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The US Capitol Building. (credit: House of Representatives)

The House of Representatives today approved a Republican proposal that limits the Federal Communications Commission's authority to regulate Internet providers.

The "No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act" was ostensibly proposed to prevent the FCC from setting the rates charged by Internet providers. But the bill defines "rate regulation" so broadly that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler says it could prevent the commission from enforcing net neutrality rules against blocking and throttling.

The FCC says it has no plans to impose strict utility rate regulation on Internet providers, but it can review whether specific rates are "unjust" or "unreasonable" under its authority to regulate common carriers. This bill would remove that authority and could also limit the FCC's authority to prevent ISPs from applying data caps in discriminatory ways.

Video shot/edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

The future of virtual reality beyond immersive gaming and 360-degree movie-watching is mysterious to say the least. At this year's Tribeca Film Festival, we're getting a taste of what devices like the Oculus Rift and Samsung's Gear VR could allow all kinds of creatives to do and the types of experiences we could have using this new medium.

The Storyscapes exhibition at the festival showcases a number of VR experiences and installations that all focus on interactive storytelling. We got to try out a few of them, using mostly the Gear VR headset, and in one case the consumer version of the Oculus Rift, and all of them manage to tell very different stories using the same VR medium. Oscar Raby's "The Turning Forest" is on the fanciful side of the spectrum, incorporating a tunnel-like forest installation and colorful animations to take you through an imaginary world. Meanwhile, other projects examine very real and raw parts of our society, like The Guardian's "6x9," which puts you in the position of an inmate in solitary confinement.

Group video chat without plugins is possible, just as long as everyone is using Edge. (credit: Microsoft)

Since November 2014, Microsoft has been working to build a plugin-free version of Skype that will run in the browser. That work took a step forward today, with support for no-plugin voice and video calling in Microsoft's Edge browser.

However, the support is quite limited. It requires the latest version of Edge, as shipped in Windows 10 version 1511 (build 10586). Both one-to-one and group chats are available in Edge-to-Edge calls without plugins, and one-to-one calls to the very latest version of Skype for Windows and OS X are also plugin-free. But any other combination—different browsers, older versions of Skype, or group calls to the desktop Skype clients—will still need a plugin.

Skype in the browser remains an awkward combination. There are two related specs within the browser for real-time communication (RTC), the earlier WebRTC, and the derived but different Object RTC. Edge has preliminary support for ORTC, and a JavaScript library to provide WebRTC compatibility for audio, but not video, has been developed. After long pushing back against WebRTC, Microsoft has said that it will build partial support for the specification into the browser to enable video support on top of audio in basic one-to-one situations.

Enlarge (credit: Ron Amadeo)

The second Android N Developer Preview came out this week, and while it brings support for Vulkan, new emojis, and a few UI tweaks, there are also a few references to virtual reality buried inside the new update.

The "VR helper services" screen.

It looks like apps will soon be able to register themselves as something called a "VR Listener" or "VR Helper." In the latest Android N you can see this by navigating to Settings -> Apps -> Configure apps (the gear button in the top right) -> Special Access -> VR helper services. It looks like this will work similarly to the "Notification Access" screen (used by Android Wear to bring notifications to a smartwatch)—the VR helper services screen will show a list of apps that plug into this API, and users can allow or deny the permission.

In the settings strings there's a permissions warning related to the VR service that states "[app name] will be able to run when you are using applications in virtual reality mode." It sounds like when Android kicks over into whatever this VR mode is, the helper app will be able to pop up and do... something. We're not sure what. We're also not sure how comprehensive this "Virtual Reality Mode" is.

It wasn't exactly what divers searching for sunken ships expect to find. When the Texel Divers Club glimpsed a package in the sand-buried remains of a sunken ship off the island of Texel in the Wadden Sea, they brought it to the surface—only to discover it held a wealthy lady's most prized possessions: a silk damask dress, velvet embroidered purse, perfume ball, lice comb, stockings, and books bound in beautiful leather.

Kaap Skil Museum

A lice comb made from cow horn.

6 more images in gallery

Preserved beneath a layer of sand since the 17th century, the dress was probably for everyday wear and was of a style frequently seen in paintings from the late Renaissance. Made of rich silk damask, it likely belonged to a woman of the upper classes. Despite its fanciness, experts believe it was for everyday wear because it wasn't beaded or embroidered with golden or silver threads. The woman's books were stamped with the emblem of King Charles I, of the Stuart royal family from England, which suggests she may even have been royalty. It's exceedingly rare to find such a well-preserved collection of textiles and makes this find one of the most important of its kind in Europe.

The find is also a boon for historians who want to understand what everyday life was like during this era. What we see in paintings is not always an accurate record of people's lives. Finding this cache of typical (albeit expensive) clothing verifies that privileged women of the era really did dress in the ways we might expect and carry tiny metal balls of scented, dried flowers to mask body odors that would have been common in a culture where people didn't bathe very often—and never got any medical remedies for all the funguses and bacterial infections that flourish on human bodies.

(credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Apple has a team of "about 100 employees" working on search improvements for the iOS App Store, according to a report from Bloomberg. Of the improvements being considered, the only one the report specifically calls out is a potential system by which app developers could pay Apple to feature their apps in search results, not unlike a service that Google rolled out for Google Play developers early last year.

On the one hand, this might bring some order to the current App Store discovery process. The Top Charts are habitually stocked with the same big-name apps, which are more likely to stay in the Top Charts because that's how many apps are discovered in the first place. Search results are often packed with clone and knockoff apps. Apple curates lists of apps, but developers can't just sit around and wait for that to happen. Being able to pay money to improve visibility at least creates a clear chain of cause and effect that developers have some level of control over.

That said, charging for visibility might not actually solve any of those problems. Those with the money to pay Apple's fees could well be the same big-name app developers whose software already dominates search results and the Top Charts. And making enough money from your app to make paying for search results worthwhile could still be contingent on getting into those Top Charts or onto one of Apple's curated lists somehow.

President Obama and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. (credit: White House)

President Obama today pledged support for the Federal Communications Commission effort to give cable TV customers a greater choice of set-top boxes. Shortly after, the top cable lobby group expressed its displeasure, saying the White House's statement "may be good politics, but it's bad government."

The White House published a blog post this morning saying that cable TV subscribers shouldn't have to spend "nearly $1,000 over four years to lease a set of behind-the-times boxes." Americans should "have options to own a device for much less money that will integrate everything they want—including their cable or satellite content, as well as online streaming apps—in one, easier-to-use gadget," the White House said.

The FCC in February approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would force pay-TV companies to provide content and programming information to makers of third-party hardware and applications. This would create a software-based replacement for CableCard, allowing other companies to build set-top boxes or mobile applications that display a pay-TV subscriber's channels without a physical CableCard.