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Luxury bus startup Leap suspends service after regulators crack down

Late last night, luxury bus startup Leap issued a statement on its Facebook page noting that the company would be temporarily suspending its San Francisco service, citing regulatory issues with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). The commission issued Leap a cease-and-desist letter last week, saying that Leap Transit did not have a permit to operate in the city. The company has proved devisive in the Bay Area , where public transportation suffers from a litany of problems, and Leap buses are seen as a way for the wealthy to create a “two-tiered” transportation system . A ride on a Leap bus costs $6 and offers charging ports, free Wi-Fi, and a guaranteed seat. By contrast, a ride on Muni, San Francisco’s municipal public transportation system, costs only $2.25 but the buses are unreliable, packed to the gills, and employ not a single on-board bus manager to bring you coconut water. Leap so far only operates one bus line in the city, which goes from the Marina neighborhood to the Financial District. The company applied for a state permit from the CPUC in 2013, which would have afforded the company “the potential for less oversight and fewer rules,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle . But the city of San Francisco said that it ought to be able to regulate Leap, as SF municipal services would experience the greatest toll from competition from Leap. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Luxury bus startup Leap suspends service after regulators crack down

New Windows 10 build smooths tablet experience, makes Edge super fast

A new Windows 10 build is now available for Fast Ring users. Build 10122 should be available to download, but Microsoft is advising that users with AMD video cards pass on it for the time being. That’s because there’s currently a crashing issue in the Edge browser (still named “Project Spartan” in this release). Microsoft is working with AMD to update its drivers to address the issue, but until an update is available, AMD users are advised to switch to the Slow Ring. The new build makes Windows 10 look the way it looked when Microsoft demonstrated it at its Build and Ignite conferences earlier this month. This has two major parts; the Start menu has been reorganized to group Explorer, Settings, Power, and All Apps together, and the Start screen now puts more focus on new, larger tiles, putting the menu-like parts (including the aforementioned grouped icons) together in a hamburger menu. Similarly, Edge now includes the new tab screen shown off at Build. This is strongly reminiscent of iGoogle, including a search bar, popular links, news, and weather. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New Windows 10 build smooths tablet experience, makes Edge super fast

“Rachel” robocaller victims to get $1.7 million in refunds

The Federal Trade Commission’s fight against the infamous ” Rachel from Cardholder Services ” robocalls has produced a court order to give $1.7 million in refunds to defrauded consumers. The case dates to November 2012 , involving defendants including Universal Processing Services of Wisconsin, a payment processor, and telemarketer Hal Smith and his HES Merchant Services Company, the FTC said today . Per an order from US District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Universal Processing Services and HES will have to pay $1,734,972, which the FTC said “will be used to provide refunds to defrauded consumers.” “The court held Smith and HES liable for 11 violations of the FTC Act and the Commission’s Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), based on their participation in a deceptive telemarketing scheme purporting to be a credit card interest rate reduction service that used robocalls to solicit consumers,” the FTC said. “The defendants failed to disclose the identity of the person(s) responsible for placing the robocalls and unlawfully calling numbers that had been registered on the FTC’s Do Not Call Registry.” Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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“Rachel” robocaller victims to get $1.7 million in refunds

Meta analysis finds self-braking cars reduce collisions by 38 percent

While we’re still some way off seeing full-blown, self-driving cars winding their way across continental Europe, a more modest autonomous technology has found approval with safety bods. Research conducted by the European road safety research organisation Euro NCAP concluded that having a car automatically slam on the brakes to avoid low-speed accidents leads to a 38 percent reduction in rear-end crashes. The notable statistic was the result of a meta-analysis of various Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) cars, comparing them to cars without the technology in accidents where the car either struck a car in front, or was being struck from behind. Euro NCAP, with support of Australian safety organisation ANCAP, pooled data from five European countries and Australia using a standard analysis format, as well as a prospective meta-analysis approach. In non-AEB cars, the split between striking and being struck was close to 50/50, improving significantly for cars with AEB. However, despite the apparent success of the study, the researchers noted that in order to get the best results out of the technology, widespread adoption was required; slamming on the brakes to avoid an accident requires following traffic to be alert enough to react to the situation and not cause a cascade. They also noted that AEB cars might be more likely to be struck from behind, as an unintended consequence of AEB’s better reaction time, compared to a human driver. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Meta analysis finds self-braking cars reduce collisions by 38 percent

House votes 338-88 to stop bulk phone surveillance

Nearly two years after the US government’s collection of telephone calls became public following the Edward Snowden leaks, the US House of Representatives has passed, by a vote of 338-88, a bill that would end the program. An exact roll call of votes is not yet available, but votes opposing the USA Freedom Act were generally split between Democrats and Republicans, many of whom argue the proposal doesn’t go far enough to protect civil liberties. Policymakers on all sides of the surveillance debate were under pressure to make some kind of move, with relevant portions of the Patriot Act set to expire at the end of this month. The USA Freedom Act ends the bulk phone database but doesn’t include many other wished-for reforms, such as a privacy advocate at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was in an earlier version of the bill. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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House votes 338-88 to stop bulk phone surveillance

Don’t look now, but 3DS emulation is becoming a thing

Given enough time and attention from the development community, it’s practically inevitable that any video game console can and will be emulatable on a general-use computer. Hardware makers, always wary of the piracy implications of such a development, may hope that doesn’t happen until many years after that console ceases to be commercially viable. Unfortunately for Nintendo, that seems unlikely in the case of the 3DS. The Citra emulation project has been in the works for at least a year , but developers reached a breakthrough last December when they managed to load Ocarina of Time 3D for the first time. That title has now been shown running at nearly full speed on Citra with the help of an OpenGL renderer (though some visual artifacts still exist). Since then, compatibility work has continued on a seemingly game-by-game basis.  Virtual Console titles were shown off in February, and just this week team members posted evidence of Animal Crossing New Leaf , Super Monkey Ball 3D , and even the system’s home menu  running through emulation. There are a few homebrew demos available as well, including emulators for other systems running inside of the 3DS emulator and the kind of Minecraft port that’s seemingly required for all emulation projects these days. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Don’t look now, but 3DS emulation is becoming a thing

Nvidia turns on 1080p 60 FPS streaming for its Grid cloud gaming service

Starting today, Nvidia has enabled 1080p 60 FPS streaming from its Grid cloud gaming service . To use the new mode, you need to be part of the public Shield Hub beta group , have a Shield device, and at least a 30Mbps connection to the Internet. For the moment, around 35 Grid games support 1080p60 streaming, with Nvidia promising that rest (another 14 at the moment) will get a resolution bump after a server-side hardware refresh. Nvidia won’t say what that hardware refresh entails, but did confirm that its servers would be using the same Kepler-based Grid GPUs. Grid streaming remains free until June 30, after which Nvidia will offer a paid-for premium tier in addition to the free service. While Nvidia still won’t spill the beans on exactly what the premium tier gets you, or how much it’ll cost, we can confirm that 1080p streaming will not require a premium subscription. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Nvidia turns on 1080p 60 FPS streaming for its Grid cloud gaming service

With vinyl sales on the rise, this startup lets anyone press their own LP

We often talk about the lost magic of owning a physical thing , whether that’s books, CDs, or the wondrous black slab of plastic that is the vinyl record. Holding that object in your hand, flicking through its dog-eared pages and admiring its intricately crafted artwork, imparts a sense of ownership that you just can’t replicate with a Kindle or a convenient subscription to Spotify. The trouble is, making physical objects is hard , not to mention expensive. That’s especially true of the vinyl record, where pressing plants aren’t exactly ten a penny. And yet, despite the high cost of manufacturing and end price to the consumer, vinyl sales are very much on the up. According to Nielsen , vinyl album sales in the US have grown an impressive 260 percent since 2009, reaching 9.2 million units last year, while in the UK sales reached a 20-year high of 1.29 million in 2014 . Of course, these numbers are but a tiny fraction of music sales as a whole, but—regardless of whether it’s customers chasing that creamy analogue sound, or there are just a lot more hipsters around these days—there’s a demand to be satisfied. But if you’re not a big record label with deep pockets, getting the capital together to produce a run of vinyl is tricky. Even if you do raise the cash, how do you decide how many to make? Too few and people are left wanting; too many and you’re left with stock you can’t sell. It’s a problem that the recently launched Qrates  is hoping to solve. Qrates is an intriguing mix of the old and the new, consisting of a vinyl pressing service, a crowdfunding system, and a digital store all rolled into one. Using the site’s online tool, you can upload your music, design the label and sleeve, choose your preferred playing speed (33 or 45), the weight and colour of the actual record, and how many you’d like (there’s currently a nice low minimum order of 100). Qrates gives you an estimated cost, and then works with a regional pressing plant to fulfil your order. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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With vinyl sales on the rise, this startup lets anyone press their own LP

AT&T to fix Internet congestion before it can be hit with complaint

With a month left before net neutrality complaints can be filed to the Federal Communications Commission, Internet service providers are continuing to sign agreements to prevent network congestion and a potential scolding from regulators. The latest agreement was announced today between AT&T and Level 3 , an Internet backbone operator that has accused broadband providers like AT&T of not upgrading interconnection points, allowing Internet performance for consumers to be degraded. A month ago, Level 3 told National Journal  that it was “evaluating our options” and “still experiencing interconnection point congestion as some large consumer ISPs continue to attempt to leverage control over access to their users to extract arbitrary tolls.” While the FCC’s net neutrality order  bans paid prioritization of traffic after it enters providers’ networks, it doesn’t ban payments for interconnection, which happens at the edges of the network. However, the FCC set up a complaint process so it can decide whether particular demands are unreasonable and prod companies into providing enough capacity to prevent Internet slowdowns. Complaints can be filed beginning June 12. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AT&T to fix Internet congestion before it can be hit with complaint

AT&T finally ramps down throttling of unlimited LTE customers

AT&T’s long-standing policy of throttling LTE service for unlimited data customers has finally been changed so that customers are throttled only when they connect to congested cell towers. Until now, AT&T customers who used 5GB of data in a single monthly billing period were throttled for the rest of the month at all times, receiving barely usable service, despite paying for “unlimited” data. AT&T is facing a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission over the practice and has denied wrongdoing , but it promised that it would change the policy to make it more lenient before the end of 2015. AT&T did not make any official announcement of the change, but it is now apparent in the policy detailed on its website : Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AT&T finally ramps down throttling of unlimited LTE customers