Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Nicholas Rigg)

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Democratic lawmakers have been exchanging letters about a May 8 incident in which the public comments website was disrupted while many people were trying to file comments on Pai’s plan to dismantle net neutrality rules. The FCC says it was hit by DDoS attacks. The commission hasn’t revealed much about what it’s doing to prevent future attacks, but it said in a letter last month that it was researching “additional solutions” to protect the comment system.

Democratic Leaders of the House Commerce and Oversight committees then asked Pai what those additional solutions are, but they didn’t get much detail in return.

Enlarge / Much of Europe will have to wait for Niantic’s planned Safari Zone events.

Niantic’s first attempt at a live Pokémon Go gathering in Chicago last week went so badly that attendees are organizing a class-action lawsuit after shoddy cell reception prevented most of the 20,000 attendees from playing the game during the paid event. In the wake of that fiasco, the Pokémon Go developers are postponing long-planned similar events in Copenhagen, Prague, Stockholm, and Amsterdam that were set for the coming weeks.

In a statement, Niantic said the European “Safari Zone” events originally scheduled for August 5 and 12 would be pushed back to some time in the fall “in order to guarantee the best possible gameplay experience for European Trainers.” Other events planned for France, Spain, and Germany will still take place in September, however, and a “Pikachu Outbreak” planned for Yokohama, Japan will still take place in August.

The Safari Zone events were billed as a chance for European players to catch Pokémon that rarely or never show up in the region and to team up for multiplayer battles against Raid Bosses. “As a special surprise, we understand that some Pokémon that are rarely seen in Europe will be appearing soon in certain European cities for a brief time,” Niantic writes by way of apology. “We apologize for any inconvenience and hope you understand that our priority is to ensure a great experience for Pokémon Go Trainers in Europe and around the world.

NEW YORK—Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication (aka V2V) sometimes feels like the automotive world’s Duke Nukem Forever. The idea of vehicles communicating with each other over short distances to warn drivers of potential obstacles or dangers is compelling. But it may as well be vaporware. Nearly 20 years after the Federal Communications Commission allocated radio spectrum for it, we’re still waiting. Today, it may be more than a decade before enough V2V-equipped cars are on our roads to make a difference. But we might all be walking around with the solution in our pocket—smartphones. At least, that’s the impression I walked away with after a demo of Nexar’s technology one recent morning in Manhattan.

A V2V traffic jam?

Dedicated Short-range Radio Communications (DSRC) networks communicate with each other at ranges of up to 984 feet (300m), operating in a band around 5.9GHz. And so the FCC set aside radio spectrum for V2V communications way back in 1999. But it took another 11 years for a wireless protocol—802.11p—to get nailed down, finally happening in 2010. From that point, it was another four years before the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced that it was ready to start the rule-making process to get V2V approved for cars. NHTSA finally released a draft rule in December 2016, and we believe it to be a regulation that the current administration is keen to see implemented. Once on the books, it would give car makers two model years—plus a little extra leeway for older models—to make the technology standard across their fleets.

Enlarge / NEW YORK, NY – JULY 31: (L to R) Former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli and attorney Benjamin Brafman arrive at the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York , July 31, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. After hearing closing arguments on Friday, jurors are set to begin deliberations on Monday morning. (credit: Getty | Drew Angerer)

After five weeks of testimony and examinations, lawyers made closing arguments Thursday and Friday, and the jury began deliberating this morning on Shkreli’s case. The ex-pharmaceutical CEO stands accused of eight counts of securities and wire fraud, and he faces up to 20 years in prison. Like most things involving Shkreli, who became infamous for raising the price of a life-saving drug by more than 5,000 percent, the trial has been raucous and unusual.

Prosecutors made straight-laced arguments in the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, alleging that Shkreli ran a Ponzi-like scheme where he defrauded investors of two hedge funds he managed and siphoned millions from a pharmaceutical company he founded, Retrophin, to cover massive losses from those funds. For closing arguments, prosecutors had a stack of 33 binders on their table as they went through a PowerPoint presentation, The New York Times reports. The defense, on the other hand, brought props, wild tales, colorful questions, hints at office romance, and an unusual defense: that Shkreli—who’s allegedly brilliant, well-intentioned, but awkward—may have lied about some things but ultimately paid everyone back and more some.