Month: December 2019

Enlarge / The Snapdragon 865.

Today, Qualcomm detailed its new flagship SoC for 2020: the Snapdragon 865. This is going to be the chip that ships in every single high-end Android phone that comes out in 2020, and there's a lot to go over.

First up: we're getting the usual modest speed increases that Qualcomm delivers every year. Qualcomm says the CPU and GPU are 25 percent faster compared to this year's Snapdragon 855. Like last year, this is an eight core, 7nm chip, but as AnandTech reports, now it's being manufactured on TSMC-improved 7nm "N7P" node, the same manufacturing process used by Apple's A13 SoC.

This year, the bigger CPU cores have been upgraded from Qualcomm's Kryo 485 cores in the 855. They have also been based on ARM's Cortex A76 design, to the new "Kryo 585 CPU," which uses ARM Cortex A77 cores. The frequencies are unchanged from last year: the single "Prime" A77 core is at 2.84GHz, and three other A77 cores are at 2.42 GHz. Four Cortex A55s make up the smaller cores for background processing and other lower-power tasks and are clocked at 1.8GHz.

Enlarge / Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi receiving a measles vaccine to support the Mass Vaccination Drive (credit: Samoan Government)

People who have not been vaccinated against the measles virus must mark their homes with red flags, Samoan officials announced Tuesday.

The decree comes amid a devastating outbreak of measles, which was declared in October. As of December 3, officials have recorded 4,052 cases, 171 of which were recorded within the 24 hours before the tally. Officials also reported 60 deaths, 52 of which were in children aged 0 to 4 years old.

The outbreak has flourished after the vaccination rate of infants plunged to an estimated 31 percent last year. Health officials linked the drop in vaccination to the tragic deaths of two infants, who were given measles vaccines tainted with fatal doses of muscle relaxant. Two nurses were convicted in the cases and sentenced to five years in prison. Despite the convictions, anti-vaccine advocates have used the cases to drum up fear of vaccines.

Enlarge / We'd prefer to use an official image of the console, but we won't have one of those until Xbox chief Phil Spencer invites us over to his house. And, ya know, Ars tech culture editor Sam Machkovech lives down the block in Seattle, so... (credit: Xbox)

A late Wednesday post from the leader of Microsoft's Xbox team, Phil Spencer, confirmed that the first "Project Scarlett" console is officially in the wild, ahead of its late 2020 launch window. And it appears that current Xbox One players have already unknowingly connected to it.

"And it's started," Spencer posted on his Twitter account on Wednesday. "This week, I brought my Project Scarlett console home and it's become my primary console, playing my games, connecting to the community and yes, using my Elite Series 2 controller, having a blast."

Without any extra posts or clarification as of press time, we can only surmise so much from this single statement. But it's admittedly dense. Primarily, it affirms a few details that Spencer and the Xbox team have previously announced about Project Scarlett, the current codename for the unnamed successor to the Xbox One console.

Enlarge / Fontana discusses her storied career in an interview. (credit: The Writer's Guild Foundation)

Dorothy Fontana—one of the most influential writers in Star Trek's long history, a renowned teacher and mentor of screenwriters, and a trailblazer for women in Hollywood—passed away in her home in Los Angeles this week at the age of 80, according to a press release from the American Film Institute.

Her numerous Star Trek contributions and roles include story editor on The Original Series and writing credits for several key episodes of The Original Series including the introduction of Spock's parents and many explorations of Vulcan culture. She also co-wrote The Next Generation pilot "Encounter at Farpoint" with franchise creator Gene Roddenberry, and she had various writing and story roles for Star Trek video games and several individual The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and The Animated Series episodes such as the DS9 episode "Dax" which established the background of the titular character and her species.

In addition to her work on Star Trek, Fontana wrote episodes of Babylon 5, Bonanza, Dallas, Kung Fu, The Six Million Dollar Man, and many more classic TV series. She was also a member of the Board of Directors for the Writers Guild of America, and she was most recently employed as a senior lecturer at the American Film Institute, where she taught classes to screenwriters, directors, and producers.

Enlarge / Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, during an interview in New York, on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular exaggerated their 4G coverage in official filings to the Federal Communications Commission, an FCC investigation found. But FCC officials confirmed that Chairman Ajit Pai does not plan to punish the three carriers in any way. Instead, the FCC intends to issue an enforcement advisory to the broader industry, reminding carriers "of the penalties associated with filings that violate federal law."

"Overstating mobile broadband coverage misleads the public and can misallocate our limited universal service funds, and thus it must be met with meaningful consequences," FCC staff said in an investigative report released today.

But there won't be any meaningful consequences for Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular. "Based upon the totality of the circumstances, the investigation did not find a sufficiently clear violation of the MF-II [Mobility Fund Phase II] data collection requirements that warranted enforcement action," an FCC spokesperson told Ars via email.