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Sprint stops throttling heavy users to avoid net neutrality complaints

Sprint has stopped throttling its heaviest data users, even when its network is congested, to avoid potential violations of the Federal Communications Commission’s new net neutrality rules that ban throttling. Instead, Sprint will manage congestion with a policy aimed at giving all customers a solid connection to the network. “Sprint said it believes its policy would have been allowed under the rules, but dropped it just in case,”  The Wall Street Journal reported . “Sprint doesn’t expect users to notice any significant difference in their services now that we no longer engage in the process,” Sprint told the newspaper. Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Sprint stops throttling heavy users to avoid net neutrality complaints

Xbox 360 backward compatibility coming to Xbox One

LOS ANGELES—While Microsoft’s pre-E3 press conference focused largely on newer video games, the event also filled in a pretty major gap for hardware-upgrading holdouts: backward compatibility. Starting later this year, the company’s newest console, the Xbox One, will support a limited number of older Xbox 360 games. Gamers will have two ways of playing old games that are part of the backward-compatible initiative. If users already purchased the games digitally through Xbox Live, they can simply log in and re-download the game on Xbox One without paying any additional cost. If they own the game as a disc, they’ll have to download the game to their Xbox One hard drive, and the system will then check for the disc before launching the game. Technical details on how this works are still unknown. The hardware of the Xbox 360 is very different from the hardware of the Xbox One, and pure emulation of the kind used in console emulators such as MESS and arcade emulators like MAME is technically improbable ; Xbox 360 is simply too fast and too new. The limited compatibility and need to download even those games that are owned on disc suggests to us that some mix of recompilation and emulation is in use. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Xbox 360 backward compatibility coming to Xbox One

Virgin America upgrades inflight entertainment system with Android, SSDs

Virgin America’s inflight entertainment system Red was already something of a technical marvel , at least compared to offerings from other airlines. Sporting 9-inch, 1024×600 pixel resolution touch screens, USB ports, power outlets, Ethernet sockets, and a custom Linux-based OS, Red gave the airline industry a serious kick when it launched in 2007. But the competition is heating up, and with Emirates and Singapore Airlines taking the top spots for inflight entertainment last year, Virgin America has decided that it’s time for a upgrade. Enter the latest version of Red, this time built on a new Android-based based platform, which the airline is planning to beta test on 18 aircraft by the end of the year. The Red beta makes use of Panasonic’s latest Eco V2 inflight system (the current version of Red also runs on Panasonic hardware), which pairs a 9-inch (or 11-inch) 720p capacitive touch screen with the company’s latest Android-based software. The screens will also sport integrated audio jacks, USB sockets, and a credit card reader, and decode HD video at 720p. Panasonic says it’s offering out software development kits to airlines, including a rack simulator, example code, developer tools, and a custom API. Virgin America claims that using Android will make the system easier to maintain and upgrade. With many developers already intimately familiar with Google’s OS, the airline should have an easier time adding new services to the platform. The first of those new services to hit the beta are new games, including retro classics like Atari’s Asteroids and Pac-Man , as well as an upgraded interactive map that finally recognises pinch and swipe gestures. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Virgin America upgrades inflight entertainment system with Android, SSDs

Magic: The Gathering player helps cops recover his $8,000 collection

A 23-year-old Magic: The Gathering  player who had $8,000 worth of his cards stolen managed to help snare the perpetrator after working with the police to craft an elaborate sting operation. According to The Washington Post , Kemper Pogue of Woodbridge, Virginia said he was quite upset when he realized that his car had been burglarized and that he’d lost 300 cards. “I went in the house, cracked open a beer, had a few sips, and promptly started screaming expletives as I waited for the police to arrive,” he told the Post . “I’d been collecting these cards since I was a kid, and over the years they’ve only increased in value.” Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Magic: The Gathering player helps cops recover his $8,000 collection

US Army website defaced by Syrian Electronic Army

Early today, the official website of the US Army (www.army.mil) was defaced by attackers claiming to be with the Syrian Electronic Army. In addition to a message on the page claiming attribution, the attackers also included a pop-up message to anyone visiting: “Your commanders admit they are training the people they have sent you to die fighting.” One of several messages popped up by the defaced Army.mil sites. At the time of publication, the Army main homepage is down, although other Army websites have not been affected. However, the website of the US Strategic Command —the joint Department of Defense command overseeing space and nuclear forces—is also down, as is the official page for US Cyber Command hosted on its domain. Screenshots of the attack were posted this afternoon on a Syrian Electronic Army Twitter account, one which has in the past posted links to “leaked” files about connections between the US, Turkish, and Saudi Arabian governments and Syrian rebels. This account has also previously shared information about defacements of other websites (including that of the International Business Times and the Telegraph last year) and the hijacking of Twitter accounts belonging to a number of western media outlets. The SEA claims to have created its own distribution of Linux based on Ubuntu for use by its supporters. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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US Army website defaced by Syrian Electronic Army

County sheriff warrantlessly used stingray 500+ times, claims to have no records

The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department (SCSD), the largest law enforcement agency in California’s capital region, has operated a stingray at least 500 times without a warrant in the last decade. But if you asked SCSD directly, even recently they wouldn’t give you a definite figure. As part of an ongoing investigation into stingray use nationwide, Ars filed a public records request with the SCSD  this year. And at the end of April, the SCSD responded. The department claimed that “no responsive documents exist,” essentially saying that there are no  records  detailing how many times its stingray has been used. That seemed a bit odd because in 2013,  local Sacramento television station News 10  obtained a Homeland Security grant application written by the SCSD. The proposal aimed to upgrade  the department’s stingray capabilities, and as part of its justification, the SCSD claimed to know how successful its device has been: Read 23 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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County sheriff warrantlessly used stingray 500+ times, claims to have no records

Florida science teacher suspended for signal-jamming students’ cell phones

A Florida high school teacher was suspended without pay for five days Tuesday for deploying a signal jammer in his science class to block students from using their mobile phones. Science teacher Dean Liptak. Superintendent Kurt Browning said in a Pasco County School Board reprimand letter  (PDF) to instructor Dean Liptak that he exercised “poor judgement” and “posed a serious risk to critical safety communications as well as the possibility of preventing others from making 9-1-1 calls.” Liptak was accused of jamming mobile devices from his Fivay High School classroom between March 31 and April 2. Verizon discovered the blockage on the cell tower located on campus. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Florida science teacher suspended for signal-jamming students’ cell phones

Could remnants of the earliest life be preserved in volcanic glass?

You might consider volcanic activity an efficient way of destroying living tissues, but volcanic glasses are often used to study early life. Certain microbial corrosion textures in volcanic glass and in Cenozoic seafloor basalts have been interpreted as evidence of a deep biosphere, dating back to the earliest periods of life on Earth. Similarly, textures found in volcanic glass from the Barberton Greenstone Belt in South Africa and the Pilbara Craton in Australia also suggest the presence of a deep oceanic biosphere on Earth as early as 3.35 billion years ago. But a group of researchers had challenged the idea that these traces resulted from biological activity. Now, in a strong response, another group has defended the interpretation. We seem to have a genuine scientific controversy on our hands. Is this life? Volcanic glass from Cenozoic seafloor volcanics sometimes contain what are called “biotextures.” These typically take on two major forms, either microscopic spherical cavities or tubules that extend into the volcanic glass. Biogenicity, substances produced by life processes, is the most widely accepted explanation for these features. These textures can provide us with valuable information about the types of microorganisms that existed long ago, and shed light on biological processes and how those processes may have evolved over time. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Could remnants of the earliest life be preserved in volcanic glass?

Nvidia announces G-Sync for laptops, reveals low-level tech details

The big news from Nvidia might be the release of the GTX 980 Ti , but the company has also announced some updates for G-Sync. The variable refresh rate technology, which synchronizes the refresh rate of a compatible monitor to the frame rate of a game, is finally making the jump from desktop to laptop. Upcoming laptops from Gigabyte, MSI, Asus, and Clevo are all set to support the technology, and will feature 75Hz panels from 1080p all the way up to UHD (4K). Desktop users aren’t being forgotten either: There are some new monitors—including a lust-worthy 34-inch 21:9 75Hz IPS Acer X34 panel—featuring an updated G-Sync module that finally contains more than just a single DisplayPort input. Interestingly, G-Sync for laptops makes use of the embedded DisplayPort (eDP) standard, a standardised interface for hooking up display panels directly to internal graphics cards. On the desktop, G-Sync can only be used with compatible monitors that contain Nvidia’s G-Sync module. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Nvidia announces G-Sync for laptops, reveals low-level tech details

US airport screeners missed 95% of weapons, explosives in undercover tests

Transportation Security Administration screeners allowed banned weapons and mock explosives through airport security checkpoints 95 percent of the time, according to the agency’s own undercover testing. ABC News reported the results on Monday, but Ars could not independently confirm them. According to ABC News, a Homeland Security Inspector General report showed that agents failed to detect weapons and explosives in 67 out of 70 undercover operations . The report said: Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was apparently so frustrated by the findings he sought a detailed briefing on them last week at TSA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, according to sources. US officials insisted changes have already been made at airports to address vulnerabilities identified by the latest tests. It’s been a bad past two days when it comes to the government’s anti-terror strategy. The ABC News revelation came a day after a Senate impasse Sunday allowed parts of three terrorism-fighting aspects of the USA Patriot Act to expire, including the bulk telephone metadata program that Edward Snowden disclosed. Lawmakers are trying to broker a deal to the legislation that is needed, according to Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) because terrorists “want to kill us all.” Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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US airport screeners missed 95% of weapons, explosives in undercover tests