Month: September 2018

Enlarge (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Google's major Wear OS revamp is out today, and soon it will arrive on most devices released in the past year and a half (although Ars has already spent a week with a pre-release version of the OS). In the face of relentless competition from the Apple Watch Series 4 and Samsung Galaxy Watch, Google's most obvious change in the new Wear OS is a new UI for most of the main screens. There's not much in the way of new functionality or features, but everything is laid out better.

Google hasn't done much to publicize the actual name of this release, but it identifies the update as "Wear OS 2.0" on the "About" page, so we're calling it that. Don't confuse "Wear OS 2.0" with "Android Wear 2.0," though, because the latter launched in 2017. When the name change from "Android Wear" to "Wear OS" happened, the version numbers reset. Android Wear started at "1.0" and made it all the way to "2.9;" Wear OS then started over at "1.0" and counted back up to "2.0." Continuing the old version numbers would have made things a lot easier: Google and terrible branding—name a more iconic duo.

The new layout

Enlarge (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Google's major Wear OS revamp is out today, and soon it will arrive on most devices released in the past year and a half (although Ars has already spent a week with a pre-release version of the OS). In the face of relentless competition from the Apple Watch Series 4 and Samsung Galaxy Watch, Google's most obvious change in the new Wear OS is a new UI for most of the main screens. There's not much in the way of new functionality or features, but everything is laid out better.

Google hasn't done much to publicize the actual name of this release, but it identifies the update as "Wear OS 2.0" on the "About" page, so we're calling it that. Don't confuse "Wear OS 2.0" with "Android Wear 2.0," though, because the latter launched in 2017. When the name change from "Android Wear" to "Wear OS" happened, the version numbers reset. Android Wear started at "1.0" and made it all the way to "2.9;" Wear OS then started over at "1.0" and counted back up to "2.0." Continuing the old version numbers would have made things a lot easier: Google and terrible branding—name a more iconic duo.

The new layout

Enlarge / Stage 9 did impressive renderings of both the exterior and the interior of the Enterprise-D. (credit: Stage 9)

An ambitious free-to-play fan project to build an interactive, VR-style interface of the Next Generation-era Enterprise-D has come to an untimely end after being hit with photon torpedoes—or their 21st-century legal equivalent, a cease-and-desist letter.

On Wednesday, the Stage 9 project pulled the plug one day after speaking with a CBS lawyer on the phone. News of the project’s end was first reported by Eurogamer. Rob Bryan, the project lead, characterized his team’s phone call with the attorney, Vanessa Costantini, as being somewhat tense. "It was stern, there was no room for compromise," Bryan told Ars.

Costantini did not respond to Ars’ request for comment.

Enlarge / Stage 9 did impressive renderings of both the exterior and the interior of the Enterprise-D. (credit: Stage 9)

An ambitious free-to-play fan project to build an interactive, VR-style interface of the Next Generation-era Enterprise-D has come to an untimely end after being hit with photon torpedoes—or their 21st-century legal equivalent, a cease-and-desist letter.

On Wednesday, the Stage 9 project pulled the plug one day after speaking with a CBS lawyer on the phone. News of the project’s end was first reported by Eurogamer. Rob Bryan, the project lead, characterized his team’s phone call with the attorney, Vanessa Costantini, as being somewhat tense. "It was stern, there was no room for compromise," Bryan told Ars.

Costantini did not respond to Ars’ request for comment.

Enlarge (credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

California’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Xavier Becerra, announced Thursday that police had busted a robbery ring that hit Apple Store locations across 19 counties. Seventeen people have been indicted over the scheme to steal more than $1 million in Apple products from stores in Butte County in the north of the state to San Diego County in the south.

Becerra’s office said that seven people, who were not named, were arrested in Oakland on Tuesday and booked into the Alameda County Jail. Another suspect, Kennith Martin Jr., also of Oakland, is in custody in Sonoma County, roughly an hour’s drive north. The remaining nine are at large.

Oakland Police Chief Anne E. Kirkpatrick and Lieutenant Burch talk with media about the criminal search warrant arrests officers made in connection with the Apple Store Robberies. pic.twitter.com/bwV3D3tDYq

— Oakland Police Dept. (@oaklandpoliceca) September 27, 2018

The hoodie-wearing gang seemed to engage in simple tactics: literally walk in, brandish no weapons, grab electronics, and run out.

Enlarge (credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

California’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Xavier Becerra, announced Thursday that police had busted a robbery ring that hit Apple Store locations across 19 counties. Seventeen people have been indicted over the scheme to steal more than $1 million in Apple products from stores in Butte County in the north of the state to San Diego County in the south.

Becerra’s office said that seven people, who were not named, were arrested in Oakland on Tuesday and booked into the Alameda County Jail. Another suspect, Kennith Martin Jr., also of Oakland, is in custody in Sonoma County, roughly an hour’s drive north. The remaining nine are at large.

Oakland Police Chief Anne E. Kirkpatrick and Lieutenant Burch talk with media about the criminal search warrant arrests officers made in connection with the Apple Store Robberies. pic.twitter.com/bwV3D3tDYq

— Oakland Police Dept. (@oaklandpoliceca) September 27, 2018

The hoodie-wearing gang seemed to engage in simple tactics: literally walk in, brandish no weapons, grab electronics, and run out.

Enlarge / An orca in Glacier Bay. (credit: Christopher Michel / Wikimedia)

Forty years ago, the US banned production of a class of organic pollutants called polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. International efforts to deal with PCB contamination have had substantial success. But the fat-loving compounds are still hanging around, leaching into the environment from decades-old equipment, and lingering in the ocean food chain.

That lingering contamination can still cause problems for a range of species. Because of a unique blend of characteristics, however, orcas are particularly at risk. A paper in Science this week calculates just how bad those risks are, and the answers are sobering: while some populations of orcas seem to be doing just fine, others are at risk of collapse.

The zombie pollutant

Orcas, at the very high end of the food chain, absorb contaminants from what they eat, with their blubber soaking up and storing fat-compatible compounds like PCBs. Because they can live for 50 years or more, some individuals were exposed to PCB contamination back when it was at its highest and are still carrying that burden around. And it's a burden that gets passed between generations: because PCBs are stored in fat, females can transfer a huge amount of their own PCB load to their young during pregnancy and nursing.