Month: July 2021

Enlarge / Illustration of fiber-optic cables. (credit: Getty Images | Tetra Images)

The California legislature unanimously approved a plan to build a statewide, open-access fiber network yesterday. The legislation was supported by Democrats and Republicans in votes of 78-0 in the California Assembly and 39-0 in the state Senate.

The statewide, open-access fiber lines will function as a "middle-mile" network that carries data from Internet backbone networks to connection points in cities and rural areas. A middle-mile network doesn't extend all the way to residential properties, but "last-mile" ISPs can get access to it and focus on building infrastructure that connects the middle mile to homes.

California's decision to make the middle-mile network open-access means it will provide "non-discriminatory access to eligible entities on a technology and competitively neutral basis, regardless of whether the entity is privately or publicly owned," the bill text said. If all goes as planned, the network will make it easier for existing ISPs to expand and for new ISPs to get started, filling in gaps where there's no modern access and boosting competition and speeds in other areas. Last-mile ISPs could use network technology other than fiber to connect to homes because of the provision allowing technology-neutral access.

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  Formula 1 has new technical regulations for 2022, the most sweeping changes to the sport in many years. This is what the new cars will look like. [credit: Formula 1 ]

On Thursday in Silverstone, England ahead of this weekend's British Grand Prix, Formula 1 revealed next year's car to the public. 2022 will see the biggest shake-up to the sport's technical regulations since the introduction of the turbocharged hybrid powertrains in 2014. There's been a fundamental change in the way the car creates its aerodynamic downforce, with the goal being to make it easier for F1 cars to race each other closely. Ars spoke to Rob Smedley, director of data systems at F1, to find out why and how the new car came to be.

What's the problem?

The cars that will race each other at Silverstone this weekend use the air to generate grip through a combination of the front wing and rear diffuser. And they make an awful lot of downforce, which is part of the reason F1 lap times have reached historic lows. The problem is what happens to the air after it's passed over an F1 car's body—it becomes a massive wake of disturbed air. A wing running in turbulent air won't work nearly as efficiently as a wing running in clean air, and that means it's very hard for one car to follow another closely enough to try and overtake—something that F1 fans have told the sport they want to see more often.

"As the [2021] car moves in, let's say a second behind, then it's losing around 25 percent of its downforce," Smedley said. "As it moves in to about half a second—a closing distance and getting to the point where they could start to have this wheel to wheel interaction—at that point it loses 40 percent of its downforce. So the loss is immense."

Enlarge / These AirPods, displayed at the Apple Park Visitor Center in Cupertino, are genuine—but spotting the difference between real and counterfeit electronics isn't always simple. (credit: SOPA Images via Getty)

US Customs and Border Protection reports that so far in fiscal year 2021, it has seized about 360,000 sets of wireless headphones, worth an estimated $62.2 million. That's only nine months' worth of seizures—but it's already more than the 290,000 sets worth $61.7 million that were seized throughout fiscal year 2020.

In one such large seizure, CBP seized roughly 6,400 counterfeit AirPods and AirPods Pro in Cincinnati, Ohio, on July 11th. If the seized goods had been genuine, their combined Apple MSRP would have been about $1.3 million—but the five seized shipments were manifested at only $312 each. All five shipments were headed for a single address in Brownsville, Texas.

Then again, the feds may not always get it right. In September 2020, CBP in New York City seized a 2,000 unit shipment of perfectly legitimate OnePlus earbuds headed for Nevada, claiming they were "counterfeit AirPods." When pressed about the error, CBP doubled down, saying that a company "does not have to put an 'Apple' wordmark or design on their products" to violate trademark law and adding that importers "have many opportunities... to provide evidence that their product does not violate the relevant recorded trademarks."

Enlarge (credit: Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket )

A pilot for Delta Airlines is suing his own company for $1 billion, alleging that it stole an app he created.

Captain Craig Alexander, an 11-year veteran who flies 757s, developed a messaging app called QrewLive that facilitated flight crew communications. He says he pitched the app to Delta management, who, after allegedly expressing interest, ultimately turned him down before releasing a similar app of its own.

Alexander says he worked on the project on his own time and spent $100,000 of his own money to create the app. He says he had several meetings with Delta about the app in 2015 and 2016 in which executives allegedly showed interest in acquiring the software. After 2016, though, Delta stopped communicating with Alexander about the app, and in April 2018, the airline released its own app, called Flight Family Communications.

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  Xiaomi's Redmi K40 Pro, which has flagship specs (a Snapdragon 888 and 120 Hz display) for around $600. [credit: Xiaomi ]

There's a new second-place vendor in the smartphone world: Xiaomi. The latest report from analyst firm Canalys puts the Chinese company second in worldwide smartphone shipments for Q2 2021, behind Samsung and ahead of Apple. According to Canalys' data, Samsung is still the top dog, with 19 percent market share in Q2 2021, followed by Xiaomi at 17 percent, Apple at 14 percent, and Oppo and Vivo at 10 percent.

The whole smartphone market grew 12 percent this quarter as the economy begins to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic. Worldwide, Oppo and Vivo were up 28 and 27 percent, respectively, while Samsung was up 15. Apple barely moved, at 1 percent growth. Xiaomi's growth to second makes it the big winner, with a whopping 83 percent jump compared to the previous quarter. Xiaomi has traditionally targeted super-aggressive specs and price points for the biggest markets, like India and China, but Canalys says Xiaomi is now seeing big growth in other territories. The firm's numbers show Xiaomi growing "300% in Latin America, 150% in Africa, and 50% in Western Europe." Xiaomi has yet to tackle the US smartphone market in any meaningful way.

Canalys declares Xiaomi to be the second place victor this quarter, but it's hard not to notice that the BBK conglomerate is all over these market share charts. Canalys and Counterpoint both respect BBK's brand separations, but if you combined all of BBK's phone brands—Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, and Realme—the company would easily be the world's number 1 smartphone vendor. There are barely any differences between the various brands today anyway. BBK is basically the smartphone market's version of General Motors, with a million "badge engineered" variants of the same basic phones.

Enlarge (credit: NASA)

NASA announced on Friday that it has switched to backup computing hardware on the Hubble Space Telescope, potentially ending over a month of uncertainty regarding the telescope's future. The success came just two days after the agency indicated that it had narrowed down the source of the original fault.

The iconic telescope has been offline since mid-June, when the payload computer started failing in attempts to write data to memory. This computer is responsible for both managing the scientific instruments and ensuring that the data they produce is sent back to Earth. While its failure didn't pose any dangers to the hardware itself, it left the telescope unable to perform any observations.

The telescope is equipped with backups for all its computing hardware (and in the case of the memory, backups for the backups). But every attempt to switch to one of these resulted in the same errors, suggesting that the problem wasn't with the memory or processing hardware but rather part of the hardware that supports the entire system. Attention eventually focused on the power supply. As NASA put it: