Month: July 2017

Enlarge / Expedition 52-53 crewmembers Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency (left), Sergey Ryazanskiy of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos, center) and Randy Bresnik of NASA, were all smiles last week before their launch. (credit: NASA)

Last Thursday, the United States overwhelmingly passed a new round of sanctions against Russia, taking the executive actions made by then president Barack Obama in December 2016 and putting them into law. Congress also wrote its legislation such that the White House must get Congressional approval prior to any easing of sanctions against Russia. Despite some concerns about the law, President Donald Trump has said he will sign the bill.

Obama leveled these sanctions, including the dismissal of many Russian diplomats in the United States, following credible reports that the foreign adversary had meddled in the US presidential election. Russian President Vladimir Putin took no action at the time, believing he could work with President Trump to ease the restrictions. But after the Congressional action, Putin acted this weekend to remove hundreds of US diplomats from Russia. The number of US diplomats and Russian nationals employed as staff by the US government must now be 455, the same number Russia has in the United States.

In its most recent round of sanctions, the US government took care to carve out exceptions for key industries, including aerospace. This allows the American rocket company United Launch Alliance to continue to procure RD-180 engines for its Altas V rocket, and for NASA to continue smooth relations with Russia for its partnership with the International Space Station. Three astronauts, from NASA, Italy, and Russia, launched aboard a Russian spacecraft Friday to the station.

Nota bene: This is the concluding part of the surprisingly interesting history of the IBM PC. You should probably read part one of the story if you haven't already.

In November 1979, Microsoft's frequent partner Seattle Computer Products released a standalone Intel 8086 motherboard for hardcore hobbyists and computer manufacturers looking to experiment with this new and very powerful CPU. The 8086 was closely related to the 8088 that IBM chose for the PC; the latter was a cost-reduced version of the former, an 8-bit/16-bit hybrid chip rather than a pure 16-bit like the 8086.

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RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition.

A limited edition version of RX Vega 64, which features a slick aluminium shroud, costs $599 as part of a bundle that includes discounts on a Freesync monitor, X370 motherboard, and free games. A watercooled version of RX Vega 64, dubbed Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition, also comes in a similar bundle pack priced at $699.

According to those in attendance at Siggraph, where AMD made its RX Vega announcements, much of the focus was on the value proposition of RX Vega bundles and features like Freesync, rather than all out performance. Anandtech has been told Vega 64 will "trade blows" with Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080, which launched way back in May of 2016. The launch of Vega Frontier Edition (a production-focused graphics card) in June hinted at such levels of performance—RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56 are based on the same Vega 10 GPU and architecture.

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner (left) and Chairman Reid Hoffman (right) with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (center). Microsoft bought LinkedIn last year. (credit: Microsoft)

A small company called hiQ is locked in a high-stakes battle over Web scraping with LinkedIn. It's a fight that could determine whether an anti-hacking law can be used to curtail the use of scraping tools across the Web.

HiQ scrapes data about thousands of employees from public LinkedIn profiles, then packages the data for sale to employers worried about their employees quitting. LinkedIn, which was acquired by Microsoft last year, sent hiQ a cease-and-desist letter warning that this scraping violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the controversial 1986 law that makes computer hacking a crime. HiQ sued, asking courts to rule that its activities did not, in fact, violate the CFAA.

James Grimmelmann, a professor at Cornell Law School, told Ars that the stakes here go well beyond the fate of one little-known company.

(credit: Valentina Palladino)

It's no secret that Fitbit is making a smartwatch. The company signaled its serious plans with the purchase of Pebble at 2016's end and the purchase of the lesser-known Vector shortly after. Fitbit was supposed to release a smartwatch this spring, but product issues delayed those plans. Rumors suggest we won't have to wait much longer, though, as the company may release an entirely new product this fall: a smartwatch that many want to rival the Apple Watch as well as Android Wear devices.

Fitbit has plenty of reasons why it would want to confront Apple in the wearable space: Apple overtook the company as the top wearable shipper, owning 14.6 percent of the wearable market (tied with Xiaomi) in Q1 2017. But Fitbit shouldn't make an Apple Watch clone—and one could argue that it can't do so anyway. There's hope for Fitbit's smartwatch if the company takes a different approach, focusing on its roots as a fitness company while also adopting the most useful aspects of the smartwatches we have today. Here's what we know about the device so far—and what we don't know—as well as some things Fitbit should consider including in the new device.

What we know

Back in May, leaked images of the rumored Fitbit smartwatch popped up online and painted an all-too-familiar picture of what the new product could look like. The design of the wristband mimics the company's Blaze tracker (as well as the old-school Surge) with a square face accompanied by a couple buttons on the edges. It's not the sleekest-looking device, but neither the Blaze nor the Apple Watch were perceived as stylish when they first debuted. Since then, sales for both of those devices have proved users have either warmed up to the square-watch design or simply don't care enough to be deterred by it.