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The Verizon FiOS Quantum Gateway (no maintenance fee required). (credit: Verizon)

Verizon FiOS customers using one of the company's older routers are being told they must pay a new monthly "maintenance charge" of $2.80 to cover the cost of supporting the apparently outdated equipment. Customers also have the option of buying one of the company's newer routers, though some report being able to convince Verizon to give them a new one for free.

"Our records indicate that you have an older model router that is being discontinued," says an e-mail to customers published today by DSLReports. "If you do plan to keep using your current router, we will begin billing, on 9.29.16, a monthly Router Maintenance Charge of $2.80 (plus taxes), to ensure we deliver the best support."

Verizon confirmed the change to DSLReports, saying that the notice was sent to customers using the BHR1 and BHR2 routers. "Many of these routers have been in use for nearly ten years and have required more frequent repairs, so we’re trying to reduce that maintenance load and expense," Verizon said.

Enlarge / A passage of one of Feynman's lectures, written in individual atoms. (credit: TU Delft)

Last week saw researchers figure out how to make circuitry that's only a single atom thick, and this week we're pushing the physical limits on what we can do with data storage. While the ultimate limit is probably going to be a single atom, a procedure presented in a new paper is slightly less efficient in that it requires the space occupied by two atoms. Even so, and even after accounting for the equivalent of bad blocks in the storage media, the data density is enough to fit the contents of the Library of Congress within a 100 micrometer cube.

The approach, developed by a team of Dutch and Spanish researchers, has so many ingenious features that it's difficult to know where to start describing it all. But since we have to start somewhere, we'll begin with the medium itself.

The researchers first evaporated some chlorine and allowed it to settle on a copper surface. Given enough time, a single-atom layer of chlorine will fully coat the copper surface. But if you cut the process short, you end up with a mix of chlorine atoms and vacant spaces on the surface. With a scanning-tunneling microscope, which registers the electronic state of the surface, you can easily detect the difference between a chlorine atom and the hole where one could be.

Appeals court that saw through Prenda Law "shell game" says John Steele must pay a sanction related to hiding assets from discovery. (credit: Getty Images)

The US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit has found for the second time that the mastermind of the Prenda Law "porno-trolling" scheme should be made to pay sanctions to a defendant.

In an opinion (PDF) published yesterday, a three-judge panel upholds most, but not all, of the lower court's finding that John Steele, Paul Hansmeier, and Paul Duffy should pay more than $260,000 in sanctions. However, they also sided with Steele on one key issue.

Here's a brief recap of the Lightspeed v. Smith case: in 2012, Prenda Law filed a bizarre anti-hacking lawsuit against Anthony Smith, then served subpoenas to ISPs asking for identifying information of more than 6,600 users, whom they dubbed "co-conspirators." The ISPs did not comply, moved the case to federal court, and fought the subpoena.

A California appeals court is upholding the juvenile-court conviction of a 16-year-old high school boy who uploaded a 10-second video to Snapchat of a fellow high school student who appeared to be masturbating in a bathroom stall.

"I think this dude is jacking off," read the video's caption.

The teen's misdemeanor invasion of privacy charges stem from what he said was him merely playing a joke on another student "to get a laugh." The boy on the receiving end was joking around, too, not really masturbating but pretending to, according to a juvenile witness. But in the end, that didn't matter. The boy who was filmed by the mobile phone committed suicide two weeks later, leaving a note behind: "I can't handle school anymore and I have no friends."

Enlarge (credit: SpaceX)

With a number of successful Falcon booster landings behind it, SpaceX is getting ready to try something likely to be a bit more challenging: three nearly simultaneous landings. This doesn't mean SpaceX is upping its launch schedule; instead, the three boosters will all be part of the planned Falcon Heavy vehicle.

Essentially three standard Falcons strapped together, the big rocket will be capable of lifting 54 metric tons into orbit. SpaceX is planning on the first Falcon Heavy test launch later this year. A video posted earlier this year made it clear that those plans include treating each of the three boosters as a regular Falcon once they've separated from the payload. That includes a return flight to Florida or a barge offshore.

Right, now, the company is using either the barge or an on-land site at Cape Canaveral to recover the boosters, with the choice depending on how high and far downrange they travel. And the company wants the option of returning all three to land if the opportunity arises (though two by land and one by sea might be an option). And so the company told The Orland Sentinel that it was asking the government for permission to build two more landing pads near its original facility.

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Featured

The digital debut of Emily Carmichael's short film Stryka, starring Aimee Mullins and Rupert Friend. (video link)

In just a few years, Emily Carmichael has gone from making an animated webseries for Penny Arcade to writing Pacific Rim: Maelstrom and directing Powerhouse, the next big project from Steven Spielberg. Today on Ars Technica, we’re proud to host the digital debut of Stryka, one of Carmichael’s short films that rocketed her from gamer geekdom to Hollywood. It’s the tale of a neurotic alien lizard living in Brooklyn, just trying to get by on small time heists. She has just one problem. Her partner in crime just isn’t bringing the zing anymore, and she’s been secretly doing jobs on the side with someone else.

What’s immediately apparent is that Carmichael has an uncanny ability to make a completely alien world feel familiar. Even though main character Stryka (Aimee Mullins) is covered in horns and speaks in clicks, her problems are relatable. She’s torn between two thieves, Callen (Homeland's Rupert Friend) and Peterson (John Behlmann), very different men who both want to work with her. Meanwhile her mother keeps calling to nag about what she’s doing with her life. The scenes with Stryka’s coin-op shrink give us the perfect window on the rather mundane inner life of a lizard thief.