Month: April 2020

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by a nifty couple of deals on Bose noise-cancelling headphones—provided you're willing to buy refurbished. Factory renewed models of the popular Bose QuietComfort 35 II and the newer Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 are both discounted at Bose's official eBay storefront, with the former down to $200 and the latter down to $280.

We generally don't recommend buying refurbished tech unless the used products come directly from a trusted manufacturer, and fortunately, that's the case here. Bose itself has inspected and tested the re-sold gear, not a random third-party seller, and the refurbished headphones come with the same one-year limited warranty as new models. Bose says its refurbished gear "may occasionally have minor, nearly imperceptible blemishes," so there is some risk involved, but the obvious benefit is that the cost of entry is far lower. A new pair of QuietComfort 35 IIs usually runs between $300-350, while a new set of Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 range between $350-400. Beyond that, this QuietComfort 35 II deal is about $40 cheaper than the typical cost of a refurbished pair on Amazon.

Between the two, we'd say the QuietComfort 35 II is the better value here. That's not to say the Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 are bad—their metal headband gives them a more premium feel, they have a USB-C port for charging, and their noise-cancelling is not only borderline best-in-class but adjustable on more granular level through Bose's companion app. They also have better built-in microphones, which allow for clearer call quality. Still, the QuietComfort 35 II's active noise-cancellation is just as powerful, its physical playback buttons are more consistent than the 700's sometimes-finicky touch controls, and its lighter design clamps with less force, which generally makes them more comfortable for longer sessions.

Enlarge / A Charter Spectrum vehicle. (credit: Charter)

Charter Communications is asking the Federal Communications Commission to block government funding for ISPs that want to build networks in parts of New York where Charter is required to offer broadband.

An FCC rule for Phase 1 of the commission's $20.4 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) bans funding in census blocks where at least one ISP has been awarded money from any federal or state broadband-subsidy program "to provide 25/3Mbps or better service," and it also bans funding in areas that already have home-Internet access at those speeds. But that rule would not prevent ISPs from getting funding to serve parts of New York where Charter is required by the state government to offer service but in which it hasn't yet finished construction.

Charter on Friday thus petitioned the FCC for a rules waiver that would ban funding in 2,400 census blocks "in which Charter has unfunded but nonetheless binding state obligations to deploy at least 25/3 Mbps broadband service." Charter, which sells broadband and other cable services under its Spectrum brand name, said it is deploying speeds of at least 300Mbps downstream and 10Mbps upstream, far above the FCC's 25/3Mbps standard.

Enlarge / A worker hauling boxes at an Amazon warehouse in Baltimore, Maryland, on April 14. (credit: Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images)

Amazon, which is desperately trying to bulk up staffing amid surges in demand, has reportedly fired another three employees and suspended a fourth after those workers led efforts to speak out against working conditions in the company's warehouses.

Two workers let go on Friday, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, are both tech workers based in Seattle's headquarters, the Washington Post reports. Both were active in an internal employee group advocating for climate issues and had circulated a petition inside the company calling on Amazon to expand benefits and pay for employees in warehouses. Both also posted tweets in March offering to match donations to a fund set up to support workers at Amazon's warehouse in Queens.

Another employee, Chris Hayes, was not allowed to finish out his notice period after he resigned from the company in protest of its treatment of warehouse workers, The New York Times reports. He gave notice earlier, saying his last day would be April 17, but last week, after he sent colleagues an invitation to a discussion with warehouse workers, HR told him he was no longer allowed to work.

(credit: Ron Amadeo/Intel)

A new report from Axios claims that Google has "made significant progress toward developing its own processor to power future versions of its Pixel smartphone" and that a Google-made SoC could debut in a phone as early as next year. Google is apparently teaming up with Samsung, which is providing design support and manufacturing for the project, codenamed "Whitechapel."

The report says the Google SoC is an eight-core ARM processor with hardware "optimized for Google's machine learning technology" and the always-on capabilities of the Google Assistant. The chip would be built at Samsung's foundries on the firm's upcoming 5nm process, and, in addition to being aimed at the Pixel, the report says that "subsequent versions" of the chip could be used in Chromebooks.

Google has been building custom smartphone silicon for a while now. It debuted a custom camera SoC—not a main system SoC—in the Pixel 2, called the "Pixel Visual Core," which was built in collaboration with Intel. The Pixel 3 and 4 have had similar photography-focused chips, now called the "Pixel Neural Core." Since the Pixel 3, the phones have had Google's "Titan M" security module, an isolated chip that handles the phone's verified boot and cryptographic key storage. In the Pixel 4, there's also Project Soli, a radar system that was shrunken down to a tiny piece of silicon. You can see how Google building its own system SoC could be a natural step after all this other silicon work. The company has been hiring chip designers from Intel and Qualcomm for some time now.

Enlarge / Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides in this first look at Denis Villeneuve's film adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune. (credit: Chiabella James/Vanity Fair)

We have been eagerly anticipating Director Denis Villeneuve's film adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic sci-fi novel Dune since the project was first announced way back in 2016. Now Vanity Fair has given us our first look at the film, including several photos of some of the main characters. Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides? Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto Atreides? Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho? Zendaya as the mysterious Chani? They're all featured, along with a few other key cast members.

As we reported last year, Dune is set in the distant future and follows the fortunes of various noble houses in what amounts to a feudal interstellar society. Much of the action takes place on the planet Arrakis, where the economy is driven largely by a rare life-extending drug called melange ("the spice") that also conveys a kind of prescience. There's faster-than-light space travel, a prophecy concerning a messianic figure, giant sandworms, and lots of battles, as protagonist Paul Atreides (a duke's son) contends with rival House Harkonnen and strives to defeat the forces of Shaddam IV, emperor of the known universe.

That brief synopsis hardly does justice to the sweeping grandeur and enormous cultural influence of Herbert's novel. When it was first published, the Chicago Tribune called it "one of the monuments of modern science fiction." Astronomers have board games, computer games, and numerous prequels and sequels written by his son, Brian Herbert, with Kevin J. Anderson.

Enlarge / Artist's conception of some players' perception of Valorant's anti-cheat driver. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty / Riot)

In the ever-evolving cat-and-mouse battle between cheaters and game developers, Riot Games is taking expanded measures to protect legitimate players in its new tactical combat game Valorant. But Riot's new Vanguard anti-cheat system—which involves a kernel-level driver that has very low-level access to your system—is raising some eyebrows among both players and security experts.

While the Vanguard anti-cheat client only launches when Valorant is being played, Riot says the system also makes use of a "kernel mode driver" that starts operating as soon as Windows boots up. That's a big change from Riot's pre-Vanguard anti-cheat systems, which operated entirely at the more common "user mode" level, just like most Windows executables.

The old anti-cheat system gave cheaters a big advantage, Riot says, since those cheaters could use code-signing holes or Windows corruption exploits to create cheating software that runs at the kernel level. With that more privileged access to the system, those kernel-level cheating tools could make themselves look completely legitimate to user-level anti-cheat tools (which have more limited visibility into the inner workings of the OS).

Enlarge (credit: airbreak.dev)

As infections from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continue to climb, hospitals around the world are struggling with a potentially fatal shortage of ventilators, the bedside machines that help patients breathe when they’re unable to do so on their own. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of lower-grade breathing devices known as continuous positive airway pressure machines sit idle in closets or warehouses because their manufacturers say they can’t perform the same life-saving functions.

Security researcher Trammell Hudson analyzed the AirSense 10—the world’s most widely used CPAP—and made a startling discovery. Although its manufacturer says the AirSense 10 would require “significant rework to function as a ventilator,” many ventilator functions were already built into the device firmware.

Its manufacturer, ResMed, says the $700 device solely functions as a continuous positive airway pressure machine used to treat sleep apnea. It does this by funneling oxygen into a mask. ResMed says the device can’t work as a bilevel positive airway pressure device, which is a more advanced machine that pushes air into a mask and then pulls it back out. With no ability to work in both directions or increase the output when needed, the AirSense 10 can’t be used as the type of ventilator that could help patients who are struggling to breathe. After reverse-engineering the firmware, Hudson says the ResMed claim is simply untrue.