Month: April 2018

Enlarge / Elon Musk unveiling the Model X in 2012. (credit: Tim Rue/Corbis via Getty Images)

The National Transportation Safety Board announced Thursday that it has revoked Tesla's status as a party to its investigation of a fatal Model X crash in Mountain View, California last month.

Being a party to an investigation allows a company to fully participate in the investigation process, sharing information with the agency and viewing information uncovered by NTSB while the investigation is still ongoing. For example, Uber is working with the NTSB to investigate the cause of last month's fatal self-driving car crash in Tempe, Arizona.

But parties must agree to respect the confidentiality of the process while it's underway, and the agency says that Tesla has broken that agreement with recent comments about the Mountain View crash. In a statement this week to Silicon Valley television station ABC 7, for example, Tesla argued that the crash occurred because driver Walter Huang "was not paying attention to the road."

Enlarge / Elon Musk unveiling the Model X in 2012. (credit: Tim Rue/Corbis via Getty Images)

The National Transportation Safety Board announced Thursday that it has revoked Tesla's status as a party to its investigation of a fatal Model X crash in Mountain View, California last month.

Being a party to an investigation allows a company to fully participate in the investigation process, sharing information with the agency and viewing information uncovered by NTSB while the investigation is still ongoing. For example, Uber is working with the NTSB to investigate the cause of last month's fatal self-driving car crash in Tempe, Arizona.

But parties must agree to respect the confidentiality of the process while it's underway, and the agency says that Tesla has broken that agreement with recent comments about the Mountain View crash. In a statement this week to Silicon Valley television station ABC 7, for example, Tesla argued that the crash occurred because driver Walter Huang "was not paying attention to the road."

Enlarge / Luke Woodham (left) is a professional drift racer. Theo Thomas (right) is a gamer and vlogger. They both raced on an off-road track in real cars but without being able to see out the windshield. (credit: Castrol / EA Games)

I don't know about you, but when I play racing games—which I do quite often—I'm quite particular about which camera angle I use. It's almost exclusively the "front bumper cam" these days; after several years using the in-car view (where offered), I've found I'm just that bit faster without peering through a simulated windshield. It's a POV I came to love in the first Gran Turismo game two decades ago, and, for me, it remains the best.

I've never been able to come to grips with the "over the shoulder" external view, where a camera is above and behind your car—it just feels so unnatural, especially if I'm using a steering wheel and pedals. So I'd probably have fared pretty badly in this challenge between a professional drift racer and a prolific gamer, organized by Castrol and Need For Speed Payback.

A brief disclaimer: yes, at the end of the day this stunt is an advert for Castrol's products and the latest NFS game, but that doesn't make it any less cool. It involved Luke Woodham, a pro drift racer who competes in Europe, and Theo Thomas, a gamer with a sizable following on YouTube. They competed to see who could set a faster time in a point-to-point race across a dirt road in the desert, using identical Ford Mustangs. But there was a catch—all the windows on the cars were blacked out.

Enlarge / Luke Woodham (left) is a professional drift racer. Theo Thomas (right) is a gamer and vlogger. They both raced on an off-road track in real cars but without being able to see out the windshield. (credit: Castrol / EA Games)

I don't know about you, but when I play racing games—which I do quite often—I'm quite particular about which camera angle I use. It's almost exclusively the "front bumper cam" these days; after several years using the in-car view (where offered), I've found I'm just that bit faster without peering through a simulated windshield. It's a POV I came to love in the first Gran Turismo game two decades ago, and, for me, it remains the best.

I've never been able to come to grips with the "over the shoulder" external view, where a camera is above and behind your car—it just feels so unnatural, especially if I'm using a steering wheel and pedals. So I'd probably have fared pretty badly in this challenge between a professional drift racer and a prolific gamer, organized by Castrol and Need For Speed Payback.

A brief disclaimer: yes, at the end of the day this stunt is an advert for Castrol's products and the latest NFS game, but that doesn't make it any less cool. It involved Luke Woodham, a pro drift racer who competes in Europe, and Theo Thomas, a gamer with a sizable following on YouTube. They competed to see who could set a faster time in a point-to-point race across a dirt road in the desert, using identical Ford Mustangs. But there was a catch—all the windows on the cars were blacked out.

Enlarge / Windows Admin Center

Announced last year as Project Honolulu, Microsoft today released Windows Admin Center, the new Web-based graphical administrative interface for Windows systems.

Admin Center is intended to provide a common interface for remote management of Windows machines running Windows Server (2012 or newer) or Windows 10, whether on physical hardware, virtual hardware, or in the cloud. Admin Center is built to offer a common remote admin interface that replaces the mess of MMC applets, control panels, settings apps, and dashboards that are currently used to graphically configure and maintain Windows machines. It operates at the server, failover cluster, and hyper-converged infrastructure level.

The intent behind Admin Center is that it should replace the mix of remote and local admin tools that are used for ad hoc administrative tasks, many of which might traditionally be done with Remote Desktop. To that end, it has interfaces for tasks such as registry editing, managing network settings, listing and ending processes, and managing hardware.

Enlarge / Windows Admin Center

Announced last year as Project Honolulu, Microsoft today released Windows Admin Center, the new Web-based graphical administrative interface for Windows systems.

Admin Center is intended to provide a common interface for remote management of Windows machines running Windows Server (2012 or newer) or Windows 10, whether on physical hardware, virtual hardware, or in the cloud. Admin Center is built to offer a common remote admin interface that replaces the mess of MMC applets, control panels, settings apps, and dashboards that are currently used to graphically configure and maintain Windows machines. It operates at the server, failover cluster, and hyper-converged infrastructure level.

The intent behind Admin Center is that it should replace the mix of remote and local admin tools that are used for ad hoc administrative tasks, many of which might traditionally be done with Remote Desktop. To that end, it has interfaces for tasks such as registry editing, managing network settings, listing and ending processes, and managing hardware.

Enlarge / The Uber ride-sharing app is seen on a mobile phone on February 12, 2018. (credit: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The Federal Trade Commission will expand its oversight of Uber following the disclosure of its improper withholding of a 2016 security breach that exposed sensitive data for more than 25 million users.

The ride-hailing service was already bound to an agreement reached last year requiring it to undergo privacy audits every two years for the next two decades. The settlement also required Uber to implement a comprehensive privacy program that protected the personal information the company collected.

The 2017 agreement settled FTC charges that Uber misrepresented the level of access its employees had to user data and the steps it took to secure that data. Following reports in 2014 that Uber employees used an administrative tool internally dubbed God-view to monitor active Uber cars and customers—and sometimes observed specific users' locations for amusement—Uber promised to use a newly created system to monitor and restrict employee access to such information. Last year's FTC charges stemmed, in part, from Uber ending use of that system less than a year after it was put in place.

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Amazon on Thursday announced it has sealed its acquisition of smart home device-maker Ring, and to celebrate, the company is doing a very Amazon thing and slashing the price of its latest gadget. The company now lists the original Ring Video Doorbell for $99, which is about $80 off its going rate over the last few months.

Now, this isn't the most robust video doorbell on the market—or even in Ring's lineup—but it still does the basics of video doorbell-ing well enough for those new to this type of device. It shoots in 720p, it's relatively easy to set up, with its own rechargeable battery, and it works with Amazon's Alexa assistant.

Ring still requires you to pay a $3 a month (or $30 a year) subscription if you want to record videos and view them back in the cloud, which is a bummer, but the lowered starting price does make up for that somewhat. Also note that you may have to wait a few extra days for some color options to ship as of this writing; the $100 price is locked in either way, though.