Month: February 2018

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Peter Dazeley)

Verizon Wireless will soon begin locking the phones it sells to customers, a move that will prevent the phones from being activated on any other carrier's network. But Verizon says it is taking this measure to deter theft that occurs before customers purchase phones, and that Verizon will unlock the phones for customers after they're purchased.

What isn't clear is how long customers will have to wait before the phones are unlocked, and exactly what steps customer will have to take to do the unlocking. Verizon says its stores have been victimized by increasingly frequent armed robberies.

Verizon isn't allowed to lock phones to its network because of open access requirements that are specific to the "C Block" 700MHz wireless spectrum that Verizon purchased in 2008 and uses for its 4G LTE network. Since then, Verizon has generally had more customer-friendly unlocking policies than other carriers.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Peter Dazeley)

Verizon Wireless will soon begin locking the phones it sells to customers, a move that will prevent the phones from being activated on any other carrier's network. But Verizon says it is taking this measure to deter theft that occurs before customers purchase phones, and that Verizon will unlock the phones for customers after they're purchased.

What isn't clear is how long customers will have to wait before the phones are unlocked, and exactly what steps customer will have to take to do the unlocking. Verizon says its stores have been victimized by increasingly frequent armed robberies.

Verizon isn't allowed to lock phones to its network because of open access requirements that are specific to the "C Block" 700MHz wireless spectrum that Verizon purchased in 2008 and uses for its 4G LTE network. Since then, Verizon has generally had more customer-friendly unlocking policies than other carriers.

Enlarge / I am really tired of being the only person on this ship with any sense whatsoever. (credit: CBS)

This season of Star Trek: Discovery has been wobbling between awesomeness and toxic muck, and last night's finale didn't tip the balance. The show has been under a cloud of controversy since before its launch, when fans raged about having to buy CBS' All Access streaming service to watch the show. But then, despite the exit of acclaimed showrunner Bryan Fuller, ST:DISCO debuted to mostly positive critical responses. Now it's time to assess where last night's season finale left us.

Over the season, we've had standout, brilliant episodes mixed in with 60-minute clunkers. Burnham's character arc has been consistently fascinating, but characters like Lorca and Voq/Tyler have slowly eroded from multi-dimensional people into mere plot devices. Most of the show's worst problems cropped up in the second half of the season, when we took a long detour into the Mirror Universe. Though finale "Will You Take My Hand" tied up any number of loose threads, often in ways that were rich and satisfying, the episode also doubled down on some of the series' biggest mistakes.

Spoilers ahead. If you continue to read and then complain about spoilers, you will be forced to eat Saru's magical neuro-tentacles.

Enlarge / I am really tired of being the only person on this ship with any sense whatsoever. (credit: CBS)

This season of Star Trek: Discovery has been wobbling between awesomeness and toxic muck, and last night's finale didn't tip the balance. The show has been under a cloud of controversy since before its launch, when fans raged about having to buy CBS' All Access streaming service to watch the show. But then, despite the exit of acclaimed showrunner Bryan Fuller, ST:DISCO debuted to mostly positive critical responses. Now it's time to assess where last night's season finale left us.

Over the season, we've had standout, brilliant episodes mixed in with 60-minute clunkers. Burnham's character arc has been consistently fascinating, but characters like Lorca and Voq/Tyler have slowly eroded from multi-dimensional people into mere plot devices. Most of the show's worst problems cropped up in the second half of the season, when we took a long detour into the Mirror Universe. Though finale "Will You Take My Hand" tied up any number of loose threads, often in ways that were rich and satisfying, the episode also doubled down on some of the series' biggest mistakes.

Spoilers ahead. If you continue to read and then complain about spoilers, you will be forced to eat Saru's magical neuro-tentacles.

Enlarge / The dark block on the left is the four core Zen CCX. On the right is the GPU. (credit: AMD)

Last year's release of the Ryzen processors, built around AMD's new Zen core, was a major event for the chip company: after years in the doldrums, AMD finally had processors that were credible alternatives to Intel's chips.

However, AMD still didn't offer Intel much competition, because its chips lacked an important feature: integrated GPUs. In both the laptop and the mainstream and corporate desktop markets, most processors sold combine a CPU with a GPU, while discrete GPUs are reserved for high performance, gaming, and other specialized systems. The first wave of Ryzen chips all needed to be paired with video cards. That made it appealing to enthusiasts and certain high-performance markets, but irrelevant to Intel's bread-and-butter market.

We knew that situation was temporary. A few mobile processors that combined Zen with a GPU hit the market late last year, and desktop parts were promised for February at CES. The first two chips to use the "AMD Ryzen Desktop Processors with Radeon Vega Graphics" moniker were released today. (FYI: AMD is regrettably no longer using its much more concise "Accelerated Processing Unit" (APU) terminology for CPU-GPU combinations.)

Enlarge / The dark block on the left is the four core Zen CCX. On the right is the GPU. (credit: AMD)

Last year's release of the Ryzen processors, built around AMD's new Zen core, was a major event for the chip company: after years in the doldrums, AMD finally had processors that were credible alternatives to Intel's chips.

However, AMD still didn't offer Intel much competition, because its chips lacked an important feature: integrated GPUs. In both the laptop and the mainstream and corporate desktop markets, most processors sold combine a CPU with a GPU, while discrete GPUs are reserved for high performance, gaming, and other specialized systems. The first wave of Ryzen chips all needed to be paired with video cards. That made it appealing to enthusiasts and certain high-performance markets, but irrelevant to Intel's bread-and-butter market.

We knew that situation was temporary. A few mobile processors that combined Zen with a GPU hit the market late last year, and desktop parts were promised for February at CES. The first two chips to use the "AMD Ryzen Desktop Processors with Radeon Vega Graphics" moniker were released today. (FYI: AMD is regrettably no longer using its much more concise "Accelerated Processing Unit" (APU) terminology for CPU-GPU combinations.)

The Atari 2600 (originally sold as the Atari Video Computer System, or VCS) was by far the most popular console of its era. It did much to popularize switchable cartridge-based games. Despite many efforts, Atari would never again replicate its success. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Almost immediately after Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell was un-nominated for a "Pioneer" award over accusations of sexism, questions arose from gaming fans and historians alike: was the reaction appropriate?

They wanted to know: was a "#NotNolan" campaign too quick to pass judgement based on salacious rumors? Or was it a measured response to how the gaming and technology industries look so many years later?

A report from Kotaku's Cecilia D'Anastasio came closest to answering that question on Monday. For the report, she interviewed a compelling spectrum of women who are perhaps best equipped to speak to the question: Bushnell's female peers within Atari, as well as female industry researchers and historians. The report doesn't come close to a definitive answer, and its hesitation to render any verdict on the matter is perhaps its greatest strength.

Enlarge (credit: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

In a new update to its app announced Monday, Uber drivers will now be forced to take a six-hour break after a total of 12 hours of driving time. Drivers will not be able to accept new riders during that rest period.

In a blog post, the company said it will “strengthen our approach to help keep riders and drivers safe on the road while preserving the flexibility drivers tell us they love.” The post added that 60 percent of its drivers are only on the road for 10 hours or less per week.

By contrast, federal regulations stipulate that bus drivers may only drive 10 consecutive hours after having had eight hours off duty.

Aw, damn. (credit: cibomahto)

The scourge of drive-by currency mining—in which websites and apps covertly run resource-draining code on other people's devices—shows no sign of abating. Over the weekend, researchers added two more incidents: one involves more than 4,200 sites (some operated by government agencies), while the other targets millions of Android devices.

The first incident affected sites that offer a free text-to-speech translation service called Browsealoud. On Sunday, someone changed the JavaScript code hosted here to include currency-mining code from Coinhive, a controversial site that uses the devices of site visitors, usually without their permission, to generate digital coin known as Monero.

In the process, any site that included a link to the Browsealoud JavaScript suddenly saddled its visitors with code that used 60 percent of its CPU resources, with no attempt to warn end users or get their permission (by default, Coinhive code uses 100 percent). Search results show that the breach affected 4,275 sites, including those operated by the UK government's Information Commissioner's Office, US federal courts, and the state of Indiana. The CTO of Texthelp, the company that offers Browsealoud, issued a statement saying it suspended the service until Tuesday. The move put an end to the illicit mass mining, which lasted about four hours. At no time was customer data accessed or lost, the statement said.