Month: January 2018

Enlarge (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple's battery fiasco continues to grow as the US government gets involved. According to a Bloomberg report, the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating if Apple violated securities laws with its disclosures surrounding a software update that intentionally slowed down the performance of older iPhones. The DOJ and SEC have requested more information from Apple on the subject.

No other details have been reported since the investigation is still new. It's possible that the government is looking into Apple violating the securities laws that require publicly traded companies to disclose accurate financial information, including risk factors associated with investing in the company. The DOJ and SEC may consider the update that included the slow-down practices a risk factor that could affect the company's stock and one that wasn't properly disclosed to investors. As of writing this article, Apple's stock fell 1.02 percent to $166.21 per share.

But this new investigation doesn't signal definite wrongdoing by Apple—just an investigation by the government to see whether or not wrongdoing occurred. It's also unclear which securities laws the DOJ and SEC are referencing—and since the probe is private, it's hard to anticipate when more information about the investigation will be made public.

Enlarge / Huawei Mate 10 Pro, one of the phones that won't be sold by US carriers. (credit: Valentina Palladino)

Huawei is the world's third biggest smartphone company—behind Samsung and Apple—and sells phones across the globe. But the Chinese company is virtually unknown in the US. Allegations of stolen intellectual property and spying have dogged Huawei, impeding its efforts to expand its US reach.

Earlier this month, "political pressure" was reported to have derailed an agreement between Huawei and AT&T that would have seen the carrier selling the smartphone company's hardware. Bloomberg is now reporting that Verizon, too, has dropped its plans to sell Huawei phones, including the new Mate 10 Pro. Huawei will still sell phones directly to consumers, and they'll work on US networks. But without the promotion and subsidy that carrier partnerships offer, significant sales volumes are unlikely.

Huawei's difficulties in the US started in 2003, when Cisco accused it of stealing code for router software. More trouble followed in 2008, when Huawei's bid to buy 3Com was blocked. In 2011, the US Department of Defense reported to Congress that it was concerned about the company's close ties to the Chinese military, and a 2012 House Intelligence report echoed these concerns.

Enlarge / Huawei Mate 10 Pro, one of the phones that won't be sold by US carriers. (credit: Valentina Palladino)

Huawei is the world's third biggest smartphone company—behind Samsung and Apple—and sells phones across the globe. But the Chinese company is virtually unknown in the US. Allegations of stolen intellectual property and spying have dogged Huawei, impeding its efforts to expand its US reach.

Earlier this month, "political pressure" was reported to have derailed an agreement between Huawei and AT&T that would have seen the carrier selling the smartphone company's hardware. Bloomberg is now reporting that Verizon, too, has dropped its plans to sell Huawei phones, including the new Mate 10 Pro. Huawei will still sell phones directly to consumers, and they'll work on US networks. But without the promotion and subsidy that carrier partnerships offer, significant sales volumes are unlikely.

Huawei's difficulties in the US started in 2003, when Cisco accused it of stealing code for router software. More trouble followed in 2008, when Huawei's bid to buy 3Com was blocked. In 2011, the US Department of Defense reported to Congress that it was concerned about the company's close ties to the Chinese military, and a 2012 House Intelligence report echoed these concerns.

Enlarge (credit: lenovo.com)

Lenovo has fixed a high-severity vulnerability in a wide range of laptop models that allowed hackers with physical access to log in and then obtain users' Windows login credentials and other sensitive data.

The vulnerability resides in the Lenovo Fingerprint Manager Pro, which is typically installed on ThinkPad, ThinkCentre, and ThinkStation models. A weak encryption algorithm makes it possible for someone with local non-administrative access to read Windows logon credentials and fingerprint data. From there, the person can log into the computer or use the extracted credentials for other purposes. The vulnerability affects only Fingerprint Manager Pro for Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1. Fingerprint-enabled Laptops running Windows 10 aren't affected because they use Microsoft's native support.

"A vulnerability has been identified in Lenovo Fingerprint Manager Pro," Lenovo officials wrote in an advisory published late last week. "Sensitive data stored by Lenovo Fingerprint Manager Pro, including users' Windows logon credentials and fingerprint data, is encrypted using a weak algorithm, contains a hard-coded password, and is accessible to all users with local non-administrative access to the system it is installed in."

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Today's list brings us a decent deal on Microsoft's relatively new Xbox One X, as Dell is offering the 4K- and HDR-compatible console straight up with a $100 gift card to its online store.

Now, there's a few caveats here: Dell says the gift card will arrive over email "within 20 days," the credit expires within 90 days, and you have to really want to play certain Xbox One games in 4K for the One X to be worth it. If you do, though, and you want to use that extra $100 toward, let's say, a monitor or various PC accessories, give it a look. For those who don't need the absolute strongest Xbox console, Dell is running a similar deal on the $280 Xbox One S as well.

And if you don't care about any of this, the rest of the rundown includes nice price cuts on the Essential Phone, Amazon's latest 4K-capable Fire TV, a variety of Logitech mice and keyboards, a few TVs for those overhauling their living rooms for the Super Bowl, and plenty other goodies. Have a look for yourself below.

Enlarge / Sequence on a stick. (credit: Oxford Nanopore)

A few years back, a company called Oxford Nanopore announced it was developing a radically different way of sequencing DNA. Its approach involved taking single strands of the double helix and stuffing them through a protein pore. With a small bit of current flowing across the pore, the four bases of DNA each created a distinct (if tiny) change in the voltage as it passed through. These could be used to read the DNA one base at a time as it wiggled through the pore.

After several years of slow progress, Oxford Nanopore announced that its sequencing hardware would be as distinctive as its wetware: a USB device that could fit comfortably in a person's hand. As the first devices went out to users, it became clear that the device had some pros and cons. On the plus side, the device was quick and could be used without requiring a large facility to support it. It could also read very long stretches of DNA at once. But the downside was significant: it made lots of mistakes.

With a few years of experience, people are now starting to learn to make the most of the devices, as demonstrated by a new paper in which researchers use it to help sequence a human genome. By using the machine's long reads—in one case, nearly 900,000 bases from one DNA molecule—the authors were able to get data out of areas of the human genome that resisted characterization before. And they were able to distinguish between the two sets of chromosomes (one from mom, one from dad) and locate areas of epigenetic control in many areas of the genome.

Enlarge / The id Software family tree finally comes together. (credit: id Software)

Of all the innovations id Software delivered to the video game industry in the '90s, plot certainly wasn't one of them. Still, the company managed to create a few iconic heroes in its PC-action heyday, and decades after their creation, the company's former bigwigs let loose a fun bit of trivia on Tuesday: many of id's biggest heroes are all related.

As spotted by ResetERA, a Twitter conversation unfolded on Tuesday that had been set into motion weeks earlier. A seeming throwaway December post from former id Software designer John Romero included an interesting note: that the long-running Wolfenstein series' hero, BJ Blazkowicz, was "based on" the company's early side-scrolling action series Commander Keen. A fan picked up on this and sent a question to id co-founder Tom Hall: are these two characters related, and is Doom's "Doomguy" hero also part of a genetic lineage?

Hall minced no words in his Tuesday reply: "The lineage isn't a theory. Fact." Longtime id fans might have already suspected this, based on information in a long-ago Wolfenstein hint manual, but this is the first time someone from id has gone to the trouble of confirming that idea. What's more, Romero piped up to clarify the exact makeup of the Blazkowicz clan: the Wolfenstein hero is Commander Keen's grandfather, while Keen is Doomguy's dad. The duo had a bit of a back-and-forth joke chain from there, asking why there was a missing generational badass between Wolfenstein and Keen. Hall claimed that Keen's father was "an awesome, heroic... newscaster" with the stage name of "Blaze," which is where Keen's legal name of "Billy Blaze" came from.

A screenshot taken by Hawaiian citizen Alison Teal shows the screen of her mobile phone with an alert text message sent to all Hawaiian citizens on January 13, 2018. / AFP PHOTO / Alison TEAL (credit: Getty Images)

A preliminary report released on Tuesday from the Federal Communications Commission details the events leading up to a false missile alert sent to mobile phones and television and radio broadcast stations in the state of Hawaii earlier this month. The report (PDF) suggests that the employee who sent the alert did not hear a recording notifying staff that an announcement regarding an incoming missile was simply a test. Instead, the employee apparently thought it was the real thing, according to the FCC.

The missile alert was not corrected for 38 minutes, sending residents of Hawaii into a panic. After the situation was rectified, Hawaii officials, including Governor David Ige and Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HI-EMA) Administrator Vern Miyagi, attributed the mistake to "human error," saying that the employee knew the missile alert was supposed to be a test but had designated that the alert was supposed to be an "event" rather than a "test" by accident.

The employee did not agree to be interviewed by the FCC but instead issued a written statement to the federal commission. The letter said that, contrary to explanations made by Hawaii officials, the employee didn't issue an alert warning by fumbling through a software menu by accident. Instead, the employee meant to send the warning, believing the internal announcement about an inbound threat was real.