Month: January 2017

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On Tuesday, Ford announced its 2018 Mustang, a refresh from the previous generation that debuted in 2015. Although Ford couldn’t share important details like fuel economy and price, the Mustang refresh seems like a thoughtful one. It has driver assist technology, a more aerodynamic design, and performance upgrades for both the 2.3L EcoBoost four-cylinder engine, as well as its 5.0L V8 engine on the GT.

Ars spoke to Corey Holter, Ford’s Marketing Manager for Car and Cross Vehicle Marketing, about the updates to the car. He emphasized that the EcoBoost has been successful in bringing new customers into Ford’s mix, especially millennials, people of color, and women.

Before we saw the car, a spokesperson for Ford told us that the redesign of the interior and exterior of the 2018 Mustang would attract new female buyers, which admittedly put us on our guard. As a tech publication, we're all-too-familiar with the old “pink washing” gambit used so often by phone companies—that markets a product to women by slashing its specs and pandering to a perceived “female” aesthetic.

Gabe Newell and J.J. Abrams onstage at the DICE Summit in 2013. (credit: Kyle Orland)

Valve Software chief Gabe Newell logged into Reddit on Tuesday to answer questions in an "ask me anything" thread. As expected, waves of fans shouted "HALF-LIFE 3?!" as if that blurt were a question.

Unsurprisingly, Newell didn't offer hard answers about any closure to Valve's beloved FPS series. He and his coworkers have dodged such questions for years now—but he did offer a mix of pessimism and optimism regarding the Half-Life universe in general.

Early in the AMA, when he was asked what his favorite single-player Valve game was, Newell answered that it was Portal 2. A joke response from an apparent Half-Life fan prompted this Newell follow-up:

Qualcomm licenses the 3G standards essential patents from Samsung to make the cellular radio chips Apple uses in its iPhone and iPad.

The US Federal Trade Commission has charged Qualcomm with violating the FTC Act. The feds say that Qualcomm's patent-licensing policies amount to unfair competition.

The FTC's redacted complaint (PDF), filed today, says that Qualcomm maintains a "no license, no chips" policy that forces cell phone to pay high royalties to Qualcomm.

Qualcomm is a major supplier of baseband processors, and it also licenses patents that it says are essential to widely adopted cellular standards. According to the FTC complaint, Qualcomm won't sell baseband processors unless a customer takes a license to Qualcomm's standard-essential patents, on Qualcomm's terms. And Qualcomm has refused to license its standard-essential patents to competitors, which the FTC says violates Qualcomm's commitment to license on a "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" or FRAND basis. Agreeing to FRAND licensing terms is required by the standard-setting organizations to which Qualcomm belongs.

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The Windows Store—which already includes apps, games, movies, and TV shows—is going to include books in the Creators Update. This is according to pictures obtained by MSPoweruser.

Based on images from an internal Windows 10 Mobile build, books will have their own dedicated section within the Store. The whole process will work much the same way as it does for any other purchase. It appears that Microsoft is not building a dedicated reading application for these purchases. Instead, the Edge browser in the Creators Update has been updated to include support for EPUB books, affording some customization of their appearance in the browser's reading mode.

This isn't Microsoft's first foray into the electronic book world. Long, long ago it had an app called Reader, which supported a proprietary HTML-based format. Reader was developed for Pocket PC and Windows Mobile, and notably, it was in Reader that Microsoft first used ClearType sub-pixel anti-aliasing. A Reader app was also available for desktop Windows, though not Windows Phone. The company even had its own online catalog of e-books using its proprietary format, which linked to third-party sites actually selling the books.

Enlarge / The North American Wolverine could potentially be added to the Endangered Species List due to habitat loss as a result of climate change. (credit: Daniel J. Cox)

Republicans and some Democratic Congress members seem poised to weaken the Endangered Species Act under the new Administration, the Washington Post reports. Republican lawmakers especially have complained that the law has been used to improperly stymie drilling, mining, and land development. Although President-elect Trump has not commented extensively on matters concerning the Endangered Species Act, many Republicans are hoping that their efforts to amend the Act will be successful after eight years of trying without luck.

The Post reports that Republicans are suggesting alterations to the Endangered Species Act that would limit lawsuits launched to maintain protections for certain species. Others want to introduce a rule to only allow a species on the endangered list after another species comes off it. Representative Rob Bishop (R-UT), who is the Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, told the Post that he would “would love to invalidate” the Endangered Species Act if he can find the support from his colleagues to do so. Ars contacted Rep. Bishop's office for further comment but we have not received a response.

Although Congress unanimously approved the Act in 1973 to save the bald eagle population, the Act has grown more controversial, especially since it’s been used to protect wolf populations. Wolves are disliked by ranchers, who say the wolves attack livestock and cannot be hunted due to protections conferred by the Act. Despite wolves' bad reputation, many environmental advocates and researchers say that the presence of wolves is essential to maintaining wild habitats, creating a “trophic cascade” of hunting and feeding that keep elk in check and consequently help preserve the land those elk feed on.

Enlarge / Tom Price, R-Ga., speaks at a signing ceremony for the "Restoring Americans Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act of 2015" (HR 3762) at the US Capitol. (credit: Getty | Congressional Quarterly )

Republican legislation that guts the Affordable Care Act would cause 18 million people to lose their insurance and would increase premiums of individual plans by about 20 to 25 percent, all within a year of being enacted, a report released today by the Congressional Budget Office estimates.

The legislation would destabilize the individual health insurance market, the report cautions, so the effects will “worsen over time.” After roughly two years, the number of uninsured would jump by 27 million and premiums would increase by about 50 percent. If nothing else changes, in ten years, the uninsured would increase by 32 million and premiums would be about double.

The CBO made the projections based on the most current insurance data and legislation introduced in 2015 by Tom Price (R-Ga.), President-elect Trump’s nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. The legislation, H.R.3762, is designed to dismantle the ACA through budgetary reconciliation. The legislation passed both the House and Senate at the time but was vetoed by President Obama. The GOP has already begun legislative proceedings to once again pass a budgetary reconciliation that would demolish Obama’s signature healthcare law.

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Smart cameras marketed under the Samsung brand name are vulnerable to attacks that allow hackers to gain full control, a status that allows the viewing of what are supposed to be private video feeds, researchers said.

The remote code-execution vulnerability has been confirmed in the Samsung SmartCam SNH-1011, but the researchers said they suspect other models in the same product line are also susceptible. The flaw allows attackers to inject commands into a Web interface built into the devices. The bug resides in PHP code responsible for updating a video monitoring system known as iWatch. It stems from the failure to properly filter malicious input included in the name of uploaded files. As a result, attackers who know the IP address of a vulnerable camera can exploit the vulnerability to inject commands that are executed with unfettered root privileges.

"The iWatch Install.php vulnerability can be exploited by crafting a special filename which is then stored within a tar command passed to a php system() call," the researchers wrote in a blog post published to the Exploitee.rs website. "Because the webserver runs as root, the filename is user supplied, and the input is used without sanitization, we are able to inject our own commands within the achieve root remote command execution."