Month: June 2021

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | PM Images)

On Friday, the broadband industry won a court order that prohibits New York from enforcing a state law that would require ISPs to sell $15-per-month broadband plans to low-income households.

Lobby groups for ISPs sued New York to block the law that was scheduled to take effect on June 15 and received a preliminary injunction today from US District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The state law is preempted by federal law, US District Judge Denis Hurley wrote in the order. While the case will continue, Hurley found that the industry is likely to succeed in its lawsuit.

The Affordable Broadband Act (ABA) would require ISPs to offer "all qualifying low-income households at least two Internet access plans: (i) download speeds of at least 25 megabits-per-second at no more than $15-per-month, or (ii) download speeds of at least 200 megabits-per-second at no more than $20-per-month," the ruling noted. The low-income qualifications specified by the law cover about 7 million New Yorkers in 2.7 million households, over one-third of all households in the state. The law allows exceptions to the minimum-speed requirement "where such download speed is not reasonably practicable."

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

CD Projekt Red, the maker of The Witcher series, Cyberpunk 2077, and other popular games, said on Friday that proprietary data taken in a ransomware attack disclosed four months ago is likely circulating online.

“Today, we have learned new information regarding the breach and now have reason to believe that internal data illegally obtained during the attack is currently being circulated on the Internet,” company officials said in a statement. “We are not yet able to confirm the exact contents of the data in question, though we believe it may include current/former employee and contractor details in addition to data related to our games.”

An about-face

The update represents an about-face of sorts, as it warns that the information of current and former employees and contractors is now believed to be among the compromised data. When The Poland-based game maker disclosed the attack in February, it said it didn’t believe the stolen data included personal information for employees or customers.

Enlarge / Warning: Learning the care and feeding of MySQL instances does not grant knowledge of or safe interaction with actual marine mammals. (credit: Oracle)

One of the tasks nearly any sysadmin frequently encounters is the care and feeding of the MySQL database server. You can build an entire career around nothing but this topic—making you a DB admin, not a humble sysadmin like yours truly—but for today, we're just going to cover the basics.

For this guide, we're going to be using Ubuntu Linux as the underlying operating system—but most of these steps and tips will be either the same, or broadly similar, across nearly any OS or distribution you might install MySQL on.

Installing MySQL

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  If you're even vaguely familiar with Ubuntu or Debian, the installation process shouldn't be surprising: apt install mysql-server and you're off to the races. [credit: Jim Salter ]

Installing MySQL on a fresh Ubuntu instance is quite simple: sudo apt update if necessary, then sudo apt install mysql-server and you're off to the races. Once the package is downloaded and installed, mysql is fired up automatically (and will be after each system reboot).

Enlarge / AT&T's logo at its corporate headquarters in Dallas, Texas. (credit: Getty Images | Ronald Martinez )

AT&T CEO John Stankey yesterday called President Biden's plan to fund municipal broadband networks "misguided" and said the US shouldn't pay for any broadband deployment in areas that already have networks. But as AT&T and other ISPs lobby against public networks and government-funded competition, Stankey said he is confident that Congress will steer legislation in the more "pragmatic" direction that AT&T favors.

In an interview with The Economic Club of Washington, DC, (video), Stankey was asked, "Do you support the president's proposal to have municipalities own broadband facilities?" Stankey responded, "I think actually the president's proposal is probably a bit misguided in that regard."

"It would be a shame that we take taxpayer money or ask local governments to go into a business that they don't run today," Stankey said. "You know, their job is to deliver water, patch streets, things like that, not be in a capital-intensive technology business that requires constant refresh and constant management."

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  These cute blobs are known as the "Rot," and when you're not running around kicking tree-monster butt, you can sit and even meditate with your spooky-cute companions. [credit: Ember Labs ]

Until I played Kena: Bridge of Spirits this week, I wondered why I would carve time out of my gaming schedule to play yet another third-person adventure game. Sure, the game looked cute, but who the heck is this new studio, Ember Lab? And why should I assume this upstart has anything to add to a crowded genre beyond a stylish mystical-forest aesthetic?

One Parsec demo session later, my tune changed entirely.

I was invited to test the new game, slated to launch August 24 on PC, PS5, and PS4, as part of its inclusion in this week's first-ever Tribeca Games Festival. The title is a serious coup for the fest (especially in a month full of online game reveal "events"). My hands-on hour with the game's opening quests suggests that Ember Labs may indeed deliver on its promise of presenting a refreshing Zelda-like adventure with a tasteful sprinkling of Pikmin's minion-control systems.

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  On June 10, a team of UK veterans, a military spouse, and a hypermiling expert set a new world record for EV efficiency. [credit: Mission Motorsport ]

I'm a little out of step with the mainstream when it comes to electric vehicle efficiency. I believe that as long as your electricity is clean and your battery has enough range to get you where you're going (with the occasional DC fast-charge for a longer trip), even the least efficient EV will beat anything with an internal combustion engine—particularly if that EV replaces something inefficient like a sports car or a big SUV. Most people think this idea isn't enough, though, and whoever can go the farthest on the fewest kWh wins.

As of Thursday, there's a new winner. A British veterans nonprofit called Mission Motorsport spent 24 hours driving a pair of Renault Zoes (with 52 kWh battery packs) around the Thruxton racetrack in England. The 2.4-mile (3.8-km) circuit is one of the UK's fastest, but the record-setting Zoe averaged around 19 mph (30.5 km/h). That was good for 475.4 miles (765 km) on a single charge, which works out to be 9.14 miles/kWh (14.71 km/kWh).

The winning Zoe was entirely standard, except for a set of tires developed by a company called Enso. The second Zoe ran on its factory-fitted rubber and still managed 424.7 miles. That's a lot better than the car's WLTP range of 245 miles (394 km) and works out to an efficiency of 8.16 miles/kWh (13.13 km/kWh).

Enlarge / Boxes move along a conveyor belt at the Amazon.com Inc. fulfillment center in Robbinsville, New Jersey. (credit: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg)

Amazon and a who’s who of online-only retailers are trying to kill proposed federal and state legislation that would make the companies disclose contact information for third-party sellers.

The bills would force Amazon and others to verify the identities of third-party sellers and provide consumers with ways to contact the stores. The proposed legislation is pitting brick-and-mortar retailers—including Home Depot, Walgreens, and JCPenney, which support the bills—against online retailers like Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Poshmark, and others, which argue that the legislation would harm small sellers. 

The bills come as brick-and-mortar retailers lost ground to online retailers throughout the pandemic—in 2020, 20 percent of consumer retail purchases were made online, compared with about 14 percent in 2019. But the legislation is also being proposed in response to a slew of counterfeit, stolen, and dangerous items that have appeared on marketplace sites.