Craigslist unexpectedly pulls adult services listings
After months of pressure from state attorneys general, Craigslist pulled its adult services listings offline over the Labor Day weekend. Visitors to the site were greeted with a black bar with the word "censored" in white text (as seen to the right) where the link to the adult services listings would normally be.
The adult services listings have been a perpetual source of concern for law enforcement, including numerous state attorneys general, who have said that listings facilitate prostitution and that children are often victimized by the ads. Craigslist originally had an Erotic Services section, but shut it down in May 2009 in response to pressure from law enforcement. The company had previously attempted to stave off criticism by verifying listings over the phone and working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, but decided that having an entire section of the site devoted to the sex trade was a bad idea. Shortly after the erotic services section was yanked, it was replaced with the adult services section.
The new section, which required credit card payments for listings that were reviewed by moderators before going live, failed to mollify critics. The attorney general of Connecticut and 37 of his colleagues across the country subpoenaed the classified site over what they described as its brothel business. In late August, Kansas attorney general Steve Six called on Craigslist once again to shut down adult services, saying that the site had not done enough to fight "illegal sexual activity on the Internet."
At this time, it's not clear whether craigslist is going to get out of the adult services business altogether. The classifieds giant has remained silent so far, not offering any rationale for its move. If this does indeed mark the end of the line for the adult services section on Craigslist, it doesn't mean that all adult services ads will magically vanish; they're likely to migrate to other parts of the site. That said, the attorneys general will no doubt view the apparent shutdown of the adult services section as a victory in their war against the online sex trade.
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Week in Apple: Apple TV, iTunes 10, Delicious Library, oh my!
An Apple event means lots of new announcements. Almost the entire iPod line got updated, Apple TV got a serious makeover, and iTunes 10 got... something. But we also covered a patent suit, some lessons learned from Delicious Library 2, and a rumor about an iPhone revision. Read on for the roundup:Microsoft cofounder drops patent bomb on Apple, Google, Facebook: Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen has filed a lawsuit against 11 tech companies for violations of his current company's patents that cover basic Internet concepts. The list includes Google, Facebook, and Apple... but not Microsoft.
Hands-on photos, observations of new iPods, Apple TV: Following the fall Apple media event, Ars got some hands-on time with the new iPod touch, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, and Apple TV. We have some up-close and personal photos to share with you, as well as extra product details that we got out of the Apple representatives.
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Google coughs up $8.5 million to settle Buzz privacy suit
The fallout from Google's Buzz social networking aggregator continues: the company has agreed to settle a class action lawsuit over concerns that the service's original configuration violated users' privacy. While Google has made numerous changes to the service since its February launch and maintains that it did no wrong, the company has agreed to pay out $8.5 million to end the litigation.Buzz launched in early February to a lukewarm reception, which was quickly followed by an enormous controversy over concerns that the default settings revealed private information. At the heart of the problem was an auto-follow feature meant to facilitate quick adoption. Users quickly found, however, that it could reveal their Google accounts to people they'd like to avoid. Journalists were concerned that confidential sources could be revealed to the public, while one woman noted that her private Google account was auto-followed by her abusive ex-husband.
Google worked quickly to make changes, turning the auto-follow feature off in favor of recommendations, and making some features easier to opt out of. Still, it wasn't long before a federal class-action suit was filed on behalf of all Gmail users who were automatically opted-in to the Buzz service.
Google has also faced criticism from advocacy groups like EPIC and the EFF, US lawmakers, and foreign governments.
In the proposed settlement submitted to the court this week, Google agreed to make efforts to better educate Buzz users on issues of privacy and the particular privacy features that Buzz offers. Additionally, Google also agreed to pay out $8.5 million to a fund which will be disbursed as cy pres awards for organizations that focus on Internet privacy policy or education.
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Week in gaming: Move review, new 360 D-pad, console repair
Would it be sad to admit I was excited when our Move feature was pimped on the official True Blood twitter account? If so, chain me to the sad pole, because that was awesome. We went toe-to-toe with Sony's PlayStation Move for a week, and liked what we saw. Microsoft announced the price for Xbox Live was going less than the price of a cup of coffee a month, and the rage was intense.There will also be a new official Xbox 360 controller, but right now we don't know if it will be better... or just different. This is what gamers were talking about this week.
P.S: go buy Ivy the Kiwi.
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Week in tech: Android tablet army begins march, Chrome, OAuth fail
Samsung fires first Android-powered salvo at iPad with Galaxy Tab: Samsung is putting the iPad in its crosshairs with its new Android-powered Galaxy Tab touchscreen tablet. The well-specced device will launch in a few week in Europe, with the US and Asia to follow soon.Chrome 7 shows off hardware acceleration, "Tabpose": Google's Chrome Web browser will soon gain hardware-accelerated graphics—the latest trend for Web browsers that has already shown up in early builds of Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4.
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Ivy the Kiwi on the Wii, DS is a wonderful, addictive surprise
Ivy the Kiwi was created by Yuji Naka, the co-creator of Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic is a character that continues to enjoy a strong following, and the series gives any follow-up work a huge shadow to live under. Don't worry, this game is up to the challenge.Read the comments on this post
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We're trudging down the long road to universal 4Mbps broadband
Judging by the Federal Communications Commission's latest survey, we're still pretty far away from the FCC's National Broadband Plan goal of 4Mbps Internet download speeds for everyone. The agency's newest statistics indicate that out of 71 million wireline household connections, less than half (44 percent) matched or exceeded that benchmark, with its upload goal of 1Mbps. Meanwhile, the number of consumers with full mobile wireless Internet accounts shot up by 40 percent from January through June of 2009, to 35 million subscribers. Twenty-five million had such access at the end of 2008.
But among those 35 million wireless connections, only 45 percent met the Department of Commerce and Agriculture's $7.2 billion broadband stimulus program's definition of "broadband"—advertised speeds of 768Kbps downloads and 200Kbps uploads.
Of the 113 million Internet connections out there all told (residential and business), 87 million or 76 percent reached that level. If you look just at fixed-location connections, 91 percent met that goal.
There were a few bright spots in the statistical picture. There are now four million fiber connections—a 23 percent jump, and the largest increase among fixed-location broadband services.
But cable modem connections only grew by three percent to 41 million and DSL by a mere one percent to 31 million (not that DSL is much of a measure of progress any more).
All-in-all, this latest survey offers the portrait of a nation whose consumers access the 'Net at relatively slow throughput rates. Keep in mind that another benchmark of the National Broadband Plan is 100Mbps to 100 million homes by 2020. We're a long way from that goal.
The data comes from information submitted to the FCC every six months by all ISPs.
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The virtual play-by-play: talking StarCraft 2 with Mike Husky
StarCraft 2 has been doing some serious business: Blizzard has recently announced that the game has sold 3 million copies in the first month of availability. Mike Husky is certainly doing his part to keep the game popular; his YouTube channel has just under 200,000 subscribers, and his videos have over 64 million lifetime views.The demand is there for high-quality commentary on StarCraft 2 matches, and Husky wants to help fill it. "It is my goal to support and promote StarCraft as much as possible," he told Ars, and his success shows the promise of "on-air" personalities in competitive gaming.
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Chrome reaches second birthday, version 6 goes stable
When Google launched its Chrome Web browser in 2008, it was clear that the product had considerable potential. Its emphasis on performance and its intriguing minimalistic user interface attracted a lot of well-deserved attention. Today, exactly two years later, Chrome has over 80 million users, a 7.52 percent global market share (21.87 at Ars, making it the second most popular browser here behind Firefox), and is gradually creeping into the mainstream.It wasn't entirely clear at first if the browser would have real staying power or if it would be cast aside unfinished like so many of Google's other ambitious *cough*Wave*cough* experiments. But Google's commitment hasn't waned, and it's increasingly evident that the browser is an important part of Google's platform strategy and long-term aspirations for the future of the Web. To mark Chrome's second anniversary, Google has announced the official release of Chrome 6, a new major stable version of the browser.
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New malware detects browser, shows fake malware warning page
Microsoft is warning about a new piece of malware, Rogue:MSIL/Zeven, that auto-detects a user's browser and then imitates the relevant malware warning pages from Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome. The fake warning pages are very similar to the real thing; you have to look closely to realize they aren't the real thing. The ploy is a basic social engineering scheme, but in this case the malware authors are relying on the user's trust in their browser, a tactic that hasn't been seen before.
Beyond the warning pages, the actual malware looks like the real deal: it allows you to scan files, tells you when you're behind on your updates, and enables you to change your security and privacy settings. Performing a scan results in the product finding malicious files, but of course it cannot delete them unless you update, which requires paying for the full version. Attempting to buy the product will open an HTML window that provides a useless "Safe Browsing Mode" with high-strength encryption. To top it all off, the rogue antivirus webpage looks awfully similar to the Microsoft Security Essentials webpage; even the awards received by MSE and a link to the Microsoft Malware Protection Center have been copied.
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Drumroll, please: the top Web scams of the decade
"Men," said he, "must have corrupted nature a little, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves." —Voltaire, Candide
One of the less pleasant aspects of our online Age of Anxiety is that most of us now get anonymous e-mails on a daily basis from people who, given their druthers, would rob us silly as fast as technologically possible. Of late, I've been getting a frenzy of bogus missives thanking me for the five thousand dollars or so worth of software, gadgets, self-help books, and lingerie I supposedly purchased on a famous online shopping service over the last five minutes.
Of course, if this message was a mistake, I'm helpfully directed to an online form, where, upon disclosing my credit card data, someone will presumably clean my financial clock in nanoseconds.
What fun. Good to know that there are so many people out there who care. But better to know what the most common scams look like. Here is security vendor Panda's new list of the biggest Web scams of the decade.
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Hands-on: Twitter officially comes to the iPad
When we interviewed Tweetie developer Loren Brichter in June, he made two things clear: 1) Tweetie (now branded simply as "Twitter" after the company was acquired by the microblogging service) would definitely be coming to the iPad, and 2) Loren was really looking forward to exploring the larger screen touch interface. Now, the official Twitter client for iPad is finally out in the form of a universal app. The team has clearly put some effort into utilizing parts of the multitouch experience in ways that third-party Twitter apps have not, and the app is certainly feature-rich. However, the interface can be confusing at times, and many of the features are not easily discoverable without some help.
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White space broadband to be finalized (at last) this month
"White spaces" broadband has been in hibernation—the rules governing unlicensed use in empty TV channels have never been finalized, and therefore no devices have yet appeared. This despite the fact that the idea was approved under previous FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in 2008.That's about to change at last. At its next open meeting on September 23, the FCC will vote on the "TV White Spaces Second Memorandum Opinion and Order" that will "create opportunities for investment and innovation in advanced WiFi technologies and a variety of broadband services by finalizing provisions for unlicensed wireless devices to operate in unused parts of TV spectrum."
The tech is ready to go; trial deployments have already been rolled out successfully. But lingering issues, including the question of who would administer an Internet-connected geolocation database that would help prevent interference, have kept the rules from becoming final.
We're looking forward to see what designers and engineers come up with once the tech is open to widespread deployment.
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Apple's trouble with TV
Apple TV has been a persistent loser from a company that usually only tolerates winners. It's clear that Apple wants to do something "in the living room," but damned if it can figure out exactly what that is. Yesterday, Apple took another run at this thing, announcing an "all-new" Apple TV.As with any new electronic gadget, I must be of two minds about the new Apple TV. The first, most difficult question is, will the new Apple TV be a successful product for Apple? The second question is easier: is this a product I want to buy for myself?
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Hands-on with iTunes Ping, sans Facebook Connect
Because we all need another social network in our lives, Apple introduced "Ping" as part of iTunes 10 during its big media event this week. Described by Steve Jobs as "Twitter and Facebook meet iTunes," Ping aims to let the already-existing (and quite massive) audience of iTunes users friend each other, stay up-to-date on their friends' musical tastes, and like/comment on things found around iTunes.Getting started with Ping is fairly easy, although it takes some time to figure out how to do all the things you would want to do with the service. Ping requires iTunes 10 and is not turned on by default—it looks as if Apple is trying to head off complaints about privacy by making users turn it on themselves. Once you install iTunes 10, you can click on "Ping" in the everything-is-now-gray left-hand sidebar to get started.
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