Month: May 2018

Enlarge / New ZTE Blade V9 at a ZTE stand during the Mobile World Congress Day 2 on February 27, 2018 in Barcelona, Spain. (credit: Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

One of the leading Chinese smartphone makers, ZTE, is shutting down global operations in the face of crippling sanctions levied by the US government. ZTE is China's number-two smartphone maker, and as recently as last year it was the number-four smartphone vendor in the US.

"The major operating activities of the Company have ceased," ZTE wrote (PDF) in a Wednesday announcement to stock market traders in Hong Kong.

ZTE's business became untenable after a US government order banned American companies from exporting technology to the Chinese smartphone maker. ZTE is heavily dependent on US-made components, especially Qualcomm chips and Google's Android software stack.

Enlarge / Hack, mod, it's all in the mind / If you look at the code, I'm sure you'll find / The emulator runs now or later / Nevertheless, the PSP we now cater... (credit: Sony)

Sometimes it seems that Sony itself is a PS4 hacker's best friend. In January, we wrote about how hackers were taking advantage of the system's built-in PlayStation Classics emulator to get arbitrary PS2 games running on unlocked hardware. Now, it seems a PSP emulator buried in a "remastered" PS4 release could provide a new way to get upscaled versions of the portable system's games running on your TV.

The PS4 game in question is PaRappa the Rapper Remastered, a bare-bones, upscaled re-release of the '90s PlayStation rhythm game. Earlier this week, GBATemp user KiiWii posted his discovery that the PS4 game uses an in-built PSP emulator to run a copy of the 2007 PSP version of PaRappa rather than running new code specifically ported to the PS4.

The only apparent difference in the PS4 remaster is an included 4K texture package that makes the game look good on a modern television. We're reminded of similar fan-made texture packages that can already improve the look of everything from N64 and PS3 games to Wii U games via PC-based emulators.

Enlarge / Former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 17, 2014 during a hearing on net neutrality. (credit: Getty Images | Win McNamee )

Readers of Fortune on Monday were treated to an op-ed titled "I'm a Former FCC Commissioner, and I Think the T-Mobile-Sprint Merger Is Great for America."

The author is Robert McDowell, a Republican who served on the Federal Communications Commission from 2006 to 2013. McDowell's position on T-Mobile's $26 billion purchase of Sprint is no surprise because T-Mobile is paying him to help secure government approval of the merger.

"I currently serve as an advisor to T-Mobile," McDowell disclosed in his op-ed.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

On Wednesday, the California Energy Commission approved a set of standards that will require most new homes built in the state after 2020 to include solar panels on their roofs.

The standards (PDF) apply only to single-family homes and certain low-rise condos, townhomes, and apartments. Exceptions are made for homes with roofs that would receive excessive shade during the daytime or homes with roofs too small to benefit from a few solar panels.

The standards also include some smaller efficiency requirements for non-residential buildings. The state expects that, on the whole, the new requirements will help state residents save money. Overall, California expects the new residential and non-residential standards to cost the state economy $2.17 billion, while generating an energy bill savings of $3.87 billion, for a net savings of $1.7 billion.

Enlarge / The Steam Link app will go well beyond the functionality of the existing Steam Mobile app shown here, but we don't have imagery for the Steam Link yet, so....

Users will be able to turn their phones and tablets into de facto portable PC monitors for playing Steam games around the house later this month. That's when Valve has announced it will be launching its new Steam Link app for iOS and Android, officially bringing Steam's long-established in-home streaming feature to mobile devices for the first time (though there have been unofficial apps to provide similar functions for a while now).

The free Steam Link app will be available for phones and tablets running Android or iOS (though Android support will be in beta for launch) starting the week of May 21. Apple TV and Android-based TV platforms will also run the software, Valve said, essentially turning those set-top boxes into versions of Valve's own standalone Steam Link hardware.

The mobile app will link to a "Mac or PC" host system, according to the announcement (Update: A Valve representative tells Ars Linux and SteamOS are also supported), relaying game images and sound and transmitting controller input over 5Ghz Wi-Fi or wired Ethernet. While Valve said the app will include support for the Steam Controller, MFi-certified iOS controllers, "and more," it's unclear whether more generic USB/bluetooth controllers and/or mouse/keyboard setups will be usable via the mobile app (Update: A Valve representative tells Ars that keyboard/mouse controls will be supported, with a fuller list of compatible controllers available before launch).

Enlarge (credit: Michael Coghlan)

The problem with scientific papers is that they hide about half of the interesting stuff. Recently, a group of scientists set out to directly measure a property of a laser, something that goes by the exciting-sounding name of "spatial hole burning." In the process, though, they discovered how to turn a laser into a very high-speed microwave device, a discovery that may make the next generations of Wi-Fi and mobile data much easier to implement.

Was this discovery an accident, or did the scientists know that the application potential was there before they started? The paper is silent on the issue. But are we seriously going to put a laser in every cell phone?

Your laser is full of holes

When you form a picture of light from a laser, you might imagine something like light from a laser pointer: red or green, a nice directed beam, possibly a bit sparkly when you shine it on the wall. Lasers emit light with a single pure color, right? Unfortunately, life is not that simple.