Month: November 2017

(credit: Twitter / Sam Machkovech)

A Twitter rules update rolled out on Wednesday to address the site's "verification" system, and it attached a new set of standards to any user whose account receives a "blue check mark."

Twitter's "verification" system is used to confirm accounts of celebrities and other accounts of "public interest." However, the feature has long straddled a blurry line between identity confirmation and "elite" user status, especially since verified accounts receive heightened visibility and perks such as content filters. That issue returned to the headlines last week when Twitter gave a blue check mark to white nationalist Jason Kessler. Kessler is best known as an organizer of the Unite The Right white-supremacist rally, but before then, he had racked up a significant record of online hate propagation, particularly with anti-Semitic rhetoric about "cultural Marxism." (Ars is choosing not to link to Kessler's videos on the subject.)

After receiving public backlash, Twitter froze its verification system to review the process. On Wednesday, a new rules page rolled out to explain how accounts can lose their verified status. In short: if users don't prescribe to certain Twitter guidelines, even on public sites other than Twitter, they can kiss their blue check marks goodbye.

Enlarge / New stories, like the one involving the Pokémon-absorbing Necrozma, arrive very late in these new versions. (credit: Pokémon)

The 3DS ought to be winding down by now. The Switch is far from a complete failure, at least for the time being, and Nintendo has already begun to push its biggest and brightest franchises onto the new hardware. Pokémon, the international catch-and-battle craze that solely justified my owning three different Game Boys as a child, isn't far behind (especially if you count spinoffs).

That's why Pokémon Ultra Sun and Pokémon Ultra Moon feel so odd. The series is no stranger to remakes, but these new ones come just one year after vanilla Sun and Moon graced the same hardware, not the more standard two, or three, or even 10 years apart. That's not to mention that Nintendo has a perfectly good, new game system without any traditional Pokémon games that could have hosted a remake. You'd think Ultra would be a better fit because not only is its new content new, but its old content is new as well.

And make no mistake: Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are one-year-old games with some new stuff thrown in. They have a whole heaping helping of new stuff, to be fair, but, foundationally, the games are the same as their predecessors. You start as a child newly moved to the islands of Alola, Pokémon's equivalent of Hawaii, and set off on an adventure to best each landmass' Pokémon-centric trials. These replace Gym battles from the last two-plus decades' worth of Pokémon games and shake things up considerably but not so much that fans won't recognize the trials for what they are.

Enlarge / We'll keep the cloud on for you. (credit: Lunera)

The Internet of Things is a powerful concept, especially in the industrial world—but it's also full of potential security disasters and hidden computing and networking costs. But what if all you had to do to create a secure network of distributed Linux systems—complete with location awareness and custom application support capable of supporting location-based applications like asset tracking, robotic delivery, and "smart rooms"—was to change the lightbulbs?

That's the concept behind Lunera's Smart Lamps. These LED-based replacements for fluorescent and other commercial lighting systems also have a full Linux server with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, 2 gigabytes of RAM, and 2 gigabytes of Flash storage embedded in their end-caps. The Bluetooth capability includes iBeacon micro-location services—enabling retail, medical, and industrial location services. And the Wi-Fi "enables Wi-Fi network monitoring and also extending the Wi-Fi mesh," CEO John Bruggeman explained in an interview with Ars. "Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are like electricity and water for the digital experience."

Lunera had previously shipped LED replacements for commercial lighting system tubes and lamps, including fluorescent and high-pressure sodium (HPS) bulbs. But the new Smart Lamps carry quad-core, 700 MhZ ARM-based processors with memory and storage on the same die. Configurable with a mobile application and controlled through a cloud portal via a dedicated virtual private network, Lunera's smart lamps can sense each other and create a location-sensitive wireless network mesh using Bluetooth iBeacons—a mesh that can be mapped to CAD drawings of commercial facilities' lighting systems. And these lamps can run Docker containers, allowing anyone to develop applications that leverage location and Wi-Fi services and what Bruggeman describes as "ambient compute services."

Enlarge / A Google Fiber installation box in Kansas City, Kansas. (credit: Julie Denesha/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Google Fiber's gigabit Internet service has consistently been priced at $70 a month since it launched in 2012, but it's now available for just $55 in the ISP's latest city.

Google Fiber in San Antonio, Texas, comes in just one speed tier offering 1Gbps download and upload speeds, at the rate of $55 a month. Google Fiber charges $70 a month for standalone gigabit service in all other cities where it offers wired Internet service.

"[I]n San Antonio, we've priced our Fiber 1000 (1,000Mbps) service at $55 per month," Google Fiber said in an announcement yesterday. "There's no installation fee, no hidden fees, no contracts, and no data caps."