Month: August 2017

Enlarge / The 10.5-inch iPad Pro. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Apple released its third-quarter financials today, reporting higher-than-expected numbers almost all-around. The company's total revenue reached $45.4 billion, up seven percent year-over-year. Apple shares increased five percent to hit above $157 after hours—the company's record intraday high was $156.56.

While iPhone sales have increased slightly year-over-year, the most interesting numbers are for iPad. For the first time in three years, iPad sales grew: the company sold 11.4 million iPads this quarter, gleaning $4.9 billion in revenue. That represents a 15-percent unit increase year-over-year and a two-percent revenue increase year-over-year. The growth is reportedly being attributed to strong educational and business sales, as school districts buy iPads in bulk for their students and faculty to use.

Apple released the 10.5-inch iPad Pro in June, so only a portion of those sales contribute to that number. But the Pro models and the $329 iPad apparently offered the right options to the right consumers this quarter.

Enlarge (credit: Anne Frye)

A Democratic senator from New Jersey proposed legislation (PDF) Tuesday that would remove marijuana from the federal list of controlled substances. The proposal, if adopted, would also financially punish states that fail to decriminalize marijuana if they have racial disparities in their arrest and incarceration rates connected to marijuana.

Booker (credit: Facebook)

So far, eight states have legalized recreational marijuana, but pot remains illegal under federal law—meaning that President Donald Trump's administration could crack down on those states if it chose to.

"For decades, the failed War on Drugs has locked up millions of nonviolent drug offenders—especially for marijuana-related offenses—at an incredible cost of lost human potential, torn apart families and communities, and taxpayer dollars," Sen. Cory Booker said in a Facebook post.

Enlarge / Matt Bevin is the governor of Kentucky. (credit: Gage Skidmore)

Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin has publicly accused a local television executive of "personally" flying a drone over his stately private home in a Louisville suburb on Tuesday morning. Gov. Bevin made this accusation after seemingly accusing other local media of "flying directly over and around my home, filming my children." The entire incident appears to be related to a local property dispute.

The drone that was just flying over my home & filming my children was personally flown by @WDRBNews Director https://t.co/8cEacM885B

— Governor Matt Bevin (@GovMattBevin) August 1, 2017

The WDRB executive, Barry Fulmer, wrote in response on Twitter:

.@GovMattBevin WDRB was flying a drone in accordance to the FAA rules to cover news happening at your home. There is NO video of children. https://t.co/ZBoBiJTfsn

— Barry Fulmer (@BarryFulmerWDRB) August 1, 2017

When contacted for comment, Fulmer referred Ars to the tweet above, but he did not deny that he personally flew the drone.

Enlarge / Surface Laptop (credit: Justin Wolfson)

With a bunch of financing and availability changes today, some Windows hardware is now easier to buy, and some Windows hardware is now better.

Way back in October last year, Microsoft announced that a range of cheap virtual reality headsets would be released for Windows PCs. These headsets would have two standout features. First, they would start at just $299. Second, they wouldn't need base stations (like, say, the HTC Vive) or complicated laser tracking (like Microsoft's own HoloLens) to offer full six degrees of freedom movement and positional tracking. That would help keep the costs down and make the headsets much easier to set up and install.

Preorders for the first of these headsets—one unit from Acer, another from HP—were opened up earlier this year. Neowin spotted that they're now generally available to anyone, with the Acer unit costing $299 and the near-identical HP at $329.

Enlarge / The current Air Force One fleet has been in service for 26 years. Now the Air Force is looking to replace them with 747-8s that a Russian airline didn't finish paying for. (credit: US Air Force)

Before his inauguration, President Donald Trump raged about how the US Air Force's program to replace its two aging VC-25A aircraft—the heavily modified 747-200 aircraft known as Air Force One when in service—was too expensive. Via Twitter, he declared that the cost of the program was out of control and said, "Cancel order!"

But the Air Force has pressed on with its plans to purchase two newer 747-8 aircraft to replace the existing presidential transports, for good reason: the VC-25As currently in service have been flying since the George H.W. Bush administration. Fortunately, the Air Force has managed to find a way to save on the $386.8 million price tag for each of the two 747-8s needed—with a little help from Russia.

As Defense One's Marcus Weisberger reports, Boeing has two completed 747-8 aircraft that were ordered in 2013 by the Russian airline Transaero, which used to be Russia's second-largest air carrier. But Transaero went bankrupt two years after placing the order and making partial payment for the planes. Russia's Aeroflot acquired Transaero's operations, but the airline decided not to complete the purchase of the two 747s. That left Boeing stuck with two completed, flight-tested aircraft and no buyer. Five months ago, the planes were flown to a storage facility in the Mojave Desert to preserve them until Boeing could find someone to take them off its hands.

Enlarge / Faraday’s FF91 design is somewhat derivative, echoing the Jaguar F-Pace and evoking a latter-day Saab SUV, had the company not died before designing its own proper one. (credit: Jim Resnick)

In early 2016, electric vehicle company Faraday Future celebrated a deal with the state of Nevada—in exchange for building a $1 billion factory that would eventually employ up to 4,500 people, the company would get $335 million in tax cuts from the state.

Later that year, Faraday Future negotiated another deal on a former Navy shipyard in Vallejo, California. There, the electric vehicle company would build a second factory and a “customer experience center.”

Now, neither of those two projects is happening as planned. In March, Faraday Future said it would not move forward with the Vallejo site and told investors that it would be cutting its billion-dollar Nevada site down considerably, from a three-million-square-foot facility to a 650,000-square-foot facility. Earlier this month, the Le Eco-backed startup said it wouldn’t be building on the Nevada site at all, opting to put a base at a smaller site in either California or Nevada. It will, however, hold the property it bought at the site for “long-term vehicle manufacturing,” according to the Nevada Independent.

Enlarge (credit: Mark Barnes)

It's a fact of modern life that many of us forget—the phones, computers, and other connected devices we depend on can often be used against us as secret listening devices. On Tuesday, attention turned to the Amazon Echo, with a demonstration that showed how hackers can convert some models into devices that can surreptitiously record our most intimate moments.

To be clear, the hack works only against older models of Amazon Echoes. It also requires physical access to the device by a hacker with above-average skills in Linux and embedded hardware systems. That means people aren't likely to be exposed to such attacks unless they own a 2015 or 2016 device and are a target of interest to the Central Intelligence Agency, a similar nation-sponsored spy group, an advanced corporate espionage operation, or a highly determined stalker.

Enter evil maid

So-called "evil maid" attacks—so named because they're carried out by a house cleaner or other person who has brief access to a target's devices—are valid hacks Microsoft, Apple, and other manufacturers include in their threat modeling. And now, following a proof-of-concept hack by MWR Labs security researcher Mark Barnes, those types of threats are a reality millions of Echo users must consider as well.