Month: August 2017

Enlarge (credit: Thinkstock / Aurich)

Tesla's fight with Michigan over direct-to-consumer car sales took a step forward this week. On Monday, US Magistrate Judge Ellen Carmody ordered Michigan State Senator Joe Hune and State Representative Jason Sheppard to comply with a subpoena related to protectionist legislation passed in the state in 2014.

Both sides must now agree on relevant search terms, and the lawmakers will have to hand over any records of communication with "non-legislative third parties, such as lobbyists and constituents." Tesla is seeking these records to prove that it is being discriminated against as an out-of-state company.

Hune and Sheppard had attempted to have Tesla's subpoena quashed, in part because they claim their communications ought to be privileged thanks to their positions as legislators. But the Judge was not particularly sympathetic to that argument. As a concession to keeping the lawmakers' communications private, the documents will not be made public, and the court will review any disputes over relevance behind closed doors.

Enlarge / Surface Laptop. (credit: Justin Wolfson)

Last month Microsoft removed the throttle that was limiting the rollout of the Creators Update, opening it up to every compatible machine. As a result, penetration of this latest version of Windows has gone from 50 percent to 65 percent, according to the numbers provided by AdDuplex.

With the Fall Creators Update due next month, at this point it seems likely that the deployment of the Creators Update won't be complete by the time the Fall Creators Update is released. This is a slower pace than the previous major update, the Anniversary Update. That was first released in July last year, and five months later it was at about 86-percent penetration.

The reason behind Microsoft's conservative deployment schedule isn't entirely clear, but perhaps it's simply a desire to avoid some of the problems that met the Anniversary Update's release. The Anniversary Update had some notable hardware incompatibilities, for example. While these problems were eventually fixed, this only occurred after a number of customer systems were (temporarily) broken. By being much more careful about which hardware the Creators Update was sent to, the rollout was much smoother. The one exception was systems with Intel's Clover Trail Atom processors: these won't ever be updated to the Creators Update and are stuck on the Anniversary Update forever.

Enlarge / Why choose just one to buy when you can just borrow any used title for a low monthly fee? (credit: The Grey Backpack)

With direct downloads and other digital purchases growing in popularity even among console gamers, brick-and-mortar game retailers are looking for new ways to stay relevant well into the future. To that end, GameStop-owned EB Games Australia is conducting an interesting experiment that essentially turns its shelves full of used games into a massive lending library for a flat, monthly fee.

As Press Start reports, EB Games has opened up the "Swap 'n' Play" program for testing in South Australia for AUS$19.95 a month (about $16). The program lets you take out any used game you want, one at a time, then return it in exchange for another when you're done. Players can cancel any time after an initial two-month commitment.

While the program was originally limited to used games that sell for under $50, that limit has since been dropped. That means even relatively new releases can be rented out as long as a used copy is available in the store, which often happens just a few days after the "initial release.

After more than a year of battling in court, Ethan and Hila Klein, the YouTubers behind the H3H3 Productions channel, won a lawsuit filed against them by another YouTuber. Matt "Hoss" Hosseinzadeh—MattHossZone on YouTube—sued the pair after they uploaded a video in which the Kleins react to one of Hosseinzadeh's videos and criticize him in the process. Hosseinzadeh then sued the Kleins for a number of things, most notably copyright infringement for using clips of his video in their own.

The Kleins defended their video, stating the use of clips of Hosseinzadeh's video in theirs falls under fair use. New York Judge Katherine B. Forrest agreed and issued her ruling yesterday in favor of the Kleins, stating their video provides "critical commentary" on Hosseinzadeh's video and is not a substitute for it.

"Any review of the Klein video leaves no doubt that it constitutes critical commentary of the Hoss video," Forrest's decision reads. "There is also no doubt that the Klein video is decidedly not a market substitute for the Hoss video. For these and the other reasons set forth below, defendants’ use of clips from the Hoss video constitutes fair use as a matter of law."

Android Police

VentureBeat's Evan Blass says he knows the date for the launch of Google's next smartphone, the Pixel 2: October 5th. The ever-reliable leaker also says the device will come with a new SoC from Qualcomm, a "Snapdragon 836."

Google's second-generation Pixel handsets, powered by Snapdragon 836 SoC's, will be unveiled on October 5th.

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) August 24, 2017

The report lines up well with how Google did things last year. The Google Hardware division held an event around the same time—October 4th—where it unveiled the Google Home, Google Wi-Fi, Daydream VR, a 4k Chromecast, and the Google Pixel phones. This year, in addition to the phones, Android Police claims Google will also launch a new Chromebook and a smaller version of the Google Home. It would not surprise me to hear about a few other devices as well.

Enlarge / The Interceptor is baaaaack. (credit: Bungie)

BELLEVUE, Wash.—We're finally close to knowing what Destiny 2 will feel like when it launches on September 6 for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles.

Close, but not quite. The online shooter's developers at Bungie hosted a major preview event last week, just down the block from its offices in the Seattle-area city of Bellevue, and the assembled press was invited to turn on capture equipment for a limited amount of gameplay. This comes with some limits, and as a result, this preview is more about the video of what we captured than about our thoughts and feelings on what's being shown here.

Destiny 2: A world-premiere look at blasting through the new European Defense Zone (which I accidentally called the Earth Defense Zone in the narration, apologies.) (video link)