Month: December 2018

Enlarge / Now you're playing with power.

Playing old-school games on the Switch thus far has been a choice between various control compromises. You can use two Joy-Cons held in two hands, but the tiny buttons and lack of a true d-pad make this setup less than ideal. Holding a single Joy-Con sideways eliminates the d-pad completely and forces you to curve your grip around a hand-crampingly small control surface. A Switch Pro Controller or various third-party solutions can solve these problems, but they come with relatively high prices and some added features you don't need for classic games.

Enter Nintendo, which is offering subscribers to its new Online service the ability to buy two wireless, Switch-compatible replica NES controllers for $60 (on top of the $20 a year subscription). After spending a few hours testing the little guys (just before pre-orders start shipping out) we found them to be competent, authentic throwbacks with some important limitations.

Truly authentic

Anyone with fond memories of gripping an NES controller in their youth will be happy to hear that Nintendo got the authenticity darn-near perfect with these replicas. Everything from the sizing to the tactile feel to the springiness of the buttons and the d-pad is practically indistinguishable from a brand-new NES controller you might have bought three decades ago. This isn't that surprising, since the wired NES Classic Edition controllers had the same level of fidelity, but it's still nice to see.

Enlarge / The VSS Unity spacecraft returns to Earth on Thursday. (credit: Virgin Galactic)

On a clear and cold Thursday morning in the Mojave Desert, Virgin Galactic's White Knight Two aircraft took off. It carried the VSS Unity spacecraft, which on its fourth powered flight, sought to make the company's highest and fastest flight ever. It succeeded.

With Mark "Forger" Stucky and C.J Sturckow piloting the vehicle, VSS Unity was dropped from White Knight Two before burning its rocket motor for 60 seconds, reaching a velocity of Mach 2.9 and soaring to an altitude of 82.68km. These were records for the company, which may begin flying space tourists in 2019.

How big of a deal is suborbital flight?

On one hand, it's difficult to get any rocket to fly high and true. Consider that Virgin Galactic was founded in 2004. It had a basic architecture at that time—an air-launched, rocket-powered spaceship based upon a proven design—and ample funding from a British billionaire. It still took 14 years for the company to make its first spaceflight.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

T-Mobile lied to the Federal Communications Commission about the extent of its 4G LTE coverage, according to a trade group that represents rural wireless providers.

T-Mobile claimed—under penalty of perjury—to have coverage in areas where it hadn't yet installed 4G equipment, the Rural Wireless Association (RWA) said in an FCC filing Monday. The same group previously reported to the FCC that Verizon lied about its 4G coverage, leading to the FCC starting an investigation and announcing that at least one carrier exaggerated its 4G coverage.

Inaccurate coverage maps could make it difficult for rural carriers to get money from the Mobility Fund, a government fund intended to build networks in unserved areas. The FCC last year required Verizon and other carriers to file maps and data indicating their current 4G LTE coverage with speeds of at least 5Mbps. Carriers must provide "a certification, under penalty of perjury, by a qualified engineer that the propagation maps and model details reflect the filer's coverage as of the generation date of the map in accordance with all other parameters," the FCC order said.