Month: October 2017

Enlarge / Tom Wheeler, when he was Federal Communications Commission Chairman, at left, listens to then-FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai testify before the House Judiciary Committee about Internet regulation on March 25, 2015. President Donald Trump promoted Pai to chairman to succeed Wheeler. (credit: Chip Somodvellia/Getty Images)

Tom Wheeler, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, implored his successor, Ajit Pai, to say something publicly about President Donald Trump's threats to take NBC and other networks off the air because of their news coverage of the chief executive.

"With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!" Trump tweeted on Wednesday. He later follow-up with another tweet: "Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!"

Pai, who Trump appointed as FCC chariman, has remained silent as have his fellow Republicans on the regulatory agency. In a Friday essay on the Brookings Institution blog, Wheeler echoed a growing chorus of lawmakers, media organizations (PDF), and others calling for Pai and other GOP commissioners to end their two-day silence on the First Amendment issue.

Enlarge (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Earlier this year, we tried out the new Mini Countryman and came away impressed. The little crossover combined the driving feel of its smaller siblings with practicality like usable back seats and better cargo capacity. The one we really wanted to try—the Cooper S E Countryman ALL4 plug-in hybrid EV version—wasn't available back in March, but it is now. It remains a quirky and engaging drive when internal combustion and electromechanical systems are working in harmony, but the small battery means you do have to plug it in at every opportunity for that to happen.

The bits that make it go

Under the hood the Cooper S E Countryman ALL4 (henceforth known as the hybrid Mini) uses the same engine as the standard Countryman Cooper. The 1.5L 134hp (100kW), 162lb-ft (220Nm) three-cylinder turbocharged engine now just drives the front wheels via a six-speed Steptronic (automatic) transmission. The rear axle is now driven by an 89hp (65kW), 122lb-ft (165Nm) electric motor, instead of the mechanical Haldex-style system you would find in a conventionally powered all-wheel-drive Mini. The setup is closely related to the one we liked so much in the BMW i8, although a more accurate comparison would be with the Europe-only BMW 2-Series Active Tourer (that's all but identical).

Together with the 7.6kWh lithium-ion battery, the hybrid Mini is about 200lbs heavier than a Cooper S Countryman ALL4. (Curb weight is 3,825lbs/1,735kg.) But with a combined output of 221hp (165hp), and more importantly a combined torque figure of 283lb-ft (385Nm), it's quite a bit more potent: zero to 62mph (100km/h) takes 6.8 seconds compared to 7.4 seconds for the four-cylinder gasoline-powered car. On city streets it's a highly effective powertrain, but it rarely gives you full power or torque from both sources of propulsion at once. That depends on the precise combination of drive modes.

Enlarge (credit: COP Paris)

As the withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement demonstrates, the agreement is not a binding contract requiring countries to act on climate change. In fact, given the fact that the emissions pledges in the agreement were voluntary, political and civic engagement will play an important role in ensuring that governments keep to their pledges.

So, did the widespread media coverage of COP21 negotiations in Paris make any headway towards achieving this kind of civic engagement with climate policy? According to a paper in this week's Nature Climate Change, it seems as though coverage may have done the opposite. People's understanding of the issues at stake improved slightly over the course of the conference, but not much changed in their sense of personal or national responsibility. If anything, the authors write, “this global media event had a modest appeasing rather than mobilizing effect.”

Surveying Germans

A team of economists, psychologists and media researchers in Germany used the opportunity of COP21 to study how a media event of this kind might shape individual thinking about an important political issue like climate change. Michael Brüggemann and his colleagues conducted a three-part survey, asking the same group of people in Germany a series of questions about climate change before, during, and after COP21.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | KrulUA)

The lack of clear information about what Microsoft does with the data that Windows 10 collects prevents consumers from giving their informed consent, says the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA). As such, the regulator says that the operating system is breaking the law.

To comply with the law, the DPA says that Microsoft needs to get valid user consent: this means the company must be clearer about what data is collected and how that data is processed. The regulator also complains that the Windows 10 Creators Update doesn't always respect previously chosen settings about data collection. In the Creators Update, Microsoft introduced new, clearer wording about the data collection—though this language still wasn't explicit about what was collected and why—and it forced everyone to re-assert their privacy choices through a new settings page. In some situations, though, that page defaulted to the standard Windows options rather than defaulting to the settings previously chosen.

In the Creators Update, Microsoft also explicitly enumerated all the data collected in Windows 10's "Basic" telemetry setting. However, the company has not done so for the "Full" option, and the Full option remains the default.

Enlarge (credit: Comedy Central)

Futurama is headed to Hulu in its entirety starting on October 16. That includes all 140 episodes from both Fox and Comedy Central, as well as the four movies, Variety reports.

Futurama aired on Fox from 1998 to 2003. Four DVD movies were then announced in 2006, and Comedy Central picked up the series again in 2010 before concluding the run in 2012. A radio drama was produced as part of the Nerdist podcast last month to promote a popular mobile game, and the series has led to numerous video games, toys, and other works and products. It's one of the best-known stories of a cult hit that found new life after its broadcast network cancellation.

The episodes of Futurama that were produced by Comedy Central are still on Netflix for now, but you'll have to go to Hulu if you want to stream the entire series from the beginning. That said, Hulu's deal with Fox is not exclusive, so it's always possible that Futurama will show up somewhere else at a later date.