Month: February 2019

Enlarge (credit: TechBargains)

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Today's list is headlined by another deal on the Nintendo Switch, as the popular portable game console is currently available for $270 at Newegg. That's a $30 discount. Models with gray and blue/red controllers are both on sale.

A couple things worth noting here: you'll have to apply the code "EMCTVVA34" at checkout to receive the discount, but in order to do that, you'll have to give Newegg an email address first. The discount is only available through Tuesday. The deal comes from Newegg itself, not a third-party vendor. But this is the part when we mention that Newegg's checkout process was subject to a data breach last year that put customers' payment data at risk of theft for a full month. The retailer has since resolved that issue, but the more you know, etc.

It's also worth noting that Nintendo is running a separate Switch deal that bundles a $35 eShop gift card with the console at its standard $299 price. If you plan on downloading a game or two from the Switch's digital shop anyway rather than sticking to physical cartridges, that may be a better value than the straight discount here.

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  Oppo's foldable prototype. Here's the front. [credit: Brian Shen ]

Mobile World Congress is happening this week, and so far it has definitely been the foldable smartphone show. Samsung and Huawei have so far wowed the world with their folding smartphone demos, offering a tantalizing future in which a smartphone can open up into a tablet. Next up in the foldable smartphone wars is Oppo, with the company's vice president, Brian Shen, showing off this unnamed prototype foldable on Weibo, a Chinese social media site.

Oppo's foldable looks a lot like the Huawei Mate X, with a wraparound exterior display and a vertical bar for cameras, buttons, and ports. It might be a bit of a shock just how similar both devices look, but they are no closer than any two of the thousands of anonymous slab phones that are out there. Both devices look impressive, but Huawei has pushed its display further out to the edges of the device, resulting in thinner bezels and a more modern look. The two companies have also taken a different approach to the critical hinge design on their respective foldables. Huawei is using a "stretchable" hinge that gets longer when it opens, which should help make the screen tighter and flatter when opened. Meanwhile, Oppo's hinge looks like a bike chain topped with a double pivot hinge system. We don't actually know how Oppo's hinge works or if it closes totally flat, but it certainly looks complicated.

Every foldable smartphone vendor is at a different stage of development and/or unveiling. Samsung demoed the Galaxy Fold on stage, but the company isn't letting anyone touch the device at Mobile World Congress. There are some early prototypes on display in glass boxes at MWC, but Android Police reports that some of these devices feature dimples and creases in the display, so there are still some bugs to work out. Samsung is the only company with a firm release date, though: April 26th.

First generation HoloLens from above, showing the visor and the headband. (credit: Esy Casey)

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says that company's $480 million contract to supply HoloLens technology to the military is a "principled decision" and that the company will not "withhold technology" from democratic governments.

The deal, signed last year, could see Microsoft supplying as many as 100,000 HoloLens headsets to the military as part of its "Integrated Visual Augmentation System" (IVAS) project. The intent is to integrate the HoloLens hardware with thermal-imaging, weapons-targeting, and health-monitoring systems to, among other things, provide "increased lethality" of the soldiers using it. A number of Microsoft employees have signed an open letter saying that the company should cancel the contract, arguing that it crosses a line into weapons development. Some 250 staff are said to have signed the letter.

Speaking to CNN Business, Nadella defended the decision to enter the contract, saying, "We made a principled decision that we're not going to withhold technology from institutions that we have elected in democracies to protect the freedoms we enjoy," adding, "We were very transparent about that decision and we'll continue to have that dialogue [with employees]."

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

A federal appeals court has upheld AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner, dealing a blow to Trump administration lawyers who had tried to stop the deal.

The Trump administration sued to stop the deal back in 2017, arguing that having AT&T as a corporate parent would give Time Warner too much leverage in negotiations with other cable and satellite network providers. A trial judge, Richard Leon, rejected that argument last June, allowing the deal to officially close a few days later. Now his ruling has been upheld by the DC Circuit Appeals Court.

Media conglomerates like Time Warner engage in periodic negotiations with distributors like Comcast and AT&T. In these negotiations, each party threatens to end their relationship if they don't get favorable financial terms. But each party also has an incentive not to take too hard a line because failing to reach an agreement could mean a content blackout that's expensive for both sides.

Enlarge / A rig stands over a well pad at the Southern California Gas Co. Aliso Canyon underground natural gas storage facility in the Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, on Thursday, January 12, 2017. (credit: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

On Monday, a Los Angeles Superior Court Judge approved a $119.5 million settlement between Southern California Gas (SoCalGas) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB). SoCalGas was responsible for the Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Storage Facility when one of the 115 storage wells at the site started leaking methane dramatically.

Stanching the leak took nearly five months, and in that time 109,000 metric tons of methane was spewed into the atmosphere.

Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas, capable of trapping more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, although methane is shorter-lived. In addition to the headaches and nosebleeds suffered by the people living in the nearby Porter Ranch neighborhood, researchers later concluded that the leak had doubled the methane emissions rate of the whole Los Angeles Basin.