Apple is furiously opposing so-called “right to repair” legislation across the US, but a cache of leaked documents seem to show with the proposed rules. The secretive Genuine Parts Repair program is only available to select companies, offering Apple-certified parts, training, and tools — exactly what right-to-repair laws would make available to everyone. Companies like Apple and Microsoft have campaigned against right to repair, claiming that “bad actors” will use these laws to compromise devices. At the same time, Apple has apparently started making parts and data available to select firms like California’s Mobile Kangaroo and the UK’s AA Mac.
Sony hasn’t been selling as many smartphones as it once did, but Sony isn’t considering giving the mobile division the ax. Instead, it’s merging mobile with its TV, audio, and camera products to create a new unit called “.” This has the benefit of hiding just how badly Sony Mobile does each quarter. No matter how bad you think it’s doing, it’s worse. Sony says the move is about “synergy” and other corporate buzzwords. In reality, the mobile division is just a colossal embarrassment each time releases quarterly results. Over the last four quarters, Sony Mobile has lost 100.6 billion yen or $910 million at current exchange rates.
Most countries, including the US, Boeing’s 737 Max 8 aircraft following a two weeks ago. The company has scrambled to address concerns over the plane’s automated flight control system and now . It includes both updates to the airplane’s systems and training for pilots, but it’s up to the FAA to approve the plan before any 737 Max 8 aircraft will take to the skies. Some version of the Boeing 737 has been flying since the 1960s, but 737 Max family is the most recent incarnation. The 737 Max software was recently updated to include a featured called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which was supposed to make the planes safer by automatically adjusting the jet’s “angle of attack” if the nose tipped too high.
When you look at the last decade, few games have had as much industry-defining influence as the Souls series. If the FromSoftware and Hidetaka Miyazaki names are attached to a project, people will definitely perk up now. As such, the Miyazaki-led Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is getting a lot of attention now that it’s out in the wild. Brandin Tyrrel, Sekiro’s reviewer at our sister site IGN, gave this ninja-themed Souls-like an . He loves the “streamlined” progression system, the distinct shinobi combat, and the clever resurrection mechanic in this high-speed follow-up. Tyrrel certainly misses some of the online features from other FromSoftware games, but it seems that he was happy to see so many refinements implemented across the board.
Sony announced today that it has sold 4.2 million PlayStation VR headsets since the headset launched on October 13, 2016. That’s a fair increase over last August when the company announced lifetime sales of 3 million units. It isn’t, however, all that many units overall. And that’s a bit concerning, given that the PS4 is coming to the end of its life. What will happen to Sony’s nascent VR market when it does? One of the odd things about the console add-on market is that sales are no guarantee of success. Microsoft’s original Kinect was hugely successful by any measure.
When Samsung showed off its Galaxy Fold on February 20, the company took great care to only highlight the device from certain angles. When it brought the hardware to MWC, it highlighted it from a glass case. Journalists and reviewers haven’t yet had a chance to go hands-on with the device, despite myriad questions about how the fold will work in day-to-day operation. It’s starting to look like Samsung had good reason to play its cards this way if a new leak about the state of the Galaxy Fold is accurate. A report from , purportedly from a leaker who actually has the device, lays out the news.
The ESO (European Southern Observatory) has announced the successful observation of an exoplanet using optical interferometry. It’s the first time an exoplanet has been “seen” in this manner and the technique offers a promising example of how we might discern new information about the atmospheres of exoplanets. Such investigations and characterizations are considered critical to discovering other planets in the galaxy that might support life. Astronomical interferometry is the process of combining information from multiple separate telescopes to observe a given target in greater detail than any single telescope could offer. Combining multiple smaller mirrors doesn’t offer all the advantages of a single large telescope — the total amount of light collected is smaller than a single large mirror would be — but it allows for very high angular resolutions and avoids the enormous expense associated with casting huge mirrors.
Some events in the universe are so cataclysmic the ripples in space-time can spread across billion so flight years. The existence of these “gravitational waves” was the last major prediction in Einstein’s general relativity, and scientists confirmed it in 2016 thanks to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project. After a series of instrument upgrades, LIGO is to search for fainter gravitational waves around the universe. When LIGO began operations, it consisted of two facilities, one in Washington state and the other in Louisiana. The European Gravitational Observatory added a third station in Italy in 2017, which is known as the Virgo detector.
Apple has once again acknowledged that its MacBooks are equipped with a failed keyboard design. The problem — which the company has now been failing to solve since 2015 — is arguably deliberate at this point, reflecting either a refusal to grapple with the reality of the problem or a pointed attempt to shake customers down for more money. The Wall Street Journal on the issue is clever; it offers readers the option to read the article with the letters “E” and “R” removed. Joanna Stern, the author of the piece, has been dealing with the failure of both keycaps on her four-month-old MacBook Air.
