Month: November 2016

(credit: Jason Farrar)

Once again, a Federal Communications Commission attempt to lower the price inmates pay for phone calls has been blocked in court.

A ruling on Wednesday from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit granted a petition for a stay filed by Securus Technologies. This puts a halt to rate caps on inmate calling services that were implemented in August.

“Petitioners have satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending court review,” judges wrote.

RAM (random access memory) is a component of every computer system, from tiny embedded controllers to enterprise servers. In the form of SRAM (static RAM) or DRAM (dynamic RAM), it’s where data is held temporarily while some kind of processor operates on it. But as the price of RAM falls, the model of shuttling data to and from big persistent storage and RAM may no longer hold.

RAM is highly susceptible to market fluctuations, but the long-term price trend is steadily downward. Historically, as recently as 2000 a gigabyte of memory cost over $1,000 (£800 in those days); today, it’s just under $5 (~£5). That opens up very different ways of thinking about system architecture.

Enlarge / Former Reuters social media editor Matthew Keys (R), seen here with his lawyer Jay Leiderman at the federal courthouse in Sacramento in 2013. (credit: Max Whittaker / Getty Images News)

After having served nearly three months in a federal prison camp in central California, Matthew Keys is making the best of it.

In August 2016, the 29-year-old journalist began his two-year sentence in Atwater, California, about 120 miles east of San Francisco. Earlier this year, Keys was convicted at trial under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the notorious anti-hacking federal law that dates back to the 1980s. An effort to reform that law has languished in Congress.

Keys told Ars that, even post-conviction, he did not hand over any login information that led to the 40-minute alteration of a Los Angeles Times headline in 2010.

Enlarge / The California State Capitol Building as seen in 2015. (credit: Jeff Turner)

Among a slew on ballot propositions that Californians will be asked to consider on Election Day (Nov. 8) is Proposition 54, a proposed constitutional amendment that seems like a no-brainer. If passed, the law would require that the final text of all proposed legislation be published on the Internet for 72 hours before lawmakers can conduct a final vote. Typically, the text of bills in California is put online as it goes through the committee and voting process, but sometimes those bills can change at the last minute. Accessing those changes isn't always easy.

The initiative, which seems all-but-certain to pass, has massive support from Charles T. Munger, Jr., the son of billionaire Charles Munger. The younger Munger, an experimental physicist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and a longtime Republican activist, has donated over $10.6 million to the “Yes on Prop. 54” campaign. The effort supporting the opposing view has taken in just over $27,000.

Proposition 54 would also force the Assembly and State Senate to allow the public to record meetings as well, which could potentially be used in political advertising.