Month: July 2017

Enlarge (credit: loonyhiker)

The Federal Communications Commission has denied a request to extend the deadline for filing public comments on its plan to overturn net neutrality rules, and the FCC is refusing to release the text of more than 40,000 net neutrality complaints that it has received since June 2015.

The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request in May of this year for tens of thousands of net neutrality complaints that Internet users filed against their ISPs. The NHMC argues that the details of these complaints are crucial for analyzing FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's proposal to overturn net neutrality rules. The coalition also asked the FCC to extend the initial comment deadline until 60 days after the commission fully complies with the FoIA request. A deadline extension would have given people more time to file public comments on the plan to eliminate net neutrality rules.

Instead, the FCC yesterday denied the motion for an extension and said that it will only provide the text for a fraction of the complaints, because providing them all would be too burdensome. Pai has previously claimed that his proposed repeal of net neutrality rules is using a "far more transparent" process than the one used to implement net neutrality rules in 2015. Pai has also claimed that net neutrality rules were a response to "hypothetical harms and hysterical prophecies of doom" and that there was no real problem to solve.

Christmas came early for Netflix investors this year. (credit: macappsaddict via Flickr)

Netflix posted its quarterly financial results (PDF) yesterday, and it is just about dominating Wall Street expectations.

The streaming media company's stock jumped 10 percent after it revealed that it added 5.2 million memberships, far above the expectation that it would add 3.23 million during the quarter.

The company's profits aren't huge: Netflix earned just $66 million on revenue of $2.79 billion during the quarter. But investors have shown that they're willing to forego massive profits now in exchange for breakneck growth.

Enlarge (credit: www.glynlowe.com)

It's been a month following Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' announcement that he was buying the upscale Whole Foods Market grocery chain for $13.7 billion, or $42 a share, in an all-cash transaction.

Now, opposition is mounting against the pending purchase. Proposed federal class-action shareholder lawsuits have been lodged to block the deal, arguing that it isn't good for Amazon shareholders. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union is complaining to the Federal Trade Commission that the accord would reduce competition, limit consumer choice, and kill jobs. And a member of the Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law is demanding congressional hearings.

"Competition is essential for a healthy economy. That's true across the board. Amazon's proposed purchase of Whole Foods could impact neighborhood grocery stores and hardworking consumers across America," said Rep. David Cicilline, a Democrat of Rhode Island and the committee's ranking member. "Congress has a responsibility to fully scrutinize this merger before it goes ahead. Failing to do so is a disservice to our constituents."

Enlarge / Recovered 3D meshes help, but pretty much everything about this Crash remaster image had to be rebuilt from scratch. (credit: Activision)

I was happy to offer reluctant praise for the content-loaded Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy earlier this month, but I am admittedly not a Bandi-cologist. I have been watching how more hardcore fans, such as speedrunners, might react to this anthology, which required a full code rewrite, and eagle-eyed fans caught some issues that I didn't.

The anthology's developers at Vicarious Visions took to their official blog on Monday to confirm the issue: yep, you're not imagining things.

"Our game engine features a different collision system than the original game, and combined with the addition of physics, certain jumps require more precision than the originals," the Monday blog post reads. This admission joins a longer description of how the jumps in each of the anthology's original PS1 games had different animation speeds and tunings, which VV only preserved to a certain extent. All three games' basic handling systems are now derived from the Crash 3 model, VV says, and "jump tunings" have been attached to the updated Crash 1 and Crash 2 to make them feel a little more like the originals.

Bosch provided flights to Frankfurt and three nights' accommodation for this trip to the Bosch Mobility Experience.

Video edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

BOXBERG, GERMANY—Are autonomous cars like buses? In one way, yes. You wait ages for a ride in one, and then all of a sudden several show up in short succession. In late June, we went for a spin in Jack, Audi's level 3 autonomous test vehicle. Then, a couple of weeks later in Germany at the Bosch Mobility Experience, we got to sample another such vehicle.

Enlarge / Hudson returns to BioWare as the company pivots to Anthem, its first new IP in over a decade.

BioWare General Manager Aaryn Flynn unexpectedly announced today that he'll be leaving the company after a 17-year stint. His replacement as general manager will be Casey Hudson, the former Mass Effect series project director who left the company three years ago for a position as creative director at Microsoft Studios.

"I have been contemplating changes in my own life for some time, but when I heard that Casey [Hudson] had confirmed he was up for the task, I realized the opportunities before us," Flynn wrote on the BioWare blog. "I will be working with him over the next couple of weeks to help catch him up and do my part to set him up for success to be the best GM he can be."

The shake-up comes at a shaky time for BioWare, which saw Mass Effect: Andromeda receive a harsher-than-expected reception from critics and audiences earlier this year amid numerous launch-day technical issues. An extensive piece in Kotaku last month uses quotes from unnamed BioWare employees to highlight the difficulties that plagued the title's five-year development. A subsequent report suggests that planned single-player DLC for the game has now been canceled.

(credit: Comcast)

Comcast yesterday claimed that "the threat of Title II regulation" started harming broadband network investment in 2011—years before the US government decided to apply Title II regulations to broadband.

Moreover, Comcast said that net neutrality proponents who claim that investment wasn't hurt by the Title II rules "aren't living in the real world." This comes less than a week after Comcast accused net neutrality supporters of "creat[ing] hysteria."

Comcast's new statements came in comments filed yesterday with the Federal Communications Commission and in a blog post by Senior Executive VP David Cohen, who urged the FCC to stop classifying ISPs as common carriers. Comcast's claims about network investment clash with what ISPs have told their own investors; even Comcast’s chief financial officer downplayed Title II's effect on investment in December 2016.