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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Lawyers representing a Southern California limousine company that sued Uber last month over state unfair competition allegations have now filed a motion for partial summary judgement. If the filing is granted by the judge, the motion would substantially streamline the case and answer the vexing question: are Uber drivers employees or not? The proposed class-action lawsuit, known as Diva Limousine v. Uber, relies on a recently decided California Supreme Court decision that makes it more difficult for companies to unilaterally declare their workers as contractors, which effectively deprives them of benefits that they would otherwise receive as employees.

In the California Supreme Court case, known as Dynamex, that court came up with a three-part test, known as the ABC test, to figure out whether companies can assert contractor status or not: "(A) that the worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact, (B) that the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity's business, and (C) that the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business, the worker should be considered an employee and the hiring business an employer under the suffer or permit to work standard in wage orders." "The standard for summary judgement is that there is no triable issue of material facts. That seems to be the case here," says Professor Veena Dubal of the University of California, Hastings, which is just blocks from Uber's headquarters in San Francisco.

"Under Dynamex, workers are likely employees for purposes of minimum wage and overtime if they perform work that is within the usual course of the hiring entity's business. Uber drivers provide rides, and Uber is a transportation company that facilitates the provision of those rides. I have a hard time imagining how Uber can argue that there is a triable issue of fact here, although I am confident that they will argue that they are a software company. They have lost that argument in courts across the world."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An energy development group has been working for years to put together Ohio's first offshore wind project. That might sound odd for a state so far from the sea, but the benefits of offshore wind (strong, consistent gusts and relative proximity to major population centers) translate to wind turbines that are placed in freshwater, too. Consequently, an area eight miles off Ohio's Lake Erie coastline is slated to see six new 3.45 megawatt (MW) turbines as part of a 20.7MW pilot installation. On Thursday, the Department of Energy (DOE) issued an Environmental Assessment stating that proceeding with the plan would not cause any "impact to the human environment." In an additional finding published by the DOE this week, the department added that it did not believe that the offshore wind project would cause significant damage to migratory birds, either. Finally, the DOE proposed an unspecified amount of funding for the project, which will be the first freshwater offshore wind project in the US and one of the first offshore wind projects overall. The Lake Erie Energy Department Corporation (LEEDCo) and Norwegian investor Fred Olsen Renewables (FOR) will be developing the "Icebreaker" project, as the turbine installation has been called. "Interestingly, the turbines will be secured to the lake using a 'Mono Bucket' foundation, with a suction-based design that's similar to what's been used on offshore oil-drilling platforms in the North Sea," reports Ars. "The design, LEEDCo says, uses 'the best and lowest-cost technology for sites 25 meters and less.'"

After it was revealed that Vizio was tracking customers' viewing habits and sharing that data with advertisers, a class-action lawsuit was filed against the company. Now, Ars Technica is reporting that "lawyers representing Vizio TV owners have asked a federal judge in Orange County, California to sign off on [the settlement] with the company for $17 million, for an affected class of 16 million people, who must opt-in to get any money." The company "also agrees to delete all data that it collected." From the report: Notice of the lawsuit will be shown directly on the Vizio Smart TVs, three separate times, as well as through paper mailings. When it's all said and done, new court filings submitted on Thursday say each of those 16 million people will get a payout of somewhere between $13 and $31. By contrast, their lawyers will collectively earn a maximum payout of $5.6 million in fees.

Eventually, the company agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle a complaint brought by the Federal Trade Commission. However, this new settlement is related to an entirely separate lawsuit, one that was consolidated in federal court in southern California. This $17 million amount is more than Vizio made by licensing the data collected, according to a source with knowledge of the deal.

Last month when Boeing and SpaceX announced the first astronauts who will fly on their commercial crew spacecraft, several newspapers across the U.S. began publishing an op-ed that criticized the process by which Boeing competitor SpaceX fuels its Falcon 9 rocket. "The first op-ed appeared in a Memphis newspaper a week before the commercial crew announcement," reports Ars Technica. "In recent weeks, copies of the op-ed have also appeared in the Houston Chronicle, various Alabama newspapers, Albuquerque Journal, Florida Today, and The Washington Times." Ars Technica reports: All of these op-eds were bylined by "retired spacecraft operator" Richard Hagar, who worked for NASA during the Apollo program and now lives in Tennessee. (Based upon his limited social media postings, Hagar appears to be more interested in conservative politics than in space these days). Each op-ed cites Hagar's work on NASA's recovery from the Apollo 1 fire and the hard lessons NASA learned that day about human spaceflight. The pieces then pivot to arguing that SpaceX's load-and-go fueling process -- in which the crew will board the Dragon spacecraft on top of the Falcon 9 rocket before it is fueled -- ignores the lessons that Hagar's generation learned during Apollo.

"It's concerning to learn that some of the newer private space ventures launching today don't appreciate the same safety standards we learned to emphasize on Apollo," the op-ed states. "I suppose for Mr. Musk, inexperience is replacing the abundant safety protocols drilled into us after witnessing the Apollo 1 disaster. Astronaut safety is NASA's number one priority on any space mission. There is no reason it should not be for private space travel, but commercial space companies like SpaceX play by different rules."

There are some factual inaccuracies here. For one thing, SpaceX does play by the same rules as Boeing for commercial crew -- astronaut safety rules that NASA itself wrote. Moreover, NASA has already provisionally cleared load-and-go for Falcon 9 launches that will send the Dragon spacecraft into orbit. To try to understand his viewpoint, Ars attempted to reach Hagar by phone and email in September. In the course of this process, we learned that he did not actually submit many of these op-eds. In fact, based upon our research, at least four of the six op-eds that we located were submitted by two people with gmail.com addresses. Their names were Josh Brevik and Casey Murray. Further research revealed that two people with these names worked as "associates" at a Washington, DC-based public relations firm named Law Media Group or LMG. LMG's website says they are a 15-year-old firm that "develops and executes public-, Hill-, and agency-facing issue advocacy campaigns that shift the narrative in a changing world." The SourceWatch website more bluntly "calls LMG a 'secretive Washington DC public affairs firm' with a history of placing op-eds, and it seeks to mask the op-eds' financial sponsors," reports Ars.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Swiss company Climeworks has announced the opening of a new plant in Italy that will collect carbon dioxide (CO2) from ambient air and pair it with renewably-made hydrogen (H2) to make methane fuel that would add little or no CO2 to the atmosphere. The plant in Troia, Italy, was completed in July and went into operation this week as part of a research program funded by the European Union. The new Italian plant will be run for more than 4,000 hours over the next 17 months (that's just under eight hours a day) in order to demonstrate the viability of fuel production as a potential revenue source for carbon capture. Gebald said that pure, captured CO2 could even be processed into jet fuel. When that fuel is burned, he said, it would again create CO2 that could be captured at an arbitrary Direct Air Capture plant and turned back into jet fuel.

The plant consists of three air collectors that are more energy efficient than Climeworks' first ambient air collector. "The plant will filter up to 150 tons of CO2 from ambient air per year," Climeworks said in a press statement. "Simultaneously, an alkaline electrolyser (1.2 MW) locally generates 240 cubic meters of renewable hydrogen per hour by making use of excess on-site photovoltaic energy." A catalyst then combines the CO2 and the hydrogen into methane gas in a reactor built by a French company called Atmostat. The methane "is then liquified and used to fuel natural gas lorries," Climeworks says. As Ars notes, Climeworks' previous carbon-capture plant "captured carbon out of ambient air using a filter of base amines that would bind with more acidic CO2." The carbon that was captured was then sent to a greenhouse to speed plant growth.

"The second was based in Iceland at a geothermal plant that released some volcanic CO2," reports Ars. "Climeworks' small plant captures that carbon and injects it back into the ground, where mineral reactions help the CO2 bind with basalt, essentially storing the gas as a rock."

Alphabet's Waymo is launching a driverless taxi service in Phoenix in the next three months -- and it's open to the public. But due to the limited regulations surrounding self-driving cars, many critics argue that more regulations are needed to ensure the safety of these vehicles before they roll out for public and commercial use. Ars Technica reports: If a company wants to sell a new airplane or medical device, it must undergo an extensive process to prove to federal regulators that it's safe. Currently, there's no comparable requirement for self-driving cars. Federal and state laws allow Waymo to introduce fully self-driving cars onto public streets in Arizona without any formal approval process. That's not an oversight. It represents a bipartisan consensus in Washington that strict regulation of self-driving cars would do more harm than good.

Mary "Missy" Cummings, an engineering professor at Duke, agrees. "I don't think there should be any driverless cars on the road," she tells Ars. "I think it's unconscionable that no one is stipulating that testing needs to be done before they're put on the road." But so far these advocates' demands have fallen on deaf ears. Partly that's because federal regulators don't want to slow the introduction of a technology that could save a lot of lives in the long run. Partly it's because they believe that liability concerns give companies a strong enough incentive to behave responsibly. And partly it's because no one is sure how to regulate self-driving cars effectively. When it comes to driverless cars, "there's no consensus on what it means to be safe or how we go about proving that," says Bryant Walker Smith, a legal scholar at the University of South Carolina.

Honda announced today that it is investing $750 million in Cruise, the self-driving car startup whose majority shareholder is General Motors. The automotive company is also planning to invest $2 billion over the next 12 years to develop and manufacture self-driving cars based on Cruise's software. Ars Technica reports: Honda has been working on autonomous vehicles since at least 2015, but progress has been slow. In 2015, the company said it hoped to have a partially self-driving car ready by 2020 but that a fully self-driving car won't be ready until the 2030s. In 2017, Honda said it was aiming to offer freeway-only self-driving capabilities in 2020 and then reach "level 4" capability -- cars that are fully self-driving, but only in certain locations and weather conditions -- by 2025. That compares unfavorably to Waymo, which is planning to launch a level 4 taxi service this year. Cruise is aiming to launch a level 4 taxi service next year. Honda's new plan is to build self-driving cars based on Cruise's hardware and software designs. So far, Cruise has focused on modifying the Chevy Bolt for autonomous capabilities. But this new Honda vehicle will be designed from the ground up for autonomous operation.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime appeared at Seattle's Geekwire Summit on Wednesday to speak broadly about the company's future, and, while the talk didn't include new product reveals, it proved illuminating about what to expect from the big N in the future. The short version: Nintendo would rather be defined as an "entertainment" company, not a gaming one. Fils-Aime says the company currently has three "pieces of business": a dedicated video game business ("the way most of our consumers interact with us"), a mobile gaming business, and "leveraging our intellectual property (IP) in a variety of ways." The latter includes previously announced plans for a Universal Studios attraction in Osaka, Japan (still slated to open ahead of Tokyo's next Olympics hosting run in 2020) and a Super Mario film produced by Illumination Entertainment (Minions, Despicable Me). When asked about Nintendo's future focus on a company-wide level, Fils-Aime said: "It's about Mario, Zelda, Pokemon -- all these wonderful intellectual properties. How we leverage these across a variety of entertainment platforms is how we're looking to grow the company."

He went on to say that he doesn't see Xbox and PlayStation as competitors. Ars reports: "He counted the exact number of minutes per day and said that outside of the time a consumer spends eating, sleeping, working, and going to school, 'all of the rest of that time is entertainment time. That's what I compete for, minute by minute. That time you spend surfing the Web, watching a movie, watching a telecast of a conference: that's all entertainment time we're competing for. My competitive set is much bigger than my direct competitors in Sony and Microsoft. I compete for time. When I do that, I have to be creative and innovative in order to win that battle.'"

Cities are planning to sue the Federal Communications Commission over its decision to preempt local rules on deployment of 5G wireless equipment. From a report: Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and City Attorney Pete Holmes yesterday said their city intends to appeal the FCC order in federal court. Seattle will be coordinating with other cities on a lawsuit, they said. "In coordination with the overwhelming majority of local jurisdictions that oppose this unprecedented federal intrusion by the FCC, we will be appealing this order, challenging the FCC's authority and its misguided interpretations of federal law," they said in a press release.

The FCC says its order will save carriers $2 billion, less than one percent of the estimated $275 billion it will take to deploy 5G across the country. In Oregon, the Portland City Council voted Tuesday to approve a lawsuit against the FCC, The Oregonian reported, saying the move "added Portland to a growing list of cities, primarily on the West Coast, that are preparing to fight" the FCC order. East Coast cities including New York City and Boston have also objected to the FCC decision. As we've previously reported, the FCC order drew opposition from rural municipalities as well.

Four lobby groups representing the broadband industry today sued California to stop the state's new net neutrality law. From a report: The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of California by mobile industry lobby CTIA; cable industry lobby NCTA; telco lobby USTelecom; and the American Cable Association, which represents small and mid-size cable companies. Together, these four lobby groups represent all the biggest mobile and home Internet providers in the US and hundreds of smaller ISPs . Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile US, Sprint, Cox, Frontier, and CenturyLink are among the groups' members. "This case presents a classic example of unconstitutional state regulation," the complaint said. The California net neutrality law "was purposefully intended to countermand and undermine federal law by imposing on [broadband] the very same regulations that the Federal Communications Commission expressly repealed in its 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom Order." ISPs say the California law impermissibly regulates interstate commerce. "[I]t is impossible or impracticable for an Internet service provider ("ISP") offering BIAS to distinguish traffic that moves only within California from traffic that crosses state borders," the lobby groups' complaint said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The practice of "swatting," or calling in fake threats to activate an aggressive police response to an unwitting home or business, has unfortunately lingered for the past few years. Starting this week, one police department in the United States is rolling out a system targeted directly at this illegal hoax practice. On its official "swatting" resource site, the Seattle Police Department acknowledges how swatting works, along with the fact that citizens have requested a way to submit their own concerns or worries about being a potential victim. "To our knowledge, no solution to this problem existed, so we engineered one," SPD's site reads. The site claims that swatting victims are "typically associated with the tech industry, video game industry, and/or the online broadcasting community."

SPD's process asks citizens to create a profile on a third-party data-management service called Rave Facility (run by the company Smart911). Though this service is advertised for public locations and businesses, it supports private residences as well, and SPD offers steps to input data and add a "swatting concerns" tab to your profile. With that information in hand, SPD says that any police or 911 operator who receives a particularly troubling emergency report and matches it to a location that has already been flagged with a "swatting concerns" notice, will share that information "with first responders to inform and improve their police response to the incident." The report notes that "all calls" will still receive standard police response, whether or not any swatting concerns are filed. "Nothing about this solution is designed to minimize or slow emergency services," the site reads. "At the same time, if information is available, it is more useful for responding officers to have it than to not."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A lone engineer has succeeded in doing what Uber's top lawyers and expert witnesses could not -- overturning most of a foundational patent covering arch-rival Waymo's lidar laser ranging devices. Following a surprise left-field complaint by Eric Swildens, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has rejected all but three of 56 claims in Waymo's 936 patent, named for the last three digits of its serial number. The USPTO found that some claims replicated technology described in an earlier patent from lidar vendor Velodyne, while another claim was simply "impossible" and "magic." The 936 patent played a key role in last year's epic intellectual property lawsuit with Uber. In December 2016, a Waymo engineer was inadvertently copied on an email from one of its suppliers to Uber, showing a lidar circuit design that looked almost identical to one shown in the 936 patent.

The patent describes how a laser diode can be configured to emit pulses of laser light using a circuit that includes an inductor and a gallium nitride transistor. That chance discovery helped spark a lawsuit in which Waymo accused Uber of patent infringement and of using lidar secrets supposedly stolen by engineer Anthony Levandowski. In August 2017, Uber agreed to redesign its Fuji lidar not to infringe the 936 patent. Then, in February 2018, Waymo settled the remaining trade secret theft allegations in exchange for Uber equity worth around $245 million and a commitment from Uber not to copy its technology. "This includes an agreement to ensure that any Waymo confidential information is not being incorporated in Uber hardware and software," said a Waymo spokesperson at the time. That redesign now seems to have been unnecessary, says Swildens, the engineer who asked the USPTO to take a closer look at 936. "Waymo's claim that Uber infringed the 936 patent was spurious, as all the claims in the patent that existed at the time of the lawsuit have been found to be invalid," he said. Uber told Ars that despite the ruling, it would not be redesigning its lidars yet again. Swildensj, an employee at a small cloud computing startup, reportedly "spent $6,000 of his own money to launch a formal challenge to 936," reports Ars. "In March, an examiner noted that a re-drawn diagram of Waymo's lidar firing circuit showed current passing along a wire between the circuit and the ground in two directions -- something generally deemed impossible. 'Patent owner's expert testimony is not convincing to show that the path even goes to ground in view of the magic ground wire, which shows current moving in two directions along a single wire,' noted the examiners dryly."

"As I investigated the 936 patent, it became clear it was invalid due to prior art for multiple reasons," Swildens told Ars. "I only filed the reexamination because I was absolutely sure the patent was invalid."

Cloudflare, which is celebrating its eighth birthday has announced yet another service: an at-cost domain registrar. From a report: While Cloudflare had already been handling domain registration through the company's Enterprise Registrar service, that service was intended for some of Cloudflare's high-end customers who wanted extra levels of security for their domain names. The new domain registrar business -- called Cloudflare Registrar -- will eventually be open to anyone, and it will charge exactly what it costs for Cloudflare to register a domain. As Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince wrote in a blog post this week, "We promise to never charge you anything more than the wholesale price each TLD charges." That includes the small fee assessed by ICANN for each registration.

Prince said that he was motivated to take the company into the registrar business because of Cloudflare's own experience with registrars and by the perception that many registrars are in the business mostly to up-sell things that require no additional effort. "All the registrar does is record you as the owner of a particular domain," Prince said. "That just involves sending some commands to an API. In other words, domain registrars are charging you for being a middle-man and delivering essentially no value to justify their markup." Charging overhead for that sort of service, Prince said, "seemed as nutty to us as certificate authorities charging to run a bit of math." (Cloudflare also provides free SSL certificates.)

AmiMoJo writes: Apple has released more details about how the Watch 4 will contact emergency services if the watch detects that you've had a hard fall. If the watch detects that the wearer is "immobile for about a minute," it begins a 15-second countdown. After that, the Watch will contact emergency services.

Elizabeth Joh, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, was quick to point out that, by inviting the police into your home, Apple Watch wearers may be opening themselves up to criminal liability. If police are alerted by an Apple Watch of a possible injury, they do not need a warrant to enter a home under the "community caretaking" exception to the Fourth Amendment.

Any evidence of a crime in plain view (e.g. a joint) could land the owner in trouble.
The article notes the "(mostly) opt-in nature" of the service, though one New York-based criminal defense attorney had an even better idea.

He said he "would much prefer a feature that can automatically dial a user-determined contact."

AmiMoJo shares a report from Ars Technica: Today, roughly 25 percent of the European Union's power currently comes from nuclear sources, with coal and gas each delivering a little above 20 percent. Wind constitutes 10 percent of the European Union's energy mix. But by 2027, IEA's forecasts (PDF) put wind just beating all other electricity sources with a 23-percent share of the energy mix. "Other Renewables" like biomass plants contribute a little over 20 percent, gas adds 20 percent, nuclear contributes just a little below 20 percent, and coal declines to just over 10 percent. Solar energy contributes about six or seven percent in the IEA's 2027 scenario. The European Union has a wealth of wind energy, especially offshore wind energy, a sector in which the EU is the global leader. Offshore wind allows turbines to be built bigger, and coastal winds are often stronger and more consistent than onshore winds. [The IEA forecasts 200 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity by 2040.]

During a talk at the Oculus Connect conference today, Oculus' CTO, John Carmack, compared the company's newly announced Oculus Quest headset to the Xbox 360 and PS3 in terms of power. Ars Technica reports: That doesn't mean the Quest, which is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC, can generate VR scenes comparable to those seen in Xbox 360 or PS3 games, though. As Carmack pointed out, most games of that generation targeted a 1280x720 resolution at 30 frames per second. On Quest, the display target involves two 1280x1280 images per frame at 72fps. That's 8.5 times as many pixels per second, with additional high-end anti-aliasing effects needed for VR as well. "It is not possible to take a game that was done at a high-quality level [on the Xbox 360 or PS3] and expect it to look good in VR," Carmack said. Expecting Rift-level performance from a self-contained mobile headset like the quest isn't realistic, Carmack said, partly for simple electrical reasons. While a high-end gaming PC often draw up to 500 watts of power, Carmack said the Quest only uses about 5W, a tidbit that should be of benefit to the Quest's still unconfirmed battery-life statistics.

That relative lack of hardware power is going to require some developers to adopt "a different programming style that's been necessary on the PC," Carmack warned. "With a modern PC, you have so much extra power, you don't need to be a hotshot programmer to make a game people love. You don't really have that convenience on any mobile platform, really, but especially not on our platform." That's not an insurmountable problem, Carmack suggested, as long as developers focus on the dozen or so things that players really need to concentrate on in an average game, rather than "thousands" of pieces of graphical fluff. He suggested developers look back to the lessons of platforms like the original PlayStation and Nintendo DS to see how developers crafted memorable experiences on much less-powerful hardware. Carmack went on to say that "realistically, we're going to end up competing with the Nintendo Switch... they'll pick up Quest as [a] mobile device, just like Switch."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In a Tuesday interview with Bloomberg, the head of Panasonic's Automotive Division said that the company was on track to complete an additional three battery-cell production lines at Tesla's Nevada Gigafactory before the end of this year. That puts the expansion ahead of schedule for completion. Panasonic is a joint owner of the Gigafactory. The company provides the "2170" battery cells that go into a Model 3 battery pack. Tesla packages those cells to complete the pack. In the interview, Panasonic automotive executive Yoshio Ito told Bloomberg that "the bottleneck for Model 3 production has been our batteries." Ito added, "they just want us to make as many as possible."

In short, more battery cells rolling off more lines at the Gigafactory are good for Model 3 production only if the manufacturing process gets smoother. There's evidence that this is happening, as the company was able to sell more than 28,000 Model 3s in the second quarter of 2018, albeit at the slight expense of Model S and Model X production. The three new Panasonic lines will bring the number of cell-producing lines up to 13, Bloomberg wrote. Ito told the news service that Tesla is currently using all of its Gigafactory capacity to produce vehicle batteries, despite initially planning to reserve 30 percent of its capacity to build stationary storage batteries like Powerwalls and Powerpacks. That has played out in long-delayed Powerwall installations.

After more than a century of slicing tiny, inflamed organs from people's guts, doctors have found that surgery may not be necessary after all -- a simple course of antibiotics can be just as effective at treating appendicitis as going under the knife. From a report: The revelation comes from a large, randomized trial out of Finland, published Tuesday, September 25, in JAMA. Despite upending a long-held standard of care, the study's finding is not entirely surprising; it follows several other randomized trials over the years that had carved out evidence that antibiotics alone can treat an acute appendicitis. Those studies, however, left some dangling questions, including if the antibiotics just improved the situation temporarily and if initial drug treatments left patients worse off later if they did need surgery. The new JAMA study, with its full, five-year follow-up, effectively cauterised those remaining issues. Nearly two-thirds of the patients randomly assigned in the study to get antibiotics for an uncomplicated appendicitis didn't end up needing surgery in the follow-up time, the Finnish authors, based at the University of Turku, report. And those drug-treated patients that did end up getting an appendectomy later were not worse off for the delay in surgery. "This long-term follow-up supports the feasibility of antibiotic treatment alone as an alternative to surgery for uncomplicated acute appendicitis," the authors conclude. The finding suggests that many appendicitis patients could be spared the risks of surgical procedures, such as infections.

"On Wednesday, a Japanese company called ispace announced that it has two missions planned to the Moon within the next three years and that it has acquired ride-share launches on two Falcon 9 rockets to carry out those flights," reports Ars Technica. "The company's founder, Takeshi Hakamada, also said he has a long-term vision to have a city on the Moon visited by 10,000 people a year by 2040." From the report: The two missions ispace announced Wednesday are an orbiter launch in mid-2020 and a more complicated lander-and-rover mission a year later. Both will be secondary payloads on Falcon 9 rocket launches, being released by the rocket's second stage in geostationary transfer orbit. From there, they will proceed to the Moon under their own propulsive power.

During a teleconference with several reporters, Hakamada said the company hopes to demonstrate to potential customers the initial capability to deliver 30kg of payload to the lunar surface. But he also has longer-term plans that will allow it to serve customers seeking to reach the lunar surface with larger payloads. Plus, the company is developing the capability to mine ice from the lunar poles to convert the hydrogen and oxygen into rocket fuel. "Around 2030 we expect to begin developing propellant and sending it to spacecraft in space," Hakamada said. He hopes that by then, there will be several hundred people working on the Moon, or in lunar orbit, to support an industrial base. A decade later, by 2040, he envisions a city called "Moon Valley" on the lunar surface, with a diverse array of industries and thousands of visitors per year. "We believe we can establish such a world if we can actively develop our capability in the current speed," Hakamada said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: On Sept. 24, Microsoft announced what it's calling the Windows Virtual Desktop (WMD). WVD will allow users to virtualize Windows 7 and 10, Office 365 ProPlus apps and other third-party applications by running them remotely in Azure virtual machines. Using WMD, customers will be able to provide remote desktop sessions with multiple users logged into the same Windows 10 or Windows Server virtual machine. They also can opt to virtualize the full desktop or individual Microsoft Store and/or line-of-business applications. The WMD service also supports full VDI with Windows 10 and Windows 7, Microsoft officials told Ars Technica. (Those wanting to virtualize Windows 7 after Microsoft support ends in January 2020 will be able to do so for three years without paying for Extended Security Updates.)

Licenses for WVD will be provided for no additional cost as part of Windows Enterprise and Education E3 and E5 subscriptions. The aforementioned Windows 10 Enterprise for Virtual Desktops edition won't be released as a separate version of Windows 10 at all. That name is just for licensing purposes, officials said. Microsoft officials said a public preview of WVD will be available later this year, and those interested can request notification of the preview's availability. To use WVD, users need an Azure subscription and will be charged for the storage and compute their virtual machines use. Microsoft also plans to offer WVD via Microsoft Cloud Solution Providers and is working with third parties like Citrix to build on top of WVD, officials said.

A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that drivers "seeking to be classified as employees rather than independent contractors must arbitrate their claims individually, and not pursue class-action lawsuits," reports Reuters. Ars Technica explains the significance of this ruling: Employees are guaranteed to earn federal minimum wage and are entitled to overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours per week. Uber employees, in contrast, are paid by the ride and might earn much less than minimum wage if they drive at a slow time of day. California law also gives employees the right to be reimbursed for expenses they incur on the job, which would be significant for Uber drivers who otherwise are responsible for gas, maintenance, insurance, and other expenses of operating an Uber vehicle.

Hence, the question of whether Uber drivers are employees or independent contractors is a big and important one. It's also a question that isn't addressed at all in Tuesday's ruling, as the courts never get to the substance of the plaintiffs' arguments about employment law. Instead, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit court ruled that the drivers signed away their rights to sue in court when they signed up to be Uber drivers. Uber's agreement with drivers requires that this kind of dispute be handled by private arbitration rather than by a lawsuit in the public courts. The court cited a Supreme Court ruling handed down in May that held that federal labor law did not preempt arbitration agreements. [...] the decision means that each driver's case must be fought on an individual, case-by-case basis. Class-action lawsuits in the federal courts allow plaintiffs to effectively pool their resources. [...] But under arbitration, each driver's case will be considered individually. Most won't have the resources to afford top-tier legal representation, and drivers won't have the inherent leverage that comes from being able to bargain as a group.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last year, Ecuador attempted to deputize WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as one of its own diplomats and send him to Russia, according to a Friday report by Reuters. Citing an "Ecuadorian government document," which the news agency did not publish, Assange apparently was briefly granted a "special designation" to act as one of its diplomats, a privilege normally granted to the president for political allies. However, that status was then withdrawn when the United Kingdom objected. The Associated Press reported earlier in the week that newly-leaked documents showed that Assange sought a Russian visa back in 2010. WikiLeaks has vehemently denied that Assange did so.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last year, Ecuador attempted to deputize WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as one of its own diplomats and send him to Russia, according to a Friday report by Reuters. Citing an "Ecuadorian government document," which the news agency did not publish, Assange apparently was briefly granted a "special designation" to act as one of its diplomats, a privilege normally granted to the president for political allies. However, that status was then withdrawn when the United Kingdom objected. The Associated Press reported earlier in the week that newly-leaked documents showed that Assange sought a Russian visa back in 2010. WikiLeaks has vehemently denied that Assange did so.

Cody Wilson, maker of the first 3D-printed plastic gun, has been arrested in Taiwan. Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike quotes Reason: Earlier this week, Texas police issued a warrant for his arrest. Wilson, they claimed, found a woman on sugardaddymeet.com, a website that requires all users to assert they are 18 or over, then met her and paid for sex with her. Police say the woman was actually 16, which made that act a violation of Texas penal code 22.011 (A)(2)(a), regarding sex with a minor, which is legally considered sexual assault regardless of consent or payment.

While Taiwan has no formal extradition treaty with the U.S., and Wilson was not said to have been doing anything directly criminal in Taiwan, the press there reports that he was arrested without incident because the U.S. had revoked his passport, making his mere presence in Taiwan illegal. (The U.S. government has the power to revoke the passports of people facing felony arrest warrants.) Wilson was then, according to The New York Times, "delivered...to the National Immigration Agency" in Taiwan. It is expected to deport him to the U.S. to face those charges, which carry a potential 2 to 20 years in prison and $10,000 fine.
A reporter for Ars Technica visited Wilson's home weapons printing company, and was told that "A management restructuring is coming." But they also contacted Adam Bhala Lough, who directed and wrote a documentary film about Wilson. Prior to Wilson's arrest, Lough argued that "Without Cody, it can't last. It's like Tesla and Elon Musk, you can't separate the two.

"If he comes home and faces the music, there is a chance Defense Distributed will survive because it is a totally independent company without a board or any regulatory body. And the buyers of these products -- not to generalize, but at least the ones I met while doing the documentary -- they won't care about buying a product from an [accused] pedophile. In fact they may be even more emboldened by the idea that Cody was 'set-up' or that it is a 'deep-state conspiracy' against him, even if (or when) he admits to it."

On Friday, Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft attempted to deploy two miniature rovers on an asteroid that it's been orbiting since mid-August. Ars Technica reports: Each weighed only about a kilogram, and after separating from the main spacecraft they approached the asteroid named Ryugu. Japanese mission scientists think the rovers touched down successfully, but are not completely sure. Communication with the two landers stopped near the moment of touchdown. This is presumably because Ryugu's rotation took the rovers out of view from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft, but scientists won't know for sure until later Friday (or Saturday morning, in Japan) when they attempt to download images from the rovers. And thus we are left with a suspenseful situation.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission's plan for spurring 5G wireless deployment will prevent city and town governments from charging carriers about $2 billion worth of fees. The FCC proposal, to be voted on at its meeting on September 26, limits the amount that local governments may charge carriers for placing 5G equipment such as small cells on poles, traffic lights, and other government property in public rights-of-way. The proposal, which is supported by the FCC's Republican majority, would also force cities and towns to act on carrier applications within 60 or 90 days. The FCC says this will spur more deployment of small cells, which "have antennas often no larger than a small backpack." But the commission's proposal doesn't require carriers to build in areas where they wouldn't have done so anyway.

The FCC plan proposes up-front application fees of $100 for each small cell and annual fees of up to $270 per small cell. The FCC says this is a "reasonable approximation of [localities'] costs for processing applications and for managing deployments in the rights-of-way." Cities that charge more than that would likely face litigation from carriers and would have to prove that the fees are a reasonable approximation of all costs and "non-discriminatory." But, according to Philadelphia, those proposed fees "are simply de minimis when measured against the costs that the City incurs to approve, support, and maintain the many small cell and distributed antenna system (DAS) installations in its public rights-of-way." Philadelphia said it "has already established a fee structure and online application process to apply for small cell deployment that has served the needs of its citizens without prohibiting or creating barriers to entry for infrastructure investment." The city has also negotiated license agreements for small cell installations with Verizon, AT&T, and other carriers. In addition to Philadelphia, the Rural County Represenatives of California (RCRC), a group representing 35 rural California counties, also objects to the FCC plan. They told the FCC that its "proposed recurring fee structure is an unreasonable overreach that will harm local policy innovation."

"That is why many local governments have worked to negotiate fair agreements with wireless providers, which may exceed that number or provide additional benefits to the community," the RCRC wrote. "The FCC's decision to prohibit municipalities' ability to require 'in-kind' conditions on installation agreements is in direct conflict with the FCC's stated intent of this Order and further constrains local governments in deploying wireless services to historically underserved areas."

"French train-building company Alstom built two hydrogen-powered trains and delivered them to Germany last weekend, where they'll zoom along a 62-mile stretch of track that runs from the northern cities of Cuxhaven, Bremerhaven, Bremervorde, and Buxtehude," reports Ars Technica. "The new trains replace their diesel-powered counterparts and are the first of their kind, but they are likely not the last. Alstom is contracted to deliver 14 more hydrogen-powered trains, called Coradia iLint trains, before 2021." From the report: The trains are an initial step toward lowering Germany's transportation-related emissions, a sector that has been intractable for policy makers in the country. But hydrogen fuel faces some chicken-and-egg-type problems. Namely, hydrogen is difficult to store, and making it a truly zero-emissions source of fuel requires renewable electricity to perform water electrolysis. The more common option for creating hydrogen fuel involves natural gas reforming, which is not a carbon-neutral process.

The advantages of hydrogen fuel cells are that -- unlike battery-powered vehicles -- refueling a hydrogen-powered vehicle is just as fast as a vehicle powered by fossil fuels. No sitting around and charging overnight is required. Trains tend not to be battery-powered when they're electric, however, because they're so heavy. Electric train systems tend to use catenary systems, with electrified cables providing electricity to the train. But over long distances, setting up an external electricity source can be expensive. Both trains have a reported range of 1,000km (621 miles) and can reach top speeds of 140km/h (87mph). Cost is unknown, although Alstom's press release says that Lower Saxony, the German state where the trains will run, supported the purchase of the 14 additional trains with $94.5 million.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T and Verizon are trying to convince the Federal Communications Commission that mobile broadband is good enough for Internet users who don't have access to fiber or cable services. The carriers made this claim despite the data usage and speed limitations of mobile services. In the mobile market, even "unlimited" plans can be throttled to unusable speeds after a customer uses just 25GB or so a month. Mobile carriers impose even stricter limits on phone hotspots, making it difficult to use mobile services across multiple devices in the home. The carriers ignored those limits in filings they submitted for the FCC's annual review of broadband deployment.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A new study has sifted through some of the largest online data sets of personality quizzes and identified four distinct "types" therein. The new methodology used for this study -- described in detail in a new paper in Nature Human Behavior -- is rigorous and replicable, which could help move personality typing analysis out of the dubious self-help section in your local bookstore and into serious scientific journals. What's new here is the identification of four dominant clusters in the overall distribution of traits. [Paper co-author William Revelle (Northwestern University)] prefers to think of them as "lumps in the batter" and suggests that a good analogy would be how people tend to concentrate in cities in the United States. The Northwestern researchers used publicly available data from online quizzes taken by 1.5 million people around the world. That data was then plotted in accordance with the so-called Big Five basic personality traits: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. The Big Five is currently the professional standard for social psychologists who study personality. (Here's a good summary of what each of those traits means to psychologists.) They then applied their algorithms to the resulting dataset. Here are the four distinct personality clusters that the researchers ended up with:

Average: These people score high in neuroticism and extraversion, but score low in openness. It is the most typical category, with women being more likely than men to fit into it.
Reserved: This type of person is stable emotionally without being especially open or neurotic. They tend to score lower on extraversion but tend to be somewhat agreeable and conscientious.
Role Models: These people score high in every trait except neuroticism, and the likelihood that someone fits into this category increases dramatically as they age. "These are people who are dependable and open to new ideas," says Amaral. "These are good people to be in charge of things." Women are more likely than men to be role models.
Self-Centered: These people score very high in extraversion, but score low in openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Most teenage boys would fall into this category, according to Revelle, before (hopefully) maturing out of it. The number of people who fall into this category decreases dramatically with age.

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communicopia conference last week, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says the rise of streaming gaming was an inevitability that was just waiting on the technology to power it at scale. While Zelnick acknowledged that the streaming game servers "have to be pretty close to where the consumer is" to address latency issues, he said there are a few large-scale companies "that have hyperscale data centers all around the world," and that infrastructure will be able to address that last remaining hurdle in a few years time. A report adds: Zelnick's comments come a few months after Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot suggested that streaming games will completely replace consoles after one more generation. Guillemot suggested that changeover would cause a revolution in the gaming market, which will explode in size and accessibility thanks to cheap, streaming-capable boxes delivering big-budget hits. Zelnick agreed that streaming will increase the size of the high-end, big-budget gaming market -- because "you don't need to buy a box in order to play our games" -- but stopped short of expecting a massive revolution. Even if streaming boxes end up much cheaper than current consoles and PCs for the same experience, there may not be that many additional potential players who don't currently have high-end gaming hardware. "I can't sit here and argue it will be a sea change in the business," Zelnick said of future streaming game services.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last week, the House passed a bipartisan bill that originated in the Senate called the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act (S. 97), which will allow the private sector to partner with U.S. National Laboratories to vet advanced nuclear technologies. The bill also directs the Department of Energy (DOE) to lay the ground work for establishing "a versatile, reactor-based fast neutron source." The Senate also introduced a second bill called the Nuclear Energy Leadership Act (S. 3422) last Thursday, which would direct the DOE to actually establish that fast neutron reactor. That bill also directs the DOE to "make available high-assay, low-enriched uranium" for research purposes. The Nuclear Energy Leadership Act has not yet made it past a Senate vote. The report also mentions a recent U.S. Court of Appeals ruling to keep older reactors online. "The court said that subsidies for nuclear energy proposed by Illinois don't cause any interference with federal control over interstate power markets, which is prohibited," reports Ars.

"In 2017 the state of Illinois agreed to offer a Zero Emissions Credit that included nuclear energy (PDF). The credit was opposed by fossil fuel generators and by the Electric Power Supply Association, who sued the director of the Illinois Power Agency. But the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Department of Justice filed a joint brief in the case several months ago, saying those federal agencies had no problem with Illinois' credit system, according to Utility Dive."

On Friday, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai called California's net neutrality bill "illegal," saying it "poses a risk to the rest of the country." The bill recently passed California's state Assembly and now awaits the signature of Governor Jerry Brown.

In response to Pai's speech, Scott Wiener, California's Senator who authored the bill, said they are "necessary and legal because Chairman Pai abdicated his responsibility to ensure an open internet." "Unlike Pai's FCC, California isn't run by the big telecom and cable companies," Wiener also said. "Pai can take whatever potshots at California he wants. The reality is that California is the world's innovation capital, and unlike the crony capitalism promoted by the Trump administration, California understands exactly what it takes to foster an open innovation economy with a level playing field." Ars Technica reports: Pai targeted the California rules in a speech at the Maine Heritage Policy Center. Pai derided what he called "nanny-state California legislators," and said: "The broader problem is that California's micromanagement poses a risk to the rest of the country. After all, broadband is an interstate service; Internet traffic doesn't recognize state lines. It follows that only the federal government can set regulatory policy in this area. For if individual states like California regulate the Internet, this will directly impact citizens in other states. Among other reasons, this is why efforts like California's are illegal. In fact, just last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reaffirmed the well-established law that state regulation of information services is preempted by federal law. Last December, the FCC made clear that broadband is just such an information service."

Apple on Monday released iOS 12, the latest operating system designed for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. iOS 12 is available on all devices that are able to run iOS 11, which includes the iPhone 5s (released 2013) and later, the iPad mini 2 and later, the iPad Air and later, and the 6th-generation iPod touch. From a report: iOS 12 is a major update that brings several new features and upgrades to Apple's iOS devices, along with some significant performance improvements. Apps open more speedily than before, the keyboard pops up faster, and the Camera launches much quicker. Apple has also introduced optimizations for when the system is under load, making iOS devices faster when you need performance most.

[...] Siri is smarter than ever in iOS 12 with a new Shortcuts feature designed to let you create multi-step customized automations using first and third-party apps that can be activated with Siri voice commands. Shortcuts can be created through the Shortcuts app, which Apple is releasing alongside iOS 12. ArsTechnica reports that older iOS devices -- iPhone 5S, iPhone 6 Plus, and iPad Mini 2 -- are noticeably faster at launching apps and several other functions, after they have been upgraded to iOS 12.

An anonymous reader writes: Thursday the humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research held their 28th annual ceremony recognizing the real (but unusual) scientific research papers "that make people laugh, then think." And winning this year's coveted Literature prize was a paper titled "Life Is Too Short to RTFM: How Users Relate to Documentation and Excess Features in Consumer Products," which concluded that most people really, truly don't read the manual, "and most do not use all the features of the products that they own and use regularly..."

"Over-featuring and being forced to consult manuals also appears to cause negative emotional experiences."

Another team measured "the frequency, motivation, and effects of shouting and cursing while driving an automobile," which won them the Ig Nobel Peace Prize. Other topics of research included self-colonoscopies, removing kidney stones with roller coasters, and (theoretical) cannibalism. "Acceptance speeches are limited to 60 seconds," reports Ars Technica, "strictly enforced by an eight-year-old girl nicknamed 'Miss Sweetie-Poo,' who will interrupt those who exceed the time limit by repeating, 'Please stop. I'm bored.' Until they stop."
You can watch the whole wacky ceremony on YouTube. The awards are presented by actual Nobel Prize laureates -- and at least one past winner of an Ig Nobel Prize later went on to win an actual Nobel Prize.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nintendo Switch game save data stored in the cloud is only available "as long as you have an active Nintendo Switch Online membership." If you eventually cancel the $20/year subscription, Nintendo is "unable to guarantee that cloud save data will be retained after an extended period of time from when your membership is ended." That wrinkle in Nintendo's plan was not included in the details of yesterday's Nintendo Direct presentation, but it can be found digging through the FAQs and customer support pages on Nintendo's website this morning. On the plus side, Nintendo clarified that you will be able to transfer cloud-based saves between Switch systems just by signing in with your Nintendo account on as many consoles as you want. But Nintendo also said it will continue not allowing local backups of save data to an SD card or other outside storage. UPDATE: It's worth noting that cloud saves on PlayStation systems remain accessible for six months after you cancel a paid PlayStation Plus account, while cloud saves on Xbox Live are offered for free in perpetuity.

Chrome OS 70, which Google plans to release in the second half of next month, will include native support for SMB file shares, giving it built-in access to files stored on Windows servers. With this, Chrome OS users can add SMB file shares to the Files app and use them to store and load documents. From a report: Currently, using these network resources requires the use of an extension that adds a similar ability to add file shares to the Files app. Google has been working to make Files a more capable application. As well as integrating support for networked files, the company is also experimenting with giving it more access to Android files, something that will streamline the use of Android applications by exposing their data files to Chrome OS apps. The SMB support helps smooth a pain point when mixing Chromebooks with other systems: it makes it easier to use Chrome OS with corporate file servers, home networked storage devices, and of course, Windows PCs. Instead of needing the extra extension to be installed, these things will just work out of the box.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Broadband access in tribal areas is likely even worse than previously thought because Federal Communications Commission data overstates deployment, according to a new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). FCC data collection was already known to be suspect throughout the U.S., not just in tribal areas, which in turn makes it difficult for the FCC to target deployment funding to the areas that need it most. Tribal lands have less broadband access than most other parts of the U.S. and thus may be disproportionately affected by the FCC's data collection problems.

"Residents of tribal lands have lower levels of broadband Internet access relative to the U.S. as a whole, but the digital divide may be greater than currently thought," the GAO wrote. "FCC data overstated tribes' broadband availability and access to broadband service. These overstatements limit FCC and tribal users' ability to target broadband funding to tribal lands." Despite the well-known broadband access problems in tribal areas, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has been trying to limit the Lifeline subsidies that help tribal residents purchase Internet access. A federal appeals court recently blocked Pai's attempt to take a broadband subsidy away from tribal areas.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A Southern California limousine company sued Uber in federal court earlier this week, alleging violations of state unfair-competition laws. While a company suing Uber is not new, the proposed class-action lawsuit appears to rely on a recently decided California Supreme Court decision that makes it more difficult for companies to unilaterally declare their workers as contractors, which effectively deprives them of benefits that they would otherwise receive as employees.

In that case, known as Dynamex, the court came up with a three-part test to figure out whether companies can assert contractor status or not. The new case is called Diva Limousine v. Uber. Some legal experts say that the earlier decision in Dynamex may bolster an argument in this new case around unfair competition that has previously been difficult to win on in federal court. In short, Diva Limousine just might succeed where other federal lawsuits have failed.

The new iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max will use eSIM technology to allow users to use two phone lines on a single device. You could have a work or personal number, or an American and Canadian number if you travel across the border frequently. The reprogrammable SIM card is "soldered onto the iPhone's motherboard directly," and measures just 6 millimeters by 5 millimeters," reports Ars Technica, citing GSMArena.com. From the report: These handsets will have a new "dual SIM dual standby" option, one of which will be a nano SIM. In other words, they will have two distinct phone numbers. (Chinese models will have two SIM slots instead of the eSIM option.) Since their debut in 1991, traditional, physical SIM cards have decreased dramatically in size. eSIMs have already been around for nearly a year, since they were introduced into the Apple Watch and Google Pixel 2, among other devices.

The chief executive of a small pharmaceutical company defended hiking the price of an essential antibiotic by more than 400 percent and told the Financial Times that he thinks "it is a moral requirement to make money when you can." From a report: Nirmal Mulye, CEO of the small Missouri-based drug company Nostrum Laboratories, raised the price of bottle of nitrofurantoin from $474.75 to $2,392 last month. The drug is a decades-old antibiotic used to treat urinary-tract infections caused by Escherichia coli and certain other Gram-negative bacteria. The World Health Organization lists nitrofurantoin as an essential medicine. In an interview with the FT, Mulye went on to say it was also a "moral requirement" to "sell the product for the highest price," and he explained that he was in "this business to make money."

The next update to Windows 10, due to be released in October, will be smarter about how it frees up disk space and cleans up temporary files. Ars Technica reports: As part of its Storage Sense feature, Windows will be able to automatically remove the local copies of OneDrive files (unless they've been set as always available offline). The operating system will determine which files to remove based on when they were opened: files used more recently than a certain number of days will be retained locally, while those that haven't been used will be replaced with placeholders. The system will remove files until the operating system reckons it has enough free space for normal operation.

Storage Sense will also be able to remove temporary or otherwise unneeded files such as system logs and image thumbnails. It will also be able to remove old files from the download directory. The temporary-file cleanup (which can also remove certain cache files, driver packages, old anti-virus definitions, and more) was previously handled by the Disk Cleanup tool. That tool is now deprecated, as Storage Sense does everything it used to do and more. Storage Sense can perform its cleanup process periodically (every day, week, or month) or automatically whenever the system is low on disk space.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill mandating that the state's utilities move to 100-percent zero-emission electricity generation by 2045. Brown also issued an executive order today requiring the state to become carbon neutral by 2045, that is, mandating that the state remove as much greenhouse gas from the atmosphere as it puts into the atmosphere. One of the most interesting aspects of the zero-emissions bill signed today is that it also specifies that California can't increase the carbon emissions of another state to get cheap electricity. It appears that buying electricity from a coal plant in Nevada is fine if that electricity had been supplied prior to the bill's passing, but seeking out new out-of-state natural gas-fired plants to buy from would not be allowed. The bill's ambitiousness is compounded by the executive order that Gov. Brown signed today. The order requires California to become carbon neutral by 2045. "The achievement of carbon neutrality will require both significant reductions in carbon pollution and removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, including sequestration in forests, soils, and other natural landscapes," Brown's executive order states (PDF).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A court ruling that limits state regulation of cable company offerings was praised by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, who says the ruling supports his contention that the FCC can preempt state-level net neutrality rules. The new court ruling found that Minnesota's state government cannot regulate VoIP phone services offered by Charter and other cable companies because VoIP is an "information service" under federal law. Pai argues that the case is consistent with the FCC's attempt to preempt state-level net neutrality rules, in which the commission reclassified broadband as a Title I information service instead of a Title II telecommunications service.

The ruling was issued Friday by the US Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, following a lawsuit filed by Charter Communications against the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (MPUC). A three-judge panel ruled against Minnesota in a 2-1 vote -- the FCC had filed a brief supporting Charter's position in the case. "[F]ederal law for decades has recognized that states may not regulate information services," Pai said in response to the ruling. "The 8th Circuit's decision is important for reaffirming that well-established principle: '[A]ny state regulation of an information service conflicts with the federal policy of non-regulation' and is therefore preempted." Pai said the ruling "is wholly consistent with the approach the FCC has taken under Democratic and Republican Administrations over the last two decades, including in last year's Restoring Internet Freedom order." The commission says the reclassification should preempt any such attempts at regulating broadband at the state level.

Frontier Communications is asking employees for help in its fight against state net neutrality rules in California, claiming that the rules will give "free" Internet to major Web companies while raising costs for consumers. From a report: The Internet service provider urged employees to submit a form letter asking Governor Jerry Brown to veto the net neutrality bill that was recently approved by the state legislature. Frontier sent an email to employees and set up an online form for them to send the form letter to Brown. "I am proud to work at Frontier and help operate a network that is part of an incredibly successful Internet ecosystem that is the backbone of our economy and daily life," the form letter says. But net neutrality rules "will harm consumers and impose complex layers of costly regulation," and therefore "deter investment and delay broadband deployment in California, especially in rural areas that still lack high-speed Internet access," the letter says. The letter claims that net neutrality rules "will create significant new costs for consumers" but did not make it clear what those new costs would be.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A Verizon lobbyist is trying to become the attorney general of New York in the upcoming November election. Verizon executive Leecia Eve is one of four candidates in the Democratic primary for the seat vacated when Eric Schneiderman resigned after assault allegations from four women. If elected, Eve says she would recuse herself from Verizon matters and New York State's appeal of the federal net neutrality repeal. As a Verizon executive, Eve defended the company from the city's allegations. Still, Eve has argued that her Verizon experience will help her prosecute "bad corporate actors" -- but without being so harsh that businesses would stop coming to the state. "Her Verizon experience, Eve contends, is 'extremely helpful: I know how corporations work,' leaving her 'best prepared to go after bad corporate actors,' but 'not to radiate to business not to come to New York,'" news organization City Limits wrote Tuesday after interviewing Eve.

Eve would not be involved in investigating Verizon if she won the election. "Under ethics rules, Eve confirms, she'd recuse herself from cases involving Verizon or other telecom issues, leaving policy decisions to senior staff," City Limits reported. Eve also confirmed that she would recuse herself from the New York attorney general office's ongoing lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission. Along with more than 20 other states, New York has asked a federal court to reverse the FCC's repeal of net neutrality rules, a repeal that was supported by Verizon. Here's an excerpt from Eve's bio on her campaign site: "As Vice President for Government Affairs for Verizon for New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, Leecia oversees policy and ensures governmental compliance for a company that innovates and invests billions in New York State and puts nearly 20,000 New Yorkers to work every day. She also serves as a Commissioner of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey."

According to Ars, recent polls show that Eve is in last place behind three other Democrats running for the office.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Twitter is showing some users of its desktop website a new user interface that is designed to be faster and to feature support for the recently added bookmarks feature (supported in the iOS and Android clients but not, currently, the main website), a data-saver mode, and a night mode. These users have been selected at random and moved over to the new interface so they can test the interface and provide feedback. The new interface isn't all that different from the old one: it's organized a little differently, with a two-column layout instead of the three columns currently used, but overall it will feel familiar to anyone who has used the microblogging platform before. What makes this move interesting isn't the specifics of the interface itself, but the technology it's built on.

The new interface isn't actually new at all. It has been available for some time now as mobile.twitter.com, Twitter's mobile-friendly Web interface. In turn, that same Web interface is used to drive the Windows 10 app, the KaiOS platform for "smart feature phones," and the recently released Twitter Lite app for Android. This is why it has the data-saver mode; it has been designed with an eye on those users who suffer from poor or expensive bandwidth or have underpowered devices. This mobile site is perhaps one of the most prominent instances of what could be a new breed of Web application: the Progressive Web Application (PWA). PWAs are Web applications that build on certain modern browser features to provide an experience that is much more like that of a traditional application. For example, PWAs can support offline operation using service workers (a way of running JavaScript in the background that can respond to events and make network requests that degrade gracefully if the network is unavailable); they integrate with platform features such as notifications; they're also designed so that they could be pinned to app launchers and home screens and treated as if they were "real" applications rather than merely webpages.

Today, we have learned that two executives have left Tesla. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Tesla's newly hired chief accounting officer Dave Morton decided to resign because "the level of public attention placed on the company as well as the pace within the company have exceeded [his] expectations." He added: "I want to be clear that I believe strongly in Tesla, its mission, and its future prospects, and I have no disagreements with Tesla's leadership or financial reporting." Tesla's human resources chief Gaby Toledano also announced that should would be leaving the company after taking a leave of absence last month. CEO Elon Musk wrote that Toledo "has been on leave for a few months to spend more time with her family and has decided to continue doing so for personal reasons. She's been amazing and I'm very grateful for everything she's done for Tesla."

These departures certainly have had an impact on Tesla's stock, which is down more than six percent to $262, but an interview Elon Musk conducted with Joe Rogan may have caused the most damage. While discussing a wide range of topics including his tweeting behavior, his Boring Company's flamethrowers, and "neuralink" devices, the Tesla CEO openly smoked a mixed tobacco and marijuana cigarette, sending the internet into a frenzy. Ars Technica reports: Morton joined Tesla on August 6, one day before Musk's infamous tweet claiming that he had "funding secured" to take Tesla private. Musk was forced to abandon the plan a couple of weeks later. Not only did Musk not have any kind of written funding deal, many Tesla investors saw little upside in approving a deal that would reduce Tesla's transparency and the liquidity of Tesla stock. Morton didn't explicitly mention last month's buyout saga in his statement explaining his departure. But a lot of the "public attention" Tesla received during Morton's brief tenure was focused on the possibility of Tesla going private. It's safe to assume that members of Tesla's finance team were working overtime on issues related to the proposal during Morton's month at Tesla. It's worth noting that marijuana is legal in California (and several other states) if you are 21 or older, but the federal government still strictly prohibits the Schedule 1 substance.

UPDATE: You can watch/listen to the nearly three-hour-long interview here. Rogan manages to pick Musk's brain in great detail and in a refreshingly laid-back manner. We highly recommend a listen if you want to learn more about Musk's ambitions and thought process.

An anonymous reader writes: The first paid online service for Nintendo Switch, simply named Nintendo Switch Online, is set to arrive at some point later this month, and we're still waiting on a few key details. One detail about the service emerged on Friday via Nintendo's official site, and it's not a great one: there will be specific limits to the service's promised cloud-save support. Nintendo Switch Online's $20/year cost includes a promise to "save your data online for easy access" -- which, for the uninitiated, will be the only way to back up your Switch games' save data when it launches. Currently, should your Nintendo Switch be lost, stolen, or damaged, your progress in games like Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is toast, as you can neither move save data from one console to another nor personally back it up to a hard drive. The following current and upcoming Switch games do not support Save Data Cloud backups: Splatoon 2, Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu, Pokemon Let's Go Eevee, Dark Souls Remastered, Dead Cells, FIFA 19, NBA 2K19, and NBA Playgrounds.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In the wake of a Senate committee hearing in which top officials from Facebook and Twitter testified, the Department of Justice issued a statement saying that it would be investigating social media firms. "We listened to today's Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on Foreign Influence Operations' Use of Social Media Platforms closely," Devin O'Malley, a DOJ spokesman, said in a statement released to reporters on Wednesday morning. "The Attorney General has convened a meeting with a number of state attorneys general this month to discuss a growing concern that these companies may be hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on their platforms." The DOJ did not further explain by what criteria it would be examining these companies. d Google submitted a written testimony, while Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told the committee that the social media company is continuing to fight misinformation, fake news, and foreign interference. Similarly, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey dismissed any allegations of his company's bias during the testimony.

Last week, NASA discovered a small pressure leak on the International Space Station. U.S. and Russian crew members managed to trace the leak to a 2mm breach in the orbital module of the Soyuz MS-09 vehicle and patch it with epoxy. The drama might have ended there, as it was initially presumed that the breach had been caused by a tiny bit of orbital debris, but Russian news outlets are reporting that the problem was a manufacturing defect. "It remains unclear whether the hole was an accidental error or intentional," reports Ars Technica. "There is evidence that a technician saw the drilling mistake and covered the hole with glue, which prevented the problem from being detected during a vacuum test."

"We are able to narrow down the cause to a technological mistake of a technician. We can see the mark where the drill bit slid along the surface of the hull," Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, told RIA Novosti. "We want to find out the full name of who is at fault -- and we will." From the report: NASA spokesman Dan Huot, based in Houston where the space station program is managed, deferred all comment on the issue to Roscosmos. The spacecraft was manufactured by Energia, a Russian corporation. A former employee of the company who is now a professor at Moscow State University told another Russian publication that these kinds of incidents have occurred before at Energia. "I have conducted investigations of all kinds of spacecraft, and after landing, we discovered a hole drilled completely through the hull of a re-entry module," the former Energia employee, Viktor Minenko, said in Gazeta.RU. "But the technician didn't report the defect to anyone but sealed up the hole with epoxy. We found the person, and after a commotion he was terminated," said Minenko. In this case, the technician used glue instead of epoxy. As the Soyuz hull is made from an aluminum alloy, it could have been properly repaired on Earth by welding, had the technician reported the mistake.