Month: March 2017

(credit: Free Press)

The Federal Communications Commission is dropping its legal defense of a new system for expanding broadband subsidies for poor people, and it will not approve applications from companies that want to offer the low-income broadband service.

The decision announced today by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai would halt implementation of last year's expansion of the Lifeline program. This 32-year-old program gives poor people $9.25 a month toward communications services, and it was changed last year to support broadband in addition to phone service.

Pai's decision won't prevent Lifeline subsidies from being used toward broadband, but will make it harder for ISPs to gain approval to sell the subsidized plans. Last year's decision enabled the FCC to approve new Lifeline Broadband Providers nationwide so that ISPs would not have to seek approval from each state's government. Nine providers were approved under the new system late in former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's term, but Pai rescinded those approvals in February.

Enlarge (credit: NASA)

Jupiter is widely credited with providing Earth with a bit of protection. The immense gravity of the gas giant typically either sucks in asteroids and comets or flings them out into orbits where they pose our planet little danger. But astronomers have now identified an asteroid that's in a stable orbital interaction with Jupiter. That interaction sends the asteroid around our Solar System backward and causes it to shift between two radically different orbits without ever settling into either.

The planets and other bodies in the Solar System mostly orbit in a single direction, inherited from the spinning disk of material from which they formed. A few bodies orbit in the opposite direction—called retrograde—but these tend to have odd, highly elliptical orbits. They're also very rare; only 0.01 percent of the known asteroids have retrograde orbits. Orbiting in the wrong direction around the Solar System tends to bring an object into relative proximity to a planet twice an orbit, and the resulting gravitational interactions will eventually destabilize the orbit.

Or so we thought. Some mathematical work showed that it's possible to have a stable retrograde orbit that overlaps with the orbit of a planet. In this case, the gravitational interactions are the key to stability. Each of the two passes of a single orbit would provide a nudge that counteracted the results of the previous one. While the orbit would shift with each nudge, it would remain stable due to this cancellation.

Enlarge (credit: Shenzen Sunshine)

The marketplace for the consumer drone is skyrocketing. Now there are more than 770,000 drones registered with the US Federal Aviation Administration. That's up from 670,000 in January alone.

The number might be even higher if an Indiegogo crowdfunded campaign delivered its Onagofly F115 drone as promised, according to a would-be class-action federal lawsuit. The suit, (PDF) filed Monday in a Los Angeles federal court, also accuses drone-makers Shenzen Sunshine Technology of China and Acumen Robot Intelligence of Brea, California, of delivering "a worthless product" when it does follow through on orders for its hand-sized, camera-equipped drones. The suit says the delivered drones are "nothing more than a spruced-up paperweight" and that the companies have "perpetrated a scam upon the fast-growing drone-buying community."

The suit also claims that their "customer service department is nonexistent, such that it is completely unresponsive to the hundreds if not thousands of customer complaints" regarding the Onagofly F115 drone, which costs up to $280. The company had raised some $3.5 million in crowdfunding on Indiegogo. Crowdfund Insider claims that the drone was one of "the most funded Indiegogo campaigns of all time" and that the drone has been riddled with complaints of it either being shoddy or not being delivered at all.

Samsung

Update: Samsung's listing for the Dex dock has gone live; it will cost $150 and ships in "late April." Additional pictures also show that in addition to its USB and HDMI ports, it actually has a wired Ethernet jack as well, an interesting feature given that phones are innately wireless.

Original story: Samsung brought a few different accessories to the launch party for the Galaxy S8 this morning. One, Samsung Dex, is the latest in a long line of products that promise to let you replace your desktop computer with your phone.

Enlarge / Every blue dot represents a thing that can be hacked into and broken by malicious actors or used to spy on you by unscrupulous OEMs. But hey, at least you'll be able to control them all from one app.

As part of today's Samsung event, the Korean megacorp announced its intention to launch the new "Samsung Connect" service. Centered around a small Google Wi-Fi-like home router (called the "Samsung Connect Home"), the company's fact sheet explains that Samsung Connect "delivers on the vision of an integrated, cohesive, easy-to-use IoT ecosystem."

Connect is able to automatically identify Samsung-branded smart devices on your home's LAN, along with any other devices compatible with Samsung's SmartThings platform. SmartThings came under fire last May for numerous flaws and security vulnerabilities, though the company claims that it has since fixed its problems.

According to Samsung, the Connect app and service will eventually be available for all Android smartphones, rather than being restricted to Samsung devices. This is great news for folks who desperately want to see how much milk they have in their Samsung smart fridge, but who don't own a Samsung Android phone. Thanks to Connect, all Android owners will at some point be able to remotely verify their milk levels, reorder eggs, or whatever else you're supposed to do with smart fridges.