Prominent genetic "biohacker" Josiah Zayner is under investigation by California state officials for practicing medicine without a license.
Zayner has a background in biophysics and runs a company called The Odin, which sells do-it-yourself genetic engineering kits and other lab equipment intended for use outside of scientific laboratories. The kits and tools are intended to allow lay users to genetically modify bacteria, yeast, animals, and even humans.
The human that Zayner's products are best known for trying to modify is Zayner himself. In fact, the brazen CEO has a long history of self-experimentation. In 2016, he attempted a stomach-churning DIY fecal transplant in an airport hotel, then moved on to trying to genetically engineer his skin.
PG&E makes its way through bankruptcy, now utility is responsible for 85 deaths.
Enlarge/ Workers make repairs to utility lines in a neighborhood that was destroyed by the Camp Fire on February 11, 2019, in Paradise, Calif. Three months after the deadly and destructive Camp Fire, the community is beginning the rebuilding process. (credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
California Fire officials have determined that Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), one of the state's largest utilities, was responsible for the deadliest fire in a century.
The Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and burnt down nearly 15,000 homes, was sparked by PG&E power lines, according to a report that Cal Fire officials discussed with the press. The report was not widely released, but it was forwarded to the Butte County district attorney's office.
The district attorney may bring criminal charges against the utility, and Cal Fire Deputy Director Mike Mohler told reporters that, "Investigators determined there were violations of law." According to the San Francisco Chronicle, charges could include "recklessly causing a fire or manslaughter."
Paint is getting keyboard controls to improve accessibility.
Enlarge/ A picture apparently constructed in Paint using the keyboard exclusively. (credit: Microsoft)
The news for mspaint.exe aficionados is just getting better and better. Microsoft's original plan was to deprecate Paint and end its development. It would still be installable from the Store but would no longer be included with Windows or receive any updates.
Last month, the company relented and said that the app would continue to be included in Windows. And now things have gone a step further: the program has been updated to include some surprising new features.
Paint has been updated to include keyboard support. More explicitly, Paint can now be controlled through the keyboard exclusively. The cursor can be moved with the cursor keys while the space bar is used to activate tools. There are keyboard bindings to control selections, switch between resize handles/control points, and generally do all the things that currently use the mouse.
In a rare move, console rivals Microsoft and Sony announced a major collaboration on Thursday to join forces on a potentially huge new gaming sector: the cloud. The companies announced today that they have entered into a "memorandum of understanding" to "explore joint development of future cloud solutions in Microsoft Azure to support their respective game and content-streaming services."
The surprise move is the closest sign of collaboration between two fierce competitors in the console-gaming space, but it is probably not a sign that they will stop being competitors any time soon.
As part of the agreement, Sony will still use Microsoft's Azure servers and data centers for its own game and content-streaming services. That presumably includes PlayStation Now—the Sony game-streaming service launched in 2014 after Sony's 2012 acquisition of streaming company Gaikai—and PlayStation Vue, the company's Internet-based cable TV alternative.
Valve’s Steam Link app lets you stream PC games over a home network to a smartphone, tablet, or smart TV. The company released an Android version of the app almost exactly a year ago — but while Valve had also developed a version for iOS, i…
Valve’s Steam Link app lets you stream PC games over a home network to a smartphone, tablet, or smart TV. The company released an Android version of the app almost exactly a year ago — but while Valve had also developed a version for iOS, it was rejected by Apple. And since it’s not easy […]
Canada’s Heritage Committee has released the results of its study on artists remuneration. In a new report, it recommends that the Government takes a series of measures to strengthen the position of creators. The far-reaching proposals include an extension of the copyright term, limiting fair dealing rights for educational purposes, holding ISPs accountable, and increasing anti-piracy efforts.
The Canadian Government is currently exploring if and how the current Copyright Act should be amended to better fit the present landscape.
To this end, Canada’s Heritage Committee organized several hearings on remuneration models for artists, where it received input from various stakeholders.
The outcome provides input for the Committee on Industry, Science and Technology’s broader review, which will determine the future course for Canada’s copyright policy. The Heritage Committee hopes that its findings will be included.
The report, titled “Shifting Paradigms,” leads to a set of 22 recommendations. These cover a variety of issues ranging from addressing the value gap and holding ISPs accountable, through limiting fair dealing, to extending the copyright term.
These themes are in large part meant to further support creators and copyright holders. Much like the EU’s copyright reform, there is a lot of emphasis on the so-called value gap, i.e the notion that artists don’t currently receive fair compensation for their work.
This is also reflected in the report. For example, the payouts at streaming services such as Spotify are often seen as too low. Similarly, services such as YouTube can distribute music and profit from it, while only paying a small fee to copyright holders.
“The inability of policy to evolve with technology has prevented artists from receiving fair market value for their work. According to witnesses, these outdated rules have diverted wealth from creators to large digital intermediaries on which artistic content is consumed,” the committee writes.
There are also rightsholders who have highlighted the possible aspects of technology on their industries. Content creators have many new distribution platforms, for example, which can bring in extra revenue. However, it’s clear that creators can use some guidance, which results in the first recommendation.
Recommendation 1: That the Government of Canada increase its support for creators and creative industries in adapting to new digital markets.
Online piracy in general is another major theme. Torrent sites and streaming sites remain a significant problem which is hard to address, for example. In addition, ISPs currently have little incentive to help combat piracy.
One issue that the Government will look into is whether safe harbor exceptions for ISPs should change, to make these companies accountable for pirating users under certain circumstances.
Recommendation 5: That the Government of Canada review the safe harbor exceptions and laws to ensure that Internet service providers are accountable for their role in the distribution of content.
More generally, the report also suggests that Canada should do more to tackle online piracy overall. One of the options, as suggested during the consultation, is to criminalize online streaming.
Recommendation 6: That the Government of Canada increase its efforts to combat piracy and enforce copyright.
Not dumb pipes
The recommendations are mostly meant to strengthen the position of rightsholders. This also includes an extension of the copyright term from 50 to 70 years after the creator’s death. This follows requests from several copyright groups and is in line with the new trade agreement with the US and Mexico.
According to the committee, no witnesses expressed outright opposition to extending of the copyright term, which leads to the following recommendation.
Recommendation 7: That the Government of Canada pursue its commitment to implement the extension of copyright from 50 to 70 years after the author’s death.
Large copyright intermediaries are also presented with a setback, which appears to have been largely initiated by Canadian singer Bryan Adams. During a hearing last year, Adams suggested changing the text of the Copyright Act to made it easier for artists to regain their copyrights.
At the moment, Canadian copyright reverts to a creator’s heirs 25 years after “death.” By changing the word “death” to “assignment”, creators will be able to terminate a copyright assignment while they’re still alive.
This is helpful to artists who sign away their rights to labels early in their career, which they may regret later. The Heritage Committee sides with Adams and includes the following recommendation.
Recommendation 14: That the Government of Canada amend subsection 14(1) of the Copyright Act so that it reads “from 25 years after assignment.
Following more music- and movie-related recommendations, many of which deal with licensing and remuneration, the committee shifts its focus to the publishing industry.
Specifically, it addresses a commonly heard complaint from publishers that Canada’s fair dealing exemptions are too broad. Currently, schools are allowed to copy texts for educational use, but this should change, the committee argues.
Recommendation 18: That Government of Canada amend the Act to clarify that fair dealing should not apply to educational institutions when the work is commercially available.
All in all its clear that the recommendations made in the report are favorable to copyright holders, who will welcome it with open arms. However, not everyone is positive.
University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist, who has followed the developments closely, describes the report as the most one-sided Canadian copyright report issued in the past 15 years.
“Representing little more than stenography of lobbying positions from Canadian cultural groups, the report simply adopts as recommendations a wide range of contentious proposals: copyright term extension, restricted fair dealing, increased damages, as well as several new rights and payments,” Geist writes.
“There is no attempt to engage with a broad range of stakeholders, much less grapple with contrary evidence or positions.”
While the Heritage committee did hear several witnesses from people with contrasting views, such as Professor Jeremy de Beer, lawyer Howard Knopf, and author Cory Doctorow, these positions were not reflected in the final report.
The Heritage Committee’s recommendations will now be reviewed by the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, which is tasked the broader copyright review. That report is expected to come out later this year.
As such, there’s still a long way to go before any of these proposals are acted upon, if that’s the case at all.
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A copy of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage ‘s “Shifting Paradigms” report is available here (pdf).
Greetings, Arsians! The Dealmaster is back with another round of deals to share. Today's list is headlined by a nice deal on Vizio's acclaimed P55-F1 4K TV, which is currently down to $598 at Walmart. That's $100 off the 55-inch set's standard going rate and the lowest outright price we could find for this specific model to date.
While this keeps the TV a little bit pricier than TCL's 55-inch R-Series Roku TV—Vizio's chief competition—the extra $70 or so may be worth it for Vizio's apparent advantages in picture quality. While we don't review many TVs at Ars, variousoutlets have praised the P-Series sets for its excellent motion handling (with its 120Hz refresh rate) and low input lag, which make it particularly well-suited for gaming. It supports a wide color gamut and all the necessary HDR formats, including Dolby Vision, HDR10, and HLG, and it can display that content vibrantly thanks to its high brightness and 56 local dimming zones (the $1,000 65-inch model has 100 zones, but this should still be sufficient). The set itself has five HDMI inputs, too, and it will soon gain support for Apple's AirPlay 2 protocol, which should be a boon for iPhone users.
The big caveat here is that this TV is from 2018. Vizio didn't announce an exact follow-up to its mainstream P-Series sets at CES earlier this year, but it will launch some new models soon, which helps explain the price slashing now. Vizio's smart TV interface isn't quite as helpful as that of a Roku TV, either, and image-wise, its viewing angles aren't great. Like most smart TV makers, Vizio also tracks users' viewing habits for ad purposes. Still, this is how the cycle of TV pricing works. And while the panel is a clear step below premium sets like LG's OLED TVs, it still represents good value at this price for anyone willing to pay for picture quality.
Motorola’s first smartphone with a foldable display is expected to combine new technology and a classic design. The long-rumored Moto Razr would bring back the name of the company’s slim clamshell-style phone that predates the smartphone er…
Motorola’s first smartphone with a foldable display is expected to combine new technology and a classic design. The long-rumored Moto Razr would bring back the name of the company’s slim clamshell-style phone that predates the smartphone era. And it would also bring back the idea of a clamshell phone. While Samsung, Huawei, and other foldable […]
5G means a super-sized, $1,300 Galaxy S10 with less metal and more glass.
To-scale pictures of the S10 lineup. The 5G version is huge! [credit:
Phone Arena
]
Samsung and Verizon are introducing the first 5G smartphone to the US, the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G. A participation trophy should go to the Moto Z3, which is a 4G smartphone that you can clip a 5G backpack onto, but if you're looking for a fully self-contained 5G phone, the S10 5G is the first. Today, the S10 5G is out exclusively on Verizon, and it can be picked up for an astounding starting price of $1,300.
As the first 5G phone, the Galaxy S10 5G lets us put our assumptions about first-generation 5G hardware to the test. Last year, when Qualcomm announced its 5G chips, we expected the first 5G hardware to be big and power-hungry, and the S10 5G seems in line with that theory. To start, the S10 5G isn't a normal Galaxy S10 with an extra 5G modem, it's a fourth size class of the Galaxy S10 (after the S10e, S10, and S10+). It's essentially an S10++.
The bigger size is most likely required to fit all of the extra hardware needed to make 5G work, which consists of a separate 5G chip and around four extra 5G antenna modules. Since Samsung needed to super-size the Galaxy S10, it might as well have thrown in a gigantic 6.7-inch display, a bigger 4500mAh battery, a fourth rear camera (this one is a depth sensor), and a front 3D sensor.
So the good news is that Sony’s impressive new phone with a big, wide, high-res display is coming to the United States in July. The less good news is that while the Sony Xperia 1 has top-tier specs, it also has a top-tier price. Sony says the sma…
So the good news is that Sony’s impressive new phone with a big, wide, high-res display is coming to the United States in July. The less good news is that while the Sony Xperia 1 has top-tier specs, it also has a top-tier price. Sony says the smartphone will sell for $950 when it goes […]
The Canadian Government is currently exploring if and how the current Copyright Act should be amended to better fit the present landscape.
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