FBI: businesses lost $11M over 12 months to China-based phishers
US businesses have been taken for at least $11 million over the last year thanks to unauthorized wire transfers to China. The situation is so serious that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a fraud alert to small- and medium-sized businesses, warning that cybercriminals have been compromising the businesses' banking credentials in order to send money overseas.
At least 20 incidents occurred between March of 2010 and April of 2011 that resulted in the credentials of small-to-medium-sized businesses being compromised. According to the FBI, the typical scenario involves scammers sending phishing e-mails to the business in question, at which time someone enters the business' banking credentials into a malicious website. The scammers then use the credentials to log into the business' real banking website in order to wire money to "Chinese economic and trade companies."
In just a year, this resulted in $11 million in losses, with transfer amounts ranging from $50,000 to $985,000 at a time. The total attempted amounts were closer to $20 million, though—the FBI says that many attempted transfers were over $900,000, but the scammers are usually more successful trying smaller amounts. On top of the electronic wire transfers, some of the scammers also sent domestic money mules to the US in order to make further fraudulent transactions.
"The economic and trade companies appear to be registered as legitimate businesses and typically hold bank accounts with the Agricultural Bank of China, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and the Bank of China," the FBI warned. "At this time, it is unknown who is behind these unauthorized transfers, if the Chinese accounts were the final transfer destination or if the funds were transferred elsewhere, or why the legitimate companies received the unauthorized funds. Money transfers to companies that contain these described characteristics should be closely scrutinized."
From the sound of it, these small businesses and their respective banks are simply falling for simple social engineering tricks combined with malware. (The FBI says that some—but not all—cases seem to involve ZeuS, Backdoor.bot, and Spybot.) Let this be a warning to small businesses: a good way to start protecting yourself would be to get some basic firewall and virus protection, with online security training among those who control the bank accounts.
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Limbo meets Tron meets Ikaruga: Outland is beautiful
It's one thing to own your influences, but it's quite another when your game is made from parts of other games that have been strapped and stapled together into a kind of Frankenstein monster. In this case, it's a very good-looking Frankenstein monster.
Sometimes all the pieces of Outland don't quite come together as smoothly as developer Housemarque (Super Stardust HD) would have liked, but the few uneven sections are offset by the game's gorgeous art direction and well-tuned platforming.
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How do you use 1Gbps Internet links? Chattanooga residents find out
Google is bringing 1Gbps fiber connections to Kansas City, Kansas next year—but what can Kansans expect when the fiber arrives? Chattanooga, Tennesse provides a partial answer.
As the first US city to make 1Gbps fiber connections available to all, Chattanooga has been on the cutting edge of broadband deployment. Even fiber's backers admit there aren't many uses for a full 1Gbps connection at the moment, but they make a "build it and they will come" argument; provide the bandwidth and uses will materialize. Besides, once you've laid the fiber—why not roll out 1Gbps service?
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Ask Ars: what's the relationship between CPU clockspeed and performance?
In 1998, Ask Ars was an early feature of the newly launched Ars Technica. Now, as then, it's all about your questions and our community's answers. Each week, we'll dig into our question bag, provide our own take, then tap the wisdom of our readers. To submit your own question, see our helpful tips page.
Question: Intel's Sandy Bridge launch just brought its desktop CPU line up to 3.8GHz, but I remember that the Pentium 4 got up to 3.8GHz before being cancelled. So why is it that Sandy Bridge is just now getting to the clock speed levels that the Pentium 4 was at years ago? And how is it that Sandy Bridge still manages to outperform the older Pentium 4, even though it has a lower clock speed?
The relationship between clockspeed and performance isn't nearly as straightforward as it used to seem—not that it ever was all that simple. To understand why different CPUs at different clockspeeds perform in different ways, we'll first look at how the CPU processes instructions.
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Apple comments on iPhone location storm, software update soon
Apple has finally commented on the iPhone and iPad location logging controversy that erupted last week, saying that a software update would be available soon. Apple provided a Q&A page with the answers to 10 questions about the situation (shown below), but noted that the company did not transfer any of the location data gathered by people's devices back to the company. The software update, expected to be available "sometime in the next few weeks," will reduce the size of the location database cached on the iPhone, will stop backing up the cache to people's computers, and will delete this cache entirely when Location Services is turned off.
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Finally: white iPhone 4 arrives April 28 on AT&T and Verizon
Behold: the white iPhone 4. Apple has finally announced that the long-overdue device will be available on Thursday, April 28 in Apple retail stores, Apple's online store, AT&T stores, Verizon stores, and "select" Apple Authorized Resellers.
Apple first announced the white iPhone 4 back in early June 2010 during the annual Worldwide Developers Conference. At the time, the company said it would be available at the same time as the black iPhone 4—late June—but then problems began cropping up. Apple never confirmed any of the rumors surrounding the white iPhone's delay—some said it was due to white paint issues and/or mismatching paint between the phone and the home button. The company did announce several times, however, that the device's launch would be delayed due to various manufacturing "challenges." Eventually, the company pushed the launch to spring of 2011.
The January launch of the Verizon iPhone came and went with no white device to be seen, though rumors began popping up once again in February that Apple planned to roll it out soon. It all came to a head this month as seemingly everyone on earth saw or heard about the white iPhone popping up in retail stores, and now, the day has arrived.
“We appreciate everyone who has waited patiently while we’ve worked to get every detail right," Apple senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller said in a hilariously coy statement.
According to Apple, the white iPhone 4 is indeed the same device as the black iPhone 4 that was released in the summer of 2010, coming in 16GB and 32GB flavors. The 16GB version will be available in the US for $199 (with two-year contract on either AT&T or Verizon), while the 32GB version will be $299. And it won't just be available in the US starting April 28 either—Apple says the white whale is also coming to Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, UK.
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Buffy, Freddy, and Romero star in grindhouse-style Black Ops DLC
The "Escalation" content pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops is almost ready for release and, unsurprisingly, it contains a zombie-themed level. But "Call of the Dead" isn't just your standard zombie soldier set-up. With heavy George A. Romero and grindhouse influences, not to mention an aptly star-studded line-up of characters, it's sort of like Black Ops and House of the Dead: Overkill had a baby. Which can only be a good thing.
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Feature: Can you really learn to race by playing racing games? Ars takes to the track
As a hardcore racing fan, the first racing game I remember really getting into was an F1 game for the SNES. But it wasn't until the release of Gran Turismo (GT) on the PSone that the game console was at last able to provide a virtual outlet for those of us whose desire to race exceeded our budgets. Since that day, racing games have continued to give us more life-like physics, more realistic graphics, better AI, and the chance to race against other humans as online multiplayer action became possible. Peripherals have gotten better (and more expensive), and the best of them promise to immerse us in the paddock from the comfort of our couches. All of this has been great fun for racing fans, but is any of it really true-to-life? What do racing video games teach you about racing real cars? I was recently able answer to this question when I got the opportunity to go ChumpCar racing.
Before I get any further, let's get something out of the way. I know there are PC racing sims that have more realistic physics models out there. I've played a couple of hours of GTR, but nothing more. But I have played lots of GT and Forza Motorsport, along with other console racers down the years, and that's the gaming experience I drew from as I tried doing it in real life.
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Google builds WebM patent pool of its own to fight back against MPEG-LA
Taking a leaf from MPEG-LA's playbook, Google has announced the WebM Community Cross-License Initiative, a consortium of companies that agree to share any patents that those companies may hold that are relevant to the WebM video format, and in particular the VP8 video compression algorithm. True to Google's ambitions for the format, the shared patents are all available on a royalty-free basis, both to consortium members and anyone else that wants to implement WebM.
Since the launch of WebM, Google has positioned itself as the only company with relevant patents. Though the company is still not acknowledging that any third parties might have any patent claims, creating this community means that even if such claims emerge at a later date, then, as long as those claims are made by community members, they pose no risk to WebM users.
In creating this community, Google is acting in a manner similar to MPEG-LA, the organization that handles licensing for competing video codec H.264. MPEG-LA forms patent pools where groups of related patents that are jointly licensed together, in a convenient package, with the aim of giving would-be implementors of a particular technology a one-stop shop to obtain all the intellectual property rights they need. MPEG-LA's agreements also include certain conditions that protect licensees; if a company with patents in the pool discovers that it has additional patents that cover the technology, licensees need not worry: their licenses will cover the use of these patents too.
The major difference between the two is that MPEG-LA charges for use of its patent pools in many, but not every, scenario, whereas the WebM Community Cross-License Initiative will not charge in any way, ever.
The move will serve to better assure would-be implementors of WebM technology that it will not open them up to legal liability. Lawsuit-magnet Microsoft, in particular, has raised a number of questions about the patent risk surrounding WebM, and is unlikely to integrate support for the standard until the concerns are resolved to its satisfaction (though it's happy for Google to take the risk). Creating a consortium of companies bound by a promise to offer any relevant patents they may own on a royalty-free basis, even without identifying what those patents may be, is a positive step by Google to diminish that risk.
The exact terms of the cross-license agreement have not been decided. The intent is to create an agreement that essentially extends Google's existing VP8 patent grants to all the community members: they will each offer a royalty-free license to use their patents, subject to the condition that community members not sue each other. If any community member sues any other for any patent related to WebM then the suing community member wil lose its rights to use any of the other WebM Patents.
Update: A Matroska developer has informed us that although the terms on the site are described only as a "summary", they are in fact the full and final document that was signed.
Including Google itself, there are currently 17 companies in the WebM Community, representing a range of interests. Browser developers Opera and Mozilla are both members, as is consumer electronics giant LG Electronics, along with semiconductor supremos Samsung and Texas Instruments. Notable absences from the community include Microsoft and Apple.
Indeed, compared to the list of companies with patents in the H.264 patent pool—the companies perhaps most likely to have patents covering WebM—and the lack of overlap is significant. Cisco, LG, and Samsung are members of both groups, but there are 26 other companies in the H.264 patent pool that have not yet joined the WebM initiative. These companies all have a vested interest in defending H.264's royalty payments, and their absence will leave some doubts over the significance of the consortium.
MPEG-LA is not standing still either. In February, the company announced a call for the submission of WebM patents, with a view to forming a patent pool of its own. That initial call ended last month, and though the group has been quiet since that announcement, a statement given to The H said that patents had been submitted for inclusion in the pool, and that the pool-creation process was continuing. The next step for MPEG-LA will be to assess the submitted patents to determine if they are essential to VP8; if they are, a pool will be formed.
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FBI vs. Coreflood botnet: round one goes to the Feds
The FBI’s unprecedented effort to behead the Coreflood botnet—comprised of millions of hacked Windows machines—appears to be working, at least for now. The bureau has tracked a dramatic decline in the number of pings from the botnet since the takedown operation began earlier this month, according to court documents filed by the Justice Department on Monday.
The number of pings from infected US systems plummeted from nearly 800,000 to less than 100,000 in about a week after authorities began sending out “stop” commands to those machines—a drop of nearly 90 percent. Pings from infected computers outside the US have also dropped about 75 percent, likely as a result of a parallel outreach effort to foreign ISPs.
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PlayStation Network hacked, data stolen: how badly is Sony hurt?
Sony has announced the bad news: hackers have your personal data, and they may have your credit card information as well. Now it's time for the questions, such as how much this breach and the bad PR attached to it will hurt Sony, and how long the company knew the data was in the hands of the hackers before sharing that information with customers. While it doesn't look like Sony will be liable in any legal sense for holding back information, this black eye won't soon go away.
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Talking, Arduino-powered plush Portal turret is wonderful
The characters and imagery from Portal inspire strong feelings in those of us who love the game, and many people explore those sometimes-confusing feelings using arts and crafts. The latest example is this wonderful, custom-made turret, complete with motion sensor and vocal samples. While the innards are rather simple, the behavior is true to the game. Let's take a look at the toy, and then see how it was designed.
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Sony admits utter PSN failure: your personal data has been stolen
Sony has finally come clean about the "external intrusion" that has caused the company to take down the PlayStation Network service, and the news is almost as bad as it can possibly get. The hackers have all your personal information, although Sony is still unsure about whether your credit card data is safe. Everything else on file when it comes to your account is in the hands of the hackers.
In other words, Sony's security has failed in a spectacular fashion, and we're just now finding out about it. In both practical and PR terms, this is a worst-case scenario.
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Crowdsourcing a clinical trial to treat ALS
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a pretty grim disease. Victims experience progressive muscle weakness, leading to death; patients survive a median of only two to five years following the onset of symptoms. Currently, there are no effective therapies. So it's not surprising that when a preliminary study shows a hint of efficacy, patients will do what they can to get access to the drug and share their experiences with fellow patients. A company called PatientsLikeMe has now used this tendency to share information to crowdsource a sort of clinical trial, obtaining data on the effectiveness of off-label use of a drug.
Although ALS remains untreatable, it's a focus of active research, and promising results have been seen in some animal models and small clinical trials. One of these, a 2008 study, involved only 16 patients, but suggested that a simple chemical, lithium carbonate, could significantly slow ALS progression. With no other treatments and the drug already on the market, a number of patients convinced their physicians to provide the lithium carbonate off-label. Although these patients didn't provide a randomized clinical trial population, they did present the opportunity for at least testing whether the lithium carbonate might have an impact on disease progression.
To get an answer, the site put together a data-acquisition form that enabled patients to input their disease status over time using a standardized assay for ALS symptoms. All told, over 3,500 patients started tracking their disease progression; 150 of them started taking lithium, with nearly 80 continuing the treatment for a year.
A control sample was identified by comparing disease progression profiles (how rapidly symptoms got worse) from those who started lithium to those who hadn't. By matching similar progression curves, the authors felt they would increase the probability of providing a relevant comparison.
When the numbers were crunched, the lithium carbonate did not come out looking good. There was essentially no difference at all between those who took the drug and those who didn't when it comes to ALS progression. This result is the same as one obtained from a larger clinical trial that was completed recently. One somewhat surprising result is that the drug didn't even exhibit a placebo effect, which is rather unusual.
So even if the results weren't very promising for those with the disease, the approach looks like it has potential. The authors go out of their way to point out that "observational studies using unblinded data are not a substitute for double-blind randomized control trials," and warn that ALS patients may be somewhat unusual, in terms of their high motivation to seek out any alternative treatment. Still, they conclude that even with its limitations, "data reported by patients over the internet may be useful for accelerating clinical discovery and evaluating the effectiveness of drugs already in use."
There's a little added motivation for focusing on ALS by the team behind the website, too. The MIT engineers that founded it have a brother with the disease. Despite that focus, however, the site currently claims to be tracking over 500 other diseases.
Nature Biotechnology, 2011. DOI: 10.1038/nbt.1837 (About DOIs).
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Extending WiFi to one mile, thanks to empty TV channels
Rice University grad student Ryan Guerra is on a mission to extend the range of WiFi signals from a few hundred feet to a mile—and beyond. This month, he succeeded, thanks to some nifty engineering and a few empty TV channels.
The first beneficiary of his work is Houston resident Leticia Aguirre, 48, who lives at the very edge of a local free WiFi network run by Technology for All. The high frequencies (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) used by WiFi mean that signals don't easily penetrate the tree branches and leaves which surrounded Aguirre's home.
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Amazon responds to Apple: "app store" is generic, toss the suit
Amazon has responded to Apple's trademark suit over the term "App Store" by saying that Steve Jobs himself uses the term in a generic manner. The retail giant filed its response to Apple late Monday, asking the judge to toss the suit because Amazon is using the term lawfully.
Apple had filed for a trademark on the term "App Store" back in 2008—after an initial rejection, it was eventually approved in early 2010. Microsoft filed an objection in July 2010 on the grounds that the term was too generic, and later asked the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to issue a summary judgment denying Apple's trademark application.
Meanwhile, Apple filed suit against Amazon last month after Amazon began marketing its own Appstore for Android. In its complaint, Apple said that Amazon was guilty of trademark infringement and unfair competition, arguing that third-party use of the term "app store" had only occurred in very limited circumstances and that Amazon was using it improperly in order to confuse customers.
In Amazon's response, the company acknowledges that it never received authorization from Apple to begin using the term, but says that one isn't necessary because the term is generic. The company denies that it violated Apple's trademarks or that it's confusing Apple's customers, and even cited the dictionary definitions for the terms "app" and "store."
Amazon also pointed out Steve Jobs' comments during Apple's quarterly conference call in October 2010 when he appeared to use the term "app store" in a generic way while talking about Android. The full quote was this:
"So there will be at least four app stores on Android, which customers must search among to find the app they want and developers will need to work with to distribute their apps and get paid. This is going to be a mess for both users and developers. Contrast this with Apple’s integrated App Store, which offers users the easiest-to-use largest app store in the world, preloaded on every iPhone."
Amazon cited the last (bolded) line an example of generic "app store" use.
Amazon's comments echo those Microsoft made to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board—in fact, Microsoft cited the same Jobs quote and the dictionary definitions as well. Unlike Microsoft, however, Amazon has something to lose if the judge decides to rule in Apple's favor. Back when Apple first sued Amazon, Amazon hadn't yet launched its Appstore for Android (it had only begun inviting developers to submit apps). Now, however, that store has made its public debut, and Amazon risks whatever branding it has built up since then unless it manages to convince the judge that an app store can exist anywhere—not just on Apple's products.
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Windows Phone 7: no on-device location tracking; online another matter
In contrast with iOS and Android, Microsoft says that its Windows Phone OS doesn't create any persistent on-phone record of where you've been. That's not to say that the company doesn't collect the information at all—but the large location caches found on handsets with competing operating systems aren't found on Microsoft-powered phones.
Windows Phone offers location-based services, and just as on the other platforms, these location-based services use a combination of WiFi positioning and GPS. Whenever the phone makes a location-based search, it sends the MAC addresses of visible WiFi access points, and if GPS is turned on, the GPS-acquired position and velocity. This information is persistently recorded for Microsoft's Orion positioning service. Since WiFi base stations don't generally move around much, and since MAC addresses are, at least in theory, globally unique, knowing the GPS co-ordinates of a WiFi base station allows the approximate location of any device within range of that base station to be rapidly acquired, without the battery drain of GPS. All three companies record this information to build ever larger—and ever more accurate—location databases.
Speaking to CNET, Microsoft also said that a unique, per-device ID was transmitted along with the requests. Though there are benign uses of such an ID—and in fact, services like "Find My Phone" depend on it—the risk is that it will be stored long-term, allowing both Microsoft and law-enforcement to track movements of Windows Phone users.
The company declined to comment on what the retention policy for this more personal information was, only that it was retained for a "limited period." Nor would the company disclose under exactly what circumstances it would hand the information over to law enforcement agents.
Somewhat surprisingly, Microsoft did not say whether cell tower data was sent or recorded. iOS and Android both cache cell tower positions, and Windows Phone uses cell tower positioning to augment the other positioning methods. To convert the data sent by the cell tower into useful GPS coordinates requires a database lookup, and that in turn means that the phones must be sending some cell tower information to Microsoft's services.
Update: Speaking to PCWorld, Microsoft has confirmed that its positioning database includes cell tower data, implicitly confirming that the phones do, of course, send cell tower IDs.
Microsoft did stress is that if location services are disabled on the phone, then any and all location information, including the device IDs, is no longer sent to the company. In that situation, the police would have to approach the mobile network operator if they want to find out where someone is—something they have no qualms about doing.
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The 3DS gets first million-seller, free 3D Excitebike coming
The Nintendo 3DS has certified its first million seller with Nintendogs + Cats, which has sold approximately 1.71 million units worldwide. This is not a surprise: the game is first-party, a sequel to an already-popular franchise, comes in multiple flavors with different breeds of dogs, and it has been heavily promoted by Nintendo. This continues Nintendo's trend of first-party games finding success on its own hardware.
According to Fox Business, the company has sold 3.61 million 3DS systems as of the end of March, short of the 4 million unit goal. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata described the sales as "weaker than expected."
In other news, Iwata announced that there will be a port of the original Excitebike with 3D effects given to gamers when the 3DS eShop goes live at an indeterminate time in the future. This will be a limited-time offer, and there were no regions specified. Let's hope this isn't limited to Japan; after all, who doesn't want to play a 3D Excitebike?
Nintendo is sharing some mixed news, with profits down, 3DS sales lagging, but first-party games continuing to do well and a new console on the horizon. This should be a very interesting E3.
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Climate, vaccines, and human psychology: the public vs. science
Last week, Ars and Nature.com partnered to present the first Science Online NYC meeting, held at the Rockefeller University campus. The night focused on communicating controversial scientific topics, with an emphasis on vaccines and climate change. Although the general conclusion was that psychology and history dictate that there's only so much we can do to engage the public on some topics, there are simple ways scientists can do better.
David Ropeik, a journalist turned lecturer and consultant, started off by describing why the public doesn't always come to terms with science. The first point he mentioned is that all of us, even experts, never have a complete picture of a complex topic—he termed the situation "bounded rationality," where we try to make reasonable extrapolations from the information we do have. He also pointed to the work of Dan Kahan, which has indicated that we accept or reject information in a way that reinforces our identity as part of a social group. If you think your peers don't like evolution, for example, you're more likely to reject information that supports it.
Ken Bromberg, who is the head of pediatrics at Brooklyn Hospital, spoke for a bit about vaccine safety. There's a tendency to think that resistance to vaccination arises from the fact that the diseases they prevent are now extremely rare, but Bromberg noted that antivaccination movements have been around since the beginning of vaccination programs, in some cases at times where the diseases still posed a real threat. And the cultural contexts involved in those movements have been very different throughout history, and are very different currently. The resistance to vaccination in Brooklyn, for example, is different culturally from that on the West Coast, so a single message can't be expected to be effective.
NASA's Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher, rounded out the panel, and focused a bit on what scientists might do better. He said that, prior to the politicization of the issue, climate science was a field nobody cared about, and involved poking through deep sea muck or fossilized rodent pee in order to gain a clearer picture of past climates. The scientists themselves were unprepared for the aggressive attention their field received, and have responded in a variety of ways, many of them ineffective.
The approach he finds most effective is to focus on the process of science: not just what we know about the climate, but how we've come to know it, and how we've eliminated alternative explanations. The process of science tends to be something that almost everyone, even climate science's harshest critics, admires. By discussing the process of climatology, Schmidt thought that more people would be willing to recognize that it's the same process that operates in other fields.
The discussion with the audience went on for nearly an hour after these presentations wrapped up, and covered a lot more ground. If the topic interests you, it's well worth watching the archived video of the discussion.
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We're sorry, but SETI can't take your call right now
Last week, the SETI Institute announced that its primary observation facility, the Allen Telescope Array, had run out of money for basic operations. The 42-dish radio telescope, based in Northern California, had been constructed with money donated to the SETI Institute, primarily by its namesake, Paul Allen. The dishes will be put into a hibernation of sorts, in which basic maintenance will be performed, but they will be unable to perform observations.
SETI data can be gathered on just about any hardware, but for most other telescopes, SETI work is a lower priority than many other basic observations. The Allen Array was an exception. It has been jointly managed by SETI and the University of California-Berkeley, which has used it for standard astronomical observations funded by the State of California and the National Science Foundation; these have resulted in the publication of a number of academic papers.
Unfortunately, California is suffering a severe and protracted budget crisis, while the National Science Foundation has cut back on its share of the operating costs. As a result, there is no money to pay for the personnel and power involved with a standard observational schedule. The SETI institute had been focusing on fundraising to build more dishes to expand the array, and hasn't focused on covering operational costs with its fundraising.
According to Scientific American, SETI had hoped to use the facility to start scanning the planet candidates identified by NASA's Kepler Observatory. That plan is now on indefinite hold. Now, its best option appears to be to convince the Air Force to use the facility for tracking purposes, while SETI squeezes in observations in the dishes' spare time. In the meantime, the search for ET will have to be done as observatory time becomes available.
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Deals on Facebook arrives, ready to take on Groupon
Not sure you need yet another deal site in your life? Too bad, because if you have a Facebook account, it's there already. Facebook announced Tuesday morning that it was launching Deals on Facebook, a Groupon-like deal center that allows businesses in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego, and San Francisco to offer steep discounts to Facebook users. And despite our tongue-in-cheek reaction, the new Deals offering is likely to take off simply because of its heavy Facebook integration and Facebook's massive built-in audience.
Deals on Facebook is launching today in five cities, but Facebook says it hopes to expand to other cities in the future. (When you go to the Deals page now and you live in another city, it asks you to sign up to be notified when the feature will be available to you.) A typical deal page looks just like you'd expect Groupon or Living Social mishmashed with Facebook to look—you can buy the coupon directly through Facebook and then post it to your wall, or share it with friends. Each deal is "Like"-able as well and you can post comments on the deal's Facebook wall, adding an extra social layer on top of your typical coupon site.
Deals on Facebook differs from Facebook's other deal-related product, Check-In Deals, which was launched late last year. That feature works with Facebook's check-in system (called Places) and allows businesses to offer discounts to users who have checked in there. It's a little more immediate—you're already at a restaurant or a coffee shop, and now you get a free bagel with your purchase of coffee. Deals on Facebook, on the other hand, lets you plan a little further in advance for bigger jaunts, like a trip to the aquarium or that skydiving adventure you've been fantasizing about.
As usual, Facebook is trying to make it easy for its user base to get deals from other places too—the company says it's working on bringing discounts from the likes of OpenTable, Gilt City, Plum District, and a handful of others onto the site as well. It's possible that you've never even heard of many of those, which is kind of the point—Facebook is hoping to compete with the big names, not these tiny specialty sites. Still, with the recent launch of the Google Offers beta, there are plenty of big names available to compete with, so Facebook will have to expand quickly if it wants to nab mindshare from potential Google customers or take advantage of burned out Groupon users.
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Feature: How to build your own computer: Ask Ars DIY Series, Part II—software
In 1998, Ask Ars was an early feature of the newly launched Ars Technica. Now, as then, it's all about your questions and our community's answers. Each week, we'll dig into our question bag, provide our own take, then tap the wisdom of our readers. To submit your own question, see our helpful tips page.
Instead of replying to a reader's question on Ask Ars, we've got Part II of new PC-building guide, complete with informative (and entertaining) video clips that both inform and entertain. Last week we were all about hardware assembly. Today, we're picking up where we left off, covering first boot and software tweaking. If you're in the process of building your own PC and are wondering what to do now that the hardware is in place, read on.
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Sony to join tablet fray with dual-screen Honeycomb clamshell
Sony announced plans to join the tablet party with two new entries running Android 3.0 Honeycomb today in a press release. Codenamed the S1 and S2, both tablets will be WiFi-, 3G-, and 4G-capable, and their unusual form factors will be hitting markets in the fall of this year.
The S2 is the far more unusual-looking model. Two narrow 5.5-inch screens are arranged on two sides of a clamshell, like a lovechild of the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS. According to Sony, the screens will be able to be used separately or combined to use as one large display (though there is still a seam down the middle). The current design, which Sony says is subject to change, shows the two halves of the S2 with rounded backs, and... well... if we had one, we can't say we wouldn't decorate it to look like the Hamburglar.
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Artistic trickery: Ars looks at indie mech game Hawken
The term "indie game" tends to elicit images of retro-styled platformers or art games. And that's what makes the upcoming mech game Hawken from Adhesive Games so impressive. Though it has only been in development for 10 months and is being created by a relatively small team, early footage of Hawken shows visuals that rival that of many AAA releases. Studio cofounder Christopher Lalli spoke with Ars about the importance of a strong art direction and how to "cheat" to make a game look better.
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Hands on: RealNetworks' Rinse for iTunes is good, not great
Hold onto your hats: RealNetworks is still around (*gasp*) and it just released a new-ish software product to help clean up users' iTunes libraries. The software, called "Rinse," removes duplicate songs from your collection, fixes the tags so that your song names, artists, and albums are correct, adds missing album art, and "refines" your genre categorizations in hopes of making your music listening experience more streamlined.
Rinse costs $39 to run on Mac OS X or Windows (XP, Vista, and Windows 7), though a free trial is available for those who want to see how it works before purchasing. Of course, there's competition on both platforms—a plethora of third-party tools can do one or more of the aforementioned tasks—but few can do all of them well. Does Rinse measure up? We gave it a run-through to find out.
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