Month: November 2018

Enlarge / Facebook co-founder, Chairman, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before a combined Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committee hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, April 10, 2018, in Washington, DC. (credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

A failure to adequately redact a public court document from February 2017 shows that, back in 2012, Facebook considered charging companies at least $250,000 for access to one of its primary troves of user data, the Graph API.

In April 2014, Facebook changed the way the previously-permissive Graph API works. The social media giant restricted some data access and eliminated all access to the earlier version by June 2015.

The redaction failure was first reported Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal. Ars was able to access pages of blacked-out text simply by copying and pasting them into a text editor. However, some portions of the messages, which span 2012 through 2014, are incomplete.

This morning, Nintendo sent out one of its periodic brag-heavy business press releases, this time focusing on a strong start to the US holiday shopping season. In addition to updates on lifetime US sales for the 3DS family of systems (22 million), and recent Classic Edition systems (2.5 million for SNES Classic, 2 million for NES Classic), the release highlighted more than 8.2 million lifetime US sales for the Nintendo Switch (through November 26).

That sounds pretty impressive for a system that has just hit its 20-month anniversary on retail shelves, without even two full holiday seasons under its belt. But we wanted to figure out just how those sales stack up to the competition. So we tracked down some numbers for past consoles for comparison. As you can see, the Switch's US sales pace puts it in some pretty elite company:

Enlarge (credit: Patty's Photos / Flickr)

While the rollout of Windows 10 version 1809 (the October 2018 Update) has been problematic, Microsoft really does try to avoid sending the update to configurations that it knows just won't work properly.

One of these situations involved PCs with Apple's iCloud client. The system would break when trying to sync or update Shared Albums when used on Windows 1809, and, accordingly, Microsoft blocked installation of the update on systems with iCloud installed. Similarly, the iCloud client could be installed on Windows 1809 because Apple had a broken version check that didn't recognize that version 1809 was indeed the current Windows version.

Both issues appear to be fixed now. Apple has released iCloud for Windows version 7.8.1, which resolves both the crash and the bad version check. After upgrading to this version, the Windows 10 Update will no longer be blocked and will install in the normal way.

Enlarge / Cpt Nurcahyo Utomo (head of Flight Mode Indonesian Safety Transportation Committee) during the press conference, in Jakarta, Indonesia, on November 28, 2018. (credit: Donal Husni/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

More evidence supporting the theory that faulty sensor data caused the crash of a Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX in October has emerged from the aircraft's flight data recorder. A report released on November 28 by Indonesian crash investigators shows that the pilots of Lion Air Flight 610 fought with the aircraft's maneuvering characteristics augmentation system, or MCAS, nearly from the moment the jet took off from Jakarta on October 29. And the aircraft had suffered from a similar problem on a flight from Bali to Jakarta the day before—a flight that was completed safely after the pilot shut down the 737 MAX's automatic anti-stall system.

"In our view, the plane was not airworthy" during its previous flight, said Nurcahyo Utomo, head of Indonesia’s national transport safety committee (KNKT), in a press conference today in Jakarta. Utomo faulted Lion Air's maintenance and safety culture in the crash, though a final finding on the cause of the crash is likely months away.

The 737 MAX lost in the crash had repeatedly had problems with its airspeed and angle of attack (AOA) sensors, both of which feed into the MCAS system. One of the AOA sensors on the lost aircraft was replaced after the problems on the flight from Bali to Jakarta the day before, and the plane was put back into service. The MCAS uses inputs from these sensors to detect if the aircraft is likely to stall—losing enough lift to stay airborne—and automatically adjust control surfaces. Those adjustments would push the nose of the aircraft down to increase the lift generated by the wings with a combination of improved air flow over the wings and increased airspeed.

Enlarge / A protester holds a sign outside FCC headquarters on Dec. 14, 2017 before the vote to repeal net neutrality rules. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

Net neutrality advocates are preparing one more "Day of Action" before the expiration of a key deadline for restoring the repealed rules.

In May, the US Senate narrowly voted to reverse the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of net neutrality rules. But the measure still needs majority support from the House of Representatives by a deadline of December 10, net neutrality advocates say.

Advocacy groups Fight for the Future and Demand Progress organized a Day of Action for Thursday this week.