Month: May 2020

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Peter Dazeley)

The New York Times has won its lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission, as a federal judge ruled Thursday that the FCC must turn over net neutrality comment records that it refused to give to the NYT.

The NYT sued the FCC in September 2018, saying the agency denied a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request for records that the NYT said might shed light on possible Russian interference in the net neutrality repeal proceeding. The Times' motion for summary judgment was granted by Judge Lorna Schofield of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

"We are pleased that the court saw through the FCC's privacy arguments and understood the public interest in The Times having access to this data," an NYT spokesperson told Ars today.

Enlarge / Amazon's orange-yellow logo wall. (credit: David Ryder/Getty Images)

Amazon VP Tim Bray, who had been with the company for more than five years, has resigned in protest of Amazon's treatment of warehouse workers and the firing of other employees who spoke out.

The company fired multiple warehouse and office workers in recent weeks amid organizing efforts to improve conditions in the company's distribution centers, where individuals have contracted COVID-19. Firing the whistleblowers is "evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture," Bray said in a blog post explaining his departure. "I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison."

Bray was one of several thousand Amazon tech workers who joined together in 2019 as Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, he said. Warehouse workers this year reached out to that group for support, as it was already organized. Members of AECJ then put their heft behind the warehouse workers' push, organizing a large video conference for Thursday, April 16, as part of those efforts.

Enlarge / Amazon's orange-yellow logo wall. (credit: David Ryder/Getty Images)

Amazon VP Tim Bray, who had been with the company for more than five years, has resigned in protest of Amazon's treatment of warehouse workers and the firing of other employees who spoke out.

The company fired multiple warehouse and office workers in recent weeks amid organizing efforts to improve conditions in the company's distribution centers, where individuals have contracted COVID-19. Firing the whistleblowers is "evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture," Bray said in a blog post explaining his departure. "I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison."

Bray was one of several thousand Amazon tech workers who joined together in 2019 as Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, he said. Warehouse workers this year reached out to that group for support, as it was already organized. Members of AECJ then put their heft behind the warehouse workers' push, organizing a large video conference for Thursday, April 16, as part of those efforts.

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  The finale of IndyCar's iRacing challenge was more action-packed than most races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Here, with nine laps to go, Simon Pagenaud of Team Penske (right), Graham Rahal of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (middle), and Lando Norris of Arrow McLaren all vie for the lead. This would end badly for Pagenaud a couple of corners later. [credit: Chris Graythen/Getty Images ]

There was more drama in the world of esports racing this weekend—not in NASCAR, though. That series announced a return to real-world racing later this month, and its drivers have been on their best behavior after a pair of high-profile fiascos in April. No, this time IndyCar is in the spotlight. The month of May is special to the series, but this year the racing had to take place in a virtual Indianapolis, with a 175-mile event held in iRacing thanks to the COVID-19 lockdown. There was plenty of action, just not all of it good. The highlight—or low point, perhaps—was when last year's Indy 500 winner and 2016 series champion Simon Pagenaud appeared to take out F1's rising star, Lando Norris, three laps before the end of the race.

The 70-lap race was action-packed, even by IndyCar standards. The cars circulated in a much tighter pack than they would in real life, even after IndyCar tweaked some iRacing environmental settings like wind speed to make things a bit more life-like. And when cars race together in a pack at speeds close to 220mph (350km/h), crashes happen. In the real world, those can have awful consequences, like the crash that took Dan Wheldon's life at Las Vegas in 2011. Bruised feelings are the worst that can happen in iRacing, though.

The seeds were probably sown last weekend, when Norris—a young phenom in F1 and extremely good sim racer—blitzed the IndyCar regulars when he was invited to join them in a race at a virtual Circuit of the Americas. At (virtual) Indianapolis with eight laps to go, Norris, Pagenaud, and Graham Rahal were three-wide for the lead, going into one of Indy's four turns, when it went wrong for Pagenaud who ended up backwards after hitting the wall and damaging his car. Five laps later, Norris was looking strong, leading his two Arrow McLaren teammates toward a potential 1-2-3 victory, when he came across a slow-moving Pagenaud, who was now a couple of laps down following a trip to pit lane to repair his car.