Month: September 2019

The calls (and texts) might be coming from inside the house as a killer stalks a group of sorority sisters in the first trailer for Black Christmas, directed by Sophia Takal (best known for directing an episode of Into the Dark), who also co-wrote the script with April Wolfe. The original 1974 Black Christmas is widely regarded by film historians as one of the first slasher films.

(Some spoilers for original film and 2006 remake below.)

Original screenwriter A. Roy Moore was influenced by the infamous urban legend about the babysitter and the man upstairs, as well as string of holiday murders in Montreal, Quebec. While the film mostly received lackluster reviews, it proved modestly profitable at the box office, and over the years, it has garnered a strong cult following. Director John Carpenter was purportedly inspired by Black Christmas when he made 1978's Halloween. Sure, it's a typical slasher film, but you could do worse for gory alternative holiday fare if you're in the mood for that sort of thing. Along with the occasional humorous touches, there are some genuinely shocking twists, including a deliberately ambiguous ending (we never learn the killer's identity, for one thing). Sadly, the 2006 remake had none of those redeeming qualities.

Enlarge / The logo of Deutsche Telekom, owner of T-Mobile, seen at Mobile World Congress in February 2019 in Barcelona, Spain.

The New York City government sued T-Mobile yesterday, alleging that its Metro stores routinely use "abusive sales tactics" such as selling used phones as if they are new and charging customers for services they didn't order.

"Abusive sales tactics are rampant at Metro stores," the complaint says. "At least several dozen have sold used phones to consumers as though they were new, charged consumers for fake taxes and unwanted services, or enrolled consumers in expensive financing plans without their consent."

T-Mobile's Metro division offers prepaid service over the T-Mobile wireless network and is branded as "Metro by T-Mobile." It was known as MetroPCS until a 2018 rebranding. T-Mobile has stressed that Metro and itself are one and the same, announcing that "Metro by T-Mobile is T-Mobile," the lawsuit noted.

Enlarge / A Ring video doorbell mounted on a home. (credit: Ring)

Amazon's Ring line of video doorbells and home surveillance equipment is particularly popular with one key group: police. More than 400 law enforcement agencies around the country have partnered with Ring to use its apps and help market its security cameras to residents in the name of safer neighborhoods. As a dozen recent media reports have shown, however, the details about these partnerships and the privacy concerns they raise tend to be shrouded in secrecy and hard to learn.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is now among those who would like Amazon to explain what, exactly, Ring is up to. "The nature of Ring's products and its partnerships with police departments raise serious privacy and civil liberties concerns," Markey said in a letter (PDF) addressed to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

"Although Amazon markets Ring as America’s ‘new neighborhood watch,’ the technology captures and stores video from millions of households and sweeps up footage of countless bystanders who may be unaware that they are being filmed," Markey said in a statement. "I am particularly alarmed to learn that Ring is pursuing facial-recognition technology with the potential to flag certain individuals as suspicious based on their biometric information."

Enlarge / "Agrivoltaics" studies like the one pictured here in Massachusetts are finding many crops that pair well with solar panels. (credit: NREL / Flickr)

Solar panels might seem like they’re in direct competition with plants. One is catching sunlight to do photosynthesis, the other wants to take it to push electrons. Surely Highlander rules apply, and there can be only one on a plot of land, right?

In reality, it’s not a zero-sum game. Some plants will burn in direct sun, after all, and so there are plenty of food crops that would be happy to share their space with panels. And as a new study led by the University of Arizona’s Greg Barron-Gafford shows, the combination isn’t even necessarily a compromise—there are some synergies that can bring significant benefits to a solar-agriculture.

Everybody wins

Prof. Barron-Gafford et al. focused on dry areas like the American Southwest, where water for crops is limiting and things are projected to get drier. The shade provided by solar panels could lower soil surface temperatures and evaporation, the researchers thought, and vegetation could similarly keep the panels themselves a little cooler than a bare ground installation. Since solar panel efficiency drops at high temperature, that could mean more electricity generated.