Month: October 2017

Remember the Essential Phone, which was delayed so much it launched right in the middle of the iPhone (and Pixel 2) hype season? The phone built by Andy Rubin's new company offers an innovative design and a great software loadout, but the subpar camera and lack of water resistance put it solely in the "second-tier" phone category. Essential's second-tier phone still had a top-tier price, though, which made it a tough sell in the ultra-competitive world of smartphones.

The Super NES Classic Edition isn't the only piece of modern hardware sporting an unreleased, decades-old console game. Analogue announced today that its recently revealed FPGA-based Super Nt hardware would come packed with a new expanded and "uncut" version of Super NES run-and-gun classic Super Turrican embedded on every system.

Factor 5, which later became well-known for the Rogue Squadron games, originally designed Super Turrican to fit on a 6-megabit cartridge (which was actually a decently large console game back in 1993, believe it or not). According to developer Julian Eggebrecht, though, publisher Seika didn't want to pay for the extra ROM chips needed for those cartridges, so the game had to be cut down to fit in just 4Mbit.

The uncut 6Mbit version, which Factor 5 retained through the years, includes a previously unseen final level for the game, along with new music, new enemies, improved sound effects, improved graphics, and some slight changes in the way weapons work. The uncut version was apparently considered for Virtual Console release back in 2008, but Nintendo reportedly refused to release a game that had not been previously available (Nintendo would later break this precedent with the 2015 Wii U release of Earthbound Beginnings, an unreleased translation for the Japanese Mother on the Famicom).

Enlarge (credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

A bipartisan group of federal lawmakers wants to make it more difficult for Russia to influence US elections. To that end, the group has drawn up legislation requiring Internet-based companies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook to disclose who is buying political advertisements on their platforms and maintain those records after elections.

The Honest Ads Act would heap on the Internet some of the same types of political advertising rules that apply for TV, radio, and print. The legislation is designed to somehow enforce federal election laws that forbid foreign nationals and foreign governments from spending money in the US to influence elections.

"We understand that election security is national security, and we know Russian threats to national security don't always involve traditional weapons of war," Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said at a news conference announcing the legislation.

Enlarge / The Pixel 2 XL in all its slim-bezel glory. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

The Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL are the best Android phones you can buy, but boy does the 2 XL have a lot of display issues. In addition to graininess and a weird blue shift at certain viewing angles, the 2 XL is now experiencing burn-in on units that are just a week or two old.

Android Central was the first to report the issue, showing a picture of a Pixel 2 XL with some nasty image retention around the navigation bar. Shortly after, several other reports of burn-in started popping up, and you can add Ars' review unit to the list of affected devices. You can see the permanent navigation bar burn-in below on our two-week old device.

Here's the burn-in on our two-week old review unit. You can still see the navigation buttons on this solid gray image. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

In response to the complaints, Google has sent out a statement saying that it's investigating the issue: