Ars Technica
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Windows 8 Consumer Preview coming February 29th
The Windows 8 Consumer Preview—notably it's not being called a "beta"—will be launched on February 29th. Microsoft will launch it at an event it's hosting in Barcelona to coincide with Mobile World ...
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Mozilla Antarctica community site launched by coolest Firefox fans
The popularity of the Firefox Web browser has grown tremendously in recent years, but there is one region where it is practically ubiquitous. Firefox has consistently held 80 percent market share in Antarctica...
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Feature: Step 1: give every kid a laptop. Step 2: learning begins?
Nicolas Negroponte, the head of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, sure knows how to get people's attention. About three months ago, the venerable ed-tech evangelist told the Open Mobile Summit in San F...
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The spice must flow: new model describes the evolution of desert dunes
Understanding dunes is important, since he who controls the Spice controls the Universe… That’s the last Dune joke, I promise. Understanding the mechanisms behind desert sand dune formation and e...
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Czech, Slovak governments backing away from ACTA, too
My wife, who is professionally interested in the politics of the Czech Republic, doesn't usually find ways to connect her work and mine. So she was surprised to see this week that the European protests against the A...
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The Darkness II: A short, entertaining, by-the-numbers horror shooter
The Darkness II is one of the most unabashedly and gleefully gory games of this generation, reveling in its own torrents of blood and shredded viscera. While bullets exploding heads and tearing through flesh a...
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For cold water corals, warming is beating acidification to drive a growth spurt
The release of excess CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels, deforestation, and other processes doesn’t just affect our air; it also affects our oceans. The oceans absorb as much as 30 percent of the e...
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Crypto crack makes satellite phones vulnerable to eavesdropping
Cryptographers have cracked the encryption schemes used in a variety of satellite phones, a feat that makes it possible for attackers to surreptitiously monitor data received by vulnerable devices. The resear...
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Anonymous exposes e-mails of Syrian presidential aides
Hackers aligned with Anonymous have exposed hundreds of e-mail messages from the webmail server of Syria's Ministry of Presidential Affairs, the support ministry for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Among the expos...
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Adobe confirms: no Flash for Chrome on Android
Google issued a beta release of Chrome for Android earlier today. The browser provides support for modern Web standards and includes a number of compelling features that aren't available in the Android's default bro...
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Feature: Don't panic? Windows 8 and the "ribbonification" of Explorer
When Microsoft first revealed that the Explorer file manager would be outfitted with a ribbon-style toolbar in Windows 8, responses were loud, passionate, and frequently negative. The company recently described cha...
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Google reportedly developing Android-powered smart glasses
Much like flying cars and jet packs, wearable computing is one of those aspirational fields of technology where the current state of the art doesn't deliver the sort of experience that people have imagined for decad...
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Lasers plus a crushing magnetic field may make fusion more efficient
Ever since I first heard about the idea, I have loved inertial confinement fusion. The basic concept involves blowing stuff up with lasers to get some energy, then doing it again and again as fast as possible...
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The three patents Microsoft is hammering the Nook with—and why they may be invalid
Microsoft's complaint against Barnes & Noble's Android-based Nook devices has been narrowed down to just three patents, with the US International Trade Commission having to decide whether Nook devices infr...
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You, me, and "science" makes three: the state of online dating
Online dating has only become more ubiquitous and socially acceptable since the first sites launched in the mid-'90s: in a 2007-2009 study, 22 percent of couples surveyed formed as a result of dating websites,...
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Apple trademark may hint at processing improvement for next-gen A6 processor
A recent trademark application from Apple for the term "Macroscalar" may give a clue about upcoming improvements for its next-generation mobile processors. The term refers to technology Apple has been working ...
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Judge denies record label's request to shutter "used" MP3 store
A one-of-a-kind website enabling the online sale of preowned digital-music files got a major legal boost late Monday when a federal judge refused to shutter it at the request of Capitol Records. ReD...
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Google (finally) brings Chrome to Android
Google is finally bringing Chrome to the Android platform. A beta release of the increasingly popular Web browser was published this morning in the Android Market and is available to users who are running Andr...
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Minecraft developer makes "serious" offer to fund Psychonauts sequel
In the annals of video gaming, 2005's mind-bending platformer Psychonauts is right up there with Earthbound and Beyond Good and Evil in the ranks of games that have a devoted cadre of fans eagerly demanding se...
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Genome of extinct human relative placed on Amazon web services
It has been nearly 200 years since we became aware of the Neanderthals, an extinct form of humans that once shared Europe and Asia with the modern humans. But it has been less than two years since we discovered tha...
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After seizure, online gamblers try to retrieve $150 million from Full Tilt Poker
After a key ruling last week, US gamblers hoping to retrieve $150 million stored with online gaming site Full Tilt Poker will have the opportunity to go after the company in court. In April 2011, the US Dep...
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Kingdoms of Amalur: A great action game in an empty, forgettable world
The ubiquity of the action RPG, as an idea, is a little weird when you think about it. It's hard to think of two more disparate genres to try to combine, and usually the attempt ends up leaning too heavily tow...
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Pulsed lasers make lightweight glasses out of polymers
Microscopically, glasses are solids that look more like liquids—they lack a regular crystalline structure. The liquid character is no accident, since a typical glass is made by cooling a fluid rapidly. ...
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Motorola Droid 4 to launch on Verizon for $199.99
The Motorola Droid 4 will be available on Verizon's network for $199.99 with a two-year contract, Motorola announced in a press release today. The smartphone carries on the keyboard tradition of its predecessor,...
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Nikon D800 combines medium format quality, HD filmmaking in one DSLR
Nikon on Monday announced the D800 digital SLR camera, the newest addition to its professional DSLR line up. Boasting a 36.3 megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor, high ISO shooting capabilities, and a variety of h...
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Symantec offered hackers $50k to delete stolen code in alleged "sting"
Hackers claiming to have the source code for Symantec's PCAnywhere and Norton Antivirus software attempted to extort $50,000 from the company, according to e-mail transcripts posted on February 7. But the poi...
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Feature: Can porn be copyrighted? One file-sharing defendant says no
The strange case of Hard Drive Productions versus "anyone that the video company's lawyers suspect of illegally downloading its pornographic movies" has taken a new and interesting twist. One of the nearly 1,...
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High-res UI elements in OS X 10.7.3 renew buzz about "retina" display MacBooks
There's renewed buzz about support for "retina" displays on Apple's portable Macs thanks to higher-resolution cursor images showing up in Mac OS X 10.7.3. Noticed by a handful of Mac developers, there are new UI ima...
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Paramount "humbled" by SOPA protests even as CEO blasts "mob mentality"
Major Hollywood studios are still reeling from last month's resounding defeat of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act. The latest sign of the studios's changed posture is a letter that Para...
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Revenge is ours: extracting energy from a cockroach
I love science. The joy of discovery in pure research combines with applied science to leave me fantasizing about future technology. Add in the occasional WTF moment and the comedy inherent in poorly prepared ...
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Raspberry Pi's $35 Linux computer on track to launch later this month
The first model of the Raspberry Pi Foundation's low-cost Linux computer will likely be available for purchase later this month. The organization announced today that manufacturing on the first batch is set to compl...
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ITC lawyers argue that Barnes & Noble didn't infringe Microsoft's patents
Barnes & Noble received a boost in its patent infringement case against Microsoft after staff attorneys at the US International Trade Commission recommended that ITC Judge Theodore Essex find that the book compa...
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Google to strip Chrome of SSL revocation checking
Google's Chrome browser will stop relying on a decades-old method for ensuring secure sockets layer certificates are valid after one of the company's top engineers compared it to seat belts that break when they are ...
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Canonical ending support for Kubuntu, reassigning lead developer
Jonathan Riddell, the lead developer of the Kubuntu project, announced today that his work on the KDE-based Ubuntu variant will no longer be funded by Canonical after the upcoming 12.04 release. Kubuntu will be deve...
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Journalist recovers video of his arrest after police deleted it
A Miami journalist has recovered video of police officers arresting him after it was deleted from his camera. The man was covering a police effort to evict Occupy Miami protestors. He plans to file a complaint...
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Law firm that defended Marine still smarting from Anonymous attack
The website of a law firm that represented a US Marine accused of leading a massacre that killed 24 Iraqi civilians remained inaccessible on Monday, three days after hackers with Anonymous took credit for an attack ...
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Apple rules top three smartphone spots but loses new users to Android
Apple continues to hold the title for some of the top-selling smartphone models, with the iPhone 4S being the best selling handset in the US last quarter, according to a new report by market research firm NPD. But w...
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DRM server transition to make some Ubisoft games unplayable starting tomorrow
While DRM schemes are designed to make sure only legitimate purchasers can play a game, the opposite will be true starting tomorrow for some Ubisoft titles. That's when a planned server migration will temporarily d...
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From your couch, Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking
A few weeks ago, Stephen Hawking celebrated his 70th birthday. The famous cosmologist (who is probably more widely known than any other living scientist) has written several popular books including A Brief Hi...
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Game makers face uphill battle proving copyright infringement in court
The idea of copying a successful game concept and profiting off of your own version is practically as old as the game industry itself—just look at the countless Pong clones released in the wake of the At...
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Another reason why Apple may be limiting Siri to iPhone 4S
Siri, Apple's widely advertised voice-activated "intelligent assistant," has so far been limited to the latest iPhone 4S hardware after Apple's acquisition. Though observers have come up with various reas...
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Reverse alchemy: replacing precious platinum with ignoble iron
Homogeneous catalysis, in which the catalyst is mixed directly in with the reaction components, sees widespread use in industrial settings. The catalysts themselves are often complex organometallic compounds t...
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Poll Technica: should Apple more strictly police app ripoffs on the App Store?
Apple has begun to take action against iPhone app ripoffs that have been crudding up the App Store. Over the weekend, the company removed a number of apps that bear a striking similarity to ones that are alre...
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Whatever happened to that "six strikes" P2P notice system? It's coming soon
Whatever happened to the "six strikes" system that was to help civilize the American Internet? Three years ago, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) gave up its mass litigation strategy of tar...
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Torrent search engine BTJunkie voluntarily shuts down
Torrent search engine BTjunkie is the latest file-sharing service to fall on its sword in the wake of the Megaupload sting. Junkie, one of the largest BitTorrent indexes, decided to shut down volunta...
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Verizon, Redbox team up to build video streaming, DVD service
Verizon and Redbox are developing a new video service to compete against Netflix, which will combine Redbox's kiosk DVD and Blu-Ray rental service with streaming and downloadable video content made possible by Veri...
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Volcanoes, rather than a quiet Sun, may have triggered the Little Ice Age
I’m not a big guy. It doesn’t take a tremendous shove to send me crashing to the floor. But what does it take to knock the Earth’s climate off balance? In the case of the Little Ice Age, a r...
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A license to link? Lowe's has one
In the course of building a large framed mirror last month—a process which cemented my belief that doing pro-quality wood staining is a black art best left to necromancers—I visited the website for...
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Over 3 years later, "deleted" Facebook photos are still online
Facebook is still working on deleting photos from its servers in a timely manner nearly three years after Ars first brought attention to the topic. The company admitted on Friday that its older systems for st...
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Microsoft publishes fancy-pants heterogeneous parallel GPGPU C++ AMP specification
Microsoft has published the specification for C++ AMP (Accelerated Massive Parallelism), its new system for heterogeneous parallel processing in C++. When Microsoft first announced C++ AMP in June last year, i...
