Month: August 2019

Enlarge / Sick kids, chest scars, and bloody urine are just some of the new warnings. (credit: FDA)

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday revealed 13 repulsive warnings it proposes adding to cigarette advertisements and packaging.

The graphic warnings are intended to deter smoking. They include short statements and “photo-realistic color images depicting some of the lesser-known health risks of cigarette smoking.” The depicted health risks include bladder cancer, prominent neck tumors, limb amputation, erectile dysfunction, type II diabetes, blindness, and heart and lung disease. The warnings would replace the standard Surgeon General’s warning, which the agency described as “virtually invisible” to consumers.

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  Cigarette smoking can harm children..

The FDA said the new warnings fulfill a mandate set by a 2009 law called The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (TCA). The act required the agency to come up with fresh warnings for cigarette packages and ads to address the lingering public health issue.

Enlarge / An image from Apple's lawsuit shows a real iPhone X and Corellium's service running a virtual iPhone X. (credit: Apple)

Apple yesterday sued Corellium, a company that sells access to virtual machines that run copies of the operating system used in iPhones and iPads.

Corellium markets iOS virtualization as "a research tool for those trying to discover security vulnerabilities and other flaws in Apple's software," according to Apple's complaint (PDF) filed in US District Court for the Southern District of Florida. But "Corellium's true goal is profiting off its blatant infringement," Apple wrote. "Far from assisting in fixing vulnerabilities, Corellium encourages its users to sell any discovered information on the open market to the highest bidder."

Corellium offers access to copies of iOS in a cloud service and in private installations on a customer's premises, with the latter costing $1 million a year, the lawsuit said. "Corellium does so with no license or permission from Apple," the lawsuit said.

Enlarge / Ars Technica's Jonathan Gitlin spotted this e-tron being prepared for crash testing during a visit to IIHS testing facilities. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Crashes hurt car insurance companies' bottom lines, so the industry-funded Insurance Institute for Highway Safety conducts comprehensive crash tests to help consumers buy safe cars—and encourage the industry to raise its standards. The IIHS recently put Audi's new e-tron through its paces, and Audi boasts that the e-tron is the first fully electric car to win the organization's highest rating: Top Safety Pick+.

The IIHS conducts several different crash tests as well as evaluating a vehicle's headlights and crash prevention technology. The e-tron earned the highest possible mark, "good," for every one of the dozens of sub-categories in the IIHS report.

"The dummy's position in relation to the door frame, steering wheel, and instrument panel after the crash test indicates that the driver's survival space was maintained very well," the IIHS writes of one of its crash test results.

Enlarge / Who's up for a game of Titanfall?

Epic is showing no signs of plans to remove the controversial, mech-like B.R.U.T.E. from Fortnite, saying the powerful new combat option helps in the studio's mission "to bring players of all skill levels together to have a fun experience where anyone can win."

The launch of the B.R.U.T.E. earlier this month has been one of the biggest changes in the game's short history, letting two players team up in an armored automaton to hurl a barrage of missiles at relatively tiny, mech-less opponents. Angry players have been flooding online forums and social media with clips showing overpowered mechs destroying other players, claiming the addition is ruining the competitive balance of the game.

Epic has already tweaked the B.R.U.T.E. a bit in response to the complaints, adding a targeting laser to warn otherwise unsuspecting players of an incoming barrage. But in a new update posted yesterday, the Fortnite Team suggested the B.R.U.T.E. has actually been beneficial to their view of how the game should be balanced.

Enlarge / An election official holds an electronic voting machine memory card following the Georgia primary runoff elections at a polling location in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., on Tuesday, July 24, 2018. (credit: Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Election security advocates scored a major victory on Thursday as a federal judge issued a 153-page ruling ordering Georgia officials to stop using its outdated electronic voting machines by the end of the year. The judge accepted the state's argument that it would be too disruptive to switch to paper ballots for municipal elections being held in November 2019. But she refused to extend that logic into 2020, concluding that the state had plenty of time to phase out its outdated touchscreen machines before then.

The state of Georgia was already planning to phase out its ancient touchscreen electronic voting machines in favor of a new system based on ballot-marking machines. Georgia hopes to have the new machines in place in time for a presidential primary election in March 2020. In principle, that switch should address many of the critics' concerns.

The danger, security advocates said, was that the schedule could slip and Georgia could then fall back on its old, insecure electronic machines in the March primary and possibly in the November 2020 general election as well. The new ruling by Judge Amy Totenberg slams the door shut on that possibility. If Georgia isn't able to switch to its new high-tech system, it will be required to fall back on a low-tech system of paper ballots rather than continue using the insecure and buggy machines it has used for well more than a decade.

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  Volkswagen brought its ID Buggy electric concept to Monterey Car Week. And they let us drive it! [credit: Ingo Barenschee ]

CARMEL, CALIF.—Do you remember that bright green electric beach buggy that Volkswagen showed off back in March? It's called the ID Buggy, and it's one of a growing number of ID-badged concepts from the automaker that show the way to its post-diesel future. It's a wildly different-looking bunch, yet each uses VW's new modular architecture for battery electric vehicles, called MEB. The ID Buggy is definitely the most left-field of the ID vehicles, even without the bright green bodywork. But under that one-off concept body is a production MEB powertrain, just like the one that will appear in the Europe-only ID 3 as well as the US-bound ID Crozz crossover and ID Buzz BEVs. But the craziest thing about the Buggy isn't the way it looks or that VW let me drive it. No, the craziest thing about the Buggy it's the fact that VW is actively exploring ways to put it into production.

Modular architectures have been all the rage among automakers for a while now. These are much more flexible than the platforms of old and are more like a giant box of parts and components that simplify the design process and the supply chain. VW Group has been all-in when it comes to modular architectures since it introduced its MQB platform in 2011, which provides the bone structure for everything from the diminutive Polo hatchback in Europe to the made-in-Chattanooga, Tennessee Atlas three-row SUV.

MEB is the newest of the company's architectures, and unlike the modular architecture that BMW's developing, this one is just for BEVs. (MEB will provide the bones for rear- and all-wheel drive BEVs for the VW, Skoda, and Seat brands. Meanwhile, Audi and Porsche are developing a separate architecture for bigger, faster, and more expensive BEVs.) As you might expect, at the heart of each MEB model is its lithium-ion battery pack. For the Buggy, that's a 62kWh pack, which powers a 150kW (201hp), 310Nm (227lb-ft) electric motor that drives the rear wheels. VW's press materials say that the buggy will go from 0-62mph (0-100km/h) in 7.2 seconds, reaching a top speed of 100mph (160km/h), with an estimated range of 155 miles (250km) on the WLTP test.