Month: June 2017

Enlarge (credit: Tesla)

Understandably, the focus of a lot of our car coverage here at Ars has been on things like hybrid and electric powertrains, autonomous vehicles, and the rise of the connected car. But there are other interesting technology stories in the auto industry that are a little more hidden from the average driver. Take Gordon Murray's iStream idea, for example. From the same brain that created some of the world's best racing cars—and the almighty McLaren F1 road car—iStream is meant to be a low-impact way of building new vehicles, which will hopefully reach fruition with the reborn TVR brand. There's also 3D printing, as demonstrated by companies like Local Motors and 3D Divergent.

And then there's the way that modern IT solutions can—hopefully—make the auto industry more efficient and faster to respond to new design trends or challenges. A while back, we looked at Toyota's use of virtual production lines to streamline how the company builds trucks at its plant in Texas. Obviously, Toyota isn't the only OEM to head off into the virtual world to do this kind of work. And many OEMs have opted for Dassault Systèmes' 3DEXPERIENCE as their platform of choice.

Users of 3DEXPERIENCE span the automotive ecosystem. Ford and GM power their commercials and marketing with the Dassault platform. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has been touting 3DEXPERIENCE as its tool of choice for early design and styling. And even the Internet's favorite EV maker is a client: the Tesla Model 3 was conceived and designed using it.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | WIN-Initiative)

Charter Communications has filed a complaint against Verizon, saying the telco violated New York state's public service law and regulations by denying access to utility poles.

Charter is required to extend its network in New York state to 145,000 homes and businesses by May 2020 under a condition imposed on its purchase of Time Warner Cable, and it was supposed to complete the first 36,250 locations by May of this year. Charter last week was fined by New York regulators for failing to complete the first wave of construction on time, but it largely blamed its failure on Verizon in a complaint filed on Saturday with the New York Public Service Commission.

"In the face of Verizon’s intransigence, Charter has been unable to satisfy the milestones in the Buildout Condition," Charter said. Charter is the second-largest cable company in the US after Comcast.

Enlarge / CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Facebook's 2016 "F8" conference. (credit: Facebook)

This article originally appeared on ProPublica on June 28, 2017.

In the wake of a terrorist attack in London earlier this month, a U.S. congressman wrote a Facebook post in which he called for the slaughter of "radicalized" Muslims. "Hunt them, identify them, and kill them," declared U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican. "Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all."

Higgins' plea for violent revenge went untouched by Facebook workers who scour the social network deleting offensive speech.

Enlarge / Customers of the telecommunications and Internet provider TalkTalk are among those who have been targeted in a Windows support scam operation in the UK. London Police announced the arrest of four suspected of involvement with the ring today. (credit: Carl Court/Getty Images)

City of London Police, collaborating with Microsoft, have made four arrests as the result of a two-year investigation into rings of "Windows support" fraudsters. The arrests, London Police Commander Dave Clark told the press, "are just the beginning of our work, making the best use of specialist skills and expertise from Microsoft, local police forces, and international partners to tackle a crime that often targets the most vulnerable in our society."

The four suspects—a man and woman working together in Surrey, and another couple working from South Shields, Tyneside, are accused of being involved with a scheme operating out of a call center in India. Their role in the scams is not clear.

The scam, similar to the one Ars intercepted in January, seeks to convince would-be victims to install remote-access software on their computers and then to set up recurring credit card billing for technical support or anti-virus software. In these cases, the scammers often posed as employees of the UK Internet service providers BT and TalkTalk, saying that they had been authorized by Microsoft to provide technical support.

Enlarge / Back in my day... (credit: eBay / John Romero)

If you want to play the original version of Doom II, the game will set you back just $1.24 during the current Steam sale. If you want a boxed copy of the original floppy disk version, circa 1994, there's a copy available on eBay right now for $75.

But if you want Doom II floppy disks that were once owned (and potentially signed) by Doom co-creator John Romero, you'll need to pay over $3,000.

That's what we learned this week when Romero posted "Original DOOM 2 disks / 3.5" floppies / PC" on eBay and promoted the listing via Twitter. The auction drew 84 bids from 31 distinct bidders over three days, ending this morning with a winning bid of $3,150. "I will sign these disks if you like," Romero wrote in the eBay description, leading us to wonder if that signature would increase or decrease the collector's value (we kid).