Month: March 2020

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by a discount on Anker's PowerCore 10000 PD Redux, a USB-C portable battery that we've previously reviewed and recommended in multiple buying guides. It's down to $30 on Amazon today, which is only $1 more than its all-time low and well below its usual going rate of $46.

We recommend the PowerCore 10000 PD Redux primarily because of its portability. It measures 106×52.3×25.5mm, making it noticeably shorter than the average smartphone, and it weighs just seven ounces, so it should fit more than comfortably in many handbags or (men's) pants pockets. It pairs that size with an 18W USB-C Power Delivery port, which is fast enough to charge most modern smartphones (including new iPhones) at maximum speeds. It's worth noting that new charging standards should increase smartphone charging rates even further in the future—devices like Samsung's 2020 Galaxy phones already accept more power with first-party chargers—but since power banks with those improvements aren't yet common, we think this Anker model is still a good value for a travel battery at $30.

Either way, the PowerCore has a 12W USB-A port alongside the PD port that lets you charge two devices simultaneously, albeit at a maximum of 18W combined. The battery's 10,000mAh (36Wh) capacity should be enough to get two full charges out of most phones. Anker includes an USB-C to -C cable in the box, and the device is covered by an 18-month warranty.

Enlarge / Senators Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), joined by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), speaking about net neutrality at a press conference in May 2018. (credit: Zach Gibson | Getty Images)

Back when yours truly was small, attempts to squeeze money out of children largely took place on TV, whether it was a half-hour Saturday morning toy commercial masquerading as a cartoon or local PBS affiliate fundraisers saying on-air after Sesame Street that kids should go tell their parents Big Bird will go away unless they donate. (My mother is still salty about that one.)

In the year 2020, however, kids are using all the same devices their parents are but with even less filter on how to avoid being manipulated. Existing privacy legislation provides some protection for kids under 13, but it's limited—and has no provisions at all for protecting middle- and high school-aged kids, who are the most likely to have phones in their pockets and be power-users of new social apps as they pop up. To that end, Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) today proposed a new bill to limit manipulative marketing, dark patterns, and harmful content being pushed to younger users.

The bill (PDF), called the Kids Internet Design and Safety (KIDS) Act, tries to tackle the "non-transparent ways" digital media properties "ensure children interact with content that reflect the interests and goals of content creators, platforms, and marketers." Children, in this case, is defined as anyone under 16. Content "directed to children," in the bill, also gets a broad definition as anything targeted to users under 16 by:

Enlarge (credit: Wikimedia commons)

Over the weekend, the people who manage the SETI@home distributed-computing project announced it would be going on hiatus at the end of March. The project was one of the first efforts that successfully convinced home users to donate some of their free computing time to help with research, and its success spawned a large number of related projects.

While it's on hiatus, users with a fondness for distributed computing might take a look at Folding@home, which is trying to figure out the structures of proteins on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

SETI sunset

The SETI@home's project page describes the reason for the shutdown simply. Over the years, home users have done so much processing that the team now has a large backlog of processed data to analyze. So, the researchers are de-prioritizing the management of the data distribution and focusing instead on looking at what has already been done in the hope of getting their analysis published in an academic journal. As a result, no more work units will be distributed after the end of March.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Naughty Dog / HBO)

Sony's push to create a formal film and TV studio based on its massive video game properties has finally borne official fruit. One year after its formation, PlayStation Productions has announced its first confirmed project: an HBO-exclusive, live-action TV series based on the acclaimed 2013 game The Last Of Us.

Thursday's news, which HBO confirmed to Ars Technica via a press release, confirms that TLoU creative director and writer Neil Druckmann has been named as the TV series' co-writer and executive producer. While that's normally a novel thing in games-to-screen adaptations, Druckmann had already announced intentions to do this kind of thing previously, when he'd teamed with Sam Raimi to turn the game into a feature-length film. HBO's announcement did not mention when or how that film project, which began life in 2014, eventually fizzled.

This time, Druckmann will be joined in his co-writer and executive production duties by a pretty big name in HBO TV series: Craig Mazin, the creator of 2019 miniseries Chernobyl.

Enlarge / An exterior view of the Apple Store on the Chicago River. (credit: Apple)

Apple has re-opened all of its retail stores in China, business publication Bloomberg reports, but the company also notified its tech support workers that some products and supplies could be in short supply in the immediate future.

The company sent a memo to Genius Bar workers that replacements for damaged iPhones will be slow to arrive, taking two to four weeks in some cases. Apple employees who spoke with Bloomberg "also noticed a shortage of individual parts."

In the meantime, Apple's memo told tech support professionals that they can provide loaner handsets amidst the delays and offer to mail replacements to customers when they become available.

Enlarge / Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) in March 2020. (credit: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

When longshot presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard sued Google last year alleging a violation of her First Amendment rights, legal experts were scathing in their responses.

The lawsuit "has so many problems it's hard to know where to begin," tweeted attorney Gabriel Malor. Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman described the lawsuit as "terrible."

Now a federal judge has confirmed these experts' views. In a Tuesday ruling, he threw out the lawsuit. Gabbard's lawsuit claimed that Google violated her free speech rights when it blocked her from buying campaign ads for a few hours on the evening of June 28, 2019. But Stephen Wilson, a federal district judge in the central district of California, ruled that Gabbard didn't have a case.

Enlarge / Certificate revocation isn't normally handled with boltcutters. (credit: Jan Kaláb CC BY-SA 2.0)

Earlier this week, Let's Encrypt announced that it would revoke roughly three million—2.6 percent—of its currently active certificates. Last night, however, the organization announced that it would delay the revocation of many of those certificates in the interest of Internet health.

The impact of the revocation on system administrators was and is significant due to the very short window of maintenance allowed before the revocation went into effect. Roughly thirty-six hours were available from the initial announcement to the beginning of scheduled certificate revocation. Half an hour prior to the scheduled revocations, more than one million affected certificates had still not been renewed, and Let's Encrypt announced an additional delay to give administrators more time.

The revocations are necessary because of a bug in Let's Encrypt's CA (Certificate Authority) code, which allowed some domains to go unchecked for CAA (Certificate Authority Authorization) DNS record compliance. Although the vast majority of the certificates revoked posed no security risk, they were not issued in full compliance with security standards. Let's Encrypt's decision to rapidly revoke them all is in compliance with both the letter and spirit of security regulations.