The alternative whistleblower site created by WikiLeaks defectors may launch sooner than later, according to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN). The project is being referred to as "OpenLeaks" and is reportedly on track to launch this coming Monday. Though the newspaper didn't name its sources, it's clear from the group's goals that the founders essentially want to be the anti-WikiLeaks."Our long-term goal is to build a strong, transparent platform to support whistleblowers—both in terms of technology and politics—while at the same time encouraging others to start similar projects," an anonymous person told DN. "As a short-term goal, this is about completing the technical infrastructure and ensuring that the organization continues to be democratically governed by all its members, rather than limited to one group or individual."
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Time to get the feds involved in 'Net peering and transit ruckus?
Peering and transit: too important to leave to the market alone?That's the contention of a new letter from New America Foundation, Media Access Project, and Free Press. The DC-based groups of argue that the secrecy around such key network interconnection deals is bad for the Internet—and that both the FCC and Department of Justice should start investigating.
Oh—and that investigation should not be limited to the recent Comcast/Level 3 dispute which kicked off recent concern over peering agreements, but should be extended to examine “how peering agreements are negotiated and whether companies are acting in an anti-competitive manner.”
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The Uncharted 3 hype machine revs up... can we take a pass?
Uncharted 3 was announced yesterday. Entertainment Weekly had a few screenshots, there was a short teaser trailer to watch, and that was it. The gaming world went bananas, of course, as most of us were ready to buy without learning anything more about it. Sadly, this is as good as it's going to get.I don't mean to pick on Uncharted 3, as it's merely the latest of the big-game reveals that has whipped everyone into a frenzy even though the game itself is a year or more away. There will soon be more video shown on Jimmy Fallon's late night show. We were told that we need to watch the Video Game Awards on Spike TV because we will get more details there as well. The game is sure to grace a few magazine covers in the coming months. At GDC, E3, PAX, and press junkets we'll see and play carefully selected portions of the game designed to leave us with the best possible impressions of the title.
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November great for Black Ops, good for everyone but Sony
Wait a minute, do we actually have good news about overall sales for the US gaming industry in November? We certainly do! "November sales represent the best November on record in terms of new physical retail sales," NPD analyst Anita Frazier wrote in the company's latest report. "It bests November 2008 by roughly $30 million, and that time frame was at the height of the music/dance genre sales."Let's take a look at the game and hardware sales for the month of November; there are some interesting things going on. To be blunt, this was a good month for everyone but Sony. We're also getting used to the new format of the NPD reports, where the official release has very little in the way of specifics, and we're reliant on Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo themselves to release the detailed information. Guess which company decided to sit this month out?
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Switching ISPs? You may not get much better service
If you are like most Americans, you live in a city or region with a choice of two home landline Internet service providers, if that. Over here in my corner of the Ars Orbiting HQ—San Francisco, California—I often wonder whether to switch from my AT&T DSL "up to 3 Mbps" plan to Comcast.I get the itch to do this during periods when my AT&T connection inexplicably needs to be restarted every day for about a week, then goes back to performing smoothly for no identifiable reason. This has happened twice over the last five years.
Or I get into a switchy mood whenever I see one of those old Comcast TV ads making fun of "Bill and Karolyn Slowsky"—the DSL subscribing turtles who always offer some lame excuse for slow Internet. We're not slowpokes, they invariably insist, we just love the suspense of waiting for downloads. "Fast—it's not for everyone," is Comcast's spin on these hapless reptiles.
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Cloudy with a chance of leaves: reducing climate uncertainty
Although it's easy to calculate the impact of additional greenhouse gasses on the temperature, these simple calculations don't capture the potential for feedbacks in the system. The easiest feedback to understand is the ice-albedo response. As temperatures rise, ice melts; that ice normally reflects back most of the sunlight that hits it, so its loss leads to increased absorption of sunlight and hence, a further increase in temperature. Ice is hardly the only feedback, however, so researchers use climate models to try to incorporate as many of these feedbacks as possible.Unfortunately, there's often disagreement and uncertainty as to how some of the feedbacks operate. In the past week, a couple of papers have come out that address these uncertainties. In one, an author analyzes the impact of clouds on climate, one of the largest uncertainties in current models. In the other paper, the authors argue that past attempts at figuring out the response of plants to climate change have gotten it all wrong.
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This is Sony's machine gun. There are many like it, but this is Sony's
We loved the color and styling of the handgun-style shell Sony released for the Move, but the company went with a more "realistic," less stylized look for it's $39.99 Sharp Shooter peripheral. Coming this February—just in time for Killzone 3—the peripheral holds one Move controller, one Navigator controller, and is ten kinds of awesome.
So let's just imagine what it would look like to be holding this gun in your hands, shooting at the screen, while wearing a pair of active 3D glasses. We'll hold our opinions of the hardware until we get our hands on a unit for review, but we're sure it will be a very effective form of birth control.
This is also compatible with the upcoming Dead Space: Extraction. We'll take two.
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December 2010 Patch Tuesday will come with most bulletins ever
According to the Microsoft Security Response Center, Microsoft will issue 17 Security Bulletins addressing 40 vulnerabilities on Tuesday, December 14. It will also host a webcast to address customer questions the following day.Two of the vulnerabilities are rated "Critical," 14 are marked "Important," and the last one is classified as "Moderate." All of the Critical vulnerabilities earned their rating through a remote code execution impact, meaning a hacker could potentially gain control of an infected machine. At least eight of the 17 patches will require a restart.
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Apple may drop NVIDIA for Sandy Bridge's IGP next year
Apple plans to drop NVIDIA in favor of Intel's integrated graphics in its upcoming Sandy Bridge processors for use in Apple's 13" laptops, according to a report from CNET. Apple has so far resisted using Intel's current-generation processors in its smallest notebooks due to inferior graphics performance, lack of OpenCL support, and engineering constraints. CNET's sources claim, however, that Apple is impressed with the performance of Sandy Bridge's IGP, and that Intel plans to support OpenCL in some form, which would allow Apple to maintain OpenCL support across its entire computer line.We decided to take a look at some of the technical aspects of Sandy Bridge and how it would fit in Apple's notebook strategy, and we identified a few aspects that might make Sandy Bridge a good fit for Apple's 13" notebooks. Low voltage variants likely won't ship until the second or third quarter next year, so don't expect a MacBook Air refresh before then—however, the same considerations apply for those models, as well.
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Select WiiWare games (finally) get demos; check out Fluidity
WiiWare releases have serious PR problems. With no demos to get people's interest, and no simple way for the company to send copies to the press without sending codes to redeem for generic credits, it's hard to get people talking. Nintendo has addressed one of those issues with free, playable demos of select WiiWare games.Read the comments on this post
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ACS: Law takes P2P users to court, fails miserably
Andrew Crossley, the UK lawyer behind P2P settlement letter firm ACS: Law, has actually filed lawsuits against several named individuals. Well, sort of. And it didn't go so well.Crossley has said for years that he wasn't in the shakedown business and that real lawsuits would be filed against alleged file-sharers who didn't settle—but few such suits have been forthcoming. Crossley has been attacked by members of the House of Lords, has lost a crucial archive of his business e-mails, and is facing disciplinary charges from the regulators. But somehow he presses on, and last month he pressed his claims against eight individuals who had never responded to the court.
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First arrest made in WikiLeaks revenge attacks
4chan vigilante group Anonymous is used to getting away with its DDoS attacks and other Internet shenanigans, but that's not going to be the case this time around. An arrest has been made in 4chan's revenge attacks on PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard, begun after the companies stopped providing services to WikiLeaks. The first to go down is a Dutch 16-year-old boy, who has been arrested by the Dutch High Tech Crime Team and is being held for interrogation.The teenager went unnamed by the National Prosecutor, but the team said in an announcement Thursday that the cyberattacks (some of which came out of the Netherlands) "quickly led" investigators to the suspect. In addition to his arrest, the 4channer's computers and other devices were seized.
In addition to the high-profile attacks on the payment processors, Anonymous also made an attempt to take down Amazon after the company kicked WikiLeaks off its servers. That attempt appears to have failed (as did the initial attacks on PayPal), but the group could decide to renew its efforts at any time.
As for the arrested teenager, he has already confessed to being part of the attacks on Visa and MasterCard, according to Dutch authorities. The investigation is ongoing, though, because a larger group is "probably" involved. We're going to go out on a limb and say that a single arrest won't put a stop to the actions of that larger group.
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Apache quits Java governance group in protest of Oracle abuses
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) announced today that it is resigning from the executive committee of the Java Community Process (JCP), the governance body responsible for managing standards related to the Java programming language. The move is a response to Oracle's ongoing failure to comply with the intellectual property policies established by the JCP.The heart of the issue is that Apache can't certify that its open source Java implementation—called Harmony—conforms with the Java language standards because Oracle refuses to supply the necessary test suites under a suitably open license. Oracle's position on the issue falls afoul of JCP policies, which stipulate that standards and other relevant materials must be freely redistributable and made available under terms that are conducive to enabling third-party open source implementations.
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Feature: Epic's Mark Rein talks iOS, Android, and we review Infinity Blade
Mark Rein, the vice-president of Epic Games, is having a very good morning. Infinity Blade debuted in the number one slot for highest grossing games in the iTunes App Store, with overwhelmingly positive buzz. The game, developed by Chair, is the first game on iOS devices that uses Epic's Unreal Engine 3. The $5.99 release works both as a standalone game and something of a commercial showing what the engine can do on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.We spoke with Rein earlier this week about iOS devices, Android, and what he learned working with Unreal Engine 3 on phones, tablets, and iPods. Is that a sentence you expected to hear a year ago?
Oh, and we'll also review the game. Let's get started!
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Copyright troll Righthaven sues for control of Drudge Report domain
News aggregation impresario Matt Drudge is being sued for copyright infringement for reproducing a copyrighted photo along with a link to a story about airport security on the Las Vegas Review-Journal website.The plaintiff in the case is Righthaven, a company that's earned a reputation this year as a world-class copyright troll. Righthaven has sued nearly 200 parties this year alone. Righthaven has typically gone after those who post news excerpts of its partners, such as the Las Vegas Review-Journal, but pledged to be more discretionary after being handed a defeat in court by a judge who recently ruled that one of its targets had "fair use" to its work.
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Google Chrome notebook unboxing photos and first impressions
Today was Google Day in the Stokes household, as the same FedEx truck brought both a Nexus S and Google's newly announced Cr-48 Chrome OS notebook. Below are some unboxing photos and very quick hands-on impressions of the unit. Read the comments on this post
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