Month: June 2023

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)

Just one day after suing Binance, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has now sued Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange operating in the US.

The SEC alleged that Coinbase has violated laws since "at least 2019" by failing to register both its cryptocurrency trading platform and its crypto asset-staking program. Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, Gurbir S. Grewal, said in a press release that Coinbase chose not to register, making "calculated decisions" that "may have allowed it to earn billions" while knowingly depriving Coinbase investors of SEC protections.

"You simply can’t ignore the rules because you don’t like them or because you’d prefer different ones: the consequences for the investing public are far too great,” Grewal said. "As alleged in our complaint, Coinbase was fully aware of the applicability of the federal securities laws to its business activities, but deliberately refused to follow them."

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  Need a 27-inch touchscreen at a picnic? [credit: LG ]

The most stressful part of carrying a computing screen around—whether that display's part of a tablet, laptop, monitor, or even a more wieldy portable monitor—is making sure the device doesn't crack, snap, or otherwise break going from point A to point B. LG's new StanbyME Go (27LX5QKNA) tends to such concerns with a 4.69-inch-thick (119 mm), supposedly military-grade briefcase to which a massive 27-inch tablet is permanently attached.

LG’s not selling it in the US (yet)

The wacky design, spotted recently by sites like GSMArena, is listed on LG's South Korean website as being available starting June 7, as per a Google translation of the page.

Ars Technica asked LG if there is a US price or release date, and a spokesperson said the company didn't "have anything to share in regard to US plans at this time." However, the device does seem to be available at South Korea's YooTopia website to US shoppers for $1,050.

Enlarge / Eric Berger (upper left) moderated a panel featuring (clockwise) Alex Fielding, Charity Weeden, and Bhavya Lal on the topic of satellites and low-Earth orbit. (credit: Ars Technica)

The space industry has seen a dramatic uptick in the number of satellites launched into low-Earth orbit in recent years. Much of this growth, but not all of it, has been driven by the rapid expansion of SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation, which is now populated by more than 4,000 satellites.

In our space panel for Ars Frontiers, I had the pleasure of discussing the implications of this growth in satellites and space-based services with a distinguished panel of experts. Many issues, good and bad, have arisen, from the cluttering of low-Earth orbit to the development of powerful tools used in conflict, such as synthetic aperture radar and communications in Ukraine. You can watch the entire discussion here.

It's important to realize how much the environment in low-Earth orbit has changed over the last five years. This is the area of space from about 100 km in the atmosphere up to about 2,000 km. But the majority of satellites are clustered within a few hundred kilometers of the surface of the Earth.

Enlarge / Eric Berger (upper left) moderated a panel featuring (clockwise) Alex Fielding, Charity Weeden, and Bhavya Lal on the topic of satellites and low-Earth orbit. (credit: Ars Technica)

The space industry has seen a dramatic uptick in the number of satellites launched into low-Earth orbit in recent years. Much of this growth, but not all of it, has been driven by the rapid expansion of SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation, which is now populated by more than 4,000 satellites.

In our space panel for Ars Frontiers, I had the pleasure of discussing the implications of this growth in satellites and space-based services with a distinguished panel of experts. Many issues, good and bad, have arisen, from the cluttering of low-Earth orbit to the development of powerful tools used in conflict, such as synthetic aperture radar and communications in Ukraine. You can watch the entire discussion here.

It's important to realize how much the environment in low-Earth orbit has changed over the last five years. This is the area of space from about 100 km in the atmosphere up to about 2,000 km. But the majority of satellites are clustered within a few hundred kilometers of the surface of the Earth.

Enlarge / Apple's Vision Pro headset. (credit: Apple)

Apple's pitch for its new Vision Pro headset announced yesterday leaned heavily on third-party apps and content—Apple's app ecosystems are a big competitive advantage for the iPhone and iPad, and the company clearly wants to extend that to its AR headset.

A page on Apple's developer site outlines what Apple will do between now and Vision Pro's launch to help developers get their apps ready. Most notably, the company will offer a Vision Pro developer kit, which will be hardware that will "provide the ability to quickly build, iterate, and test on Apple Vision Pro so your app or game will be ready to deliver amazing experiences." The kits will be available by application only.

Apple typically only offers these kinds of developer kits at major inflection points for its hardware lineup, where there's a big gap between a product's announcement and release and where the company wants to make sure that developers can get software done ahead of time. Most recently, this happened during the Apple Silicon transition, where developers could pay $500 to grab a prototype Mac mini with the guts of an iPad Pro inside of it.

Enlarge / Apple's Vision Pro headset. (credit: Apple)

Apple's pitch for its new Vision Pro headset announced yesterday leaned heavily on third-party apps and content—Apple's app ecosystems are a big competitive advantage for the iPhone and iPad, and the company clearly wants to extend that to its AR headset.

A page on Apple's developer site outlines what Apple will do between now and Vision Pro's launch to help developers get their apps ready. Most notably, the company will offer a Vision Pro developer kit, which will be hardware that will "provide the ability to quickly build, iterate, and test on Apple Vision Pro so your app or game will be ready to deliver amazing experiences." The kits will be available by application only.

Apple typically only offers these kinds of developer kits at major inflection points for its hardware lineup, where there's a big gap between a product's announcement and release and where the company wants to make sure that developers can get software done ahead of time. Most recently, this happened during the Apple Silicon transition, where developers could pay $500 to grab a prototype Mac mini with the guts of an iPad Pro inside of it.