Month: June 2017

Enlarge / On the evening of June 29, 2007, everyone was doing this, right? (credit: Jacqui Cheng)

Ten years ago today, folks like our own Lee Hutchinson waited (in line or online) for the first iPhone's formal release. We've been examining the product's impact all week as it turns 10, and today we couldn't help but resurface our version of those infamous "look at that line, tho" stories from a decade ago. These pieces originally ran on June 29, 2007.

CINCINNATI, Ohio—Everyone else is covering the iPhone line in budding metropoli (is that a word?) euch as New York City, San Francisco, and Chicago. I hear there were 50+ people in line for the iPhone at the Michigan Avenue Apple Store in downtown Chicago as of 5am. Well, we thought we'd do something different (OK, maybe we had to because we were going to that darn wedding later) and cover iPhone line-waiters in a slightly less popular city... the budding metropolis of Cincinnati, Ohio.

I used to live in Cincinnati, and so I was familiar with the landscape when I arrived. I showed up at Kenwood Towne Center Mall at 7:45am Eastern Time, expecting at least 20 people to be in line. This is what I saw when I got there.

Enlarge / Then-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in 2015. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler spoke out against the FCC's proposed repeal of net neutrality rules this week, saying the repeal will help monopoly broadband providers abuse their dominant position.

There's "a monopoly provider for three-quarters of the homes in America, and no choice," Wheeler said in a forum (video) in Arlington, Virginia Monday hosted by US Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.). "When you've only got one provider, who makes the rules? The provider makes the rules."

Wheeler was referring to FCC data that shows most Americans live in areas with either one provider of high-speed broadband (at least 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream) or none at all.

Enlarge

Amazon Prime Day 2017 is almost upon us: starting from 6pm on July 10 (Monday), and running until the end of July 11, you'll be able to stock up on toilet rolls and other odd things that Amazon has failed to shift over the last year, plus a few nice products that you'll actually be interested in. Prime Day 2017 is officially on July 11, but Amazon is adding six more hours of shopping this year, presumably to cash in on a second lucrative evening shopping spree.

The first teaser from the second season of The Grand Tour will also be unveiled on Prime Day. Amazon tells us that Jeremy, Richard, and James have visited Mozambique, Switzerland, and, er, the UK.

Enlarge (credit: Getty | ShaunGoo)

When patients have a choice between opioids and medical marijuana for a painful condition, an overwhelming majority say they prefer marijuana, that it works just as well, and has fewer side effects, a new survey finds.

Though the survey, involving 2,897 medical cannabis patients, didn’t track actual drug use or efficacy, the findings fits with previous data. Decades of research suggest marijuana is effective for pain treatment. And recent studies have found that in states with medical marijuana availability, there are fewer opioid overdose deaths and doctors fill fewer opioid prescriptions.

The authors of the new survey, led by Amanda Reiman of the University of California, Berkeley, say the data furthers the need to examine marijuana as a “viable substitute for pain treatment,” particularly in light of the devastating opioid epidemic now gripping the country. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that opioids killed more than 33,0000 Americans in 2015, and estimates that 91 people in the US die each day from the highly addictive drugs.

AMD

AMD today launched Ryzen Pro (styled "PRO" in AMD's branding, but we're not going to do that here), a series of processors designed for the corporate desktop. Close counterparts to the existing line of consumer-oriented Ryzen chips, the Pro parts are aimed at Intel's vPro-compatible processors, which enable a number of additional administrative, security, and management capabilities.

Most of the regular Ryzen models have corresponding Pro versions, albeit topping out at a 1700X rather than the 1800 and 1800X of the consumer parts. This means that at the high end, there's a couple of eight core, 16 thread parts, which is twice the number of cores and threads of comparable Intel chips.