Tag: newsletters

iCloud for Windows update means PCs can use iCloud Drive before Macs can

iCloud Drive is now available on Windows, but not OS X. Andrew Cunningham Apple officially released iCloud Drive yesterday as part of the iOS 8 update , but it came with a caveat: turning it on disables the “old” way of iCloud syncing, but OS X doesn’t yet support iCloud Drive and won’t until OS X Yosemite is released later this fall. If you use iCloud to sync application data between your phone, tablet, and desktop, this means you’ll need to keep living with the more limited version of iCloud until Yosemite is out (or roll the dice and give the Public Beta a try ). If you’re a Windows user with an iPhone, though, you can go ahead and pull the trigger on that iCloud Drive update now. Apple today released an updated version of the iCloud for Windows application  that adds full support for iCloud Drive. Install the program and sign in, and iCloud Drive will appear in your user profile folder and your Favorites menu in Windows Explorer, much like Microsoft’s own OneDrive cloud storage service. This is the first opportunity that Windows users will have to view and directly manipulate iCloud data, not counting the more limited capabilities of the iCloud.com Web apps, and it’s a nice new addition for people who like iOS but don’t care to use Macs. Otherwise, iCloud for Windows continues to be more limited than iCloud on either iOS or OS X. It can sync with your Photo Stream and sync Safari bookmarks with either Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome, and if you have Outlook 2007 or later installed it will also offer to sync your iCloud mail, calendars, contacts, and reminders. However, it can’t use iCloud Keychain to sync passwords, nor does it provide any kind of “Find My Device” functionality as it does in both iOS and OS X. You can’t sync Notes data directly either, though that feature is accessible via iCloud.com. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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iCloud for Windows update means PCs can use iCloud Drive before Macs can

Artificial sweeteners may leave their users glucose intolerant

Flickr user Bukowsky18 People who are watching their weight will often opt for a diet soda, reasoning that the fewer calories, the better. But the availability of drinks and foods made with artificial sweeteners like saccharin, sucralose, and aspartame hasn’t seemed to help much with our booming obesity levels. Now, some researchers might have identified a reason for this: the sweeteners leave their users with elevated blood glucose levels. But they don’t seem to act directly on human metabolism. Instead, the effects come through alterations in the bacterial populations that live inside us. The paper that describes this work, which was performed by a large collaboration of researchers from Israel, is being released by Nature today. The researchers note that epidemiological studies about the effects of artificial sweeteners have produced mixed results; some show a benefit, while others indicate that they’re associated with weight gain and diabetes risk. Given that human populations haven’t given us a clear answer, the researchers turned to mice, where they could do a carefully controlled study. They started taking a group of genetically matched mice and spiking their drinking water with either sucrose or a commercial prep of an artificial sweetener (either saccharin, sucralose, or aspartame). After five weeks, they checked the blood glucose levels of these animals. Eleven weeks later, the groups that were given the artificial sweeteners all had elevated blood glucose levels compared to those that received sucrose. This is typically a sign of metabolic problems, most often caused by insulin losing its effectiveness. It can be a precursor to type 2 diabetes. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Artificial sweeteners may leave their users glucose intolerant

Watch out, California’s self-driving car permits take effect today

Audi On Tuesday, permits for self-driving cars issued by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) took effect for the first time. Applications for the permits began in May 2014. Only the Volkswagen Group (which includes Volkswagen and Audi cars among others), Mercedes Benz, and Google have been issued permits for their 29 total vehicles. Overall, that represents a miniscule fraction of all 32 million registered cars in the Golden State. Bernard Soriano, a DMV spokesman, told Ars that Tuesday also marked the first time those numbers had been disclosed outside of the agency. “There are a handful of different companies that are completing their application,” he added, noting that the DMV expected to issue more permits soon. “They’re all large automakers.” Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Watch out, California’s self-driving car permits take effect today

iPhone 6 and 6 Plus pre-orders break record, top 4 million in one day

The iPhone 5S (left) next to the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus. Which size is the one for you? Megan Geuss On Monday, Apple confirmed that its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus pre-order numbers broke records for the smartphone line, as they combined to rack up over four million purchases in the first 24 hours  they were on sale. As we reported —and Apple’s announcement confirmed—many of those pre-orders won’t ship to customers until October. The pre-orders, which started  early Friday morning in nine nations , handily surpassed the first-day numbers of the iPhone 5; that model received over two million pre-orders in 2012 , though its actual first-weekend sales upon retail launch reached five million . That doesn’t mean Apple’s first-week in-store supply will be able to feed the sort of demand that the iPhone 6 is generating. Anybody curled up in a sleeping bag in front of an Apple Store right now, however, can take comfort in the fact that Apple will make “additional supply” of both models available to purchase at 8am local time this coming Friday. All four major American carriers’ stores will also have phones available on Friday, as well as “additional carriers and select Apple Authorized Resellers.” Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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iPhone 6 and 6 Plus pre-orders break record, top 4 million in one day

US gov’t threatened Yahoo with $250K daily fine if it didn’t use PRISM

Yahoo reports that it is on the verge of releasing 1,500 pages of documents related to a long court battle over its participation in the PRISM program, a National Security Agency program revealed last summer as part of the Snowden leaks. A leaked top-secret slide about PRISM shows that Yahoo was one of the first participants, having begun contributing to the database in March of 2008. It did so under severe duress. Company executives believed the government’s demand for data was “unconstitutional and overbroad” and fought it in court. “Our challenge, and a later appeal in the case, did not succeed,” explained Yahoo General Counsel Ron Bell in a blog post published today. “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)… ordered us to give the U.S. Government the user data it sought in the matter.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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US gov’t threatened Yahoo with $250K daily fine if it didn’t use PRISM

Intel demos next-next-gen “Skylake” processors, coming in late 2015

A Core M CPU package based on the Broadwell architecture. Intel Intel’s Broadwell CPU architecture has only just started rolling out , and most of the processors that use it aren’t even supposed to launch until early next year. The new 14nm manufacturing process is causing the delay , but yesterday at the Intel Developer Forum the company tried to demonstrate that Broadwell’s lateness wouldn’t affect the rest of its roadmap. To that end, Intel highlighted a couple of working developer systems based on the new “Skylake” architecture, as summarized here by Anandtech . The company didn’t go into specific performance or power consumption numbers (both because it’s early and because Intel probably doesn’t want to take the wind out of Broadwell’s sails), but it showed working silicon rendering 3D games and playing back 4K video to prove that the chips are working. The first Skylake processors are reportedly due out late in 2015 following the beginning of volume production in the second half of the year. Here are the basic facts we already know about Skylake: it’s a “tock” on Intel’s roadmap, meaning it introduces a new architecture on a manufacturing process that’s already up and running. In this case, that’s Intel’s 14nm process, which Intel  insists has recovered from its early problems . Some of the CPUs in Intel’s lineup—specifically  mid-to-low-end socketed desktop CPUs —will get their next refresh using Skylake instead of Broadwell. Whether this is because Intel wants to reserve 14nm manufacturing capacity for lower-power, higher-margin chips or because it just doesn’t think the power-consumption-obsessed Broadwell is a good fit for regular desktops is anyone’s guess. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Intel demos next-next-gen “Skylake” processors, coming in late 2015

Meet the tech company performing ad injections for Big Cable

Front Porch ad. A Northern California company that bills itself as the “worldwide leader in Wi-Fi monetization” is the vendor behind Comcast’s and other US cable companies’ promotional advertising campaign performed through JavaScript injection, Comcast said Monday. Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas confirmed the vendor’s name, Front Porch of Sonora, hours after Ars reported that Comcast recently started serving Comcast ads to devices connected to one of its 3.5 million publicly accessible Wi-Fi hotspots across the US. We wrote that Comcast’s decision to inject data into the net raises security concerns and cuts to the heart of the ongoing net neutrality debate . As it turns out, Front Porch also does business with Cox, Time Warner, Bright House, and Cablevision in the US, Front Porch CTO Carlos Vazquez said in a telephone interview. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Meet the tech company performing ad injections for Big Cable

Epic makes Unreal Engine 4 free for students

On Thursday, Epic Games announced that it would make the complete Unreal Engine 4 suite free to use for universities and students on a case-by-case basis. Interested teachers and students can now submit their credentials via Epic’s official site , and upon acceptance, they will have access to the suite without having to pay the standard $19 per month fee . “There’s no separate ‘academic’ version or anything like that,” UE4 General Manager Ray Davis said to Ars in a phone interview. “The cool thing is, as a student, even if you don’t decide to subscribe upon graduation, you’ll still retain access to any version of the engine you had at that point. We’re not leaving people hanging at the end of a school year or anything like that.” Though UE4’s university-specific offer isn’t quite as accessible as Crytek’s CryENGINE, which can be downloaded by anybody on a non-commercial basis, Epic’s revision does stem from feedback the company received after it announced UE4’s pricing structure during this year’s Game Developers Conference . Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Epic makes Unreal Engine 4 free for students

Oculus targets $200 to $400 range for consumer version of VR headset

Kyle Orland When Oculus eventually releases a consumer version (CV1) of its Rift virtual reality headset, the company wants to “stay in that $200-$400 price range,” founder Palmer Luckey told Eurogamer in a recent interview. That lines up roughly with the $350 currently being charged for the second Development Kit (DK2) version of the Rift, which began shipping to developers recently. Luckey warned Eurogamer, though, that the consumer version price range “could slide in either direction depending on scale, pre-orders, the components we end up using, business negotiations…” One thing that won’t be sliding around anymore is the technical specs for the CV1. “We know what we’re making and now it’s a matter of making it.” Luckey wouldn’t be pinned down on the specifics of those consumer specs, but he said to expect a jump in resolution above the DK2, similar to the 720p to 1080p jump we saw between the first development kits (DK1) and DK2. Luckey also teased improvements to 90Hz “or higher” refresh rate (up from 75Hz in DK2) and lowered weight and size for the consumer headset. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Oculus targets $200 to $400 range for consumer version of VR headset

Appeals court says Yelp’s ad sales tactics don’t extort small businesses

Robyn Lee On Tuesday, a California appeals court ruled that Yelp’s ad sales strategies do not extort small businesses and merely amount to “hard bargaining” by the company. Yelp lets anyone review a business, and businesses can’t opt out of being reviewed. So when Yelp’s ad sales team began calling around asking companies to buy advertising in exchange for displaying good reviews more prominently, some storefronts cried foul. In 2010, four small business owners banded together to sue Yelp for extortion after they refused to buy advertising from Yelp and allegedly found that bad reviews were displayed more prominently. Two of the business owners also alleged that Yelp authored negative reviews to induce them to advertise or in retaliation after the business declined to buy advertising. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Appeals court says Yelp’s ad sales tactics don’t extort small businesses