Month: August 2018

Enlarge / Alex Jones (credit: Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

After holding out for a few weeks, Twitter joined the chorus of social media and tech giants that have punished conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for questionable content. Twitter suspended Jones from his account on Tuesday after he tweeted out a link to a video in which he calls for his supporters to get their "battle rifles" ready for the media and others.

But the catch is that Jones' ban will last just seven days—the InfoWars host will not be able to tweet or retweet from his personal account during that week. The InfoWars Twitter account has not been affected by this suspension.

According to a report by The New York Times, Jones tweeted a link to a Periscope live broadcast video (which can be viewed in part in a Media Matters tweet) in which he urged his supporters to ready their weapons against the media and other groups. Twitter issued the seven-day suspension after a user flagged the tweet and the company determined that it violated its rules against inciting violence.

Enlarge / Ethan Peck (center) poses with members of the Nimoy and Star Trek families. (credit: Ethan Peck)

CBS has found its Spock. Following in the footsteps of Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto, actor Ethan Peck will play a young version of the famous Vulcan in season two of Star Trek: Discovery.

Peck is the grandson of famed actor of the silver screen Gregory Peck, who was best known for films like Roman Holiday, The Yearling, and Moby Dick, among others. Ethan Peck has appeared in numerous TV shows like Gossip Girl, That 70's Show, and Madam Secretary. He starred in the TV series 10 Things I Hate About You in the role played by Heath Ledger in the film on which it was based, and he has also appeared in several movies, as well as in the video game Halo 4. Several pictures of Peck can be found on his Instagram page.

Discovery showrunner Alex Kurtzman revealed that Spock would appear in the show's second season during a panel at the 2018 San Diego Comic-Con.

Enlarge (credit: Amazon)

Microsoft's Cortana and Amazon's Alexa digital assistants can now talk to each other. The collaboration between the two assistants was announced last year and was originally due to become available by the end of 2017.

Microsoft showed how the integration would work at its Build conference earlier this year, and what's rolling out today seems little changed from that demo. From a Cortana-native device (a Windows 10 PC, an Xbox, the Harman Kardon speaker), "Hey Cortana, open Alexa" will switch you to speaking to Alexa. From there, you have access to Alexa's full range of shopping (not that anyone seems to really care about that), music, weather, and so on.

From an Alexa-native device, the opposite incantation—"Alexa, open Cortana"—will open Microsoft's digital assistant for you to check your calendar, manage your to-do list, or listen to some emails.

Enlarge / The Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio on a stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway in Big Sur. (credit: Eric Bangeman)

In the time since I began reviewing cars for Ars Technica, my reviews have settled into a routine. A fresh vehicle pulls into the alley behind my house on Tuesday morning with a full tank of gas and a soft limit of 500 miles of driving. After familiarizing myself with the infotainment system, safety features, and the other peculiarities, I take each car for a 60+ mile drive. I include suburban neighborhoods, arterial streets, expressways, and winding country roads with actual hills and curves (a few of those actually exist around Chicagoland). Then for the rest of the week, I spend time doing the stuff I'd do with any other car: buying groceries, taking my son to rugby practice, driving to church... the usual stuff. It's generally enough to give me a good picture of what a car is and is not capable of.

That said, there is always one question left unanswered at the end of a trip: "How would this car be on a family road trip?"

I reviewed the Alfa Romeo Stelvio Ti last year. Although it was my second review to be published, it was the first car I actually drove. And I liked it. A lot. So when the 505hp, V6 Stelvio Quadrifoglio finally made it to dealers this spring, I had an idea for Alfa Romeo: instead of doing the usual one-week loan, how about letting me see how practical a high-performance, $84,000 SUV is for a family vacation? What it's like to spend day after day in the racing seats? How does this vehicle handle on the winding Pacific Coast Highway?

Enlarge (credit: Natural Cycles)

An app to prevent unwanted pregnancies by tracking a woman’s body temperature has scored a first-of-its-kind marketing approval from the Food and Drug Administration, the agency announced.

The US stamp of approval—which clears the way for similar apps to get the green light—lands as the app’s Swedish maker faces investigations by European authorities into its advertising claims, plus criticism from health experts and reports of dozens of unwanted pregnancies.

The sleek mobile app, called Natural Cycles, boasts 900,000 users worldwide as well as approval from the EU to act as a form of contraceptive. Yet it’s essentially riff on an old-school “natural family planning” method dressed up for the digital age. An $80 annual subscription for the app comes with an oral thermometer and relies on a user’s basal body temperature (BBT) to estimate the time of ovulation (when an egg is released from an ovary and wanders down the fallopian tube for a potential sperm-rendezvous, which happens at approximately day 14 of a textbook, 28-day cycle).