Month: April 2020

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  Opening the app after the update gives you this quick note. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

iPhone and iPad users are now able to purchase and rent videos from Amazon directly in the Amazon Prime Video iOS and iPadOS apps in an apparent reversal of a longstanding limitation in Amazon's apps on those platforms.

Users discovered the changes in an Amazon Prime Video iOS app update—the app now displays a pop-up notifying users of the new functionality. Neither Apple nor Amazon has made an announcement about the change elsewhere yet.

Historically, Amazon Prime Video and some other apps similar to it were limited to consumption of content acquired outside the app. So the previous version of the Prime Video app let users watch videos they'd purchased on say, Amazon's website, but it would not let them purchase those videos directly from the app. And in cases where app developers do offer in-app purchases, those purchases are generally made through Apple's own payment system.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by a nice little sale on new Sonos speakers and soundbars. The deals take $50 off the Sonos One, Sonos One SL, and Sonos Beam, bringing the speakers down to $149, $129, and $349, respectively. This ties the lowest prices we've seen for the One and One SL and marks the biggest discount we've seen for the Beam since it went for $319 on Cyber Monday. (The Beam briefly fell to $299 on Black Friday the week prior.) The sale prices are available on the Sonos website and at online retailers such as Amazon.

Before we go any further, let's address the elephant in the room: Sonos recently came under fire for announcing it will end official software updates for a variety of its older speakers. It also drew ire for forcing users to brick those older devices if they wished to trade up to a newer speaker, only to reverse course last month.

It's worth noting that all the devices Sonos plans to "sunset" launched more than a decade ago—and will still receive security patches after the major updates stop rolling in—while the speakers on sale today launched between 2017-2019 and capably work with all the revamped software Sonos has introduced to its lineup in recent years. Still, this is a problem software-dependent speakers face and classic "dumb" speakers do not. Sonos' official line is that it promises at least five years of software support for a speaker after it's stopped selling that device directly, so the One, One SL, and Beam should have a long road of software updates ahead of it. But, like any other computer, they do have a shelf life.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty)

Everyone at Ars is truly humbled by your support this week! Late last night, our subscription tracker crossed the 100-percent mark—and kept on going. We're going to continue the subscription drive through the weekend, and we're going to raise our goal by 50 percent because your support has been amazing.

When we started this drive on Monday, we picked a goal that felt out of reach; we wanted to shoot for the stars. You all have delivered more than we had expected, but the fact remains that each and every new subscription is a bulwark to securing our future at this incredibly trying time.

Thank you sincerely for being a reader!

Enlarge / This is the Falcon 9 rocket that will launch the Crew Dragon spacecraft, with NASA astronauts aboard. (credit: NASA)

NASA originally planned to announce that it was bringing its iconic "worm" logo back on Wednesday, but the agency was afraid people would take it as an April Fools' Day joke.

Happily, it most certainly is not. The worm has returned, and that's no joke.

The space agency said the retro-looking logo will be stamped on the side of the Falcon 9 rocket that will carry astronauts to the International Space Station as part of SpaceX's Demo-2 flight, presently scheduled for mid to late May. NASA says there’s a good chance you’ll see the logo featured in other missions, too.

Enlarge / Today's devices don't—and won't—support the new 6GHz band. Once the spectrum is ratified for Wi-Fi use, you'll need hardware upgrades before you can take advantage of it. (credit: Mahmoud Hassan)

In a press release yesterday, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced that he has proposed a set of rules for the new RF spectrum that the proposed Wi-Fi 6E standard will use. In this month's April 23 meeting, FCC members will vote on those proposed rules for unlicensed use of the 6GHz band (5.925–7.125GHz).

The Wi-Fi spectrum we already have—2.4GHz band

In the 1990s, the biggest concern for Wi-Fi users was "how far will the Wi-Fi reach." Today, the biggest concern—whether most users realize it or not—isn't how far the Wi-Fi will reach, it's how many different devices are competing for airtime. The legacy 2.4GHz band is almost entirely unusable for many urban dwellers—it's crowded with microwave ovens, Bluetooth headsets, and every Internet-of-Things device imaginable.

Making matters worse for 2.4GHz, the frequency band offers excellent range and penetration—which in an increasingly crowded modern setting is very much a bug, not a feature. A Wi-Fi device can only transmit if no other device in range is also transmitting—so increased range and penetration also means increased competition for airtime.

Enlarge / Depicting a Humvee like this in Call of Duty is allowed by the First Amendment, a federal judge has ruled.

A federal judge ruled this week that Activision has a first amendment right to include Humvees in its Call of Duty titles, despite vehicle manufacturer AM General's claims of trademark infringement and false advertising for the in-game use of the military vehicles.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit first filed by AMG in 2017, which suggested that Call of Duty players were being "deceived into believing that AM General licenses the games or is somehow connected with or involved in the creation of the games." That's not a completely ridiculous idea, since Activision and other major game manufacturers generally arranged licenses for their in-game guns until 2013.

In his ruling this week, though, District Judge George B. Daniels dismissed AM General's claim. That decision hinged in part on a 1989 precedent that established that artistic works could make reference to outside trademarks as long as the usage was relevant to the work and did not "explicitly mislead as to the source of the content or work."