Month: June 2018

(credit: Jhaymesisviphotography)

Apple recently announced new restrictions on the use of cryptocurrencies on iPhones and iPads, a change first noticed by Apple Insider on Monday.

"Apps may not mine for cryptocurrencies unless the processing is performed off device," Apple's app store guidelines for iOS now say. This requirement was absent from the same document just a few weeks ago.

Apple's new policy is apparently motivated in part by concerns that cryptocurrency mining could drain the batteries of mobile devices. "Apps, including any third party advertisements displayed within them, may not run unrelated background processes, such as cryptocurrency mining," the policy states.

Enlarge / A lot of tech packed into this svelte box. (credit: Kyle Orland)

Microsoft plans to deliver "console quality gaming on any device"—PC, Xbox, or phone—with a "game streaming network" that the company is developing, said executive president of gaming Phil Spencer at the company's E3 press conference.

This isn't the first time that Spencer has spoken of such development. At the Xbox One X launch last year, he said that Microsoft would have a game streaming service within three years, taking advantage of Azure's substantial global footprint to ensure that data center distance—and hence in-game latency—was low enough to enable high quality gaming.

Spencer is far from the only one talking about streaming: Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said that streamed games will replace consoles some time after the next console generation, and EA has announced its own cloud streaming service.

Enlarge / The US flag flies outside the US Embassy on October 14, 2017 in Havana, Cuba. (credit: Getty | Gary Hershorn)

The US government has withdrawn two more US workers from its embassy in Cuba following fresh accounts of bizarre noises followed by an array of symptoms consistent with mild traumatic head injuries, according to a series of reports from the Associated Press.

The two workers are considered “potentially new cases” in mysterious incidents plaguing Cuba and also workers in the US consulate in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, just northwest of Hong Kong.

The workers have been sent to the University of Pennsylvania for more neurological testing, where experts previously evaluated and treated 21 of the 24 confirmed US cases from Cuba and have begun evaluating workers evacuated from Guangzhou.

Enlarge / FCC Chairman Ajit Pai at Fox Studios on November 10, 2017 in New York City. (credit: Getty Images | John Lamparski )

The Federal Communications Commission's repeal of net neutrality rules took effect today. But as net neutrality supporters try to get the rules back in place, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is trying to convince Internet users that they're going to love the newly deregulated broadband industry.

Pai's FCC has eliminated rules that prohibited Internet service providers from blocking or throttling lawful Internet traffic. The repeal will also let ISPs charge websites or online services for priority access to consumers.

Pai claimed in a CNET op-ed that the repeal preserves the Internet as "an open platform where you are free to go where you want" and that it "will protect consumers and promote better, faster Internet access and more competition."

"Are you sure?" we hear Ryan Gosling, as Neil Armstrong, ask his wife Janet (portrayed by The Crown's Claire Foy).

"Yeah," she replies meekly, grabbing for her husband's hand. "[It'll] be an adventure."

Director Damien Chazelle's First Man, a film focused on Neil Armstrong's journey to becoming the first human to set foot on the Moon, doesn't launch into theaters until October 12. But this weekend, Universal revealed the first trailer—and boy, do Chazelle and company know how to set the stakes.

Enlarge / We're really hoping to see more of this crazy cast of Beyond Good and Evil 2 characters this year. (credit: Ubisoft)

Once again, major French publisher Ubisoft will be kicking off its E3 week with a press-conference presentation featuring all its upcoming games. The event will take place at LA's Orpheum Theater at 1pm PDT (4pm EDT, 8pm UTC) on Monday, June 11.

A lot of Ubisoft's presentation will likely focus on the same still-unreleased games discussed before last year's E3. That includes open-ocean pirate game Skull & Bones, mysterious VR title Transference, toys-to-life space sim Starlink, and the surprising tonal shift of Beyond Good and Evil 2.

Expect announcement of new content for some of Ubisoft's ongoing multiplayer games like For Honor and Rainbow Six Siege, too. Plus it wouldn't be an Ubisoft press conference without new sequels in franchises like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, The Division and maybe a few others (is it time for another Watch Dogs game, yet?)

Two years ago, Ars Technica hosted the online premiere of a weird short film called Sunspring, which was mostly remarkable because its entire script was created by an AI. The film's human cast laughed at odd, computer-generated dialogue and stage direction before performing the results in particularly earnest fashion.

That film's production duo, Director Oscar Sharp and AI researcher Ross Goodwin, have returned with another AI-driven experiment that, on its face, looks decidedly worse. Blurry faces, computer-generated dialogue, and awkward scene changes fill out this year's Zone Out, a film created as an entry in the Sci-Fi-London 48-Hour Challenge—meaning, just like last time, it had to be produced in 48 hours and adhere to certain specific prompts.

That 48-hour limit is worth minding, because Sharp and Goodwin went one bigger this time: they let their AI system, which they call Benjamin, handle the film's entire production pipeline.