Month: July 2018

Enlarge / A Charter Spectrum vehicle. (credit: Charter)

Charter Communications could lose its authorization to operate in New York State because of its failure to meet merger-related broadband deployment commitments, a key government official said.

NY Public Service Commission (PSC) Chairman John Rhodes said that "a suite of enforcement actions against [Charter] Spectrum are in development, including additional penalties, injunctive relief, and additional sanctions or revocation of Spectrum's ability to operate in New York State," according to a PSC announcement last week.

Charter agreed to expand its network in exchange for state approval of its 2016 purchase of Time Warner Cable (TWC). New York officials say that Charter has failed to meet its commitments, even though Charter claims it has. Rhodes accused Charter of "gaslighting" and noted that the PSC has already ordered Charter to stop making misleading claims about its broadband deployment progress.

Enlarge (credit: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg / Getty)

Tesla is 15 years old, but it's still fundamentally a startup. And being a startup in the capital-intensive car business means raising billions of dollars to spend on manufacturing infrastructure. In recent months, as Tesla races toward volume production of its mass-market Model 3 sedan, some analysts have warned that Tesla could be months away from running out of cash.

The company burned through more than $1 billion in the first quarter of 2018, ending the quarter with less than $2.7 billion in the bank. Tesla likely has even less than that today—we'll find out how much less when Tesla announces its second quarter financial results next week.

Adding to the pressure is Tesla's massive debt. Tesla has more than $10 billion in total debt, and more than $1 billion of that could come due in the next eight months.

Caffeinate or continue to have unfettered access to your machine? A new Windows 10 tweak hopes you will no longer have to make such difficult decisions. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The next semi-annual update to Windows 10 will use machine learning models to make automatic rebooting for updates a bit less annoying. The models will attempt to predict when you're likely to return to your PC and not update if you're expected back soon.

In prior versions of Windows, it was routine for systems to be compromised through flaws that were patched months previously because Windows users deferred installing those updates or even disabled Windows Update entirely. Windows 10 goes to some lengths to ensure that Windows users, especially home users, apply the monthly security patches in a timely fashion through a policy of automatically rebooting when a patch is available. Last year, Microsoft gave users greater control over this feature, allowing those reboots to be explicitly scheduled, but the policy of automatic installation and rebooting remains fundamentally in place.

Enlarge / The last screen adaptation of Dune was this Sci-Fi miniseries, which debuted in 2000. (credit: Sean Gallup/Newsmakers/Getty Images)

Via the good people at io9, my attention was drawn this morning to news that Dune is coming back to the silver screen. This is probably old news to many of you; we've known for a while that the man at the helm is Denis Villeneuve, fresh off Blade Runner 2049 (a worthy sequel to most everyone's favorite futuristic film noir), and just this week Deadline pegged a certain young Hollywood heartthrob for Atreides.

The latest news, however, is that Brian Herbert—son of Dune author Frank Herbert and an author in his own right—revealed that the first script will only focus on the first half of the novel. This confirms an earlier report that Villeneuve plans to adapt the book across two movies.

Herbert's epic sci-fi novel is set far off in the future—about 20,000 years from now—and it tells the story of an intergalactic power struggle between different noble houses to control a substance called melange, which makes interstellar travel possible. (That's massively underselling things, but you try summarizing a 400-page novel in one sentence.) Published in 1965, it has gone on to have a huge influence in popular culture; here at Ars, our favorite descendants are Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice" and the frequent references to the litany of fear by Peter Puppy in the Earthworm Jim cartoons. (The recreation of Dune using gummy worms gets a notable mention.)

Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino)

The first Android Things device is now available; Google is officially firing shots at Amazon's Echo-everywhere mentality with Lenovo's help. Lenovo's Smart Display is much like Amazon's Echo Show: a screen-toting smart speaker that carries not Alexa, but the Google Assistant. Like the Google Home and its Max and Mini cousins, this Smart Display (and similar forthcoming devices) is designed to enhance the Google Assistant experience with a screen that can show weather forecasts, recipe instructions, smart home controls, Duo video calls, and YouTube videos.

Android Things is Google's Internet of Things initiative, basically a stripped down version of Android aimed at low-end hardware. Things' two big points of emphasis seem to be improving IoT security through Google-led updates and allowing third parties to build smart devices that leverage Android APIs and Google Services... like Lenovo has done here with the Smart Display.

The screen is the selling point of this first Android Things device, begging you to assess your expectations for the Google Assistant. Do you need the Assistant to have a screen? Google hopes your answer will be yes and, in turn, that you're willing to drop extra money for such a smart display. Lenovo's 8-inch and 10-inch Smart Displays, priced at $199 and $249 respectively and available starting tomorrow, show off the perks of having a panel. But after spending some time with this device, these Smart Displays don't hide the fact that the Google Assistant remains—first and foremost—a voice-activated helper.