Month: September 2017

Enlarge / The author sitting in Ford's fake self-driving car. (credit: Andy Schaudt / Virginia Tech)

Last month we covered a "driverless" car roaming Virginia streets that turned out to really just be a normal car with the driver hidden inside a seat suit. Today, I got a chance to try the seat suit out for myself. You can't see my face, but this is a picture of me giving the thumbs-up sign from inside the suit.

The research was led by Andy Schaudt, a researcher at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, in partnership with Ford. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let me take a test drive. Schaudt told me that they put their drivers through hours of training before letting them loose on public roads, and there wasn't time to give me the necessary training.

Still, just from sitting in the seat, I could tell that driving the vehicle would be awkward. The suit is designed for the driver's arms to rest on his or her lap, gripping the steering wheel from below. Lifting my arms would cause the flimsy front of the suit to fold, ruining the illusion. So drivers were trained to turn the wheel gingerly while keeping their arms near the bottom. The study also added an extension to the turn signal so drivers could reach it without raising their arms.

Enlarge / Former Congressman Ron Paul: Not a fan of SpaceX. (credit: Pete Marovich/Getty Images)

Three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul has written an opinion piece for Fox News that comes out swinging against SpaceX, accusing the company of benefiting from potentially having a monopoly on national security launches. The article also attacks US Sen. John McCain as a "lead sponsor" of provisions to give SpaceX a monopoly on launch services.

"Allowing SpaceX to obtain a monopoly over launch services harms taxpayers much more than forbidding the Pentagon from purchasing Russian products harms Vladimir Putin," Paul writes. "If this provision becomes law, SpaceX will be able to charge the government more than they could in even a quasi-competitive market. This monopoly will also stifle innovation in rocket launching technology."

Paul correctly notes that SpaceX has enjoyed substantial support from NASA, but, in return, the company has provided services at a significantly lower cost for the space agency. However, the irony of his "monopoly" argument is that it was SpaceX, and its Falcon 9 rocket, that brought competition into the Air Force launch services agreements. Before SpaceX was certified two years ago to compete for national security launch contracts, United Launch Alliance was the sole provider of these services for a decade. SpaceX has since provided launches at a large discount for the military.

Enlarge / Kaspersky Lab CEO and Chairman Eugene Kaspersky speaks at a conference in Russia on July 10, 2017. (credit: Anton NovoderezhkinTASS via Getty Images)

The Department of Homeland security ordered government agencies to stop using any software products made by Kaspersky Lab. The department cited concern about possible ties between Kaspersky officials and Russian intelligence.

Agencies in the executive branch are expected to begin the process of discontinuing Kaspersky products within 90 days.

According to a DHS statement posted online by Reuters reporter Dan Volz:

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

During and after yesterday's Apple announcement of its FaceID unlocking feature for its new iPhone X, some brief discourse began on the Ars #staff Slack channel concerning legal rights when your face is your new passcode. It's a big deal, as this is the future of smartphone unlocking—largely because Apple says so.

"This is the future of how we'll unlock our smartphones and protect our sensitive information," Apple VP Phil Schiller said.

So let's start off with one fear an Ars colleague brought up. He suggested that the cops could take your phone and hold it up to your face to unlock it. Presumably, a mugger or nefarious actor could do the same thing.

Enlarge / A new mode allows you to change lighting scenarios for photos on the fly.

To those familiar with past Apple upgrade conventions, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus might as well have been called the iPhone 7S and 7S Plus. They improve incrementally on two already good phones. But when we spent time with them at Apple’s Cupertino event, they felt a bit anemic compared not only to other phones in their category but to their own big brother, the iPhone X.

The phones felt the same in our hands as the 7 and 7 Plus. The main difference is in texture—the back is made of glass now—meaning that fingerprint smudges were common, just like with the iPhone 4 some years ago. In fact, the Apple rep showing the phones carried a cloth with her to wipe the smudges off between demos. She wasn’t being persnickety; it was needed.

We checked the bottom of the phone: no headphone jack, and there’s still a Lightning port. Given that the new Macs use Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C, it would have been nice to see Thunderbolt 3 instead, but we weren’t expecting that.