Tag: golf

Chicago Netflix customers: Your bill is about to go up 9 percent

Starting Wednesday, the city of Chicago’s new ” cloud tax ” went into effect: it imposes a 9-percent tax on “patrons of amusement,” including those services that are “delivered electronically.” In short: Netflix users in Chicago will be paying a little extra for their subscriptions pretty soon. “We will be adding it to the cost we charge subscribers,” Anne Marie Squeo, a Netflix spokeswoman, told Ars in a statement. “Jurisdictions around the world, including the US, are trying to figure out ways to tax online services. This is one approach.” Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Chicago Netflix customers: Your bill is about to go up 9 percent

MS-DOS is getting a new game in the form of Retro City Rampage 486

If there’s one thing that’s wrong with PC gaming these days, it’s that it’s far too easy. Steam collections? Automated driver updates? Graphical user interfaces? Pah! Frankly, if a PC game doesn’t require a Sound Blaster 16 card and arrive on 25 floppy disks, then I don’t want know. Fortunately, there’s one developer out there that gets it. Vblank Entertainment is bringing Retro City Rampage —its homage to 8-bit games and Grand Theft Auto —over to the greatest gaming OS of all time: MS-DOS. Yes, the operating system released all the way back in 1981 is getting a brand new(ish) game. Retro City Rampage 486 is a port of Retro City Rampage DX , an enhanced version of the game featuring a story mode, arcade challenges, and free roaming. But before you get too excited, best check those system requirements. You’ll need an Intel 486, a whopping 3.7 MB of hard drive space, and 4MB of RAM in order to get up and running. Pretty steep, I know, but on the plus side, if you already own a copy of either the Windows or Mac version of Retro City Rampage , you can pick up the new port for free. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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MS-DOS is getting a new game in the form of Retro City Rampage 486

Samsung silently disabling Windows Update on some computers

Microsoft MVP Patrick Barker, who spends a large portion of his life analysing, debugging, and helping other people troubleshoot Windows, has discovered that Samsung is actively disabling Windows Update on some of its PCs. Barker stumbled across the issue while trying to assist a user who found that Windows Update “kept getting disabled randomly.” By using Auditpol and registry security auditing, Barker discovered that a program called Disable_Windowsupdate.exe was being run every time the PC booted up—and that EXE file, unfortunately, belonged to Samsung’s SW Update suite. SW Update is exactly what it sounds like: it’s one of those bundled OEM tools that ostensibly keeps all of your PC’s software and drivers up-to-date. In this case, though, SW Update also installs a service that regularly downloads and executes a file called Disable_Windowsupdate.exe directly from Samsung’s servers. The file  is even digitally signed by Samsung (but don’t run it unless you want to disable Windows Update). Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Samsung silently disabling Windows Update on some computers

Airplanes grounded in Poland after hackers allegedly attack flight plan computer

Around 1400 passengers at Warsaw’s Chopin (Okecie) airport in Poland were grounded on Sunday after hackers allegedly attacked the computer system used to issue flight plans to the airplanes. The source of the attack isn’t yet known. The alleged hack targeted LOT, the state-owned flag-carrying Polish airline. Reuters is reporting that the attack took place on Sunday afternoon, and was fixed about five hours later. 10 LOT flights were cancelled and about a dozen more were delayed, according to a LOT spokesman. The spokesman didn’t provide any details of what had actually occurred, though he did give away this one tantalising morsel: “We’re using state-of-the-art computer systems, so this could potentially be a threat to others in the industry.” The spokesman said that flights that were already in the air were not affected by the hack and could land normally. Also, the hack didn’t affect the airport itself; it was just the LOT computers. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Airplanes grounded in Poland after hackers allegedly attack flight plan computer

AMD unveils R9 Fury X, Fury, and Nano graphics cards

25 more images in gallery There’s not one, not two, but three brand new high-end graphics cards on the way from AMD. As rumoured, AMD is dropping the numerical branding and is instead grouping its top cards under the “Fury” banner. All are based on its new Fiji chip, which is a tweaked version of the company’s long-standing GCN architecture, and—as expected—all will come equipped with 4GB of stacked, on-package high bandwidth memory (HBM). The flagship is the $649 R9 Fury X, which launches on June 24. At that price, it is pitched directly against Nvidia’s GTX 980 Ti . It features 4096 stream processors—a huge jump over the 2816 stream processors found in the R9 290X—”up to” 1050MHz core clock, 256 texture units, 64 ROPs, HBM memory with 512 GB/s of bandwidth, a 67.2 GP/s pixel fill rate, and a six-phase VRM (voltage regulator module), which AMD claims is ideal for overclocking the card. We don’t yet have UK pricing, but it’ll probably be around £550. Despite using two 8-pin power connectors, the Fury X’s power consumption isn’t as high as some feared: the TDP is 275W, just a tad higher than the R9 290X’s, although it’s worth bearing in mind that in real-world usage, the R9 290X was much closer to 300W. The Fury X supports up to 375W of power for overclocking. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AMD unveils R9 Fury X, Fury, and Nano graphics cards

Microsoft partners with Valve VR and Oculus, shows Minecraft for HoloLens

LOS ANGELES—At Microsoft’s pre-E3 press conference , the company announced a strategic partnership with Valve VR, complementing its partnership with Oculus, which was revealed last week at an Oculus press conference in San Francisco. In other VR news, Microsoft invited Mojang’s brand director, Lydia Winters, to the stage to demo a version of Minecraft built specifically for Microsoft’s HoloLens . Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Studios Kudo Tsunoda told the audience that Microsoft is “working closely with Valve to make Windows 10 the best platform for VR gaming.” Valve’s own SteamVR development kit is still in development, but Ars got a chance to play with it at Valve’s office in Seattle last week. Microsoft also reiterated that it would be partnering with Facebook-owned Oculus VR with the goal of getting the Xbox One controller to interoperate with the  consumer-ready version of the Oculus Rift , which will be launched in the first quarter of 2016. Users will be able to play VR games through the Oculus Rift using their Xbox One controller, and they’ll be able to stream games through Windows 10 to the headset. Oculus also announced last week that it would launch its own hand-held controllers called Oculus Touch to allow for more natural gestures and movements through virtual worlds, but Oculus Touch is still in prototype mode and won’t be available until after Oculus’ launch. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft partners with Valve VR and Oculus, shows Minecraft for HoloLens

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

Hands-on with YouTube Gaming—Google built itself a Twitch Killer

NEW YORK—YouTube Gaming is coming! YouTube’s Twitch Killer was announced on Friday , so we stopped by the YouTube Space in Manhattan to try out a pre-release version of the service. (And we took a  ton of screenshots, see below.) YouTube says the service will launch “this summer”—it’s kind of “this summer” right now— and sure enough, the version we tried out seemed 99% finished. We spent most of our time with the desktop website, and we weren’t even on a developer sandbox—it was just the live gaming.youtube.com site with a properly-flagged account. Let’s get started! The Interface Ron Amadeo An open live stream, complete with chat. It’s Twitch! Note the “-1:43” tooltip: you can rewind the stream! 3 more images in gallery In its blog post, YouTube neglected to show the most important screenshot: the live streaming video page, so that was the first place we explored. The live video page is an all-dark interface with a large video player and a tabbed interface to the right. The tabs house chat, the typical YouTube related videos list (which should be great for discovery), and a description tab. Read 27 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Hands-on with YouTube Gaming—Google built itself a Twitch Killer

Everybody copies everyone: iOS 9 features inspired by Android

Apple announced iOS 9 on Monday, and while watching the keynote, I had just a little bit of déjà vu. Most of iOS 9’s new features seem to be squarely aimed at Apple’s biggest rival in mobile: Android. Specifically, they were about  catching up  to Android. Search improvements, proactive assistance, split screen, and transit directions? It’s been done, but the differences are the fun part, so we chased down the new iOS 9 screenshots and compared them to their Android counterparts. It’s not just about who copied whom; it’s also a chance to look at the different designs of the two operating systems. And hey, Apple isn’t the only one taking ideas from a competitor. Android M’s selectable app permissions are an exact copy of the iOS model. Siri and Search are chasing Google Now but hitting Google where it hurts The iOS 9 Search and Google Now screens. 8 more images in gallery iOS 9 adds a lot of “proactive assistant” and search features that were first seen on Android. The main search screen now looks a lot like Google Now, with cards showing various bits of information. Search differs from Google Now in that it shows suggested people and apps at the top, but the News and Nearby places are all Google Now. iOS search shows categories for Nearby places, while Google Now shows individual places with ratings and pictures. Read 19 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Everybody copies everyone: iOS 9 features inspired by Android

Apple unveils the next version of OS X, “El Capitan”

SAN FRANCISCO—As usual, another opening-day WWDC keynote has brought with it another new version of OS X. The new version, El Capitan, introduces a handful of new features to the platform but is otherwise focused on refinement, both in the overall stability of the OS and in its visual identity (El Capitan switches the system font from Helvetica Neue to the Apple Watch’s San Francisco typeface , which changes the look of the OS in subtle but significant ways). Spotlight becomes “more expressive,” according to Apple VP Craig Federighi. There are also improvements to window management and the built-in apps. On stage, Federighi showed off an improvement to the UI where a shake of the mouse causes the cursor to temporarily grow huge—for finding the cursor when first sitting down. The updated version of Safari shipping with El Capitan introduces the concept of pinned sites, which will load instantly on starting up Safari and which will remain in persistent tabs in the Safari UI. The browser also now allows users to see which tabs are playing music (similar to Chrome), and to mute noisy tabs with a single gesture. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple unveils the next version of OS X, “El Capitan”