WikiLeaks alternative OpenLeaks goes live
OpenLeaks, the alternative whistleblower site created by WikiLeaks defectors, has officially gone live, though it's not yet fully operational. The organization confirmed that it doesn't plan to publish information itself, but rather help third parties (such as nonprofits and news orgs) get access to leaked documents in order to convey them to the public.The launch of OpenLeaks was spoiled somewhat by, ironically, a leaked PDF of its site contents published on Cryptome.org. The OpenLeaks news page seems to welcome this leak, but warns that not all parts of the site are complete yet and that it's still operating in an alpha phase. OpenLeaks plans to enter into beta in the second half of 2011, when it will begin working with NGOs, media, unions, and others to publish relevant information.
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News Corp. and Apple finally ready to intro The Daily next week
News Corp. and Apple have finally scheduled the announcement of The Daily, which is expected to be the long-rumored iPad subscription system for periodicals. The event will take place on Wednesday, February 2 in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City at 11am EST, headed by Rupert Murdoch and Apple VP of Internet Services Eddie Cue.
Apple has been working on a system to bring newspapers and magazine subscriptions to the iPad outside of the normal App Store or iBooks ecosystem. The company was reportedly in talks with News Corp., Hearts Corp., Time Inc., and (Ars parent company) Condé Nast throughout 2010. It's unclear whether any of those companies—besides News Corp., that is—are currently involved in the launch of The Daily, though, so it may end up being limited to News Corp.'s own publications for the time being.
The special event to introduce The Daily was expected to happen in December, then January, but kept being delayed. Now that the event is finally on the calendar, cue up speculation over what The Daily will bring, and whether or not it will be the subscription model we've all been waiting for. Rupert Murdoch has already said that subscriptions will cost $0.99 per week, so what else can we expect?
As usual, Ars will cover the event when it happens, so stay tuned for next Wednesday.
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Finally: Google, nine others to run "white space" databases
When the Federal Communications Commission gave the green light to "white space" devices—unlicensed wireless gadgets that can create broadband connections in prime, unused television bands—it also required these services to use a geolocation system to determine whether a specific TV frequency is in use in that location. The system will constantly update a database of all TV signals and unlicensed devices. In November 2009, the Commission posted a "help wanted" sign for white space database administrators. Lots of companies applied. Yesterday, the agency announced the winners: Comsearch, Frequency Finder, Google, KB Enterprises LLC and LS Telcom, Key Bridge Global LLC, Neustar, Spectrum Bridge, Telcordia Technologies, and WSdb LLC.
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Norway: Sony's PS3 "updates" actually downgrade system
Norway's Consumer Council, an independent government agency, has received multiple complaints from PlayStation 3 owners over the removal of the "Other OS" functionality of the console. It has now taken the complaint to Norway's Consumer Ombudsman, with the Council claiming that Sony breached the Norwegian Marketing Control Act by removing a key feature after sale."Sony claims a universal right to change or remove functionality from the gaming console," Øyvind H. Kaldestad of the Consumer Council told Ars. "The Consumer Council strongly believes there needs to be a limit to what constitutes a reasonable change to products we buy—and that terms of service that grant the manufacturer full access to literally downgrade the product or limit the functionality are unreasonable and in clear violation of the Marketing Control Act."
There's also the issue of Sony's wording. "When a company use terms like 'updates' or 'upgrades,' it is reasonable to expect a significant improvement of the product and not the risk of being stuck with a lesser product," said the Council's Thomas Nortvedt in a statement.
The Consumer Ombudsman can reach out to the parties involved in disputes and negotiate a voluntary compromise, but somehow we doubt Sony is going to shrug and replace the Other OS functions of the PlayStation 3... although with the system now opened completely by hackers, there's little good reason not to do so. If no voluntary arrangement can be reached, the issue can be taken to the Market Council, a legal entity with the power to "issue decisions banning unlawful marketing and contract terms and conditions in standard contracts when deemed necessary in the interests of consumers."
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Google flips the switch on autocomplete censorship
Weren't sure where to find the best illegal files online and thought you'd turn to Google for help? It just got a wee bit harder. Google is living up to its promise to cut down on enabling piracy through its search engine by removing piracy-related terms from its autocomplete. Now, if you want to find certain sites related to file sharing, you'll have to know exactly what you're looking for if you want it to turn up on Google.
Google's autocomplete feature has become the stuff of legend, turning up strange observations about human nature and helping the world's Internet users get to their Web destinations that much faster. However, users began noticing that searches for BitTorrent, RapidShare, uTorrent, and the like aren't being autocompleted anymore—they'll only show up if you type the complete phrase into the search engine and hit enter.
The change doesn't come as a huge surprise—Google outlined its plan to "prevent terms that are closely associated with piracy from appearing in Autocomplete" in December as part of a new approach to digital copyright. In addition to the autocomplete changes, Google also said that it would work with rightsholders to "expel violators" from AdSense and "experiment to make authorized preview content more readily accessible in search results."
Still, Google's position is controversial, as some of the sites being censored also offer legitimate content, and plenty of other P2P sites (such as the Pirate Bay, Vuze, and MediaFire) are apparently not being censored. "What Google may not realize is that our technology is used for many purposes that provide significant value to the technology industry, companies, artists and consumers at large," BitTorrent VP of Marketing and Product Simon Morris told TorrentFreak.
Vodo founder Jamie King agreed, arguing that Google was willing to censor for China (until it wasn't), and now it's doing the same job for Big Content. "I guess it’s simple: our favorite search monopoly cares less about helping the thousands of independent creators who use BitTorrent to distribute legal, free-to-share content than they do about protecting the interests of Big Media in its death throes," King said.
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Facebook turns on HTTPS to block WiFi hijacking
Facebook announced Wednesday it would begin supporting a feature to protect users from having their accounts hijacked over WiFi connections or snooped on by schools and businesses.Facebook users will now have the option of using Facebook over HTTPS, the encryption protocol used to protect online banking sessions and user logins for services of all kinds on the Web.
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Male fairy wrens get girls with a little help from predators
Why would a bird perform a particularly conspicuous display in response to a predator’s call? This strange behavior seems like a recipe for disaster, since it probably alerts the predator to the bird’s presence. But for a species of fairy wren, it’s actually a way for males to get females’ attention, according to a new study in Behavioral Ecology.The study’s authors set out to determine why male splendid fairy wrens (Malurus splendens) tend to sing a particular melody called a “Type II song” just after gray butcherbirds (Cracticus torquatus) vocalize. Butcherbirds are one of the main predators of fairy wrens. Fairy wren males “hitchhike” their responses so closely on the end of the butcherbird’s call that it sounds almost like a duet. Previous studies suggest that the call is some sort of signal to other fairy wrens—not to the predator. The researchers investigated two possibilities about why fairy wrens might perform this odd behavior.
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Sony's NGP announced: stuffed with tech, no price or release date
Sony has finally announced the PSP's successor. Called the NGP—which is not the system's final name—it looks like the PlayStation Portable... just more so. What's notable is what we don't know: there was no price announced, nor was there a specific release date given outside of the "end of the year 2011."What we do know is that it comes with damn near everything you could imagine. Let's take a look at the system and you'll see why it might have been wise to keep the price under wraps for now.
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PlayStation titles coming to Android-based devices
While Sony didn't make its upcoming PlayStation Phone official at its press event, the company did show off the "PlayStation Suite," a new initiative that will bring original PlayStation games to Android-based devices. The games are coming this calendar year, with titles like Syphon Filter, Wild Arms, and Cool Boarders 2 shown at the event."In the dramatically evolving and diversifying mobile market, the number of users who enjoy games casually on a variety of devices, including mobile phones, smart-phones and tablet PCs, has been increasing significantly," Sony stated. "By offering 'PlayStation quality' content to this rapidly growing market, SCE will not only deliver the PlayStation experience to a wider base of users around the globe, but will also be able to offer game developers and publishers the potential to further expand their business opportunities to these devices."
Sony is opening the door for a wide variety of devices through its "PlayStation Certified" process. "Through this program, SCE will offer necessary support, including development support as well as logo licensing, to ensure the delivery of PlayStation quality experience across various devices," the company explained. Android 2.3 or later is required for these features, and users will be able to download programs directly to their phones or tablets. All this content will also be available through Sony's upcoming NGP.
This is big news for Android phones, especially if PSP games or original content are supported at a later date... the wording does state that Sony is "starting" with original PlayStation games, after all. Of course, it would be silly if Sony didn't have some upcoming hardware to take advantage of this program, don't you agree?
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Feature: A truly graphic adventure: the 25-year rise and fall of a beloved genre
Space Quest. Day of the Tentacle. Gabriel Knight. Monkey Island. To gamers of a certain age, the mere names evoke an entire world of gaming, now largely lost.Graphic adventure games struggle to find success in today's market, but once upon a time they topped sales charts year after year. The genre shot to the top of computer gaming in the latter half of the 1980s, then suffered an equally precipitous fall a decade later. It shaped the fate of the largest companies in the gaming industry even as the games' crude color graphics served as the background for millions of childhood memories. It gave us Roger Wilco, Sam & Max, and the world of Myst. But few gamers today know the complete history of the genre, or how the classic Sierra and LucasArts titles of the late 1980s and early 1990s largely disappeared beneath the assault of first-person shooters.
Here's how we got from King's Quest to The Longest Journey and why it matters—and getting to the end of this particular story won't require the use of a text parser, demand that you combine two inscrutable inventory objects to solve a demented puzzle, or send you pixel-hunting across the screen.
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Dose of hot Tea catches Republicans up to Democrats in social media use
Social media is becoming an increasingly important part of US elections, but the group that has made the most progress in recent years has been... the Tea Party? According to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, Republicans managed to catch up to Democrats when it came to using social media in 2010, and Republican supporters of the Tea Party helped to lead the way with their heavy online engagement.Democrats dominated social media during the 2008 US elections, leading (in part) to the kind of word-of-mouth popularity that only President Obama could dream of. Since then, however, more and more voting adults have been getting on board with social networks in order to learn about and help spread the messages of their favorite candidates.
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LightSquared unleashed to sell wholesale 4G mobile broadband
A new contender in the communications world has received the green light to sell mobile high-speed Internet on a wholesale basis. On Wednesday the Federal Communications Commission granted LightSquared permission to open its satellite and base station networks to a wide variety of mobile broadband partners. The move introduces the prospect of new, innovative 4G services across the country, among them under-served rural areas.LightSquared calls the application grant the "essential building block for our network as we build out to meet the rigorous construction timetable that the Commission has made a condition of our authorization."
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Google hopes to fix weak growth of Android Market app purchases
Google's Android mobile platform is experiencing considerable growth, but the company is reportedly concerned by the slow pace of application sales from the Android Market. In an effort to boost sales and keep developers happy, the search giant is taking steps to revitalize the Android Market.Google is going to add support for in-app purchases and has been working to establish carrier billing relationships with network operators. The company also recently launched a major redesign of the Android Market application, with the aim of making software more discoverable and smoothing out the process of finding and buying applications.
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3 months on, 2 million Windows Phone 7 handsets in the channel
In an interview with Bloomberg, Microsoft Senior Project Manager Greg Sullivan said that more than two million devices have now sold into the channel. The company remains silent on the number actually in users' hands.In another interview, with CNET, the news was more encouraging. Those people who have bought Windows Phone 7 handsets are apparently happy with them: 93 percent of customers are satisfied or very satisfied with the platform, and 90 percent would recommend it to others. This satisfaction is certainly consistent with our experience. Awareness of the brand has also risen, up 22 percent to 66 percent, showing that the company's expensive advertising campaign is starting to make people notice the platform.
A month ago the number sold into the channel was around 1.5 million. Even if the actual figure is around 2.2 or 2.3 million—a bit over "more than two million"—that means that growth of the new platform has flattened. If the number is just a little more than 2 million, it means that Microsoft is shipping WP7 licenses to manufacturers at a lower rate now than it was in the first two months. Either way, the number is unlikely to be encouraging for the company.
Marketplace, Microsoft's application store for the platform, continues to perform strongly, however. There are now more than 6,500 applications on the store, and 24,000 registered developers. Whether the company can retain this momentum in the face of bleak sales figures remains to be seen: developers are already increasingly concerned about the platform's growth and Microsoft's promotion of it.
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Netflix: ISPs who charge by the gigabyte are ridiculous
Some ISPs want to start charging customers by the gigabyte, or they want to set low data caps and charge overage fees. Netflix has a word for this idea: ripoff.In the company's most recent financial report (PDF), released today, Netflix made clear its view that the move to usage-based billing is about ISP profit, not actual costs.
Wired ISPs have large fixed costs of building and maintaining their last mile network of residential cable and fiber. The ISPs’ costs, however, to deliver a marginal gigabyte, which is about an hour of viewing, from one of our regional interchange points over their last mile wired network to the consumer is less than a penny, and falling, so there is no reason that pay-per-gigabyte is economically necessary. Moreover, at $1 per gigabyte over wired networks, it would be grossly overpriced.Netflix notes that it already delivers much of its traffic to "regional ISP front doors"; that is, it uses content delivery networks to get streaming video geographically close to customers who request it. That way, the video does not have to transit across the country on an ISP network, and local delivery should be quite inexpensive. (This was part of the recent peering spat between Comcast and Level 3, which is now carrying some Netflix traffic.)
Netflix pledges to "do what we can to promote the unlimited-up-to-a-large-cap model" and to keep the 'Net from a strict metering approach that becomes totally divorced from costs. Such metering would also have the effect, of course, of making an ISP's own video services, most of which are delivered separately from "the Internet," more attractive.
Internet users have largely sided with Netflix's view of the situation. They rebelled when Time Warner Cable tested low data caps and overage fees, eventually forcing the company to reverse course, and they're currently protesting so loudly in Canada that the government regulator has had to take some action. But when ISPs have set huge caps, like Comcast's 250GB limit, few complaints have arisen.
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T. rex beaten by smaller dinos; eats them as payback
Tyrannosaurus Rex, the "tyrant lizard"—and every kid's favorite dinosaur—has been at the center of a debate over how it ate ever since fossils were first unearthed in Wyoming back in 1874. Given its morphology, there is no question that T-rex was a meat eater, but how it found its meals is an unsolved problem. Whether it was an active predator, a pure scavenger, or a mix of both, has been argued back and forth for over 100 years.The latest research to weigh in on this issue (which is freely available to all) is published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, and it concludes that T. rex "hunted like a lion, rather than regularly scavenging like a hyena." Previous studies into the hunting behavior of the T. rex have focused on morphology, a position that the authors of the current paper say is flawed. They identify two morphologically similar species, namely eagles and vultures, who have vastly divergent hunting strategies.
In their paper, the authors used an ecological model based on predator relationships in the Serengeti to determine the T. rex's hunting strategy. They conclude that scavenging would not be an effective strategy for T. rex because "it [would be] out-competed by smaller, more abundant predatory dinosaurs." The smaller dinosaurs would more often find carcasses for food (smaller therapods were predicted to be 14 to 60 times better at finding carcasses), leaving the T. rex behind at meal time. They conclude that T. rex would have ranged over large areas and have actively hunted large vertebrate prey in order to sustain their diets.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2010. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.2497
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"Bullies": P2P lawyers demand sanctions against those suing them
Late last year, Massachusetts resident Dmitriy Shirokov teamed up with a pair of young lawyers to file a class-action lawsuit against attorneys from Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver—the firm operating as the US Copyright Group. Shirokov had received a letter from DGW saying that he had shared the film Far Cry online; would he please pay $1,500 ($2,500 if he waited too long) to make the whole matter just go away?He would not. Instead, he sued the DGW lawyers for racketeering, extortion, and committing fraud on the US Copyright Office (among 25 total claims). Even the settlement letters were said to be misleading, since they referenced other cases like the Joel Tenenbaum $675,000 P2P verdict—but without noting that a judge has already slashed that amount as being unconstitutional. According to Shirokov, DGW's idea is merely to scare the accused into paying up.
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Spy agency wants video game to teach spooks to think straight
American intelligence analysts are biased, and therefore make lousy decisions; even the spooky agencies admit that. The spy guys’ new hope for introducing some objectivity: get the analysts to start playing a video game.“A Serious Game could provide an effective mechanism for exposing and mitigating cognitive bias,” the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA) announced on Tuesday. IARPA, the blue-sky science and technology division of the intelligence community, is looking to gather potential developers for this “Sirius” initiative next month in Washington.
“When an intelligence problem invokes [analysts'] biases, analysts may draw inferences or adopt beliefs that are logically unsound or not supported by evidence,” IARPA notes. “Cognitive biases in analysis tend to increase with the level of uncertainty, lead to systematic errors, filter perceptions, shape assumptions and constrain alternatives.”
Does it ever. The litany of blown intelligence calls is nearly endless. Even as Iraqi tanks moved closer to the Kuwaiti border in July 1990, few in the CIA believed Saddam would invade. In 2007, the intelligence community’s consensus view was that Iran had given up its nuclear weapons program. Er, not quite. Early last year, the top military intel official in Afghanistan lamented that he knew next to nothing about the people and cultures of Afghanistan. Do we even need to mention that whole Iraqi WMD thing?
Sirius is one of a whole bunch of IARPA efforts to overcome biases—and reach more accurate conclusions. In December, 2009 IARPA started work on a computer system that could replicate—and then outdo—human decision-making; a few months later, the agency launched a project to let algorithms pick the most objective analysts.
With the Sirius project, IARPA is hoping gamers will be able to study—and unlearn—all sorts of different prejudices. The agency is looking to axe everything from “Anchoring Bias” (relying too much on a single piece of evidence) to “Confirmation Bias” (only accepting facts that back up your pre-made case) “Fundamental Attribution Error” (attributing too much in an incident to personality, instead of circumstance).
IARPA is hoping that “social scientists, computer scientists, statisticians, and gaming and virtual world experts, as [well as] universities and companies from around the world will participate in this research.” Given the, um, uneven state of journalism these days, let’s hope they let a few reporters in on the fun, too.
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Fan film shows how Super Meat Boy feels, not how it looks
When I was younger I had a friend who very efficiently fell into his own navel with a monstrous drug problem. It was depressing to hang out at his impossibly dour apartment while he tried to keep up his end of the conversation; from his point of view his life was daisies and rainbows. He saw nothing but bright colors and felt nothing but good times. The difference between experiencing something first-hand and how that experience looks to an outside observer can be vast.Trust me, this applies to video games, because that difference is what makes the following Super Meat Boy video so effective.
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PlayStation phone dubbed Xperia Play, looks decent for gaming
On the eve of what is widely believed to be the announcement of the successor to the PSP, Engadget has somehow managed to get some hands-on time with another upcoming Sony handheld: the PlayStation phone.
One of the worst kept secrets in gaming, it appears that the PS phone will be marketed under the name Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, and it looks very similar to the Xperia X10 phone. Both gadgets feature a four inch, 854x480, multitouch LCD screen, and the batteries are interchangeable. And, as rumored, the Xperia Play runs Gingerbread (Android 2.3) and features a single-core processor that clocks anywhere from 122.88MHz to 1GHz, an Adreno 205 GPU, and 512MB of RAM.
Since the hands-on took place with a pre-release prototype, there's no word on the quality of the games that will be available, but the preview does look at the hardware from a gaming perspective. Much like the PSP Go (and just like in all of the leaked images) a DualShock-style control pad slides out from the bottom of the device. It features the regular setup of buttons, though there are only two shoulder buttons as opposed to four, and touchpads are used to replace analog sticks. In order to test out the control setup, a number of games were played via an emulator—including Ridge Racer Revolution and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4—and they "all ran pretty well."
During testing, the 1500 mAh battery lasted a full day taking pictures and using 3G data frequently. The 5-megapixel camera's pictures were sharp, but it seemed to over-pigment red colors. The camera had no tap-to-focus capability and could only take 800x480 resolution video, but Sony Ericsson may overlay its own camera software to fix some of these problems.
Since the Xperia Play is a gaming phone, the prototype's lack of games and game delivery system to try out leaves some pretty big questions unanswered, including how filled-out the choices will be and how much games will cost. Keep in mind that this just a prototype; it's likely there will be some changes before it ships, but it's a good bet that the final product will be largely the same. The official unveiling of the Xperia Play is expected at the Mobile World Congress, which starts on February 14 in Barcelona.
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Liveblog: Microsoft's FY2011 Q2 earnings call
Microsoft's FY2011 Q2 earnings call is tomorrow, and Ars will be liveblogging it. Who knows, perhaps the company will finally reveal how many people have bought Windows Phone 7.
The earnings call is scheduled to take place on January 27, 2011 at 5:30pm Eastern Standard Time (see when the liveblog starts in your own timezone).
Sign up for an e-mail reminder below or simply bookmark this page and come back at the time above.
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No opting out of Facebook turning your check-ins, likes into ads
Better go check your Facebook profile pic to make sure it's suitable for advertising—the company has begun using real users' postings in ads being shown to their friends. The effort is eerily similar to parts of the now-defunct Facebook Beacon, but Facebook is now calling them "sponsored stories," and users won't be able to opt out of their posts being used to advertise to friends.
The new "feature" started showing up quietly on Wednesday morning without any kind of fanfare from Facebook, but users began to notice it right away. Things posted by their friends; check-ins at businesses and "Likes" clicked from other websites started being highlighted in the right-hand column with the other ads, under the headline of "Sponsored Story."
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Congressman wants to slap warning labels on violent games
Video games in the United States have their ratings on the front of the box, with a description of what content led to that rating on the back of the box. The issue of whether playing violent video games leads to real-world violence is a contentious one, and Congressman Joe Baca (D-CA) wants to be proactive on this issue. Rep. Baca has introduced a new version of the Video Game Health Labeling Act, which would force the game industry to place yet another warning label on the box of video games rated "Teen" or above.Read the comments on this post
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Senators bash "telecom oligarchs," propose strict net neutrality bill
In the month since the FCC adopted its open Internet rules, most of the DC debate over net neutrality has focused on FCC overreach. Verizon sued the agency. MetroPCS sued the agency. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced a bill to strip the FCC of any authority to regulate Internet access.But Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) have another point of view: the FCC didn't go far enough. The pair yesterday introduced the "Internet Freedom, Broadband Promotion, and Consumer Protection Act of 2011" (PDF) to extend net neutrality to all forms of Internet access (including wireless).
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Learning self-control as a kid makes for a better adulthood
The events of our childhood can help influence the trajectories of the rest of our lives. The economic status of a family, as well as factors like a child's IQ, have been correlated with various forms of adult welfare, from health to financial stability. But factors like these tend to be difficult to change; why do some people overcome a difficult background, and how might we enable more people to do so? That's the question asked by a research team that has followed over 1,000 children from birth until they were 32, and the results are pretty straightforward: teach the kids a bit of self-control. The kids in question were born in Dunedin, New Zealand, and enrolled in the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study; 32 years later, a full 96 percent of the initial cohort were still checking in. Along the way, the children, their parents, teachers, and friends reported in on their physical and mental status. Professionals also performed medical and psychiatric evaluations, giving a remarkably complete perspective on the children's development. Hundreds of papers have been produced using the data in the last decade alone.
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