Month: February 2017

Enlarge / Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Nintendo Switch in portable mode.

Complaints and concerns about Nintendo's first paid online service, which will launch later this year for the new Switch system, softened a bit on Wednesday. That's because the still-unnamed service now has a price—and a surprisingly cheap one, at least for the console space.

For now, the price figure is coming from Nintendo's Japanese president, Tatsumi Kimishima, who tells the Nikkei Asian Review that Nintendo Switch owners can expect to pay an annual fee of between 2,000-3,000 yen (which equals $17.60-$26.40 USD). Even if Nintendo majorly rounds that figure up for American gamers, that cost will still likely come in at half the $60/year fee for rival services Xbox Gold and PlayStation Plus.

Like its rivals, the Nintendo Switch's online services will be needed to access certain types of multiplayer matchmaking and in-game voice chat. The Switch will handle this differently than other systems—through a smartphone app, which will synchronize connectivity and chat with the console. This decision may be partly due to the system's headphone jack residing in the hardware, which cannot be accessed when the system is in "TV dock" mode. Other controllers, including the Switch's "Pro" controller and its default Joy-Con wands, do not have their own headphone jacks. (Nintendo has not announced whether the system's Bluetooth functionality will support players' own Bluetooth headsets.)

(credit: Oculus)

A jury has found Oculus and its executives liable for a combined $500 million in damages in a trial over improper use of technology created at Id Software parent company ZeniMax Media.

While the jury found that Oculus had not misappropriated trade secrets from ZeniMax—a major part of the case—it determined that Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey had violated a non-disclosure agreement with the company when working on early prototypes of the Rift VR headset, according to a copy of the verdict obtained by Ars Technica. Oculus was also found liable for copyright and trademark infringement for misuse of certain ZeniMax code and logos. The company, Luckey, and Iribe were also found liable for false designation regarding misuse of certain ZeniMax trademarks.

Oculus is liable for $300 million in the verdict ($50 million for trademark infringement, $50 million for copyright infringement, and $200 million for breaking the NDA), while Luckey owes $50 million and former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe owes $150 million (both for false designation). Oculus CTO John Carmack, who previously worked for ZeniMax and was accused of stealing code and destroying evidence, is not personally liable for any damages. ZeniMax had sought damages of $4 billion in the case.

Enlarge / Donald Trump (right) met with numerous tech executives, including Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (center), and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (left) on December 14, 2016. (credit: TIMOTHY A. CLARY / Staff / Getty Images News)

Several major tech companies are organizing in opposition to the Trump administration’s executive order that restricts entry or re-entry of citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries. The order, which was signed last Friday, affects immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria.

Officials from Expedia and Amazon filed formal legal declarations earlier this week in support of Washington state’s federal lawsuit that seeks to overturn the executive order. Both companies said that their employees are directly affected by the president’s policy.

Expedia further explained that its business interests would be negatively impacted if the order is allowed to stand.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Late Tuesday night, the plaintiff’s committee suing Volkswagen Group on behalf of customers who bought 3.0L diesel vehicles announced that it struck a deal with VW Group to compensate the owners of approximately 75,000 vehicles.

The vehicles, including VW SUVs, Audis, and Porsches, were discovered in 2015 to have illegal software on them that would engage the car’s emissions control system under lab testing conditions and circumvent the car’s emissions control system to give better performance under normal driving conditions.

Volkswagen’s cheating was discovered in September 2015 in almost 500,000 2.0L diesels. Similar software was found on approximately 80,000 3.0L vehicles a few months later, so lawsuits pertaining to those cars have been on a separate but parallel legal track.

Enlarge / The authors' computer modeling didn't look like this. They're probably disappointed by that fact. (credit: Greg Stewart/SLAC)

In today's odd science news, researchers have shown that they can produce electricity by evaporating water from a chunk of soot. The research falls into the category of systems that extract electricity from waste energy around us—kind of like generating electricity from swaying buildings or powering your watch from your own movements. But this was a result that I did not expect.

The experiments that make up the new work are so simple that pretty much anyone can do them themselves. Take a hydrocarbon of choice and set it on fire so that it burns with a yellow flame. Then hold a bit of glass in the flame so that it gets covered in soot. Afterward, expose the carbon to an atmospheric plasma. Tape some electrodes to the carbon and then lower it into some water.

The porous carbon drags water into itself through capillary forces, and when the water later evaporates from the carbon surface, electricity is generated. Not much, admittedly, at 53nW per square centimeter, but still enough to raise eyebrows.

Enlarge / A female study participant responds to a question. (credit: Wyss Center )

Patients with “locked-in syndrome”—conscious, but fully paralyzed and unable to move even their eyes—may soon be able to mentally break out.

Using a new, noninvasive device that measures brain waves and blood flow, four locked-in patients were able to communicate by answering yes or no questions, neuroscientists report this week in PLOS Biology. The four patients, all completely paralyzed by Lou Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), answered geography questions, correctly identified family members’ names, and even said they were happy and glad to be alive.

The study’s lead author, neuroscientist Niels Birbaumer, of the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva, told MIT Technology Review that “the relief was enormous” for the families after hearing the positive responses.

(credit: Aurich Lawson)

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman today filed a lawsuit against Charter and its Time Warner Cable (TWC) subsidiary, claiming that the Internet provider "allegedly conduct[ed] a deliberate scheme to defraud and mislead New Yorkers by promising Internet service that they knew they could not deliver."

State officials said they conducted a 16-month investigation that reviewed internal corporate communications "and hundreds of thousands of subscriber speed tests," concluding that Spectrum-TWC customers were "dramatically short-changed on both speed and reliability," the attorney general's announcement said. The 87-page summons and complaint filed in the New York State Supreme Court is available here.

"The suit alleges that subscribers’ wired Internet speeds for the premium plan (100, 200, and 300 Mbps) were up to 70 percent slower than promised; Wi-Fi speeds were even slower, with some subscribers getting speeds that were more than 80 percent slower than what they had paid for," the announcement said. "As alleged in the complaint, Spectrum-TWC charged New Yorkers as much as $109.99 per month for premium plans [that] could not achieve speeds promised in their slower plans."