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Microsoft makes a nod to subscriptions for Windows 10

Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner Microsoft Even as it has cut the price of Windows— offering it for free on phones and small screen tablets, plus there’s a Bing edition for everything else—Microsoft is still working on ways to monetize its platform. Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner was speaking to investors last week, and GeekWire reported that profits are still the goal. Asked if the plan was to make Windows a loss leader to draw people into the Microsoft ecosystem, Turner said that the company had “not had any conversations” on this. He reiterated this when asked if the company was going to start losing money on Windows, saying “that’s not any conversations that we’ve had… we’ve got to monetize it differently.” What form might that different monetization take? Turner says that “there are services involved. There are additional opportunities for us to bring additional services to the product and do it in a creative way.” Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft makes a nod to subscriptions for Windows 10

Samsung 850 EVO SSD takes its storage into the third dimension

Things have advanced quite a bit since our last thoroughly in-depth look at how solid state disks work, and Samsung has been one of the biggest companies leading the charge toward faster, denser solid state drives. Its 840 EVO was the first consumer SSD to use TLC NAND—that’s triple-level cell NAND, which can store three bits per memory cell instead of one or two. Now, Samsung’s newest consumer SSD takes NAND density a step further, stacking the memory cells on top of each other in a complex sandwich. The 850 EVO, formally announced this morning , uses 32-layer TLC “V-NAND,” where the “V” stands for “vertical.” As we discussed previously at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, Samsung is the only SSD manufacturer that makes ” the whole widget “—it’s the only vertically integrated OEM that builds every part of the SSDs it sells, including the NAND that actually holds the data. This gives the company a distinct advantage over other SSD manufacturers—most of whom source their NAND from Samsung. The 850 EVO is set to be released in four capacities: 120GB, 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB. These are all decimal measurements, not binary—so that “1TB” is properly one trillion bytes, not 1024GB (there are official IEC units for binary measurements, but I’ll eat glass before I start saying ” tebibyte “). The quoted numbers on Samsung’s site look pretty good for a consumer-level drive: max sequential read speeds of 540MB/s, max sequential write speeds of 520MB/s, and relatively high IOPS across a variety of read and write regimes. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Powerful, highly stealthy Linux trojan may have infected victims for years

Researchers have uncovered an extremely stealthy trojan for Linux systems that attackers have been using to siphon sensitive data from governments and pharmaceutical companies around the world. The previously undiscovered malware represents a missing puzzle piece tied to “Turla,” a so-called advanced persistent threat (APT) disclosed in August by Kaspersky Lab and Symantec . For at least four years, the campaign targeted government institutions, embassies, military, education, research, and pharmaceutical companies in more than 45 countries. The unknown attackers—who are probably backed by a nation-state, according to Symantec—were known to have infected several hundred Windows-based computers by exploiting a variety of vulnerabilities, at least two of which were zero-day bugs. The malware was notable for its use of a rootkit that made it extremely hard to detect. Now researchers from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab have detected Linux-based malware used in the same campaign . Turla was already ranked as one of the top-tier APTs, in the same league as the recently disclosed Regin for instance. The discovery of the Linux component suggests it is bigger than previously thought and may presage the discovery of still more infected systems. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Powerful, highly stealthy Linux trojan may have infected victims for years

Apple manager gets year in jail, $4.5m fine for selling industry secrets

Onetime Apple supply manager Paul Shin Devine will spend a year in prison and repay $4.5 million for selling Apple’s secrets to suppliers, the AP reports . Devine, who worked at Apple from 2005 until his arrest in August of 2010 , pleaded guilty to wire fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering—and could have been sentenced to as much as 20 years in prison. Working with Singapore resident Andrew Ang, Devine was accused of selling confidential information to companies that hoped to become Apple suppliers, and to suppliers trying to negotiate better deals with the company. Winning an Apple contract can be a make-or-break moment for a supplier, as we saw in the recent dust-up between Apple and would-be sapphire manufacturer GT Advanced Technologies ; companies hoping to get in on the action sent “millions in kickbacks” to Devine. Ang and Chua Kim Guan, who were respectively the sales director and general manager of Jin Li Mould Manufacturing, were charged in 2013 for bribing Devine. They were accused of paying Devine $387,600 between 2006 and 2009. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Apple manager gets year in jail, $4.5m fine for selling industry secrets

Rovio lays off 110 people as Angry Birds hype fades

Rovio has confirmed that 110 people will lose their jobs as the Angry Birds maker also shuts down its game-development studio in Tampere, Finland. The layoffs, first announced in October, amount to about 14 percent of the company’s workforce. It had been expected that Rovio would make 130 people redundant but after a round of consultations this number has now been reduced. Rovio said that as a result of the redundancies “several positions” have been opened for internal applications. The actual number of employees out of work will depend on how many new internal positions are filled. The closing of its Tampere development studio means that Rovio will move all of its Finnish operation to its Espoo headquarters. The company shot to fame in 2009 when it released Angry Birds , its 52nd game . The title went on to become the most downloaded mobile game of all time. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Rovio lays off 110 people as Angry Birds hype fades

Android 5.0.1 released; fixes inadvertent factory reset bug

It seems like every big software release is quickly followed up by a bug fix update, and it looks like that’s what Google has just pushed out to AOSP and the Nexus image page . Android 5.0.1 is the latest version of Lollipop, and is now available for select devices. On the factory images page, there are downloads for the Wi-Fi Nexus 9 , Wi-Fi Nexus 7 (2013) , and the Nexus 10 , and we’re expecting updates for the rest of the Nexus devices soon. Google hasn’t said anything official about the update, but Peter Kiddier, an intrepid commenter over at Android Police , has picked out the new commits from the source code. The major showstopper looks to be this bug , which, in some instances, could cause stray input on the lock screen to erase everything on the device. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Android 5.0.1 released; fixes inadvertent factory reset bug

FBI seizes 20 boxes of documents on LAUSD iPad program

On Monday morning, the FBI seized 20 boxes of documents pertaining to a $1.3 billion iPad program from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), according to the Los Angeles Times . The program, which was intended to give iPads to every student, teacher, and campus administrator of the nation’s second-largest school district, has met with many catastrophic difficulties, and this latest federal investigation led the new superintendent of the school system to shelve the project indefinitely on Tuesday. The program first hit a bump in the road back in 2013 when a number of students “hacked” the iPads —which is to say they deleted profile information that designated the user as a student, thus letting the student browse the Internet unencumbered by the filter restrictions enforced by the school district. At the same time, many teachers reported that they felt ill-equipped to use and teach with the iPads. In October, the LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy resigned amid allegations of malfeasance , although he claimed no wrongdoing. Deasy drew attention after the disclosure of his ties to Apple and curriculum-provider Pearson. On Tuesday, Deasy told the Los Angeles Times that he had had no contact with the FBI, nor did he know what the investigation was about. Ars contacted the FBI for more details about the investigation, but a spokesperson said she could not comment. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Feds want Apple’s help to defeat encrypted phones, new legal case shows

OAKLAND, CA—Newly discovered court documents from two federal criminal cases in New York and California that remain otherwise sealed suggest that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is pursuing an unusual legal strategy to compel cellphone makers to assist investigations. In both cases, the seized phones—one of which is an iPhone 5S—are encrypted and cannot be cracked by federal authorities. Prosecutors have now invoked the All Writs Act , an 18th-century federal law that simply allows courts to issue a writ, or order, which compels a person or company to do something. Some legal experts are concerned that these rarely made public examples of the lengths the government is willing to go in defeating encrypted phones raise new questions as to how far the government can compel a private company to aid a criminal investigation. Read 29 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Feds want Apple’s help to defeat encrypted phones, new legal case shows

Google Glass isn’t dead; Intel-powered hardware reportedly due in 2015

It’s been easy to believe Google Glass is dead given all the problems that have popped up lately. The device was introduced to the world more than two years ago, but it never came close to the original concept . The project’s founder left Google to work at Amazon, and monthly updates from Google have slowed from important feature releases to sometimes single-sentence changelogs . App developers are giving up on the platform, and Twitter recently pulled support for its Glass app. The official forums , once a bustling hive of optimism, now mostly discuss declining usage or low morale among remaining Glass users. And unless something happens in the next 30 days, Google will miss its original plans for a consumer release. Glass is not dead, though. A report from The Wall Street Journal claims that a new version of Google Glass is on the way, and unlike the minor revision that Google released last year, it has totally overhauled internals. According to the report, Glass will switch from its dead Texas Instruments SoC to a processor built by Intel and will get a full hardware refresh. Google Glass has had a rough life thanks to its choice of SoC. The original unit (and the revision) used a Texas Instruments chip, but shortly after the launch of Glass, TI quit the smartphone business and ended support for many of its products. That was a big problem for Glass since, as early as this year, the device was still based on Android 4.0—an OS originally released in 2011. Glass was missing out on some big wearable-specific enhancements in later versions of Android like notification APIs, Bluetooth LE, and lower memory usage. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google Glass isn’t dead; Intel-powered hardware reportedly due in 2015

Latest Windows 10 update shows how rapid releases work in practice

Windows 10’s updates and maintenance are following a different, better path to all prior Windows releases: one with more regular updates and quicker access to new features for those who want it, while still offering enterprises a slower pace of delivery. With the first update to the Windows 10 Technical Preview a month ago, Microsoft also enabled a two-speed update track for the million or so members of the Windows Insider program. By default, preview users are put on the slow track. However, about 10 percent of users have put themselves on the fast track. The first ( contentious ) fast track release was made almost two weeks ago, and fast track users have been using it since then. Those fast track users also revealed a variety of problem scenarios. The two big ones were the screen going black (and staying black) every time a PC was unlocked, and a blue screen of death. A pair of patches have been released to fast track users to address these issues, the second coming yesterday, and both of them seem now to be fixed. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Latest Windows 10 update shows how rapid releases work in practice