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(credit: Google)

Project Fi, Google's MVNO cellular service, launched last year with the unique ability to switch between multiple networks—T-Mobile and Sprint. Today Google announced that it is adding a third network into the mix—US Cellular. US Cellular is the fifth-largest carrier in the US, and Google says the company's LTE service in "23 states, both urban and rural" will be merged into the Project Fi network.

Project Fi uses special SIM cards and radios to work as a "network of networks." Fi-compatible phones measure the available connections from participating cellular networks and switch to the fastest one on the fly. With the new addition, Fi phones will now pick the fastest network from T-Mobile, Sprint, and US Cellular. The downside is that you actually need a Fi-compatible phone, which right now is the Nexus 6, 5X, and 6P.

The service also provides a ton of Internet-centric features, full functionality over Wi-Fi, online voicemail, texting from other devices via Google Hangouts, call forwarding, and a sweet mobile app. Voice and text on Fi is unlimited, and data charges work on a flexible system where users are only charged month-to-month for what they use, at a rate of $10 per 1GB.

The Liang Bua cave, with excavations in progress. (credit: Liang Bua Team)

The diminutive “hobbit” species, Homo floresiensis, was recently in the news because of a new analysis that suggested the species predated the arrival of modern humans to the region. But the discovery left a big unanswered question: how did the hobbit fit into the human family tree? A discovery described in today’s issue of Nature helps piece together more about the species’ history, shedding light on its ancestry and suggesting that it was present in Indonesia as early as 700,000 years ago.

When first found, the tiny bones discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores were dated to around 20 kya (20 thousand years ago). That date was revised earlier this year, placing them between 100 kya and 60 kya. Since modern humans probably moved through the region around 50 kya—and since other species of humans have tended not to last long once our own species moves into the neighborhood—the older dates helped to resolve the mystery of how the hobbits had lived alongside us for so long. Basically, they hadn’t.

Still, this left a lot of other questions open. How long did hobbits live on the island? If hobbits and modern humans coexisted for even a short period of time, is it possible that they shared some of their genes with us like Neanderthals did? The latter question depends partly on their ancestry—if hobbits descended from Homo erectus, its evolutionary distance from humans would make interbreeding unlikely. The new finding suggests that's the case.

Made in Space is developing a concept to turn an asteroid into a self-propelling spacecraft. (credit: Made in Space)

In his iconic science fiction novel Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke describes how humanity first mistakes a large inbound spacecraft for an asteroid and then interacts with the mysterious alien ship. The founders of Made in Space, a small company with big dreams of manufacturing materials in space, are clearly fans of the book, because they have named their latest venture Project RAMA.

Made in Space's plan seems like science fiction as well: the company wants to turn asteroids into spacecraft. No, really, this isn't the latest book from Neal Stephenson. The company is serious—and so, apparently, is NASA. The agency has agreed to pay as much as $100,000 to Made in Space to conduct a feasibility study on the concept. “This definitely is in the category of sci-fi inspired stuff,” agreed Spencer Pitman, head of product strategy, in an interview with Ars. “But it’s guided by a long-term vision of the future, of living and working in space.”

Made in Space is the company that has put two 3D printers on the International Space Station to serve both the needs of NASA and paying customers who want products printed in microgravity. But that’s just the beginning. The company’s goal is to pioneer the manufacturing of materials in space, using resources in space. So if you want to use the lunar regolith to build solar cells on the Moon or create concrete from Martian soil, they want to help.

(credit: Cyrus Farivar)

Lawyers for journalist Matthew Keys are set to appear before a federal judge in Sacramento, California, on Wednesday morning to ask that his upcoming self-surrender date be pushed back pending his appeal. During the same hearing, the judge is also likely to set how much money Keys must pay in restitution to his former employer, Fox 40 and Tribune Media.

The 29-year-old was convicted in 2015 of three counts of conspiracy and criminal hacking under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and was sentenced earlier this year to two years in prison. For now, Keys is due to report to federal prison in Lompoc, California, next week.

In a motion filed with the court on Tuesday, Tor Ekeland, one of Keys’ attorneys, noted that his client has consistently shown that "he is not a flight risk nor a dangerous threat to the community" and as such should be allowed to stay out of custody while his appeal is pending.

This teaser for the new Destiny expansion was taken down from the game's British site shortly after it was posted on Wednesday. (credit: Bungie)

Bungie fans knew that more news about the shooting game series Destiny was incoming this week, and a major nugget of that news landed a day earlier than expected—there may be an official plan to bid the last generation of gaming consoles farewell.

A Wednesday update to the game's British website loosed the name of the next Destiny expansion—Rise of Iron—along with its September 20 launch date. Clicking the promotional box for that news, which has a picture of an armor-clad hero wielding a flaming hammer (because, you know, video games) loads an outdated trailer for 2015's Taken King expansion, which leads us to believe that this information was accidentally posted ahead of a planned Thursday reveal via the game's official Twitch channel. In fact, as this article was going to press, the image was removed. A saved screenshot is posted above.

In addition, the promotional text box says the expansion will launch "for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One," which could mean one of two things: that the last generation of Destiny is officially over or that its release schedule has been deprioritized to get current-gen console owners their updates first. Last-gen Destiny players are still getting updates to the game at the same speed as current-gen players, but Bungie hasn't been shy about recommending that players make the next-gen jump at some point. In particular, last year's expansion forced such large memory requirements for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (whose most popular SKUs don't have giant hard drives) that Bungie made it a point to tell players how to transfer their progress and stats to new systems.

Yahoo headquarters in Barcelona, Spain. (credit: David Ramos/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Yahoo will auction off nearly 3,000 patents and pending patent applications, according to The Wall Street Journal.

News of the patent sale came late yesterday, not long after it was reported that Verizon is submitting a $3 billion bid for Yahoo's core Internet business. The sale of the core Web business will include about 500 US patents and more than 600 pending applications, separate from the larger group going in the standalone patent sale.

Yahoo moved 2,659 patents into a patent-holding company called Excalibur IP LLC, which was seen as a first step toward a patent sale.

Microsoft's Surface Book. (credit: Nathan Fitch)

Microsoft quietly rolled out a new way for business customers to buy Surface hardware yesterday: the Surface Membership Plan.

Spotted first by Paul Thurrott, the scheme allows Surface hardware, from the Atom-powered Surface 3 all the way up to the Surface Book, to be bought on a monthly price plan. The plan also includes the Surface service plan with accidental damage protection, offering repair and replacement for dropped or damaged hardware, and some amount of personal training. Prices range from $32.99/month for a bottom spec Surface 3 bought over 30 months, up to $220.99/month for a top spec Surface Book bought over 18 months. This works out at a premium of about $400-$500 as compared to buying the hardware and service plan outright.

Multiple systems can be bought through this scheme, allowing companies to buy a whole fleet of machines without requiring the initial up-front capital outlay, underscoring the business positioning of the payment plan.

The Parliament House in Singapore. (credit: TteckK)

Singapore is planning to take 100,000 government computers off the Internet in order to boost security, according to several news reports. Government employees who need Internet connectivity to do their jobs will have access to "dedicated Internet-linked terminals," but by default the civil servants won't be able to go online using government-issued devices, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency reported today.

Government employees have received a memo about the change, which is being phased in over the course of a year. "There are some 100,000 computers in use by the public service and all of them will be affected," The Straits Times wrote.

Singapore government websites were hacked by Anonymous in 2013, apparently in response to censorship regulations imposed on news sites. The latest security measure is reportedly aimed at preventing similar attacks and the spread of malware through e-mail.

(credit: MCX)

Shortly after Apple Pay launched in 2014, people began noticing that drug store chain Rite-Aid was pulling support for Apple Pay and Android Pay (then Google Wallet) at its cash registers. Although it was done without any fanfare, the reason for the pivot was that Rite-Aid was a member of the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), a consortium of retailers that included Walmart, BestBuy, and CVS, among others. MCX wanted the retailers and their customers to use its own payments app called CurrentC.

Now two years later, CurrentC is shutting down. The company wrote on its website that all user accounts would be deactivated June 28.

CurrentC had actually been in development since 2011, conceived as a way to break big retailers from the shackles of having to pay credit card companies interchange fees every time customers charged their bill to a card. As it was originally conceived, customers would link their checking and debit accounts directly to the app. When a user got to the cash register, the cashier would scan a QR code from the customer’s phone provided by the CurrentC app to authorize the payment.