Month: February 2018

Enlarge / Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 5th Generation. (credit: Lenovo)

Lenovo has issued a recall of 5th generation ThinkPad X1 Carbon laptops built prior to November 1 (if you own one, you can check your status here) after reports that the battery could overheat. There haven't been any fires yet, but Lenovo warns that a fire hazard exists. Machines will be inspected and, if necessary, repaired for free in the recall program. Some 83,500 of the laptops have been sold in the US and Canada.

The cause of the problem? It appears that the laptops literally have a screw loose. An unfastened screw left in the laptops during their manufacturing can damage one of the lithium batteries and cause one of the cells to short out. This causes rapid overheating and failure of the battery, with three systems reported to have failed in the field.

The fix is, accordingly, simple: the unfastened screw will be removed. As Lenovo's FAQ on the issue states, "Removal of any unfastened screw will eliminate any exposure of the battery to an unfastened screw." No screw, no problem.

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Today's list includes a couple of discounts on Amazon's newer touchscreen Alexa devices: the Echo Spot and Echo Show. The former is down to $115, a modest $15 discount but still the lowest it's been to date. The Echo Show, meanwhile, is down to $180, which is a $50 price cut. The Echo Spot in particular functions as a sort of "smart alarm clock," doing all the usual Alexa things—sending music to a connected speaker system, activating smart home gear, etc.—as well as displaying song lyrics, making video calls with other Spots, and the like.

If you're not cool with letting Amazon put a camera in your home, though, we've also got deals on several Dell laptops, some 4K TVs, and the usual suite of miscellaneous accessories. You can peruse the full list below.

(credit: TechBargains)

Note: Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.

Enlarge / The Google Pixel and Pixel XL (credit: Ron Amadeo)

The same San Francisco law firm that recently settled arbitration claims against LG over the "bootloop" issue has now filed a new proposed class-action lawsuit against Google. This time, the firm is alleging manufacturing defects in the microphone on Pixel and Pixel XL handsets.

The firm's clients—Patricia Weeks of Florida and Waleed Anbar of California—say that they both purchased Pixel phones in 2016. However, months after their purchases, they both said that they experienced a defective microphone. The case, Weeks v. Google, was filed Tuesday in federal court in San Jose, California.

When they approached Google's customer service, they were told that Google would not refund them or offer a replacement.

Enlarge / IMAGE being prepared for launch. (credit: NASA)

Late last month, news broke that a satellite sleuth had spotted what appeared to be a lost NASA probe alive and sending out data. Now, NASA has officially confirmed the identity of the satellite as the IMAGE orbiter and is in the process of restoring the capability of processing the data that it is sending down. While we don't yet know whether any of its instruments are operational, one of its original team members is arguing that the hardware can still produce valuable science.

And NASA has determined that the craft's return to life is even more mysterious than we'd realized. When IMAGE originally lost contact, it was using its backup hardware after the primary set shut down. Upon its return, IMAGE is using its primary hardware again.

For those interested in all the details of the saga, NASA has put up a page where it's posting updates on its attempts to revive the satellite. In late January, the Goddard Flight Center was given time on NASA's Deep Space Network to have a listen to the craft. By the end of the month, the agency confirmed that this was indeed IMAGE and started trying to produce a software environment that could process the data it was sending.

Enlarge / Mitchell only obliquely addressed many of the accusations made against him in a lengthy conversation on The East Side Dave show earlier this week. (credit: The East Side Dave Show)

Over the weekend, Donkey Kong Forum moderator Jeremy Young removed competitive video gamer Billy Mitchell's highest claimed Donkey Kong scores from the forum after presenting credible evidence that these scores were achieved via MAME emulation rather than on actual arcade hardware. Mitchell addressed those accusations publicly for the first time on an episode of The East Side Dave show recorded Tuesday (subscription required).

After a long and meandering conversation about his career both before and after The King of Kong documentary helped raise his media profile, Mitchell did acknowledge that "the film footage that [Young] has... shows MAME play," referring to the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Such footage would be potentially susceptible to manipulation via stitched-together recording of game inputs, and it would go against Mitchell's claims that his scores were recorded on actual arcade hardware.

In practically the same breath, though, Mitchell tried to cast some doubt on the provenance of the footage Young used in his analysis. "I contend that if he gets the original tape or he gets the original room shot, he will see that what I say is true," he said. "I'm not disputing what he says is true, what I'm disputing is that I want him to have the original tape."