Ars Technica
-
Apple reportedly gobbling up tiny Italian audio software firm Redmatica
Apple is reportedly in the process of acquiring a tiny Italian software firm specializing in sample-based instrument creation and editing tools, according to Italian site Fanpage. The acquisition was approved by Italian...
-
Report: Sony mulls, but ultimately rejects online-only console
With the video game industry rapidly transitioning from a focus on retail game sales to a marketplace dominated by downloads, it's only a matter of time until a major home console decides to do without physical media at all. It seems tha...
-
Methane made from meteors may explain Mars mystery
A fragment of the Murchison meteorite. ASU.edu The results were announced in 2009: researchers had been watching Mars for several years using Earth-based telescopes, and they'd seen somethi...
-
Faster than your router? Verizon doubles FiOS speeds to 300Mbps
Internet access as fast as a superhero. JD Hancock Verizon today said it will double its highest FiOS Internet speeds to 300 megabits per second. That's faster than any cable offering, and ...
-
Harvard prof to chair FCC's net neutrality advisory committee
The Federal Communications Commission has named an Open Internet Advisory Committee to monitor and report on the effectiveness of the FCC's network neutrality regime. The committee will be chaired by Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittra...
-
Apple: publishers "expressed varying degrees of unhappiness" with Amazon
Apple has acknowledged that yes, part of its motivation to launch the iBookstore was to make money, but says its agreements with e-book publishers were a result of individual negotiations. Additionally, the company argu...
-
Google Nexus tablet pops up on benchmark site
The Google Nexus tablet may have made a guest appearance on a benchmark result site a month ahead of its anticipated release, according to Android Police. The tablet, named "Nexus 7" in the benchmark results, appears to use a Tegra 3 pro...
-
Germany in trouble with EC over lack of ISP, telecom data retention
The European Commission is preparing to refer Germany to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, for failing to introduce a new law that would put it in line with the European data retention directive, according to a new report from...
-
Open government reboot focuses on APIs instead of data
Issued by the Office of Management and Budget, the Digital Government Strategy is the basis of a new White House directive to expose "high-value" Federal data through Web APIs Have you ever wante...
-
New book: WikiLeaks wanted LulzSec's help to hack Iceland
Parmy Olson, the Forbes London bureau chief, is out with a new book called We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency. While we're working on a review, one tidbit caught our eyes: the...
-
Fast and the furious: Increasing OS X efficiency with Alfred
Need for speed: Alfred moves beyond the capabilities of Apple's Spotlight. Pro users of OS X often feel that the keyboard is the secret weapon to get things done on the desktop. After all, learning the key...
-
BFG Edition to revamp Doom 3 for PC, consoles
Id software has been largely silent about any future plans for the venerable Doom franchise since Doom 4 was first announced back in 2008. The company broke that silence today, not with new details about Doom 4, but with the announcement...
-
Video clips of Tim Cook on Steve Jobs, Apple TV, patent wars, and more
So you've heard about Apple CEO Tim Cook's thoughts on running the company post-Jobs and how he feels about standards-essential patents. But what about all the other stuff he chatted about with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg at the All T...
-
$10,000 iPad prototype was "most likely" stolen property, says eBay seller
Selling Apple prototypes is shrouded in mystery and intrigue. apps69/Ebay Auctioning off Apple prototypes is tricky business. If you’re the seller, there’s always the chance that Apple will ...
-
Not just the browser: why buying Opera makes sense for Facebook
An acquisition of Opera could be the key to monetizing Facebook's mobile platform. Johan Larsson If rumours are to believed, a Facebook-branded browser might not be far off. Independent UK ...
-
UK Supreme Court: yes, extradite Julian Assange to Sweden
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange today took one crucial step closer to extradition as the UK Supreme Court ruled that Sweden's European Arrest Warrant (EAW) for his capture and return was in fact valid. Assange has been...
-
Shuttle-monitoring radar can watch raindrops in a cloud
Doppler weather radar at the National Severe Storms Laboratory. NOAA Turn on the Weather Channel, and you might see storm-tracking images from your friendly local Doppler radar system. Alth...
-
A Beefy Miracle: Fedora 17 arrives with GNOME 3.4 and GIMP 2.8
Fedora 17's GNOME 3.4 desktop. The default wallpaper needs more cow. The developers behind the Fedora project have announced the official release of Fedora 17, codenamed Beefy Miracle. The update includes ...
-
WiFi, cellular data to account for 60% all Internet traffic by 2016
WiFi will account for more than half of all Internet traffic by 2016, and cellular data will grow by leaps and bounds to take a 10 percent share, according to Cisco. Cisco today is releasing the latest version of its Visual Networking In...
-
One year on, the value of Microsoft's Skype purchase remains mysterious
This week, the New York Times interviewed Tony Bates, President of Microsoft's Skype Division (and CEO of the company when it was independent). In the interview we learn much about Skype's independence of the larger Microsoft organizatio...
-
Apple CEO Tim Cook: Steve "taught me that the joy is in the journey"
Steve Jobs taught Apple CEO Tim Cook to "never ask what he would do," Cook said on stage at the 10th annual All Things D conference on Tuesday. "Just do what's right. And so I'm doing that." Cook took the opportunity to...
-
Silicon Valley donations to Obama reach record levels
Last week, President Barack Obama swung through Silicon Valley, taking in nearly $13 million for his re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee, according to Politico. That’s more than at the same point ...
-
Microsoft outsources copyright enforcement to small Redmond company
PugnoM If there’s one thing that jumps out from the new Google copyright removal request tool released last week, it’s that Microsoft is number one, having gone after 2.5 million URLs that may...
-
New Zealand judge orders US to hand over Megaupload documents
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom and his co-defendants scored a significant victory on Tuesday when a New Zealand judge ordered the United States government to hand over evidence the defense will need to prepare for an upcoming extradition ...
-
You Don't Know Jack shines on Facebook
Names and faces blurred to protect my stupid friends (and that one smart one). Jellyvision Many of the most popular "social" games on Facebook are really the opposite of social, when you get...
-
Hot tuna: bluefins carry Fukushima isotopes across the Pacific
Bluefin tuna migrate across the Pacific as they mature. NOAA The same factor that put the Fukushima power plants at risk—proximity to the ocean—ensured that a sizable fraction of the radioa...
-
Hands-on: Web development on the go with Diet Coda for iPad
Panic has officially released Coda 2, a major new version of the company’s award-winning Web development application. Panic also took the opportunity to launch Diet Coda, a new lightweight Web development tool for the iPad. We did some h...
-
Indie game developers band together to promote price control
Despite being known primarily for its lower-priced PC and iOS versions, <i>World of Goo</i> actually made more money selling for $15 on Nintendo's WiiWare service. 2D Boy Imagine...
-
Spy malware infecting Iranian networks is engineering marvel to behold
Iranian systems were by far the most targeted by Flame, an advanced piece of surveillance malware. Kaspersky Lab Malware recently found infecting Middle Eastern networks is so complex and s...
-
Hard drive supplies back to pre-flood levels, but prices aren't
Last October, flooding in Thailand took a huge bite out of hard disk drive supplies, taking out about a quarter of the world's HDD manufacturing capacity. The impact of that disaster has passed, and supply levels are back to near where t...
-
Slick new Chromebook, first "Chromebox" desktop out from Samsung today
Samsung's new Chromebook and Chromebox Google A year after unveiling Chromebooks to the world, Google and Samsung today are announcing two new devices, including the first "Chromebox" deskto...
-
Nearly 1 million iOS jailbreaks over Memorial Day thanks to Absinthe
The developers behind the iPhone Dev Team and Chronic Dev, among others, released a new version of their iOS jailbreak tool, Absinthe, last Friday. But is jailbreaking iOS devices still en vogue? It certainly seems like...
-
Innocent Megaupload user asks court to order his data returned
An Ohio videographer has stepped forward to be the poster boy for innocent users who lost access to data due to the January seizure of Megaupload's servers. He has asked the Virginia court overseeing the case to order that his files be r...
-
Allegedly "leaked" photos show 3D features coming to iOS Maps
Wondering what the rumored Maps app for iOS 6 is going to look like? BGR claims to have received a number of predictably blurry photographs of the app, which the site has posted as a photo gallery. The photos show views of the maps and a...
-
Rock of ages: 40,000 year-old musical instruments the world's oldest
Flute made of mammoth ivory Image courtesy of Oxford University Oxford University in the UK has announced that researchers from that school and Germany's University of Tübingen have determi...
-
New York bicycle hire works like London and Paris, but more expensive
Come July, 600 cycle stations will open for business across Manhattan and Brooklyn. Citi Bike Come July, some 10,000 bicycles adorned with the electric blue corporate livery of international...
-
Putting a good spin (wave) on quantum memory
A magneto-optical trap for rubidium atoms. williams.edu Just like a regular computer, a quantum computer based on photon entanglement requires memory as well as processing. However, storing...
-
Facebook Camera is no Instagram killer, but it doesn't have to be
Facebook Camera turns Facebook into a photo-only social network. Facebook recently released the Facebook Camera app for iOS. Designed primarily to make it easier to share photos on Facebook, the inclusion ...
-
X-rays and iPads: The network healthcare evolution
Photo illustration by Aurich Lawson Future of Bandwidth How much bandwidth does your office really need? Bandwidth explosion: As Internet use soars, can bottlenecks be averted? At...
-
Climate models ignored by media (except for their critics)
Science on a Sphere, Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts in Harrisburg, PA NOAA You won’t find them next to the operating systems on the shelves of your favorite store, but climate mode...
-
WWDC 2012 schedule posted, keynote confirmed, app released
WWDC 2012 is on. Apple confirmed the keynote, released this year's app, and posted the talk schedule for attendees first thing Monday morning, officially sending the lucky 5,000 attendees (and a smattering of media folk...
-
Making idiot-proof infographics with Infogr.am
Enlarge / Infogr.am's splash page lets you choose between creating a new design, or accessing previously stored works. Let's say you want to compare the airspeed velocity of various unladen swallows. You c...
-
Four signs America's broadband policy is failing
Photo illustration by Aurich Lawson In 2008, I wrote a paper for the Cato Institute questioning the need for network neutrality regulations; I argued that the Internet's decentralized architect...
-
Keep out: NASA asks future Moon visitors to respect its stuff
NASA’s proposed radius around the Apollo 17 landing site, which would prevent damage to any historical artifacts from future missions. NASA The moon is about to become crowded. In the next ...
-
Precision and purpose: Ubuntu 12.04 and the Unity HUD reviewed
Ubuntu 12.04, codenamed Precise Pangolin, rolled out last month. The new version of the popular Linux distribution brings updated software and new features, including the highly-anticipated Heads-Up Display (HUD) interface. The HUD is on...
-
Catan Junior brings serious board game strategy to tots
Catan Junior comes with everything you see here! Batteries not included (or required) Charlie Hall European-style board games have been quickly surging in American popularity and availabilit...
-
Lives of the Planets suffers from poor research
The new paperback edition of "Lives of the Planets" by Richard Corfield suffers from serious errors and misleading statements. Planetary science is a fast-moving field, especially in this era of Mars rovers, orbiting ma...
-
From now on, Britain's "cookie law" prohibits tracking without consent
You'll see this message if you visit the BBC website for the first time since the regulations went into place. What the media have called Britain's "cookie law" became enforceable this weekend and will require UK-based website operators ...
-
Ubi turns any wall into a touchscreen using Microsoft's Kinect
Ubi Interactive "We can turn any surface into a 3D touchscreen," explained Anup Chathoth, one third of Munich-based startup Ubi Interactive. Such claims typically conjure up images of floating...
-
So what's playing Diablo III really like? The OpenForum weighs in
Sure, there's been some bumps along the way, but is Diablo III actually...fun? JBLivin Earlier this week, our own Gaming Editor Kyle Orland reported on Diablo III’s recent problems with ser...
