Month: November 2017

Enlarge / An AT&T Cell on Wings. (credit: AT&T)

AT&T is using an LTE-equipped drone to reconnect some Puerto Ricans who lost wireless service after Hurricane Maria.

This obviously isn't a permanent fix for Puerto Rico, where 48 percent of cell sites are still out of service more than a month after the hurricane wrecked telecom infrastructure on the island. But the drone—AT&T calls it a Flying COW (Cell on Wings)—is providing wireless connectivity in an area of up to 40 square miles.

"As we work to permanently restore our network, this experimental technology is providing data, voice, and text services to customers," AT&T said in an announcement today. "This is the first time an LTE cell site on a drone has been successfully deployed to connect residents after a disaster."

"I don't have the re-releases with me." (credit: Aurich Lawson / Lucasfilm)

On Monday, November 6, major media-acquisition news landed: 21st Century Fox has reportedly held talks to sell all of its assets to Disney. CNBC's unnamed sources say those talks have since stalled, but the mere possibility got nerd tongues wagging. What would happen if those two media giants joined in unholy matrimony? In addition to questions about Disney and Fox's shared rights to Marvel Comics properties, one franchise stood out: Star Wars. Our own Lee Hutchinson talked at length about how Fox figures into the future of Star Wars' past, so we're resurfacing this 2014 article, which looks at the logistical and legal hurdles that existed on the eve of the original trilogy's first major Blu-ray launch. Until we hear any firmer news about Fox and Disney, of course, this is all a bit of a pipe dream. But who knows?

Disney is doing all kinds of things with the Star Wars universe now that it has purchased the franchise away from George Lucas. In addition to the three sequel films, there will be "at least three" spin-off movies, which will likely be origin stories for some of the supporting cast of Star Wars characters. The House of Mouse is pouring a tremendous amount of time and money into Star Wars, and Disney could be the new arbiter of the Holy Grail of Star Wars requests: a remastered release of the unedited, non-special-edition original trilogy.

Unadulterated, "pure" versions of the original Star Wars films are difficult to come by. Except for one sad, low-resolution release on DVD in 2006 (which we'll discuss in a moment), the films have only been available in their modified "Special Edition" forms since 1997, when George Lucas re-released the films to theaters with a series of changes. Some of those changes aren't bad at all—the fancy new attack on the Death Star in Episode IV is perfectly cromulent—but others are absolutely terrible. In Return of the Jedi, Jabba's palace gains an asinine CGI-filled song-and-dance interlude. Dialogue is butchered in Empire Strikes Back. And in the first movie, perhaps most famously, Han no longer shoots first.

Enlarge / A functional iPhone X, unlike the ones that went through recent stress testing. (credit: Samuel Axon)

As we suspected in our review, the iPhone X is not faring well in the first drop and durability tests. Two different drop tests showed immediate damage to the device.

Consumer electronics site CNET ran a drop test from a height of three feet. The glass at the corner of the phone cracked on the very first test, which dropped the phone on its side. A second test dropped the phone on its face, leading to even more fractures. CNET concluded that dropping the phone without a case is "out of the question."

The damage CNET encountered was only cosmetic—a more extreme drop test from SquareTrade showed damage to functionality as well. SquareTrade is a company that offers protection plans for mobile devices, so it should be noted that the company has an incentive to convince consumers that their devices may be at risk.

People line up to enter the federal courthouse in San Jose, California in July 2012. It was the first day of trial in the patent battle between Apple and Samsung. (credit: Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The colossal courtroom clash between Apple and Samsung over patents won't be making a second appearance at the Supreme Court.

The two tech titans went at it in front of juries in San Jose over the course of two blockbuster trials, held in 2012 and 2014. Both times juries returned verdicts in favor of Apple—the first ordering Samsung to pay more than $1 billion in damages, the second ordering a payment of $120 million.

News today concerns the second verdict. In 2016, the $120 million verdict was thrown out entirely by a panel of judges on the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which hears all patent appeals. The judges said that patents on Apple features like smartphone autocorrect and "slide to unlock" were invalid in light of prior art.

A battery installation built by BYD in 2015 in LaSalle County, Illinois. (credit: BYD)

Though a lot has changed since 2016, not much has changed for energy economics in the US. The cost of wind generation continues to fall, solar costs are falling, too, and the cost of coal-power energy has seen no movement, while the cost of building and maintaining nuclear plants has gone up. And none of those conclusions reflect subsidies and tax credits applied by the federal government.

The conclusions come from Lazard (PDF), an asset management company that publishes cost estimates for various types of electricity-generation assets each year. Lazard’s numbers reflect the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), which averages the estimated costs of construction, maintenance, and fuel for electricity-generating assets over the number of megawatt-hours that each asset is expected to produce over its lifetime. In other words, the LCOE is the lifetime cost of a turbine divided by the amount of energy that turbine will produce over its lifetime. LCOE is a good way of comparing electricity generation sources that vary dramatically in cost to build and cost to maintain.

The result, tracked over years, is one way of gauging how the US energy mix is changing and could change in the coming year. Though the new presidential administration was expected (and still is expected) to be a boon to coal and nuclear energy, those efforts are still mired in the political process. And even if they succeed, thwarting the cost advantages of wind and solar energy while propping up coal and nuclear power will require not-inconsiderable amounts of intervention from the US government.