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Today, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced that it had completed rules that will regulate methane and other emissions from new natural gas and oil drilling sites. The rules, which have already received extensive public and industry comment, are focused on methane due to its potency as a greenhouse gas, but they'll also limit emissions of toxic chemicals and pollutants that contribute to ground-level ozone. In making the announcement, the EPA also issued a call for data regarding existing hardware; it intends to eventually regulate the emissions from that, as well.

The new rules cover any new or updated hardware for oil and natural gas wells, as well as sites that collect, process, and compress natural gas for distribution. Formulated under the Clean Air Act, they had already gone extensive public comment. In response, the EPA tightened a few cases; low production wells will now have to be monitored, and the frequency of monitoring at compressor stations was increased.

The rule is focused on methane emissions, and the EPA estimates that it will cut the greenhouse equivalent of 11 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (out of the US' roughly 5.3 billion). But as a side benefit, release of various organic toxins, including benzene, toluene, and xylene, will also be cut, as will emissions of ozone-forming chemicals. The Agency hasn't quantified the value of the ensuing health benefits, but it figures the climate benefits by 2025 ($690 million) will significantly outweigh the implementation costs ($530 million).

The limited emissions cuts are at least in part due to the fact that the rules are focused on new and upgraded hardware; they don't touch existing equipment. But that should change. The Obama administration has set a goal of reducing methane emissions from the oil and natural gas industries by 40 percent in 2025. And in announcing the new rules, the EPA stated, "EPA is also starting the process to control emissions from existing sources by issuing for public comment an Information Collection Request that requires companies to provide the information that will be necessary for EPA to reduce methane emissions from existing oil and gas sources."

Charter Communications prevented customers from using their own modems for two years beginning in 2012, and as punishment, the company will have to pay a $640,000 fine and complete a three-year compliance plan.

The Federal Communications Commission entered into a consent decree with Charter to settle the commission’s investigation into the matter, and it released the decree on Tuesday.

Charter’s actions were no secret—see this DSLReports article describing the modem ban in June 2012. But Charter—which just got FCC approval to complete a merger that will make it the nation’s second largest cable company—got away with it until the FCC stepped in.

The FCC’s Media Bureau began an investigation in July 2015 after modem maker Zoom Telephonics asked the commission to take action. Zoom also petitioned the FCC in October 2015  to reject Charter’s purchase of Time Warner Cable (TWC) and Bright House Networks.

“The Bureau’s investigation found that for a period of approximately two years beginning in 2012, Charter informed subscribers that they would no longer be permitted to attach new customer-owned modems,” the FCC said. “Charter later provided a list of authorized customer-owned modems, but new modems were only added to the list after passing a number of tests, many of which did not relate to harm to the network or theft of service.” (Charter customers who already used third-party modems before the policy went into place were allowed to keep using them.)

Because of the FCC investigation, Charter is shortening its modem testing period to three weeks. The $640,000 fine will be paid to the US Treasury.

Charter will have to file compliance reports every six months detailing its efforts to let customers attach their own modems. It won’t be a total free-for-all, though. For example, Charter can still prohibit attachment of modems that don’t support version 3.0 or higher of DOCSIS, the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification. Charter will have to notify the FCC each time it prohibits the attachment of a specific modem and explain why.

Charter doesn’t charge a separate modem rental fee—the cost of a Charter-supplied modem is included in a customer’s monthly bill. Thus, using a third-party modem with Charter doesn’t save a customer any money. But regardless of whether cable companies charge a rental fee, FCC rules prohibit providers from preventing the use of modems except when they cause “electronic or physical harm” or are used for “the unauthorized receipt of service.”

Charter began preventing use of customer-owned modems when it launched new pricing and packages that included the modem at no additional cost. “As a result, we will no longer provision customer owned modems on our network when a customer signs up for Charter Internet service,” a company representative said at the time in a DSLReports thread. “If you are an existing Charter Internet customer and own your own modem, and you are content to stay in your current package and pricing, you can continue to use your modem. If you decide you would like to come to the new pricing, at that point, we will issue you a new Charter modem.”

Charter said it enforced the policy because it wanted to make sure every customer gets “the best online experience possible.” To make that happen, Charter said it needed to provide the modems itself and make sure they all have the most up-to-date firmware.

While Charter finally relented in 2014 and allowed use of third-party modems, the company’s testing program resulted in few options, according to Zoom’s petition to deny the Charter/TWC/Bright House merger. (The merger got the final required approval from California regulators today and is expected to be completed next week.)

“Most of the 22 Charter-certified modem models are unavailable at major brick and mortar retailers, and others are not easily available,” Zoom wrote. “Only three have wireless functionality, and none of them employ the 802.11ac standard.”

The Charter website currently lists 25 approved modems.

This wasn’t the only case of a cable company allegedly preventing attachment of customer-owned devices. A class-action lawsuit against Cablevision accused that company of requiring cable TV subscribers to rent a set-top box in order to receive certain video services. While Cablevision denied the allegations, it agreed to a settlement that offers customers one-time bill credits or payments of $20 to $40, or services valued at up to $140. Current or former Cablevision customers have until September 23 to request bill credits or cash payments.

Disclosure: Bright House is owned by the Advance/Newhouse Partnership, which is part of Advance Publications. Advance Publications owns Condé Nast, which owns Ars Technica. Advance/Newhouse will own 13 percent of Charter after the proposed transactions are completed.

Last year Chinese device maker Cube launched a 10.6 inch Windows tablet with a Core M Broadwell processor, a Wacom digitizer, pen support, and 4GB of RAM.

Now the company has a new model with a more powerful processor and a USB 3.1 Type-C connector.

The Cube i16 Tablet is up for order from AliExpress for $514.

The tablet features a 1920 x 1080 pixel display, an Intel Core M3-6Y30 Skylake processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage plus a microSD card slot.

Continue reading Cube i16: A $515 Windows tablet with full HD screen, Core M3 Skylake, pen support, 4GB RAM at Liliputing.

The problem with being a safety-conscious, responsible drone operator is that it's much easier to actually fly the drone than it is to comply with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules. If we're ever going to have instant Amazon Prime Air deliveries, Domino's Pizza drones, and other flying robot helpers, complying with those rules needs to get easier—it also needs to get automated.

At the recent Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) Xponential conference in New Orleans, Amazon Prime Air Vice President Gur Kimchi outlined Amazon's vision for how that might look. Kimchi and Amazon propose an approach that uses "federated" traffic control—the sharing of information between air traffic control systems, operators, and drones themselves to enable a safer yet more crowded sky. The groundwork for such a system is already being laid—in part thanks to software developed by a Santa Monica, California, company called AirMap.

AirMap has released an application for Apple iOS that could make drone operations safer by directly connecting drone operators to airport operators and air traffic controllers. The app is built atop an Internet application interface that is also being used by drone manufacturers like DJI, 3D Robotics, Yuneec, and the commercial and military small UAS manufacturer Aeryon Labs. This setup allows users to integrate the same services directly into the software used to fly drones.

AirMap has already brought 75 airports onboard with the application, which gives airport managers a "dashboard" from which they can grant or withhold permission to fly and set specific automated policies for certain areas near their airports. Eventually, the software will let drone operators see each other as well as data about crewed aircraft on courses that might conflict.

The drone phone tree

Today, if you want to fly a drone in compliance with FAA rules, it's relatively easy—that is, as long as you're flying far from civilization, in visual line of sight, below controlled airspace, and nowhere above people or cars. Fly one anywhere else, and things get complicated.

Odds are that there's an FAA-designated airfield near you, whether it's an actual airport or the helipad at a local hospital. "In 2012," explained AirMap CEO and co-founder Ben Marcus, "congress passed a law—Section 336 of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act—which requires recreational operators of drones to give notice to airports and air traffic control when flying within five miles of an airport. So to give notice, you would pick up a telephone or knock on the airport manager's door and say, 'Hey, I'm going to fly over the 7-Eleven down the street.'"

Technically, the regulations apply even if you're flying a kite. (By the way, if you're flying your kite more than 150 feet up without proper lighting, this is also an FAA rule violation). At the park near my house, that means contacting 10 different entities—seven hospitals, a city water filtration plant, city police headquarters, and a hotel that occasionally allows helicopters to land on the roof of its parking garage. I know this mostly because of an "app" released by the FAA earlier this year called B4UFLY, intended to help drone owners become aware of things like temporary flight restrictions and the restricted airspace near airports. But B4UFLY doesn’t provide any way for would-be drone pilots to reach airports to get permission (not even phone numbers). All the app gives is a latitude and longitude for the location of the airports nearby.

The current system of contacting airports also ignores another important part of drone safety. While the FAA's air traffic control system may eventually provide data to other organizations, "in the interim there's a whole lot of other public safety entities that have an interest in drone safety," Marcus explained. He's not just referring to airports, but local police and other organizations need to be aware of what's in the air, who's flying it, and where it's flying. Currently there's also no easy way for drone operators to know when there's a change in the situation while they're flying—such as an emergency service helicopter barreling into their flight path.

So while the FAA's B4UFLY app and the collaborative program with AUVSI and the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) that spawned it are giving drone operators some very basic information, they're not exactly making the skies safe on their own. Drone safety, Marcus said, "starts with awareness for operators—giving them something that's easy to understand about where they can and can't fly safely, that's dynamic. It's similar to the B4UFLY concept, but we asked, 'How do we make that really useful?' That's how we started… we decided to look at how we go about building a safe and efficient operating environment for drones. The first element of that is awareness. And it's not just about how you display things on a map, but how you get that information into the hands of the operator."

There's an app (and an API) for that

The AirMap iOS application is available on iPhones and also has an Apple Watch add-on. It allows a drone pilot to create a profile, including a "library" of aircraft and contact information, to be used to send notifications of flights. The app collects geolocation data, gives a color-coded message about flight restrictions, and offers the drone pilot the ability to notify airports within five miles of flight plans simply through a tap on the screen.

more images in gallery

Everything that's in AirMap's iOS app is also available in the AirMap application programming interface and software developer kit. The goal, Marcus said, is that "you don't need to open another app—you can see the information with the app you're already using to fly your drone. So if you attempt to take off within five miles of an airport, you get a pop-up message asking if you'd like to provide notice."

AirMap's app for iOS.

On the other end, airport operations centers can plug into the AirMap system, called the Digital Notice and Awareness System (D-NAS). These groups will use a "dashboard" application that allows them to see all of the notifications within their operating area. "We launched that program with the American Association of Airport Executives recently," Marcus said. In total, 75 airports signed up as of the first week of May—and more are in the pipeline. The airports already using the system include Los Angeles International, Houston George Bush Intercontinental, Denver International, and a host of regional and small airports. "We're also trying to figure out how to make the dashboard useful for heliports as well—more for the helicopter pilots who are landing than for a tower," Marcus added.

more images in gallery

The dashboard gives airport operators "a realtime map of where notices have been provided" by drone pilots, Marcus explained. "They can also, as the airport operator, click on any of those flights to get information on the type of drone and the altitude it's flying at, and [they] can send an SMS message to the operator from the dash." That SMS message can be manually typed in or automated.

Additionally, the dashboard allows airport managers to set geo-fence-based rules that can automatically set an area as more permissive of drone flights or explicitly exclude drones from flying in the area (such as the approach paths being used for landing aircraft). On the drone operator side, that means the SMS messages approving flying can be used as a handy way to show police that, yes, they have permission to be flying.

Within the next month, AirMap will add traffic alerts to the iOS app and the API. These alerts are based on aircraft transponder data and other sources, and they will warn drone operators of aircraft that are coming into the airspace they're using. For airports and helipads currently not enrolled in the service, AirMap pulls contact data (including phone numbers) from the FAA's database—ironically, something the FAA neglected to do with its own app.

While AirMap has partnered with specific drone manufacturers, the API is available to anyone building their own drone. The iOS application (which will be followed shortly by an Android app) is intended largely to demonstrate the features of the API—which includes map tiling and other geo-spatial data independent of what's built into iOS or Android, Marcus said. "The second reason is so that we can allow people who do not have a drone built by one of these manufacturers to also participate in the system—if you're building a drone in your garage or flying something rudimentary, maybe even without GPS—you can still participate with the digital notice."

In robots we trust

While the AirMap app addresses operations within line of sight, future drones flying autonomously will need a whole additional layer of communication to operate safely. In particular, these devices will need drone-to-drone communication to help "deconflict" any potential collisions in more crowded skies. Again, Kimchi outlined Amazon's proposal for how this would work—a system in which services like AirMap would be part of a larger "federated" traffic control system, providing both rules for general drone traffic flow and automated alerts and responses to potentially dangerous situations.

These sorts of federated services are something Internet service developers like Amazon are already familiar with. But such setups are currently far outside the FAA's comfort zone, and this would require a cultural change in how the aviation industry views automation.

Kimchi remarked on the irony of how the aviation industry currently uses autopilots to land aircraft in foggy conditions when pilots can't see the runway, yet they don't trust the systems in good weather when the risk is lower. "We already trust the automation in the worst possible conditions, why don’t we trust it the rest of the time?” he told the AUVSI conference crowd. So when drones can both sense and avoid hazards and share data amongst themselves about such hazards, organizations like AirMap and Amazon believe UAVs will be able to fly safely in public airspace—doing so in much greater numbers.

This week, Walmart sued Visa in New York State Court, saying it wanted to be able to require PIN authorizations on all EMV debit card transactions. Although many debit card transactions already require a PIN to authorize purchases or withdrawals on that card, Visa makes its merchants give Visa card holders the option to authorize with a signature. Walmart is arguing that this puts its customers at risk for fraud.

Visa, Mastercard, and other card networks set an October 2015 deadline for merchants and card issuers in the US to shift to the chip-based EMV standard (which is eponymous for Europay, Mastercard, and Visa, the three groups that developed the standard). The transition was meant to replace the magnetic stripe cards that persisted for years in the US, even after other countries quickly made the transition to the more secure chip-based cards. Walmart made the transition early last year, becoming one of the first national retailers to buy new terminals that accepted EMV cards, the Wall Street Journal reports.

But even though the EMV standard accepts PIN authorization on all cards, the major card networks said they would allow signature authorization to persist in the US and not require PIN authorization, claiming that it would minimize confusion among customers who might have trouble adapting to the new standard. Others objected to the authorization leniency, arguing that signature authorization does nothing to prevent fraud against a card holder if their card is physically stolen.

In a statement to the WSJ, Walmart said that the suit was about “protecting our customers’ bank accounts when they use their debit cards at Walmart.” Still, the paper notes that there's a monetary side to Walmart's legal salvo as well—for every signature-authorized transaction, Walmart must pay Visa five cents more than it does on a PIN-authorized transaction. According to the WSJ, about 10 percent of Visa debit-card-using customers at Walmart will ask to override the PIN authorization prompt at the checkout counter in favor of authorizing the transaction with a signature.

Mastercard, on the other hand, lets retailers choose how they will allow customers to authorize transactions.

Walmart has fought against card networks and issuers for years. One of its most recent battles involved leading a consortium of retailers to create the Merchant Customer Exchange, known as MCX, which tried and failed to launch CurrentC, a system that would authorize payments to the store directly from a customer's checking account with the help of a QR code on the customer's phone, essentially circumventing the interchange fees paid by the retailer to the credit card companies. When CurrentC failed, Walmart launched Walmart Pay in a continued attempt to wrest control from mobile payment systems like Apple Pay and Android Pay.

Auch im zweiten Halbjahr 2016 erwartet Apple trotz des Starts eines neuen Smartphones ein schwächeres Geschäft. Ursache sei das Fehlen von bahnbrechenden neuen Funktionen im kommenden iPhone 7. (Apple, Prozessor)

There are a growing number of Windows tablets with support for digital pens that let you write or draw on the screen or hover the pen over the display to move an on-screen cursor or perform other actions. And Microsoft is building a whole new “Ink Workspace” experience which will roll out to users with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update this summer.

But figuring out which pen works with which tablet can be a bit of a pain, because you generally can’t use a Wacom pen on a tablet with N-Trig technology, or vice versa.

Continue reading Microsoft Pen Program could standardize pen design for Windows 10 devices at Liliputing.

NVIDIA launched an 8 inch Android tablet designed for gaming in 2014. Then the company re-launched the tablet with a new name, but similar specs (and a lower price tag) in late 2015.

Now it looks like a new NVIDIA Shield tablet is on the way. Maybe this time NVIDIA will put a new chip in the tablet.

An unannounced NVIDIA tablet showed up at the FCC website this week.

While the FCC documents are light on specs, here’s what we do know:

• It supports 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz 802.11ac WiFi.

Continue reading Next-gen NVIDIA Shield tablet leaked by the FCC? at Liliputing.

Welcome to the new Ars Technica! We know site redesigns are a lot like coming home from work and finding your living room rearranged, so we're very eager to hear from you about problems you encounter, what you think about new features, and anything else we might do to help your browsing/reading experience.

But first, here's some insight on our thought process behind the new design. Ars Technica has grown tremendously over the past five years. We are now reaching 17 million people monthly from all across the planet, and we are proud to say that we have done so not by focusing on quantity of content but quality. We prefer to grow our editorial staff without just creating "more" stuff. Many (most?) publications in the tech scene publish two to three times as much content as we do per day. This doesn't mean we won't try new things, though; in the past year, we've expanded space and health coverage, but we've done so by getting expert reporters like Eric Berger and Beth Mole to bring you the most important news—as opposed to wall-to-wall, wafer-thin coverage. We've opened Ars UK to much success, and have exciting plans for expanded coverage of Europe.

With today's redesign, we are embracing the fact that we do not want to be—and have never been—a place for quick hits and throwaway hot takes. Instead, we like to free up our writing staff to focus on the issues that matter most, at a depth and level that we find meaningful. Concomitant with that is our desire to present information in the most readable and attractive fashion, which we generally mean to be uncluttered, crisp, and well-designed.

In past redesigns, one design motivation really constrained us: information density. We'd measure our success, in part, by how many stories readers could see "above the fold"—ancient industry-speak for the first 600 or so vertical pixels. We have abandoned this goal for a few reasons. First, we want to more clearly and prominently display all of our work, not just some of it. Second, everyone is doing a lot of scrolling these days. While scrolling may have been an annoyance 15 years ago, it's now common on everything from phones to tablets to laptops. Lastly, monitor sizes and resolutions have exploded in recent years, and screen real estate is no longer particularly prized (outside of mobile, of course).

Ars Technica remains an outlier in the publishing world for many reasons, one of which is the simple fact that we have a tremendously strong front page readership. Most publications can't say they get most of their traffic from front page readers—that is, people who arrive at a homepage and then move around the site. Instead, most sites find themselves increasingly (and sometimes completely) reliant on social media and links from other sites in order to grow their traffic. We, on the other hand, have an audience that averages three visits a day to the front page. That meant it was time to look at the front page as a showcase for our work and to take a step back from the clutter-inducing strategies of the past.

Again, we're excited to hear what you think. It would be a great help if you could direct feedback to the right place so we can address the inevitable issues that pop up as quickly as possible. First, if something is clearly broken, please let us know about such bugs here. Second, if you see a missing feature or if there is a feature you think would be easy to build into this new design, feature request comments should go here. Finally, your general thoughts and feedback are welcome in the discussion below. Please note that we will not be monitoring this thread for bug reports and suggestions, however, so please consider where you leave your feedback.

This being our 18th year of existence, we've done quite a few redesigns (see 2004, 2010, or even our recent 2012 relaunch). We know that there will be bumps in the road in the days to come. We appreciate your help in resolving any issues, and we really hope you grow to love the new Ars Technica. We can't wait to also unveil some new site features—such as secure browsing—once we've ironed everything out in the coming weeks.

Nach Amazon Now startet nun auch bald Amazon Fresh in Berlin. Die Belieferung mit frischen Lebensmitteln ist für weitere Städte geplant. (Amazon, Kindle)