Month: August 2017

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we're back with a number of new deals to share. Of note is a killer price on a robo-vacuum: you can get an Ecovacs Deebot M80 Pro Wi-Fi-controlled robotic vacuum with mop and water tank (it can clean hard floors and low-pile carpet) for just $179. That's a great price for a robo-vacuum in general, but it's especially good when you consider the $374 price tag on a comparable Roomba device.

Check out the rest of the deals below, too.

Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Spencer Platt)

As the Federal Communications Commission prepares to deregulate broadband providers and eliminate or weaken net neutrality rules, the commission has not yet made a ruling on a net neutrality complaint filed against Verizon more than a year ago.

There have been tens of thousands of "informal" net neutrality complaints filed since the rules took effect in 2015, but there has been only one formal complaint. Informal complaints can be filed for free but won't necessarily result in a ruling; formal complaints require a filing fee of $225 and kick off a court-like proceeding in which the parties appear before the FCC and file numerous documents to address legal issues.

The only formal net neutrality complaint was filed in July 2016 by a Verizon Wireless customer named Alex Nguyen, who alleged that the carrier has violated the rules with numerous actions that blocked third-party devices and applications from being used on its network. The complaint has its own docket, and Verizon has made several responses to the allegations, yet it has been so little-noticed that the people who wrote the FCC's proposal to repeal net neutrality rules seemingly forgot that it existed.

Enlarge (credit: Discord)

Discord probably didn't need to add more major features to keep its 45 million users happy. The free text and voice-chat service has exploded in roughly two years of public testing, thanks to its simple "chat with my gaming friends" system that resembles a more voice-heavy version of Slack.

But just as the service begins to reach critical mass—and invites more questions about how the heck its "no ads, no required subscription" model will ever make money—the Discord team has responded with a major update: new video-sharing features that Discord insists will also remain totally free for all users.

“Do it in a bathtub”

When Discord co-founder and CMO Eros Resmini needs to conduct important business, he prefers to conduct it via his own app. The free text and voice-chat service works on a bunch of hardware, and if you're not interested in installing the Discord app on Windows, macOS, iOS, or Android, you can access its every feature via a simple, instant-load Web-browser interface. The idea: no matter what platform you are playing a game on, you can use a phone or computer to connect to friends, coordinate multiplayer sessions, and instantly sync up all-important "party" voice chat (without jumping through the hoops of other exclusive gaming-network services).

Enlarge (credit: Penn State)

The Pacer court document service used by more than a million journalists and lawyers has raked in more than $1 billion since it was established in 1995, but a new report questions whether its administrators have put enough of that windfall into securing the system. Hanging in the balance is the reliability of a service that's crucial for the smooth functioning of the entire US federal court system.

Until Wednesday, Pacer suffered from a vulnerability that made it possible for hackers to charge download and search-query fees to other users, as long as those users visited a booby-trapped webpage while logged in to a Pacer website. Officials with the non-profit known as the Free Law Project also speculate that the same flaw—known as a cross-site request forgery—may also have allowed hackers to file court documents on behalf of unsuspecting attorneys who happened to be logged in to Pacer. If the speculation is correct, the flaw had the potential to severely disrupt or complicate ongoing court cases. Pacer administrators, however, have told Free Law the fraudulent billing hack wasn't possible.

Even if the hypothesis is wrong, the flaw still made it possible for hackers to cause Pacer users to be billed for services they never requested. The users would have a hard time figuring out why they were being charged for downloads and searches they never made. Even when the users changed passwords, their accounts could still rack up fraudulent charges whenever they were simultaneously logged in to the hacked or malicious site and one of the Pacer sites.

Enlarge (credit: Tesla)

In a move that still appears bizarre, with the Model 3 launch Tesla decided that talking about an electric car's battery pack in terms of kWh was passé. Until now, the brand has used kWh to badge its various models, so we know that a Model S 60 has 60kWh-worth of cells and a Model X P100D packs 100kWh between its wheels. The new order does away with that, much like when BMW ditched decades of badging logic. Instead, there's just a regular and long-range model, with EPA estimated ranges of 220 and 310 miles. But with barely a handful of Model 3s on the road—and a long wait in store of most of the preorder queue—the Internet is hungry for more details. After all, how else to bench race it?

On Monday, Autoblog appeared to have solved the mystery, at least in part. Tucked away in an EPA document (PDF) were the magic numbers for the long-range model: 80.5kWh, based on the fact that it's rated at 350V and 230Ah. The report also detailed the rear-wheel drive motor-generator unit, which is a 192kW (258hp) AC three-phase permanent magnet configuration.

But then, according to Electrek, Tesla corrected the record during a conference call with new investors: the standard Model 3 will have "just over 50kWh," and the long-range version 75kWh.