Month: October 2018

Enlarge (credit: Josh Coleman/Getty Images)

America's roads got slightly safer between 2016 and 2017, the federal government reported on Wednesday. In total, 37,133 people died in car crashes last year, compared with 37,806 who died the preceding year.

The welcome news comes after two consecutive years of significant increases; fewer than 33,000 people died on American roads in 2014. But the longer-term trend has been overwhelmingly positive. America suffered more than 50,000 highway deaths per year in the early 1970s.

That change is even more impressive when you consider the steady increase in miles traveled over the same period. Fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled have fallen from 3.35 in 1975 to 1.16 in 2017.

Enlarge / Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime poses with the wildly successful Nintendo Switch. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

SEATTLE—Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime appeared at Seattle's Geekwire Summit on Wednesday to speak broadly about the company's future, and, while the talk didn't include new product reveals, it proved illuminating about what to expect from the big N in the future.

The short version: Nintendo would rather be defined as an "entertainment" company, not a gaming one.

Fils-Aime says the company currently has three "pieces of business": a dedicated video game business ("the way most of our consumers interact with us"), a mobile gaming business, and "leveraging our intellectual property (IP) in a variety of ways." The latter includes previously announced plans for a Universal Studios attraction in Osaka, Japan (still slated to open ahead of Tokyo's next Olympics hosting run in 2020) and a Super Mario film produced by Illumination Entertainment (Minions, Despicable Me).

Enlarge (credit: masa osada)

New Zealand privacy activists have raised concerns over a new law that imposes a fine of up to NZ$5,000 (more than $3,200) for travelers—citizens and foreigners alike—who decline to unlock their digital devices when entering the country. The Southern Pacific nation is believed to be the first in the world to impose such a law.

According to the Customs and Excise Act of 2018, which took effect on October 1, travelers must comply if officials believe there is a "reasonable cause." The law does not spell out exactly what that means, nor does it provide a means for individuals to challenge this assessment.

NZ authorities are only to search data locally held on the device and not in cloud storage.

Enlarge / Frances Arnold. (credit: Caltech)

Evolution is a powerful creative force—just look at the life all around us for evidence. And humanity has harnessed that creative process to produce tremendous variety in our domesticated animals and crops. But doing so has been a long-term project, involving many generations and the many years those occupy.

This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to three researchers who figured out how to get evolutionary processes to work for us on the level of individual molecules and accelerate it to the point where the results were available in weeks or months rather than years. The results have included proteins that catalyze the formation of chemical bonds life has never created and antibodies that can bind to any molecule of our choosing. These results have already found their place in industrial production and medical treatments.

Catalysts

Half of the award goes to Frances Arnold of Caltech for the development of directed evolution of enzymes. The goal of directed evolution is to create an enzyme, or catalyst, that performs a chemical reaction of our choosing, even if that reaction is completely useless for the organism the enzyme evolves in. Arnold put together a process that in retrospect seems obvious but hadn't been done systematically prior to her work.

Enlarge / The logos that the Wi-Fi Alliance wants software to use to show the connection speed/type. (credit: Wi-Fi Alliance)

The Wi-Fi Alliance, the trade group that develops and promotes wireless networking standards, is attempting to make Wi-Fi naming a bit simpler with the introduction of 802.11ax next year.

The plan is to brand the new specification as "Wi-Fi 6," rebrand 802.11ac as "Wi-Fi 5," and 802.11n as "Wi-Fi 4," making it easy to tell at a glance which standard is newer and, hence, faster.

The current naming uses IEEE's terminology. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers oversees development of a wide range of electrical and electronic standards. The standards are organized into groups; IEEE 802 covers all local area network standards. 802.11 specifically covers Wireless LAN.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | nevarpp)

Four lobby groups representing the broadband industry today sued California to stop the state's new net neutrality law.

The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of California by mobile industry lobby CTIA, cable industry lobby NCTA, telco lobby USTelecom, and the American Cable Association, which represents small and mid-size cable companies. Together, these four lobby groups represent all the biggest mobile and home Internet providers in the US and hundreds of smaller ISPs. Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile US, Sprint, Cox, Frontier, and CenturyLink are among the groups' members.

"This case presents a classic example of unconstitutional state regulation," the complaint said. The California net neutrality law "was purposefully intended to countermand and undermine federal law by imposing on [broadband] the very same regulations that the Federal Communications Commission expressly repealed in its 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom Order."