Month: October 2016

Enlarge / Facebook's Free Basics app for India, which was banned by the country's net neutrality rules. (credit: Facebook)

Facebook is considering whether to launch a mobile application in the United States that would provide free access to a selection of websites, according to a Washington Post report today.

Facebook has been talking to White House officials about how to roll out the Free Basics program in the US without inviting regulatory scrutiny, the article said, attributing the information to anonymous sources. The Free Basics application provides access to a variety of websites—including Facebook and Facebook Messenger—without counting against customers' data caps, so Facebook would also need cooperation from US mobile operators.

"The US version of Free Basics would target low-income and rural Americans who cannot afford reliable, high-speed Internet at home or on smartphones," the Post reported.

Enlarge (credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project)

In 2015, representatives from 196 countries met for the Paris Climate talks, setting greenhouse gas emissions targets for the year 2025. As part of this agreement, the US has set what are called "intended nationally determined contributions," which are planned reductions in carbon emissions. A recent paper in Nature Climate Change examined the current federal policies and determined that it is unlikely the US will meet its own targets as things now stand.

The paper attempted a comprehensive evaluation of historical and projected greenhouse gas emissions in the US, and it put a particular emphasis on the most influential policy years. These were 2005 (the year the Kyoto Protocol went into effect and the Montreal action plan was developed) and 2025 (the date for reaching the targeted goals of the Paris climate talks). Researchers built a model that included historical and projected estimates of both climate data and energy use. The team then used the model to test the potential effects of several different pieces of climate policy that have been proposed or passed in recent years.

They found that the EPA’s Clean Power Plan would be the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions reductions, producing an estimated drop of 221 to 267 million tons of CO₂ equivalent. However, the team did find that an earlier, more ambitious version of the Clean Power Plan would have had an even larger effect.

Enlarge / Oculus diversity lead Ebony Peay Ramirez speaks about a $10 million pledge toward diversity-minded initiatives. (credit: Oculus)

Oculus' annual conference revolving around its VR products just happened to be scheduled two weeks after the company's founder, Palmer Luckey, was revealed as a major contributor to a "shit-posting" political meme organization. Coincidentally, this third edition of Oculus Connect began with a major no-show on its keynote stage: Palmer Luckey.

Luckey could have used the Oculus Connect stage to address the controversy over his donations to Nimble America, which my colleague Kyle Orland so succinctly described in September as "an unofficial pro-Trump political nonprofit that is powering the tsunami of white supremacist and other racist image macros that have plagued Reddit." Instead, Oculus gave a few minutes of stage time to Ebony Peay Ramirez, the company's head of diversity, who announced that Oculus will commit $10 million to "diverse programs for virtual reality."

"VR will only succeed if it reflects a diverse ecosystem," Ramirez said to the Oculus Connect crowd. "Diversity matters, not just in the storytellers lending their voices to the medium but to the audience as well." Ramirez described a variety of Oculus-run initiatives, including VR For Good, Launch Pad, and The Diverse Filmmakers Project, to offer access and assistance for more diverse VR creators. However, she frequently stumbled over her words throughout her speech, even when asking, "Can I hear it from the women in VR, please?"

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Yuri_Arcurs)

The Federal Communications Commission plans to vote on rules protecting the privacy of broadband subscribers later this month despite persistent opposition from Internet service providers.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler circulated the proposal to commissioners today and scheduled a vote for October 27. The rules are likely to be approved by a 3-2 vote with the commission’s Democratic majority supporting them.

The proposed rules will put broadband providers under a stricter privacy regime than the one imposed on websites like Google and Facebook, which are regulated separately by the Federal Trade Commission. The rules will require ISPs to get opt-in consent from consumers before sharing Web browsing data and other private information with advertisers and other third parties.

SAN JOSE—We've had a couple of chances to try out Oculus' hand-tracking Touch controllers in the last few years, but they've always been short, limited demos on early prototypes. This week at the Oculus Connect conference, we finally got a chance to get to know the retail version of the controller, using it on about a dozen different games throughout an all-day event.

The extended playtime has been enough to build that strong first impression into a clear preference. Oculus might be coming late to the hand-tracking party compared to the competition, but the wait has been worth it for what is currently my favorite virtual reality controller.

Let your fingers do the playing

Oculus Touch's biggest strength is that you don't have to focus on holding it at all times. With controllers like the HTC Vive or PlayStation Move (or even the Wii Remote), your fingers and hand position are limited by the need to grip the controllers with most of your fingers at all times. Oculus Touch, on the other hand, is balanced to stay in the crook between your thumb and index finger, even if you open your fingers and thumb and even as you twist and turn your hands around in all directions.

Not pictured: the Lizard Squad. (credit: William B. Neaves)

Federal prosecutors have charged two 19-year-old men with running "hacking-for-hire" websites that attacked companies worldwide and did business with international hacking groups "Lizard Squad" and "PoodleCorp." Zachary Buchta of Fallston, Maryland, and Bradley Jan Willem van Rooy of the Netherlands, have both been charged with conspiring to cause damage to protected computers.

Buchta walked out of federal court in Chicago yesterday after being released on bail. He was arrested earlier but released on his own recognizance. The judge ruled that Buchta can live with his mother in Maryland while he awaits trial, but he won't be allowed to access the Internet or have any contact with van Rooy. As for van Rooy, he was arrested in the Netherlands last month and remains in custody there.

The allegations against Buchta and van Rooy are among the first US charges related to Lizard Squad.

SAN JOSE—When Oculus first announced the minimum PC specs for the Oculus Rift, the headset needed an Nvidia GTX 970 equivalent and an Intel i5-4590 to run acceptably. Now, without changing the hardware, Oculus has used a new software API called "asynchronous spacewarp" to officially lower that recmmended spec. Now, Oculus says the Rift will run acceptably on any machine with an Nvidia 960 or greater, and an intel i3-6100 (or AMD FX4350) or greater.

The key to that change, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe says, is a new "asychronous spacewarp" technology built into the Oculus API. Much like the Oculus' existing "asyncrhonous timewarp" technology (which Iribe says eliminates almost all of the 11 percent of frames that would otherwise be dropped in VR), Iribe says "spacewarp" allows games to run at an internal 45 frames per second, while still providing a smooth 90 frames per second to the headset.

The spacewarp system (which is built into the Oculus runtime) takes the two previous frames generated by software, analyzes the difference, and calculates a spatial transformation that can generate a "synthetic frame" based on the current head translation and movement. While Iribe was clear that this synthetic frame system is still "no replacement for native 90 hz rendering," it does fill in the frame rate gaps on systems that are not able to hit that framerate natively.