Over the weekend, Ross Ulbricht’s lawyer, Joshua Dratel, filed a motion asking the court to dismiss all charges against the Silk Road kingpin. It’s largely what you’d expect from a bullish defense attorney. But here’s the twist: Dratel throws bitcoin under the bus.
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Every city street is actually a block party waiting to happen, a coiled spring of neighborly hangouts and community come-together yearning for a release. Kevin Van Lierop decided to make that process a little less daunting with his "Block Party in a Box." Now your neighborhood has no excuse not to get down.
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An Earth-shaking piece of news hit the drone community on Thursday night. A National Transportation Safety Board judge dismissed a fine that the Federal Aviation Administration had levied against the pilot of a commercial drone. The FAA has no legal authority over small aircraft, the judge said.
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It’s here, folks. The battle royale between the regulators and the people over e-cigarettes is upon us. It started a few years ago, calmly, but with New York City banning vaping in public places, the knives are about to come out.
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Taxi and car-sharing apps which quote for journeys based on GPS data could find themselves outlawed by regulators. Transport authorities across fifteen US and Canadian cities are looking at a set of rules that would prohibit anything except physical metering to calculate the cost of a trip. The proposals would also put the kibosh on demand pricing, whereby quotes automatically rise when more people are making bookings, and also on the use of drivers who don’t have proper taxi licenses. Some of these practices are already banned in a number of states, and in fact three online transport services — Zimride, SideCar and our old friend Uber — were fined in California this week precisely for allowing unqualified hands to take the wheel. If the current proposals are adopted, the role of smartphones would likely be restricted to hailing regular taxis or putting electric money into traditional cabbies’ pockets.
Filed under: Cellphones, Transportation, Mobile
Taxi service apps could be hit by a proposed ban on GPS metering originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Nov 2012 11:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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European regulators have charged Microsoft for not giving Windows 7 users a choice of internet browsers when they install the OS. Although this is only an initial step towards a fine for the software maker, Microsoft agreed with the European Commission to offer browser choices to its Windows users over three years ago, avoiding a heavy antitrust penalty. Unfortunately, while Microsoft acknowledged the “technical error”, this wasn’t before the European Commission picked up the issue — the EU’s antitrust watchdog said in July that Microsoft had not complied with the order from February 2011. According to a Reuters report earlier this year, and echoed in the EU’s statement below, the fine could amount to as much as 10 percent of the Redmond company’s global turnover.
Update: Microsoft has issued a statement on the EU charge, received by The Verge.
“We take this matter very seriously and moved quickly to address this problem as soon as we became aware of it. Although this was the result of a technical error, we take responsibility for what happened, and we are strengthening our internal procedures to help ensure something like this cannot happen again. We sincerely apologize for this mistake and will continue to cooperate fully with the Commission.”
Continue reading EU antitrust commission charges Microsoft over browser selection ‘breach’
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Internet, Software, Microsoft
EU antitrust commission charges Microsoft over browser selection ‘breach’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Oct 2012 06:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Google just chalked up one of the more important victories for driverless cars. California Governor Jerry Brown has signed bill SB1298 into law, formalizing the legal permissions and safety standards needed to let automated vehicles cruise on state-owned roads. While the bill lets anyone move forward with their plans, it’s clear from the ceremony that local technology darling Google is the primary impetus for the measure: Brown visited Google’s Mountain View headquarters to put ink to paper, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin oversaw the signing with his Google Glass eyewear on full display. If you’re dying to see driverless vehicles become mainstays of the Golden State, the official act making that possible is already available to watch after the break.
Filed under: Robots, Transportation
California Governor Brown signs bill clearing use of driverless cars on public roads (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Sep 2012 16:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The FCC currently decides on concerns of wireless spectrum concentration on a case-by-case basis: what’s acceptable in one deal might be forbidden in another. That inconsistency can be maddening to carriers and advocacy groups alike, which is why FCC Chairman Juilus Genachowski is reportedly on the cusp of distributing an order to review the process. Talking to The Hill, an official at the agency claims that the review would ask for input on creating a universal standard that would apply to all deals, hopefully providing “clarity and predictability” for any company making a spectrum grab. The order could be distributed to the FCC’s commissioners next week and voted on next month, although there’s no sign of an impending revolution — it’s just a call for opinions, after all. Regardless, the two sides of the spectrum debate already like the idea, as it could both prevent complaints by carriers of ambush regulation as well as toughen up rules that critics say hands too large a slice of the airwaves to the incumbents.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile
FCC seen reviewing rules for carrier spectrum sales, might try one-size-fits-all model originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Aug 2012 10:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Continuing this morning’s Jelly Bean soap opera, we’ve just heard that Nexus S owners on Vodafone Australia won’t be getting their pioneering update today — despite the fact that only 24 hours have elapsed since the carrier said the roll-out was on its way. According to the carrier’s official blog, the update has been delayed because Android 4.1 “does not meet all Australian regulatory requirements related to emergency calls.” Ouch. On the other hand, that sounds eminently fixable.
[Thanks, Daniel]
Filed under: Cellphones, Software
Nexus S on Vodafone Australia won’t get Jelly Bean today after all originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 03:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Where there’s smoke, there’s fire and now that the EU’s caught a whiff of alleged misconduct on Microsoft’s part, it’s dragging Windows 8 under the hot lights. Though MS moved swiftly earlier this week to acknowledge and remedy the technical glitch that prevented users from selecting alternate browsers on early 2011 Win7 machines, it now faces similar claims from third parties regarding its upcoming Win8 tablets. According to Reuters, the European Commission’s broadening its investigation to encompass allegations that Redmond is blocking the install of rival browsers on Win RT tablets running ARM chips and withholding access to full APIs. The company’s yet to issue a response to this latest bout of legal drama, but when the stakes are this high, you can be sure it won’t be before long.
Filed under: Software
EU deepens Microsoft investigation amidst claims Windows RT tablets block rival browser install originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Jul 2012 18:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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