Month: March 2018

Enlarge / Net neutrality supporters rally for Title II reclassification of broadband in front of the White House in November 2014. (credit: Stephen Melkisethian)

The biggest lobby groups representing broadband providers will help the Federal Communications Commission defend the repeal of net neutrality rules in court.

Yesterday, three trade groups that collectively represent every major home Internet and mobile broadband provider in the US filed motions to intervene in the case on behalf of the FCC. The motions for leave to intervene were filed by NCTA–The Internet & Television Association, CTIA–The Wireless Association, and USTelecom–The Broadband Association. (Yes, those are the organizations' correct names.)

NCTA represents cable companies such as Comcast, Charter, Cox, and Altice. CTIA represents the biggest mobile carriers, such as AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, and Sprint. USTelecom represents wireline telcos with copper and fiber networks, such as AT&T and Verizon. All three groups also represent a range of smaller ISPs.

Enlarge / Here's the whole camera assembly. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Samsung's perfectly adequate flagship, the Galaxy S9, is out in stores today. There are two versions: the Galaxy S9, with a single rear camera and a smaller screen for $719.99, and the Galaxy S9+, which adds a second rear camera and a bigger screen for $839.99.

Samsung is showing off its biggest strength with the S9 launch, working at a scale that many other Android device makers can't touch. The S9 is rolling out simultaneously to 70 countries today, with that number growing to 110 by the end of the month. We recently harped on Google for being terrible at this sort of global thing with the Pixel line, which is available in a whopping 6-8 countries.

The Galaxy S9 mostly follows the Galaxy S8 formula from last year but adds 2 more gigabytes of RAM (for a total of 6GB), stereo speakers, always-on "OK Google" support, and a killer new camera setup with a variable aperture. In the US and China, the phones get the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC, while in the rest of the world, the phones use a Samsung's equally new Exynos 9810 Octa.

Enlarge / The 10.5-inch iPad Pro. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

On the heels of opening up registration for its annual WWDC event, Apple will hold an education-focused event on March 27 that will highlight "creative new ideas for teachers and students," multiple reports indicate.

Lane Tech College Prep High School in Chicago will host the event at 10am CDT on March 27. Apple's last education event took place all the way back in 2012 in New York City. In typical Apple fashion, the event's invitation doesn't offer any details about the impending announcements.

Apple has hosted hardware events during springtime before, and there are a number of rumored devices that could come out of this event. Gossip says Apple might be about to reveal a new 9.7-inch iPad for a special education price of $259. New iPads have been rumored for later this year as well, but it's unlikely that an education-focused iPad would include the new and expensive FaceID camera. A new iPad with Apple's high-end camera, which enables FaceID, Animoji, and ARKit features, may debut later this year.

Enlarge / Storm troopin' across the universe...

Nearly four months after shutting down microtransactions over widespread fan outrage, EA has announced a new "Progression Update" for Star Wars Battlefront II that will bring real-money purchases back to the game on March 21—but only for cosmetic items.

The game's randomized loot crates will now be earned through daily logins, completion of in-game Milestones, and timed challenges, rather than real-money purchases, the publisher announced this morning in a blog post. Those randomized crates will also no longer include character-boosting Star Cards, which will instead be earned through experience points applied to classes, hero characters, and ships. The Star Card system will now progress linearly as well, at a rate of one Star Card unlock or upgrade per experience level.

Cosmetic "appearances," on the other hand, can be purchased with credits earned in-game or with crystals bought with real money. "If you’ve ever dreamed of being a part of the Resistance as a Rodian, your chance is right around the corner," the blog post reads. That change comes after EA CFO Blake Jorgensen said in November that concerns over brand integrity initially prevented the game from including potential cosmetics like a pink Darth Vader costume.

For reasons known only to my subconscious, I woke up this morning thinking about a car you've almost certainly never heard of: the Connaught Type-D GT Syracuse. It was an intriguing little thing—light years ahead of its time and wildly ambitious for a tiny British startup that had taken its name from a maker of racing cars that went bust in 1957. But even though the Connaught never made it to production, it still deserves to be remembered.

Cast your mind back to 2004. Michael Schumacher was still on top of his game, racing for Ferrari. Jeremy Clarkson was still on Top Gear and still funny. Tesla barely existed, the autonomous car was a far-off dream, and I was still just reading about cars as a scientist rather than writing about them for my favorite online publication. Flicking through the November issue of Car, a short article about a reborn Connaught caught my eye—and my imagination.

Enlarge / Water carrying a dye and added CO₂ is bubbled over the Great Barrier Reef. (credit: Aaron Takeo Ninokawa )

Coral reefs are not just pretty and cool—beyond tourism dollars and once-in-a-lifetime diving experiences, they provide real utility to human society. They provide homes to about a quarter of the world’s fish, which many people rely on as a food source. They can act as a barrier to rising sea levels, and they can protect coastlines from eroding.

But thanks to all the carbon we’ve pumped into the air, coral reefs are disappearing. Fast. Part of that is heat stress, but CO₂ can also influence coral's ability to form reefs in the first place. A new experiment gives us our first look at how much this affects a complete reef ecosystem.

When oceans take up atmospheric carbon dioxide, they acidify. This in turn depresses the concentration of carbonate ions in the water. When there is a dearth of carbonate ions in seawater, coral reefs, made of carbonates, dissolve to restore the balance. So it stands to reason that increasing carbon dioxide in the water would spell trouble for the corals.

Enlarge / Ian Read, chairman and chief executive officer of Pfizer Inc. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

As drug giant Pfizer Inc. hiked the price of dozens of drugs in 2017, it also jacked up the compensation of CEO Ian Read by 61 percent, putting his total compensation at $27.9 million, according to financial filings reported by Bloomberg.

Pfizer’s board reportedly approved the compensation boost because they saw it as a “compelling incentive” to keep Read from retiring. He turns 65 in May. As part of the deal, Read has to stay on through at least next March and is barred from working with a competitor for a minimum of two years after that.

According to Bloomberg, Read’s compensation included in part a salary of $1.96 million, a $2.6 million bonus, $13.1 million in equity awards linked to financial goals and stock price, as well as an $8 million special equity award that will vest if the company’s average stock return goes above 25 percent for 30 consecutive trading days before then end of 2022.

Enlarge / The future of computing is... a big metal tank? If it turns out there's just a guy with a laptop in there doing Google searches, I'm going to be very disappointed. (credit: John Timmer)

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, NY—I'm in a room with one possible future for computing. The computer itself is completely unimposing, looking like a metal tank suspended from the ceiling. What makes an impression is the noise, a regular metallic ping that dominates the room. It's the sound of a cooling system designed to take hardware to the edge of absolute zero. And the hardware being cooled isn't a standard chip; it's IBM's take on quantum computing.

In 2016, IBM made a lot of noise when it invited the public to try out an early iteration of its quantum computer, hosting only five qubits—far too few qubits to do any serious calculations but more than enough for people to gain some real-world experience with programming on the new technology. Amidst some rapid progress, IBM installed more tanks in its quantum computing room and added new processors as they were ready. As the company scaled up the number of qubits to 20, it optimistically announced that 50-qubit hardware was on its way.

During our recent visit to IBM's Thomas Watson Research Center, the company's researchers were far more circumspect, being clear they weren't making promises and that 50-qubit hardware is just a stepping stone toward quantum computing's future. But they did make the case that IBM was well-positioned to be part of that future, in part because of the ecosystem the company is building up around these early efforts.