Month: July 2017

Enlarge (credit: Mike Mozart)

Cable company Charter Communications said it has no interest in buying Sprint. After reports that Sprint owner SoftBank proposed a merger with Charter, the cable company said it will move forward in its plan to offer wireless service without buying the carrier.

"We understand why a deal is attractive for SoftBank, but Charter has no interest in acquiring Sprint," Charter said in a statement provided to Ars and other news outlets. "We have a very good MVNO relationship with Verizon and intend to launch wireless services to cable customers next year."

SoftBank reportedly proposed a merger that would combine Sprint and Charter to create a new entity controlled by SoftBank, rather than a merger in which Charter would buy Sprint. Still, Charter's statement seems to make it clear that it doesn't want to combine its cable network with Sprint's nationwide wireless network. Charter plans to resell Verizon Wireless service inside its cable territory rather than nationwide.

Fifteen state attorneys general have teamed up with a pro-Hollywood group to launch a campaign aimed at dissuading the public from visiting file sharing sites.

To be sure, it's true that ads and other content on piracy sites can infect unsuspecting visitors with malware. But these attorneys general, in conjunction the Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA), really want you to know that visiting pirate sites can ruin both your life and your family's life. The scary black-hooded hacker on their video messages says it all.

"Hackers use pirate websites to infect your computer and steal your ID and financial information, or even take over your computer's camera without you knowing it," the top cops from the states say in the PSAs. The PSAs are appearing on social media, radio, and television this summer.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Nicholas Rigg)

The Federal Communications Commission has told members of Congress that it won't reveal exactly how it plans to prevent future attacks on the public comment system.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Democratic lawmakers have been exchanging letters about a May 8 incident in which the public comments website was disrupted while many people were trying to file comments on Pai's plan to dismantle net neutrality rules. The FCC says it was hit by DDoS attacks. The commission hasn't revealed much about what it's doing to prevent future attacks, but it said in a letter last month that it was researching "additional solutions" to protect the comment system.

Democratic Leaders of the House Commerce and Oversight committees then asked Pai what those additional solutions are, but they didn't get much detail in return.

Enlarge / Much of Europe will have to wait for Niantic's planned Safari Zone events.

Niantic's first attempt at a live Pokémon Go gathering in Chicago last week went so badly that attendees are organizing a class-action lawsuit after shoddy cell reception prevented most of the 20,000 attendees from playing the game during the paid event. In the wake of that fiasco, the Pokémon Go developers are postponing long-planned similar events in Copenhagen, Prague, Stockholm, and Amsterdam that were set for the coming weeks.

In a statement, Niantic said the European "Safari Zone" events originally scheduled for August 5 and 12 would be pushed back to some time in the fall "in order to guarantee the best possible gameplay experience for European Trainers." Other events planned for France, Spain, and Germany will still take place in September, however, and a "Pikachu Outbreak" planned for Yokohama, Japan will still take place in August.

The Safari Zone events were billed as a chance for European players to catch Pokémon that rarely or never show up in the region and to team up for multiplayer battles against Raid Bosses. "As a special surprise, we understand that some Pokémon that are rarely seen in Europe will be appearing soon in certain European cities for a brief time," Niantic writes by way of apology. "We apologize for any inconvenience and hope you understand that our priority is to ensure a great experience for Pokémon Go Trainers in Europe and around the world.

Nexar

NEW YORK—Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication (aka V2V) sometimes feels like the automotive world's Duke Nukem Forever. The idea of vehicles communicating with each other over short distances to warn drivers of potential obstacles or dangers is compelling. But it may as well be vaporware. Nearly 20 years after the Federal Communications Commission allocated radio spectrum for it, we're still waiting. Today, it may be more than a decade before enough V2V-equipped cars are on our roads to make a difference. But we might all be walking around with the solution in our pocket—smartphones. At least, that's the impression I walked away with after a demo of Nexar's technology one recent morning in Manhattan.

A V2V traffic jam?

Dedicated Short-range Radio Communications (DSRC) networks communicate with each other at ranges of up to 984 feet (300m), operating in a band around 5.9GHz. And so the FCC set aside radio spectrum for V2V communications way back in 1999. But it took another 11 years for a wireless protocol—802.11p—to get nailed down, finally happening in 2010. From that point, it was another four years before the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced that it was ready to start the rule-making process to get V2V approved for cars. NHTSA finally released a draft rule in December 2016, and we believe it to be a regulation that the current administration is keen to see implemented. Once on the books, it would give car makers two model years—plus a little extra leeway for older models—to make the technology standard across their fleets.