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Enlarge (credit: Rocket League / Aurich Lawson)

Sometime "this summer," the popular car-soccer video game Rocket League will become fully free to play on all existing platforms. In order to pull this off, however, the game's publishers at Epic Games are making a curious change to its PC version: it will be delisted from Steam.

If you have not already purchased the game's existing PC version, priced at $19.99, the only way to claim its free version once it launches will be through the Epic Games Store. Tuesday's announcement from game developer Psyonix did not include a firm estimate of when this "summer" switchover will happen, and Psyonix representatives did not confirm a time frame when asked directly by Ars—so if you don't already own the game and feel wedded to Steam, consider this a final "summer" warning. Anyone who has already purchased the game on Steam will still be able to download and play the free-to-play version through that interface—and receive updates, patches, and access to existing content and unlocks.

“Long-term plans” are here today

Existing players on any platform (Steam, EGS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One) who pay for and log in to Rocket League before its F2P transition will receive a bundle of free "Legacy" content, mostly consisting of new and existing cosmetic options for the game's roster of cars. (This means owners of the game's disc version must log in ASAP to claim said goodies; after the switchover, your paid disc copy of the game won't trigger any special status.) This includes a few packs of cars and decorations that used to be sold as traditional DLC, before Rocket League delisted all discrete DLC packs in favor of an in-game, Fortnite-like store full of limited-time sales options.

Enlarge / A telephone in a prison. (credit: Getty Images | Image Source)

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is urging state governments to impose price caps on prison phone calls, three years after Pai helped kill Obama-era FCC rules that limited the price of such calls.

Pai yesterday sent a letter to the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), saying it is up to state governments to cap intrastate calling prices because the FCC lacks authority to do so. (NARUC represents state utility regulators.) Pai wrote:

Given the alarming evidence of egregiously high intrastate inmate calling rates and the FCC's lack of jurisdiction here, I am calling on states to exercise their authority and, at long last, address this pressing problem. Specifically, I implore NARUC and state regulatory commissions to take action on intrastate inmate calling services rates to enable more affordable communications for the incarcerated and their families.

Pai's letter did not mention that his own actions helped cement the status quo in which the FCC does not regulate intrastate prices. It's well-established that the FCC can regulate interstate rates, those affecting calls that cross state lines. Pai is even proposing to lower the FCC-imposed rate caps on interstate calls from 25¢ to 16¢ per minute in an order the FCC will vote on next month. But Pai's plan doesn't limit prices on intrastate calls, those in which the prisoner and the person on the other end of the line are in the same state.

Enlarge / Who needs the letter "B" when you can have a jolly roger? (credit: Brasil2 | Getty Images)

A federal appeals court has upheld a ruling that site hosts are not liable for copyright infringement committed by the sites they host, so long as they take the "simple measures" of forwarding claims to the site owner.

The ruling follows a legal battle between adult content company ALS Scan and site hosting service Steadfast. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2 to 1 on Friday (PDF) that even though ALS has a "whack-a-mole problem" with pirated content popping up on Imagebam, a site Steadfast hosts, the host did its part to prevent the piracy.

Working as intended

A copyright owner, such as ALS, can file a claim against a site, such as Imagebam, that is unlawfully sharing its copyrighted content. That often means sending notice to the site host—the entity you'd find listed in a whois search—about it. The host, in this case Steadfast, is then required to forward the notice along to the site owner and check that the site owner does in fact take the content down.

Enlarge / Phthalocyanine, the big molecule used in these experiments. (credit: Wikipedia)

Wave-particle duality is a fundamental fact of the Universe. But we don't see many objects moving around as waves. This is why it hurts when a golf ball hits you on the head: you and the golf ball are both behaving like particles.

In principle, that wave-like nature is there to be observed. Researchers have now demonstrated that with a couple of relatively heavy, complicated molecules.

Wave to me

The wave-particle debate started out in the time of Isaac Newton. Water waves were just beginning to be understood, and a series of experiments revealed that light had more to it than meets the eye. So is light a stream of particles or a wave? The debate raged on until Thomas Young presented the results of his classic double slit experiment in 1803, showing that light is a wave.

Enlarge / This almost fully-assembled shot of the Kano PC lacks only the back cover and the magnetically-connected folio case with keyboard and touchpad. (credit: Jim Salter)

Last week, we covered the launch of Kano's new Windows-powered build-it-yourself PC. The Kano PC is an extremely chunky 11.6" tablet/laptop form factor PC with both specs and a $300 price similar to low-end Chromebooks—but instead of running ChromeOS, it offers a full Windows 10 experience.

This isn't our first rodeo with extremely low-cost PCs, which sometimes disappoint us beyond the level their meager specs imply. With a dual-core, 1.1GHz Celeron CPU, 4GiB of RAM, and eMMC storage, it's clear enough on paper that the Kano PC won't be anybody's first choice for a "serious laptop"—but the real question is whether it credibly competes with similarly specified Chromebooks. The answer is "absolutely."

Our only real issue with the Kano PC has nothing to do with performance but with the extremely funky form factor, which both raises and answers the question: "What if tablet, but 2.5 times thicker and heavier?"

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by another sweeping round of deals on Amazon devices, with a variety of Fire TV media streamers, Kindle e-readers, and Fire tablets all discounted.

The sale's most notable discounts include a few all-time low prices on Fire HD tablets. The 10.1-inch 1080p Fire HD 10, for instance, is down to a joint-low of $100, which is a $50 discount for Amazon's most powerful slate. All three of the company's new Fire HD 8 tablets are down to new lows as well: the base Fire HD 8—which now includes 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and a faster processor—is down to $60 from its usual $90, while the upgraded Fire HD 8 Plus—which comes with a USB-C port a la the Fire HD 10, 3GB of RAM, and wireless charging support—is down to $80 from its usual $110. Each of the company's rugged Kids Edition tablets is down to the lowest prices we've seen as well, while the Fire 7 is down to $35 for those who want to pay as little as possible for a touchscreen. You'll still have to deal with the limitations of Amazon's Fire OS with any of these devices, but if you just want a competent device for browsing the Web and streaming videos, the higher-end Fire tablets in particular are still decent value.

Elsewhere, our favorite ebook reader, the Kindle Paperwhite, is down to $100, while our favorite budget ebook reader, the standard Kindle, is available for $70. Neither of these deals is the best we've seen, and both Kindles will almost certainly drop lower during Amazon's Prime Day event. But if you need an e-reader today, these are $30 and $20 discounts, respectively, for devices worth considering. It's a similar situation for the Fire TV Stick 4K, which is currently down to $35; this deal is $10 off the prices we saw on Prime Day and Black Friday, but it's a solid $15 drop for a 4K HDR media streamer we recommend.

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  "Every component on this car is a piece of engineering art, and the engine is no exception. I wanted the engine to look like a modern interpretation of a 1960s V12. If it wasn’t the beating heart of the T.50 it would make a fabulous, sculptural modern-art installation," says designer Gordon Murray. [credit: Gordon Murray Automotive ]

For car nerds of a certain age, few cars compare to the McLaren F1. Back in 1994, the car rewrote the rules, even in the midst of a supercar boom that gave us machines like the Jaguar XJ220 and the Bugatti EB110. At around a million dollars (£640,000), its price tag was almost as unbelievable as its specifications—an all carbon fiber construction, a hand-built V12, acceleration that was unheard of outside the race track, and a top speed north of 240mph (386km/h).

Nearly three decades later, its designer Gordon Murray is hard at work on a sequel to this legendary vehicle. It's going to be called the T.50, and we'll get our first official look at it when it's revealed next month. But in the meantime, Gordon Murray Automotive and Cosworth have released some details on the T.50's engine, which they describe as "the greatest road-car V12 ever made."

When he was at McLaren in the '90s, Murray turned to his friend Paul Rosche at BMW to build the F1's bespoke engine. This time, the job went to Cosworth, which first rose to recognition when it revolutionized Formula 1 in the 1960s with the DFV engine.