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Acura

The wait is finally over—there's a new NSX in town.

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Press impressions of Acura's long-awaited second-generation NSX are starting to show up online. We've seen the two-seat, mid-engined hybrid at a couple of auto shows now, but a couple of weeks ago Honda and Acura started giving out a bit of seat time in production cars. (Ars wasn't at the event, but you can read impressions from Roadshow and SlashGear.)

The original NSX was built from 1990-2005, and it showed the world that Honda could build a better mid-engined sports car than Ferrari. Extensive use of aluminum and other lightweight materials kept the weight down, and its naturally aspirated engine was a gem of a power plant. The handling was reportedly honed by Ayrton Senna, who benefited from Honda power in his McLaren Formula 1 car. Automotive purists made it something of a cult car, especially the more focused Type R.

The new NSX is much more complex under the skin than the previous model. It still has a mounted V6 between the cockpit and the rear wheels (longitudinally rather than transversely), but the V6 has a pair of turbochargers—and 500hp (373kW). There are three electric motor/generator units; one for each front wheel (36hp/27kW) and third (47hp/35kW) that feeds into the same 9-speed dual-clutch transmission as the engine.

Update: Microsoft now claims that the FAQ update was "a mistake," and that bitcoin support isn't going anywhere after all.

Original story: A little over a year ago, Microsoft rolled out Bitcoin support for Microsoft accounts, enabling the crytpocurrency to be used to buy games, apps, music, and video on Xbox Live, Windows Store, and (as it was then) Xbox Music and Xbox Video.

Bitcoin users could add up to $100 to their accounts at a time, with BitPay providing the necessary back-end support.

Don't get too excited—this is just Remix OS. Imagine something similar, though.

One of Android N's headline features is a new split-screen mode that lets you run two apps side by side. It's a great multitasking feature for tablets, but it looks like Google is gearing up to take things one step further. We haven't been able to get it to work, but hidden in the code of Android N are references to an "experimental freeform windows" mode.

There are several references to this mode in "framework-res.apk"—a major Android system file. The most obvious references are these strings, which are meant for the settings screen:

<string name="enable_freeform_support">Enable freeform windows</string>
<string name="enable_freeform_support_summary">Enable support for experimental freeform windows.</string>

In the framework file, these strings are listed next to other settings in the "Developer Settings" screen, but we haven't been able to get the checkbox to actually appear. These exact strings pop up in a few other places, too, like the SystemUI and SetupWizard. The framework seems to be the main location, though. The framework also contains references for the new "close" and "maximize" buttons that a feature like this would require. The SystemUI gets in on the fun, too, with references to a "recents freeform workspace" (probably referencing the recent app list).

A small supermarket chain in Florida says that it has been ready for the shift to chip-based cards—but it can't get certified. (credit: Mike)

A Florida-based supermarket and liquor store chain has sued a variety of card networks and card issuers (PDF)—including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Wells Fargo, and a number of others—over a recent shift in credit card technology that took place in the US last fall.

While the rest of the world has been migrating from insecure, magnetic stripe cards to relatively more secure chip-embedded cards for more than a decade, card networks and card-issuing banks in the US are only now demanding that retailers stop running mag stripe cards in favor of EMV cards. (EMV is eponymous for EuroPay, MasterCard, and Visa, the three corporations that developed the chip card standard.) The card networks decided years ago that by October 1, 2015, all retailers had to accept chip cards. If retailers couldn’t accept chip cards, then any time someone fraudulently used a card to make a purchase at that retailer, the retailer would have to pay for the chargeback instead of the issuer paying for the chargeback, as is common.

The liability shift was supposed to be the stick that would incentivize business owners to buy new terminals to accept chip cards. But Florida’s B&R Supermarket, which owns Milam’s Market and Grove Liquors, says it did all that—it bought new NCR Equinox L5300 card readers “well prior to the Liability Shift," installed them, and trained its staff to use them. But it never got “EMV certified” by the card-network consortium that has been managing the rollout, despite having notified the card networks and issuers that B&R Supermarket companies were ready to be certified. B&R Supermarket charges that this delay is part of MasterCard and Visa’s plan to make small businesses pay for fraud liability as long as possible.

Enlarge / The Very Large Array radiotelescope. (credit: NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day)

The source of fast radio bursts (FRBs)—an extremely brief flash of radio waves coming from space—remains unknown despite new observations. These events, of which only 17 have been observed, are largely mysterious. Until now, there’s been little indication where in the Universe they take place, and consequently there’s been no way to know what physical process is causing the flashes.

But in quick succession, two papers have suggested that the FRBs either come from a single object that can create repeated bursts or that the bursts come from the catastrophic destruction of a neutron star and thus can't possibly repeat. Just as quickly, the second results, which placed the source outside our galaxy, have been called into question.

As far back as the first FRB’s discovery in 2007, there was some indication that the source was outside the Milky Way. There was a difference in the arrival time at different wavelengths. The shortest radio waves arrived slightly earlier than their longer wavelength counterparts.

Richard Clarke, former White House cybersecurity czar, says the government has always put limits on what it would do to fight terrorism, and the FBI's demands of Apple overstep them. (credit: Aude)

Another former national security official has spoken out forcefully against the FBI's quest to get Apple to write code to unlock the iPhone 5c used by San Bernardino mass shooter Syed Farook. Richard Clarke served as the National Security Council's chief counter-terrorism advisor to three presidents (George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush) before becoming George W. Bush's special advisor on cybersecurity. He told National Public Radio's David Greene today that "encryption and privacy are larger issues than fighting terrorism," taking issue with the FBI's attempts to compel Apple's assistance.

Clarke added that if he was still at the White House, he would have told FBI Director James Comey to "call Ft. Meade, and the NSA would have solved this problem…Every expert I know believes that NSA can crack this phone." But the FBI wasn't seeking that help, he said, because "they just want the precedent."

Clarke explained that the FBI was trying to get the courts to essentially compel speech from Apple with the All Writs Act. "This is a case where the federal government using a 1789 law trying to compel speech. What the FBI is trying to do is make code-writers at Apple, to make them write code that they do not want to write that will make their systems less secure," he said. "Compelling them to write code. And the courts have ruled in the past that computer code is speech."