Month: January 2020

Enlarge / US President Donald Trump speaks during an event to announce proposed new environmental policies at the White House in Washington, DC, on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2020. Trump spoke about proposed scale backs of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). (credit: Bloomberg/Getty Images)

Today, the Trump administration announced a major overhaul to the implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act. This is the legislation that requires the consideration of the environmental impacts of projects that the federal government is involved with. In an effort to limit the consideration of environmental impacts, the new rules will call for completion of environmental analyses on a time scale that's too short for a thorough evaluation. And the scope of the analysis will be curtailed so that many environmental impacts won't be considered at all.

In introducing the changes, Trump claimed that his administration was "modernizing" environmental impact analysis. But various environmental groups are already planning on contesting the changes in court.

High impact

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was part of a collection of environmental legislation passed in the early 1970s, a collection that includes the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Compared to the other legislation, its scope was relatively limited, applying only to projects and rules that involved a federal agency. But its impact proved to be significant, as it required that an environmental impact analysis be completed to assess the consequences of federal decisions and the results of that analysis to be considered prior to any decision to move forward.

Enlarge / Google's Pixel Buds true wireless earphones, which use Bluetooth. (credit: Google)

Bluetooth SIG, the industry group that maintains the Bluetooth wireless communications standard used in numerous devices, announced a major update to the standard called Bluetooth LE Audio this week.

Bluetooth SIG previously introduced Bluetooth LE with a focus on power efficiency, but that emphasized improvements for low-bandwidth devices. Even though audio is one of the most common uses of Bluetooth, it still faces some frustrating bottlenecks and pitfalls. Bluetooth LE Audio brings improvements specifically oriented towards audio devices.

The previous audio solution isn’t going anywhere, though; companies making Bluetooth audio devices will be able to choose between the old tech and the new based on their goals.

Enlarge (credit: portal gda / flickr)

An Android phone subsidized by the US government for low-income users comes preinstalled with malware that can't be removed without making the device cease to work, researchers reported on Thursday.

The UMX U686CL is provided by Virgin Mobile's Assurance Wireless program. Assurance Wireless is an offshoot of the Lifeline Assistance program, a Federal Communications Commissions plan that makes free or government-subsidized phones service available to millions of low-income families. The program is often referred to as the Obama Phone because it expanded in 2008, when President Barack Obama took office. The UMX U686CL runs Android and is available for $35 to qualifying users.

Researchers at Malwarebytes said on Thursday that the device comes with some nasty surprises.

Enlarge / Facebook's election "War Room" on Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018. (credit: David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images)

Following months of criticism for its decision to allow candidates for political office to tell outright lies in advertising, Facebook is trying to correct course not by changing advertiser behavior but by telling users to opt out of being shown certain ads.

Facebook today announced a change to its political ad system that will "expand transparency." Sometime during 2020, users in all countries where political ads feature "paid for by..." disclaimers, including the United States, will gain an account control for seeing "fewer political and social issue ads" on both Facebook and Instagram. US users are expected to get the feature sometime this summer—well into the depths of the 2020 campaign season.

Facebook said in October that all content posted by politicians and political candidates, including paid advertising, would be exempt from any of the company's fact-checking processes and would not be held to company standards barring intentionally misleading content. That policy, or lack thereof, has continued to come under fire as other key Internet and social media players, including Google and Twitter, amended their policies to limit or ban political advertising on their platforms.

Enlarge / A child's shoe is pictured on January 8, 2020, at the scene of a Ukrainian airliner that crashed shortly after take-off near Imam Khomeini airport in the Iranian capital Tehran. US officials say that the plane was likely shot down by an Iranian air defense system. (credit: BORNA GHASSEMI / Getty Images)

The cause of the crash on Wednesday of a Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737-800 outside of Tehran is still in doubt. But Ukrainian officials had suggested that it was possible the aircraft had been shot down by an Iranian-launched air defense missile—and now US intelligence officials have suggested they have evidence that is the case.

If true, that means that the deaths of the 176 passengers aboard the aircraft were the direct result of the tensions between the United States and Iran.

Video from a witness in Tehran showed the aircraft in flames shortly after takeoff before it crashed in a fireball at a soccer field outside the city. The crew never radioed for help, and telemetry from the 737 was cut off suddenly while it was still in flight.

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  The Samsung XCover Pro. For a rugged phone, it's pretty good-looking. [credit: Samsung ]

Samsung's "Galaxy XCover Pro" seems to be bringing back the company's line of rugged smartphones, but this one is more than some extra protective plastic slapped onto an existing design. The phone has—get this—a removable battery, a feature that has all but disappeared from the market. There are a handful of very low-end smartphones that still have removable batteries, but as a mid-ranger, this would be the highest-end removable-battery phone on the market.

It's hard to say if the XCover Pro is currently official or not. Samsung's Nordic division posted a CES press release that detailed the never-before-seen XCover Pro, complete with specs and pictures, alongside several other previously announced phones. A later update scrubbed all mention of the XCover from the press release. The release said the phone would be for sale in Finland on January 31 for €499 ($554), but since the release was pulled, it's unclear if that is still accurate.

Samsung Nordic listed the phone with a Samsung Exynos 9611 SoC, an eight-core, 10nm chip with four Cortex A73 cores and four Cortex A53 cores. This would make it a mid-range phone on par with the "Galaxy A" series. The phone has 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage that's expandable thanks to a microSD slot, and that sweet 4050mAh removable battery.

Enlarge / The 2002-2003 space western drama was canceled after just one season but remains a cult favorite. (credit: 20th Century Fox Television)

Hope springs eternal, especially if you're a diehard fan of Firefly, the 2002-2003 space western created by Joss Whedon that was canceled by Fox after a single season. But the plucky crew and passengers aboard the Firefly-class spaceship Serenity live on in the hearts of self-styled Browncoats everywhere. Heck, NASA astronaut Steven Swanson loved the show (and the 2005 spin-off film Serenity) so much that he took the DVDs with him on a Space Shuttle Atlantis mission in 2007. So it's not surprising that an off-hand comment by a Fox executive has renewed rumors of a possible revival.

This latest round of revival chatter started when Firefly's former showrunner Tim Minear recently tweeted out an old photo from the last day of shooting on Firefly, just as Fox entertainment president Michael Thorn was doing a press junket for the Television Critics Association. So naturally the question came up.

"The macro answer is, any time we look at one of our classic titles, if there's a way to reinvent it for today so it's as resonant now as the original was, and is, to the fans, we're wide open," Thorn told The Wrap. "In this crowded marketplace, if you can start with some kind of brand awareness and IP that has a vocal support and, in this case, a crazy, passionate love for it, you're ahead of the game."

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | wdstock)

Verizon today claimed that it is "disrupt[ing] the cable industry" with new broadband-and-TV deals that eliminate "traditional cable bundles" and hidden fees, and the move immediately received positive press from the likes of The Wall Street Journal and Consumer Reports.

Verizon claims the new deals are available immediately for both new and existing subscribers. But actually getting one of these great deals is, so far, difficult or impossible if you already have Verizon FiOS service.

I have FiOS broadband and TV at my home in Massachusetts, so I was able to test whether Verizon would provide one of the new deals without any hassle. This probably won't surprise you, but I wasn't able to get one of the new deals at all, and a Verizon rep I spoke with didn't know when the system would be fixed.