Month: October 2017

Enlarge / FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai initially resisted calls to tell President Trump that the FCC won't revoke broadcast licenses from stations whose news coverage Trump dislikes.

But today, six days after Trump first said that NBC and other networks should have their licenses challenged, Pai said the FCC won't pull licenses based on the content of news reports.

Pai was on a panel at a telecom law conference hosted by the Mercatus Center when moderator Greg Ip of The Wall Street Journal referred to Trump's statements that news stations are spreading "fake news" and should have their licenses challenged.

(credit: Yubico)

Today, Google rolled out a new program called Advanced Protection for personal Google accounts, intended to provide much higher account security to users of services like Gmail and Drive who are at a high risk of being targeted by phishers, hackers, and others seeking their personal data. The opt-in program makes Google services much less convenient to use, but it's built to prevent the sorts of breaches that have been making recent headlines.

Examples of users who could benefit include journalists, politicians, and other public figures who may be running up against hostile actors with considerable resources—and also for private individuals in dangerous situations, like those escaping abusive relationships. In its blog post announcing this program, Google specifically named "political campaign managers," which harkens back to the breach of Hillary Clinton Presidential Campaign Chairman John Podesta's e-mails, which led to a release from WikiLeaks that may have played a significant role in the US presidential election last year.

And yes, Podesta could have avoided that particular breach had he been using this new program. That's because the Advanced Protection Program goes beyond digital two-factor authentication by requiring a physical security key in addition to your password to log in. This isn't a new idea, of course, even on the consumer side of things. Facebook has offered something similar, and even video game company Blizzard has offered one to gamers who want to protect their World of Warcraft accounts for years. In this case, the security key is a USB stick or wireless Bluetooth device that works with FIDO Universal 2nd Factor (U2F).

(credit: Universal Studios et al. v. TickBox)

Movie studios, Netflix, and Amazon have banded together to file a first-of-its-kind copyright lawsuit against a streaming media player called TickBox TV.

The complaint (PDF), filed Friday, says the TickBox devices are nothing more than "tool[s] for mass infringement," which operate by grabbing pirated video streams from the Internet. The lawsuit was filed by Amazon and Netflix Studios, along with six big movie studios that make up the Motion Picture Association of America: Universal, Columbia, Disney, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros.

"What TickBox actually sells is nothing less than illegal access to Plaintiffs' copyrighted content," write the plaintiffs' lawyers. "TickBox TV uses software to link TickBox's customers to infringing content on the Internet. When those customers use TickBox TV as Defendant intends and instructs, they have nearly instantaneous access to multiple sources that stream Plaintiffs' Copyrighted Works without authorization."

Enlarge / Autonomous Bolts under construction at GM's Orion Assembly Plant located in Orion Township, Michigan, in June 2017. (credit: General Motors)

General Motors and Cruise Automation will be the first to test autonomous vehicles on public roads in New York state, it was announced on Tuesday. The cars—which will have a pair of humans onboard as backup—aren't taking the easy route, either. The geofenced test location will be the mean streets of Manhattan, beginning in early 2018.

Earlier this year, Jack, Audi's autonomous demonstrator, took New York lawmakers out for rides to familiarize them with driveless tech. But even Audi only refers to Jack as having "level 3" autonomy, and it only drives itself on divided highways. Cruise and GM will be testing out level 4 autonomous vehicles, which are more capable and—within a geofenced area—should be able to drive an entire route without human intervention.

GM bought Cruise for more than $1 billion in 2016 and since then has been testing driverless vehicles in San Francisco, Detroit, and Scottsdale, Arizona. Cruise has now developed its third-generation autonomous vehicle, based on the Chevrolet Bolt electric car. And in February we learned that GM and Lyft had plans to put thousands of self-driving Bolts into action in San Francisco in 2018.

Another early holiday gift for Netflix investors this year. (credit: macappsaddict via Flickr)

In its most recent quarterly earnings report, Netflix announced its intentions to spend $7 billion to $8 billion on original content for 2018.

"Our investment in Netflix originals is over a quarter of our total P&L [profit and loss] content budget in 2017 and will continue to grow," the company said in its call report. "With $17 billion in content commitments over the next several years and a growing library of owned content ($2.5 billion net book value at the end of the quarter), we remain quite comfortable with our ability to please our members around the world. We’ll spend $7-8 billion on content (on a P&L basis) in 2018."

The $8 billion figure represents a potentially significant increase over Netflix's current spending. The New York Times puts estimates of Netflix's 2017 content spending at $6 billion, so the company may spend as much as ~33 percent more on originals next year. By comparison, Hulu reportedly committed $2.5 billion to original programming this year, and Amazon hit $4.5 billion (Amazon has already pledged more for 2018 but did not cite specific figures when speaking to Variety last month). Apple made a splash recently with a "mere" $1 billion commitment to original content in 2018.

Volvo

If I asked you to guess the manufacturer behind a new two-door, carbon-fiber bodied, 600hp plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, it's possible Volvo would not be the first name you thought of. And technically, it doesn't wear a Volvo badge anywhere, because this is the first product from Polestar, the automaker's new electric performance brand. It arrives in 2019 and is the first of five new EVs from Volvo. And it looks stunning.

The past few years have been good ones for Volvo. Parent company Geely has been a generous, hands-off benefactor, and the results are showing. The Swedish automaker is now one of the most forward-thinking in the industry and a home to good engineering and design across disciplines that include interiors, infotainment, and autonomous driving. Its Scalable Product Architecture provides the building blocks for a number of very good vehicles; both the XC90 and S90 impressed us, and a brief drive in the smaller XC60 T8 plug-in hybrid has whet my appetite for a proper test later this year.

Enlarge / Remember when this game was supposedly a sign of a less squeaky-clean image for Nintendo?

Since removing the blood in the original Mortal Kombat on the Super NES, Nintendo has earned its image as the family-friendly alternative to the more sex-and-violence-soaked console competition. New reporting from The Wall Street Journal suggests Nintendo is working to change that with the Switch, but any such effort is going to be an uphill climb that could use more direct help from Nintendo.

Speaking to a number of developers, the WSJ's Takashi Mochizuki reports Nintendo is explicitly encouraging game makers to release more risqué content on the Switch. "I thought it wouldn’t be possible to release such a game for the Switch, but surprisingly, Nintendo gave me positive feedback,” Inti Creates CEO Takuya Aizu told the paper regarding the provocative Gal Gun 2. Another unnamed developer said Nintendo's stance toward more violent and sexual content in games on its console "was passive until now, but that is no longer the right word to describe its stance today."

It wouldn't be the first time Nintendo has made gestures to attract more "mature" content to its consoles. After the Wii lineup was dominated by family-friendly titles (along with rare exceptions like Mad World), Nintendo's then-president Satoru Iwata said in 2012 that the company felt it had neglected "those who play games as their hobby" in favor of more casual or new gamers. "Consequently, we presume some people felt that the Wii was not a game system for them or they were not willing to play with the Wii even though some compelling games had been released."