Month: March 2022

Enlarge / Gigi Sohn testifies during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing examining her nomination to the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022. (credit: Getty Images | Pool)

The Senate Commerce Committee today sent President Biden’s nomination of consumer advocate Gigi Sohn for a spot on the Federal Communications Commission to the full Senate. Sohn’s nomination was advanced with a 14-14 tie vote due to Republican opposition and still needs approval on the Senate floor.

The FCC has been stuck with a 2-2 partisan deadlock for Biden’s entire term, but Sohn’s confirmation would allow Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel to proceed with items opposed by Republicans. That includes the restoration of net neutrality rules and Title II common-carrier regulation of broadband providers.

The tie vote in committee makes the process of setting up a final Senate vote more complicated, but it can be accomplished if all Democrats back Sohn, a Broadcasting + Cable report explained. There were also tie votes in two other nominations advanced today by the Senate Commerce Committee. Those were for Federal Trade Commission nominee Alvaro Bedoya and Consumer Product Safety Commission nominee Mary Boyle.

Enlarge / Windows Update will try to do its thing when your local power grid is being powered with green energy sources. (credit: Microsoft)

A future Windows 11 update might make your PC more environmentally conscious. In the latest Windows Insider preview build released to the Dev channel, Microsoft is testing out a new feature that it says might help reduce carbon emissions. Using “regional carbon intensity data” from electricityMap and Watttime, Windows will keep tabs on what kinds of power your electrical grid is currently using and will attempt to install updates “when greater amounts of clean energy sources (like wind, solar, and hydro) are available.

Prior to this, Windows Update’s dynamic scheduling would mainly try to install updates at times when you weren’t likely to be using your computer. The feature won’t work if those carbon-intensive data sources aren’t available in your area, and they also only apply to PCs that are plugged in, not those running on battery power. Users can still opt to install updates manually whenever they please.

Elsewhere, the new developer build continues the rapid rate of changes we’ve seen since Microsoft got its big Windows 11 update out the door to the public last month. The “open with” dialogue box that pops up sometimes after you install new apps has been changed from a square-cornered Windows 8- and 10-era design to a new Mica-infused Windows 11 look. More Microsoft account settings are manageable from within the Settings app. The animations that accompany some touch gestures have been refined. Searching for things in the Settings app should be more accurate, and the Settings app has been tweaked “for a consistent look and feel across the app.”

Enlarge / The Galaxy S22 Ultra. It has a pen. (credit: Samsung)

Samsung is once again in hot water over how it treats benchmark apps. This time, the company is accused of throttling 10,000 Android apps—but not benchmark apps. It sounds like the scheme OnePlus was caught running last year. Instead of boosting the SoC speeds when a benchmark app is running, Android OEMs are now turning down phone performance any time a benchmark app isn’t running. It’s like benchmark cheating but in reverse.

Samsung’s throttling app is called the “Game Optimizing Service.” Users of the Korean message board Clen.net found wildly different benchmark scores depending on whether benchmark apps had their original names or not. By changing the package names of popular benchmark apps—thereby making the “Game Optimizing Service” treat a benchmark app like a normal app—scores dropped anywhere from 13 to 45 percent on the Galaxy S10, S20, S21, and the new S22. Normally, the throttling behavior is not user-controllable, but the users are tricking the service by modifying apps.

John Poole, the lead developer of Geekbench, was able to reproduce the wild performance changes based on whether the S22 thought it was running a benchmark or a game. Poole changed Geekbench’s package name to that of Genshin Impact, a popular game, and saw benchmark scores plummet. The Snapdragon Galaxy S22 dropped its single-core score 46 percent, while the multi-core score was down 35 percent. Poole confirmed that this behavior exists on the Exynos S10 as well.

Enlarge / The Steam Deck. (credit: Valve)

In our recent review of the Steam Deck portable console from Valve, we noted that continued updates to the company’s Proton compatibility layer would help many games designed for Windows run well on the system’s Linux-based SteamOS. For a handful of popular online multiplayer games, though, inherent limitations to anti-cheat support on Linux may prevent compatibility with SteamOS (and the vanilla Steam Deck) indefinitely.

That certainly seems to be the case for Destiny 2. In a recent update to the game’s help page, developer Bungie notes that “Destiny 2 is not supported for play on the Steam Deck or on any system utilizing Steam Play’s Proton unless Windows is installed and running.” Since Windows installation is currently not an option on the Steam Deck (due to some lingering driver issues), Destiny 2 players are simply left out of the Steam Deck party for the time being.

More than that, though, Bungie also takes the extreme position that “players who attempt to bypass Destiny 2 incompatibility [on the Steam Deck] will be met with a game ban.” That suggests there’s more than simple Proton functionality issues at play here.

Enlarge (credit: JIM WATSON/AFP)

It’s no secret that Tesla CEO Elon Musk is annoyed with President Joe Biden. The president frequently fails to mention Tesla when discussing electric vehicle production in the US, instead referring to Ford’s and GM’s comparatively nascent efforts. Musk, who has a tendency to hurl juvenile insults, has called Biden a “damp sock puppet” for the repeated slights.

Now, having gotten nowhere with insults, Musk appears to be trying a different tack.

Biden has made it obvious that he would like to see EVs made in the US by union labor. His administration is pushing for union- and American-made EVs to receive an additional $4,500 tax credit above the $7,500 offered for others. Ford, GM, and Stellantis (which now owns Chrysler) all have unionized factories. Tesla does not.

Enlarge / The US Air Force Research Laboratory seeks to develop a satellite to patrol cislunar space. (credit: US Air Force Research Laboratory)

This week, the US Air Force Research Laboratory released a video on YouTube that didn’t get much attention. But it made an announcement that is fairly significant—the US military plans to extend its space awareness capabilities beyond geostationary orbit, all the way to the Moon.

“Until now, the United States space mission extended 22,000 miles above Earth,” a narrator says in the video. “That was then, this is now. The Air Force Research Laboratory is extending that range by 10 times and the operations area of the United States by 1,000 times, taking our reach to the far side of the Moon into cislunar space.”

The US military had previously talked about extending its operational domain, but now it is taking action. It plans to launch a satellite, likely equipped with a powerful telescope, into cislunar space. According to the video, the satellite will be called the Cislunar Highway Patrol System or, you guessed it, CHPS. The research laboratory plans to issue a “request for prototype proposals” for the CHPS satellite on March 21 and announce the contract award in July. The CHPS program will be managed by Michael Lopez, from the lab’s Space Vehicles Directorate. (Alas, we were rooting for Erik Estrada).