Sprint admits mistake, promises to pay money back but could be punished by FCC.
Enlarge/ A Sprint sign in Branford, Connecticut, in 2014. (credit: Mike Mozart)
Sprint has been caught taking millions of dollars in government subsidies for "serving" 885,000 low-income Americans who weren't using Sprint service, the Federal Communications Commission said today. Sprint violated the Lifeline program's "non-usage rule" that requires providers of free, subsidized plans to de-enroll subscribers who haven't used their phones recently, the FCC said.
"It's outrageous that a company would claim millions of taxpayer dollars for doing nothing. This shows a careless disregard for program rules and American taxpayers," FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said. "I have asked our Enforcement Bureau to investigate this matter to determine the full extent of the problem and to propose an appropriate remedy."
Sprint has admitted the mistake and said it will pay the money back. Like the FCC's other universal service programs, Lifeline is paid for by Americans through fees imposed on phone bills.
Xiaomi says the Mi Mix Alpha is “almost entirely display.”
The Xiaomi Mi Mix Alpha. How much screen is too much screen? Probably when it doesn't fit on the front of the phone anymore. [credit:
Xiaomi ]
Xiaomi is back with one of its trademark insane smartphone designs. Meet the Xiaomi Mi Mix Alpha, a phone with a screen that curves around the sides and then just keeps going, wrapping all the way around the back of the device. As Xiaomi's blog post says, "the front, side, and back of the phone are almost entirely display." Xiaomi is calling this a "concept" phone, and while the company is being coy about details right now, it says it will sell the Mi Mix Alpha in December in China. The Mi Mix Alpha might not be a foldable smartphone, but it does come with a foldable smartphone price tag: $2,810 (RMB 19,999).
OK, so... why? Why does the screen go all the way around the phone? Well, first, Xiaomi is placing functionality on the sides of the phone, since those are all pixels now. The status bar looks like it lives on the side of the phone and lists the usual readouts like the battery, cellular connectivity, Bluetooth, and other icons. Using the sides for the screen necessitates relocating the power and volume buttons, and while there is still a physical power button on the top, virtual side buttons will be taking over for volume duties.
A button on the left side (labeled "6" in the renders) seems like it will be used as the volume button. And instead of gesture navigation, it looks like the Android navigation buttons for "Back" and "Home" live on the right side of the wraparound display. Controlling this phone sounds like it will take some getting used to.
The upcoming Alcatel Hulk 7 tablet appears to be a kid-friendly tablet with a 7 inch display, a semi-rugged (or at least thick) case, and mediocre specs. While the tablet hasn’t been officially announced yet, it showed up at the FCC website this …
The upcoming Alcatel Hulk 7 tablet appears to be a kid-friendly tablet with a 7 inch display, a semi-rugged (or at least thick) case, and mediocre specs. While the tablet hasn’t been officially announced yet, it showed up at the FCC website this week, along with some drawings and other details that give us an […]
Wireless charging has really started to take off in the last few years, with a growing number of smartphones, wireless earbuds, smartwatches, and other gadget supporting the Qi wireless charging standard. Bu Qi isn’t the only game in town. For th…
Wireless charging has really started to take off in the last few years, with a growing number of smartphones, wireless earbuds, smartwatches, and other gadget supporting the Qi wireless charging standard. Bu Qi isn’t the only game in town. For the past few years Energous has been promising a truly wireless charging system that doesn’t […]
Federal judges yesterday issued a stinging rebuke to the Federal Communications Commission, saying the agency's justification for eliminating media-ownership limits "would receive a failing grade in any introductory statistics class."
The FCC's 2017 decision to eliminate newspaper/broadcast and television/radio cross-ownership rules could allow more media mergers. But the FCC order was vacated in a 2-1 vote by a panel of judges at the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judges wrote that the FCC "did not adequately consider the effect its sweeping rule changes will have on ownership of broadcast media by women and racial minorities."
The FCC's 2017 order had to consider instructions from previous Third Circuit decisions that went against the commission. But the FCC did not comply with the court's instructions, the judges' ruling said.
Greetings, Arsians! The Dealmaster is back with another round of deals to share. Today's list is headlined by a deal on Lenovo's ThinkPad T490 laptop. This configuration, with a Core i7-8665U chip, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD, is down to $949 with the code "THINKT490" at checkout.
Normally, this model goes for around $1,150. While neither as thin (17.9mm) nor light (3.3 lbs) as some ultrabooks, the T490 isn't huge, and it might be a better choice for those looking for a wider port selection. It comes with a Thunderbolt 3 port, two USB 3.1 (Gen 1) ports, an Ethernet jack, an HDMI 1.4 port, microSD and microSIM slots, and a dock connector. It has the kind of comfortable keyboard we see on most ThinkPads, and while the chipset isn't the latest thing around, it should still provide good performance for the money with the plentiful RAM and SSD on board. There's a 14-inch 1080p IPS touchscreen, too, which is rated at a decent-if-not-amazing 300 nits of brightness.
If you don't need a new laptop, though, we also have deals on budget and premium noise-cancelling headphones, an iPad Air and Apple Smart Keyboard bundle, portable hard drives and SSDs, and more. Have a look for yourself below.
Die Wohnungsbaugesellschaften installieren gern selbst Glasfaser in ihren Neubauten. Doch das wird von der Deutschen Telekom und Vodafone nicht gern gesehen – und nicht genutzt. (Glasfaser, Kabelnetz)
Die Wohnungsbaugesellschaften installieren gern selbst Glasfaser in ihren Neubauten. Doch das wird von der Deutschen Telekom und Vodafone nicht gern gesehen - und nicht genutzt. (Glasfaser, Kabelnetz)
Music industry IFPI has released its latest music consumption report, revealing that music listening numbers are increasing. The report also stresses that piracy remains a threat, but fails to highlight the rather dramatic drop in piracy rates that took place over the past year.
Music piracy, in various forms, has been a problem for decades but more recently stream-ripping has emerged as the dominant source.
Three years ago music industry group IFPI sounded the alarm bell. Stream-ripping had become a bigger piracy threat than other forms of piracy, including torrent sites, the group said.
This awareness motivated various music labels and publishers to crack down on ripping tools. That also led to the demise of YouTube-MP3, which once was the most popular ripping site.
While there was no shortage of enforcement actions, the stream-ripping problem only appeared to increase. By this time last year, IFPI’s yearly consumer insight report revealed that 32% of all Internet users were stream rippers, up from 30% in 2016.
Online piracy, in general, was also substantial, as 38% of the surveyed Internet users classified themselves as pirates. That number includes the stream-rippers, obtaining content from various legal sites.
These statistics are certainly concerning but what IFPI failed to note was that a downward trend was starting to emerge, one that continues today.
IFPI just released its latest consumer insight report, which it renamed to the “Music Listening” report. The main focus is on legal consumption, which is thriving. However, stream-ripping piracy is still highlighted as a major threat.
“Copyright infringement remains a challenge for the music ecosystem. 27% of all those surveyed used unlicensed methods to listen to or obtain music in the past month, while 23% used illegal stream ripping services – the leading form of music piracy,” IFPI notes.
There is little further context in the full report as IFPI doesn’t compare the numbers to earlier years, as it does with other statistics. We don’t know whether this is intentional or not, but the music industry group fails to observe one of the largest changes in piracy consumption in recent years.
This year 27% of Internet users classify themselves as music pirates, compared to 38% last year. Similarly, the percentage of stream-rippers dropped from 32% to 23% between 2018 and 2019, which is a rather dramatic decrease.
To put this into perspective, out of every 100 persons who were classified as music pirates last year, 29 kicked the habit. And for every 100 stream-rippers, 28 stopped. These groups obviously overlap, but it’s certainly a major shift.
Another thing we observed is that the role of search engines is no longer highlighted. This used to be a top priority. In 2016 IFPI reported that 66% of all music pirates used general search engines (e.g. Google) to find pirated music. A year later this went down to 54%, last year it dipped under 50%, and in 2019 it’s not mentioned at all.
For some reason, we think this may have been different if these trends had gone in the other direction. For example, in 2016, IFPI sounded the alarm bell when stream-ripping grew 10% while the 28% drop this year isn’t mentioned.
Perhaps the music industry group has its reasons not to discuss these newsworthy changes, but we definitely think it is at least worth pointing them out.
Sehr große Auflösung, KI, Gesichtserkennung: Eine in China konzipierte Kamera kann einzelne Personen auch in großen Menschenmengen identifizieren. (Digitalkamera, KI)
Sehr große Auflösung, KI, Gesichtserkennung: Eine in China konzipierte Kamera kann einzelne Personen auch in großen Menschenmengen identifizieren. (Digitalkamera, KI)
The version of Batman: Arkham Knightcurrently being given away to users on the Epic Games Store is missing the Denuvo anti-piracy protections still present in the Steam version. But the removal doesn't seem to have had any effect on the performance of the game, according to an Ars analysis.
Denuvo works by obfuscating and encrypting the code inside a game's executable, making it harder for would-be crackers to figure out how to get around processor-tied authentication checks. You can see this difference in the .exe files for Epic Games Store and Steam versions of Arkham Knight, with the former clocking in at about half the size (or 50 MB smaller).
For years now, some piracy watchers have argued that this extra code can slow down a game's performance compared to a Denuvo-free version, and there has been at least some evidence that certain PC games have run slightly better after Denuvo has been removed.
Die Wohnungsbaugesellschaften installieren gern selbst Glasfaser in ihren Neubauten. Doch das wird von der Deutschen Telekom und Vodafone nicht gern gesehen - und nicht genutzt. (
Sehr große Auflösung, KI, Gesichtserkennung: Eine in China konzipierte Kamera kann einzelne Personen auch in großen Menschenmengen identifizieren. (
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