Month: January 2019

Enlarge / A Comcast Service Vehicle in Indianapolis, Indiana, in March 2016. (credit: Getty Images | jetcityimage)

A new lawsuit filed against Comcast details an extensive list of lies the cable company allegedly told customers in order to hide the full cost of service.

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson sued Comcast in Hennepin County District Court on December 21, seeking refunds for all customers who were harmed by Comcast's alleged violations of the state's Prevention of Consumer Fraud Act and Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

The complaint alleges, among other things, that Comcast reps falsely told customers that the company's "Regional Sports Network (RSN)" and "Broadcast TV" fees were mandated by the government and not controlled by Comcast itself. These two fees, which are not included in Comcast's advertised rates, have gone up steadily and now total $18.25 a month.

Enlarge / Askhan Soltani has worked with the FTC and as an independent researcher, exploring data privacy issues. Recently, he testified about Facebook's privacy policies before the US and UK governments. (credit: Ashkan Soltani)

The Cambridge Analytica scandal. Data breaches at hotels, banks, rideshare companies, and hospitals. Facial recognition. DNA databases. We're living through the data privacy apocalypse and now it's time to figure out what happens next. Here to discuss that with us at the next Ars Technica Live is Ashkan Soltani, an independent researcher and technologist who specializes in data privacy.

Recently, Soltani testified before the US and UK governments about Facebook's privacy practices and how they make user data available to third parties. Soltani also authored the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, which regulates large companies that make more than 50 percent of their revenues from selling California residents' personal information. The CCPA was signed into law earlier this year.

Soltani will be in conversation with Ars Technica editors Cyrus Farivar and Annalee Newitz.

Nathan Mattise

AUSTIN, Texas—More than three months have passed since a warrant (PDF) initially went out for Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson's arrest. That document detailed Wilson's alleged sexual assault against a female "child younger than 17 years of age" whom he reportedly solicited through the website SugarDaddyMeet.com. Last Friday, December 28, the State of Texas finally formally indicted (PDF) Wilson. The 3D printed gun advocate now faces multiple charges: four counts of sexual assault of a child, two charges of indecency with a child by contact, and two charges of indecency with a child by exposure.

These charges are all second-degree felonies punishable by up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $10,000.

Enlarge (credit: Getty | DEA / C.DANI / I.JESKE)

A quick reminder: there’s a band of feral monkeys running wild in Central Florida that carries a type of herpes lethal to humans. The mischievous simians—who are not shy around people—can transmit deadly disease with just a scratch, nip, or fling of poo.

Last year, experts warned that the rhesus macaques are a public health threat. It now seems that the monkey business is likely to get worse, with a wildlife expert revealing that their population is set to double in the next few years.

“It’s going to be a problem… Continual growth of that population is going to occur without intervention,” Steve Johnson told Florida ABC-affiliate WFTV in a report published January 3. Johnson is a professor and wildlife expert at the University of Florida and part of a team of researchers that has followed the monkeys for years.

Enlarge / The two leading PC VR headsets, the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, are still growing in use for PC gamers. But how much? (credit: Kyle Orland)

As consumer-grade virtual reality enters its fourth calendar year in 2019, it seems like a good time to check in once again on how the technology is catching on with gamers. On the plus side, Steam's monthly hardware surveys suggest the proportion of PC players with a VR headset plugged in roughly doubled in 2018. On the downside, that proportion is still rather anemic, representing less than one percent of the total Steam user base.

UploadVR, which has been tracking the numbers all year, notes that total VR ownership among Steam users started at about 0.4 percent in January of 2018 and rose to about 0.8 percent in December's survey. For context, the proportion of Steam users running a Linux-based system also sits at about 0.8 percent, and Valve admitted in April that its Linux-based SteamOS machines "aren't exactly flying off shelves."

But while Linux usage among Steam players has been relatively flat, VR headset ownership showed a marked increase throughout 2018. Valve said back in July that "active VR users" on the platform were up 160 percent from a year before. As any fan of Moore's Law can tell you, that kind of growth rate can turn small numbers into big numbers relatively quickly (provided you can keep growing at the same pace, of course).