Month: June 2018

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

Comcast has disabled a throttling system that it deployed in 2008 in order to slow down heavy Internet users.

Comcast's network is now strong enough that a congestion management system isn't needed, the company says. The system has been "essentially inactive for more than a year," and is now disabled entirely.

Yet the nation's largest cable operator still imposes data caps and overage fees in 27 states, claiming that it limits the amount of data customers use each month "based on a principle of fairness."

Enlarge / A few gadgets we think your old man might enjoy. (credit: Jeff Dunn)

Last month, we compiled a few gift-worthy gadgets for Ars readers to grab for Mother's Day. Today, it's Dad's turn. With Father's Day on the horizon, we've once again revisited the many devices that have rolled through the Ars labs in recent months and picked out a list of favorites.

The following Father's Day gift ideas should placate the kind of tech-savvy Dad (or any parent, really) we'd expect to raise an Arsian. Feel free to nudge a loved one toward getting something if you're a father yourself. And if nothing below works, try to at least give your old man a call this weekend.

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

Artist's impression of scientists doing science.

Today we’re presenting the second installment of my wide-ranging interview with George Church, whose Harvard lab is one of the most celebrated fonts of innovation in the world of life science. Part one ran yesterday—and if you missed it or would like to get the background on this experimental melding of Ars Technica’s written pages and a long-form podcast series, click here.

We begin today’s installment with a discussion of the strengths and shortcomings of the CRISPR gene-editing technique, which Church co-invented. Though CRISPR is a great improvement on the nine techniques that preceded it, it isn’t the be-all, and it will surely be displaced by more powerful approaches in the future. George discusses this and provides a wishlist of improvements that he hopes its successors will bring.

Next we discuss xenotransplantation—an incredibly cool word that denotes the transfer of animal organs into humans. A billion-dollar push to make pig organs safe for human patients failed in the 1990s. George’s team recently cracked the underlying problems using CRISPR. As a result, it seems that the organ shortage that has bedeviled humanity since the first transplants were made might soon be over. Yes, really!

Sony opened its E3 press conference this year with an unorthodox bang, packing assembled journalists and fans into an ersatz, standing-room-only church to show off the newest gameplay and cut scene footage of The Last of Us Part 2. The gripping trailer transitions abruptly from a heartwarming scene of awkward teenage romance at a dance to protagonist Ellie's brutal fight for survival against a gang of equally brutal adults.

Last of Us Part 2 co-writer Halley Gross told Ars this contrast in the trailer reflects a very conscious tension in the game and in Ellie herself. In the four or five years since the end of the first Last of Us, Gross said the now-19-year-old Ellie has been able to finally find a sense of normalcy and family in a world broken by the Infected hordes. "We've been able to invest in her relationships," Gross says. "She's been able to be a teenager, she's been able to feel a real sense of stability that she hadn't felt before the end of the first game."

That stability means the opportunity for Ellie to explore her sexuality, as reflected in the passionate lesbian kiss Naughty Dog put front and center in the trailer. "Ellie's a gay character and one of the things we're really excited about with this game, as [Last of Us writer] Neil [Druckmann] started with the first game, is to show how complicated and complex and beautiful she is as a character," Gross said. "Of course, she's a 19-year-old. She's gonna have... crushes, right? That's one of the things we're really jazzed to show. It's a part of her character."