire wall’s worth of board games. Was she sneering? Her body language might have had nothing to do with us. Shoulders sagging, arms crossed, she was probably heading home, let down by another expensive night at one of New York City’s bars for cool kids.

Enlarge (credit: Gerry Dincher)

Welcome to the Ars Mailbag, where we open a tiny porthole into the insanity that is life aboard the Ars Orbiting HQ. We love our readers and pride ourselves on one of the smartest audiences and best comment sections on the Web. That said, we do get the occasional e-mail telling us that Donald Trump is going to Make the Moon Great Again. From Eric Berger's inbox:

Eric, your suggestion that Hillary Clinton might "pivot" NASA back to the Moon is ludicrous!

FACT: Only Trump will ensure America returns to the Moon, quickly. I have personal, direct knowledge of this fact. Interview him and ask him yourself, dig a little deeper!

Even if Hillary proposed a return to the Moon, she will NEVER get my vote...ever! She has been, and continues to be, part of the problem!

Trump is going to win in a landslide! Not speculation, FACT!

Given this writer's obvious prophetic gifts, we've reached out to ask when it will finally be the year of Linux on the desktop.

Paradise Earth

Speaking of space exploration, this e-mail came in to "young man" Annalee Newitz after her recent piece on Martian colonization.