Month: January 2021

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Over the past 12 months, electronics retailers have been under increased fire and scrutiny for mishandling how they sell brand-new consoles and high-end PC components. This week, online retailer Newegg has moved forward with a new, peculiar system for selling high-demand, low-supply electronics: the Newegg Shuffle. (Or, as the site's metadata calls it, the Newegg Popular Product Lottery Queue.)

If you catch this article early enough on Friday, January 22, consider this a drop-everything suggestion to rush to the site by 5 pm ET and place a product-purchase request. Really: Do that right now if you're interested in recent AMD CPUs, Nvidia GPUs, or the all-digital PlayStation 5. It's free to try. We'll wait.

OK, so, that process might have been a bit confusing. What's going on with the Newegg Shuffle?

Enlarge / Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, criticized the Australian proposal. (credit: Oliver Berg/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Google says it would have "no real choice" but to shut down its search engine in Australia if Australia passes a new law requiring Google to pay news sites to link to their articles. This would "set an untenable precedent for our business and the digital economy," said Google's Mel Silva in Friday testimony before the Australian Senate.

News organizations around the world have been struggling financially over the last decade or two. Many have blamed Internet companies like Google and Facebook that—in their view—have diverted advertising revenue that once went to news organizations. Some in the news industry argue that Google benefits from including news stories in its search results and should compensate news sites for the privilege of doing so.

So last year the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission proposed a new mandatory arbitration process designed to correct a supposed power imbalance between tech giants and Australian news sites. Under the new framework, news sites can demand that tech platforms (initially Google and Facebook) pay them for linking to their stories. Google and Facebook are required to negotiate "in good faith" toward a payment agreement.

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There's been on onslaught of Apple leaks out of business publication Bloomberg over the past week, and the latest goes into a little more detail about an upcoming MacBook Air redesign.

Like the others, the report cites anonymous people familiar with Apple's plans. It claims a newly redesigned MacBook Air (presumably with either Apple's M1 chip for Macs or a successor to that chip) will "be released during the second half of this year at the earliest or in 2022."

But buried in this MacBook Air report is perhaps equally big news for a certain set of Mac users: it claims that Apple plans to reintroduce the SD card slot in new MacBook Pros—a detail that was left out of a story on those computers earlier this week.

Enlarge / A CenturyLink service van parked in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on May 2, 2019. (credit: Getty Images | Robert Alexander )

CenturyLink and Frontier Communications have again failed to meet broadband-deployment deadlines in dozens of states after taking money from the Federal Communications Commission.

When the FCC awarded Connect America Fund Phase II grants in 2015, CenturyLink accepted $505.7 million in annual support over six years in exchange for deploying broadband with 10Mbps download speeds and 1Mbps upload speeds to 1.17 million homes and businesses in 33 states. Frontier accepted $283.4 million in annual support over six years to deploy service to 659,587 homes and business in 28 states.

The deadline to hit 100 percent of the required deployments passed on December 31, 2020. Both CenturyLink and Frontier informed the FCC that they missed the deadline to finish deployment in numerous states.

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  A Loon balloon. [credit: Loon ]

When Google announced "Project Loon" in 2013, a running joke behind the project was that no one thought a network of flying Internet balloons was a feasible idea. Eight years later, Google has decided that a network of flying Internet balloons is indeed not a feasible idea. Loon announced it is shutting down, citing the lack of a "long-term, sustainable business."

Loon CEO (Loon was eventually spun out into an Alphabet company) Alastair Westgarth writes:

We talk a lot about connecting the next billion users, but the reality is Loon has been chasing the hardest problem of all in connectivity—the last billion users: The communities in areas too difficult or remote to reach, or the areas where delivering service with existing technologies is just too expensive for everyday people. While we’ve found a number of willing partners along the way, we haven’t found a way to get the costs low enough to build a long-term, sustainable business. Developing radical new technology is inherently risky, but that doesn’t make breaking this news any easier. Today, I’m sad to share that Loon will be winding down.

Google also cited economic problems when it shut down Titan Aerospace in 2017, a plan to deliver the Internet via drone.

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Today's Dealmaster includes a notable discount on Apple's Magic Keyboard accessory for iPads, with the model designed for the iPad Air and 11-inch iPad Pro down to $199. That's $90 off the device's usual street price and the steepest discount we've tracked to date. We were impressed with the Magic Keyboard because of its build quality and typing experience—it's just obscenely expensive for a keyboard accessory, but this deal softens the blow somewhat.

Elsewhere, our deal roundup includes the lowest price we've seen on Assassin's Creed Valhalla, a massive action-RPG we enjoyed last year; a nice discount on Eufy's Indoor Cam 2K, an indoor security camera we recommended in our 2020 holiday gift guide; the latest iPad Air and Apple Watch; recommended gaming headsets and keyboards; and more. You can check out the full rundown below.

Note: Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.