Month: November 2019

Enlarge / Exterior view of a Googleplex building, the corporate headquarters of Google and parent company Alphabet, May 2018. (credit: Getty Images | zphotos)

The country's largest digital advertising platform is trying to take a stand heading into the 2020 election this week, as it both limits the targeting of political ads and warns would-be political advertisers about making false claims.

On Wednesday, Google made an announcement "clarifying" its advertising policy for political ads, making it clear that outright lies are theoretically not welcome. "Whether you’re running for office or selling office furniture, we apply the same ads policies to everyone; there are no carve-outs," the company said, adding:

It’s against our policies for any advertiser to make a false claim—whether it's a claim about the price of a chair or a claim that you can vote by text message, that election day is postponed, or that a candidate has died.

To make this more explicit, we’re clarifying our ads policies and adding examples to show how our policies prohibit things like “deep fakes” (doctored and manipulated media), misleading claims about the census process, and ads or destinations making demonstrably false claims that could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process.

That said, the company adds, they can't judge "every political claim, counterclaim, and insinuation," and so they expect the number of ads they block to be low.

Enlarge (credit: Huawei)

The Federal Communications Commission today voted unanimously to ban Huawei and ZTE equipment in projects paid for by the FCC's Universal Service Fund (USF).

The ban initially affects future projects paid for by the USF and the use of federal funding to maintain existing equipment. But the FCC is also taking public comment on another plan to require removal of Huawei and ZTE equipment from networks that have already been built. The FCC order establishes a process for identifying other companies whose equipment should be subject to the same ban, too.

Huawei and ZTE are the first ban targets because they "have close ties to China's Communist government and military apparatus," FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said. "Both companies are subject to Chinese laws broadly obligating them to cooperate with any request from the country's intelligence services and to keep those requests secret. Both companies have engaged in conduct like intellectual property theft, bribery, and corruption."

Enlarge / Frustrations mount with Librem 5 backers, as pictures and videos arrive—but the actual phones remain elusive. (credit: Purism)

Purism announced that shipping of its Librem 5 open source smartphone began in late September. Two months later, nobody outside the company has a Librem 5, and people are getting restless.

The Librem 5 is a crowdfunded project—and an ambitious one—so it wasn't much surprise or cause for concern when it missed its original January 2019 delivery target—or the April 2019 target set after January slipped. Both date changes were announced well ahead of time, and the company continued to post progress reports, commit code upstream, and assure backers of its commitment to transparency. (Full disclosure: I am a Librem 5 backer myself and am scheduled to receive a phone in the Evergreen batch.)

The new delays are more troubling. On September 5, CEO Todd Weaver announced that the Librem 5 would ship in six iterative batches, codenamed Aspen, Birch, Chestnut, Dogwood, Evergreen, and Fir. The first three batches would effectively be usable prototypes of decreasing roughness; Evergreen would be the first entirely finished hardware production run, and Fir would be a relatively unspecified next-generation design.

Let it go, let it goooo... Just when that tune was starting to fade from our collective brain, Elsa, Anna, and the gang are back with another mystical adventure in Frozen II, the sequel to Disney's blockbuster 2013 hit, Frozen. It's well-made, fun family fare with gorgeous visuals—we'd expect nothing less from the Mouse House—but somehow it never quite achieves the same emotional resonance of the original.

(Spoilers for original Frozen below; mild spoilers for Frozen II.)

The first film told the story of two princesses of Arendelle. The elder, Elsa (Idina Menzel), has the power to control and create ice and snow, but she struggles to control it. When she accidentally injures her young sister Anna (Kristen Bell), local trolls heal Anna but caution that Elsa must learn to control her magic. In response, their parents lock them both away. When Elsa turns 21, she's crowned queen, but a spat with Anna after the coronation reveals her magic. She's exiled from the kingdom, flees to the mountains, and builds a gorgeous castle of ice and snow in which to live out her days in isolation. But she doesn't realize Arendelle has also frozen over, endangering the people.

Enlarge / An AT&T sign outside a company office in New York City. (credit: Getty Images | Roberto Machado Noa )

AT&T will soon offer 5G mobile service on its 850MHz spectrum, which will enable wider coverage than existing 5G networks but offer only 4G-like speeds at launch. Significant speed increases will arrive in 2020, AT&T says.

The 5G networks already deployed by carriers use millimeter-wave signals that don't travel far and are easily blocked by walls and other obstacles. This has resulted in coverage maps with small pockets of 5G, and 4G just about everywhere else.

But 5G can work on all frequencies, such as the lower-band frequencies used by 4G. There isn't as much spectrum available on these bands, so you won't see anything like the huge speed increases available on millimeter-wave spectrum. But 5G on low-band spectrum will cover wider areas and indoor spaces and hopefully bring some speed increases—Verizon says 5G on the lower bands will be like "good 4G."

The biggest problem facing games on the App Store has always been one of discovery. If a game doesn’t make it to the Featured section, or if it isn’t a massive hit, you’re probably not going to find it just by casually browsing.

Apple Arcade, with its smaller, more carefully curated library, helps remedy that problem a bit. But with dozens of games included in an Apple Arcade subscription, it’s still hard to find the hidden gems languishing behind those few hyped in the spotlight. In between the Sayonara Wild Hearts (which is beautiful) and Grindstone (oh, is it 2am already?) are games that you absolutely should be playing, if only you knew to take the time.

Well, friend, I'm here for you with my own tasting menu of hidden Apple Arcade delights. Here’s a sampler of some of the best entries on offer, chosen for their quality, inventiveness, and suitability for playing on a phone. (Though, if you have an Apple TV, I definitely recommend using it for more than Netflix).

Enlarge / How did we get here again? (credit: US Marine Corps / DVIDS)

The Department of Defense has weighed in against a proposal before the Federal Communications Commission to open the 1 to 2 Gigahertz frequency range—the L band—for use in 5G cellular networks. The reason: segments of that range of radio spectrum are already used by Global Positioning System signals and other military systems.

In a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper pressed for the rejection of the proposal by Ligado Networks (formerly known as Lightspeed), saying, "There are too many unknowns and the risks are far too great to federal operations to allow Ligado’s proposed system to proceed... This could have a significant negative impact on military operations, both in peacetime and war."

The FCC has already largely brushed aside similar opposition from NASA, the US Navy, and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, among others, over another spectrum block in the 24GHz range—which is used by weather satellites for remote monitoring of water vapor. But comments are still being collected on the Ligado plan for sharing the 1675 to 1680MHz block of the L Band. Pai has been supportive of the plan because that range is adjacent to the existing 1670 to 1675MHz block already in use for wireless services.