Hatred gets Adults Only rating, making console, Steam release unlikely

Third person spree-killing simulator Hatred has been given an Adults only (AO) rating from ESRB, the video game ratings board in the US and Canada. The rating was disclosed by one of the game’s developers on its official forum , which expressed surprise that the title did not get the more lenient Mature (M) rating, writing “Well, I’m not quite convinced why Hatred got AO rating while it lacks any sexual content, but it’s still some kind of achievement to have the second game in history getting AO rating for violence and harsh language only.” Hatred is in fact the third game to receive an AO rating for violence alone, with both Thrill Kill and Manhunt 2 also receiving that evaluation. Thrill Kill , however, had its release cancelled after Electronic Arts bought its publisher and objected to its content. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Hatred gets Adults Only rating, making console, Steam release unlikely

Marriott tentatively backs off Wi-Fi blocking plans

In a brief statement on Wednesday evening , hotel chain Marriott International said that it would not block any personal Wi-Fi devices belonging to its customers. Marriott International listens to its customers, and we will not block guests from using their personal Wi-Fi devices at any of our managed hotels. Marriott remains committed to protecting the security of Wi-Fi access in meeting and conference areas at our hotels. We will continue to look to the FCC to clarify appropriate security measures network operators can take to protect customer data, and will continue to work with the industry and others to find appropriate market solutions that do not involve the blocking of Wi-Fi devices. Despite that pledge, Re/Code reports that the company is not rescinding a request for rulemaking that it submitted to the Federal Communications Commission late last year, in which it asked for the Commission’s blessing to block personal hotspots. In October, Marriott was fined $600,000 by the FCC following a complaint that one of its Nashville, Tennessee branches was interfering with and disabling personal Wi-Fi hotspots set up by its customers. Marriott agreed to pay the fine but remained defiant, asking the FCC to allow it to resume its practice. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Marriott tentatively backs off Wi-Fi blocking plans

Silk Road stunner: Ulbricht admits founding the site, but says he isn’t DPR

Once they got the chance, it took prosecutors less than a minute to point the finger—literally—at Ross Ulbricht. The jury of six men and six women were assembled in Manhattan’s federal courthouse to hear a story about a “dark and secret part of the Internet,” government lawyer Timothy Howard explained. The story was about “a website called Silk Road, where anybody, anywhere could buy and sell dangerous drugs with the click of a mouse.” “That man,” Howard said, turning to look straight at Ulbricht and extending his arm towards him. “The defendant—Ross Ulbricht— he was the kingpin of this criminal empire.” Read 35 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Silk Road stunner: Ulbricht admits founding the site, but says he isn’t DPR

Why DNS in OS X 10.10 is broken, and what you can do to fix it

Recently, there has been a lot of  discussion about the current state of Apple’s software quality. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with development knows that bugs are par for the course, and most people aren’t bothered by small, day-to-day bugs that are fixed within a reasonable timeframe. Obviously, like everyone else, Apple’s software has its share of those. But there’s another category of bug—glaring, perplexing bugs that couldn’t possibly have escaped the attention of the software engineers in question, let alone the quality assurance department. Such issues exist, and sometimes they go unfixed for months. Or years. Or ever. Hopefully, the set of network issues with OS X 10.10 described below won’t fall into this column, but they do raise an obvious question: why? For 12 years, the mDNSResponder service managed a surprisingly large part of our Mac’s networking, and it managed this task well. But as of OS X 10.10, the mDNSResponder has been replaced with discoveryd, which does the same thing. Mostly. Here are some strange networking problems we’ve observed since installing 10.10: Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Why DNS in OS X 10.10 is broken, and what you can do to fix it

Cable lobby says Google Fiber doesn’t need Title II to get pole access

The top cable lobby group says Google is blowing smoke when it comes to Title II and pole attachment rights. Google told the Federal Communications Commission that reclassifying broadband providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act would help Google and other companies gain access to infrastructure controlled by utilities. Section 224 of Title II covers pole attachments, and Google urged the FCC to enforce this section if it does move broadband under Title II. But that isn’t even necessary, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA)  argued in a filing today , saying that “Google already can avail itself of pole attachment rights under Section 224, notwithstanding its assertions to the contrary. Google’s letter states that Google Fiber ‘lacks federal access rights pursuant to Section 224’ because it offers an ‘Internet Protocol video service that is not traditional cable TV.’ But as NCTA has explained on numerous occasions… the law is clear that facilities-based providers of Internet Protocol television (‘IPTV’) services do qualify as cable operators under the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (‘the Act’). The Act defines ‘cable operator’ as one who ‘provides cable service over a cable system,’ without any reference to the technology (IP-based, QAM-based, or otherwise) used to provide such service.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Cable lobby says Google Fiber doesn’t need Title II to get pole access

The 100 billion frames per second camera that can image light itself

High-speed cameras produce some of the most fascinating imagery in the world. They reveal hidden details and turn the everyday into the extraordinary. But these cameras, which generally top out at around 100,000 frames per second, have nothing on a camera reported last month in Nature . This beast can manage a massive 100 billion frames per second . If you want a high frame rate, you generally use stroboscopic imaging. In normal filming, the illumination is always on, and the camera shutter is operated as fast as possible. However, as the frame rate increases, the shutter time reduces and less light falls on the sensor. The result is a noisy image. In the embedded video, you can see the difference between normal filming and stroboscopic imaging. Stroboscopic imaging builds up an image by pulsing the light source while the camera shutter remains open. Using it, you can capture single images from an event that repeats periodically. The temporal resolution is now given by the duration and timing of the light pulse. Light pulses can be less than a femtosecond (10 -15 s) in duration, while timing can be controlled with femtosecond precision. This allows stop-motion photography with frame rates of trillions per second. Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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The 100 billion frames per second camera that can image light itself

Only 25Mbps and up will qualify as broadband under new FCC definition

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler today is proposing to raise the definition of broadband from 4Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream to 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up. As part of the Annual Broadband Progress Report mandated by Congress , the Federal Communications Commission has to determine whether broadband “is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.” The FCC’s latest report, circulated by Wheeler in draft form to fellow commissioners, “finds that broadband is not being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion, especially in rural areas, on Tribal lands, and in US Territories,” according to a fact sheet the FCC provided to Ars. The FCC also gets to define what speeds qualify as broadband, or “advanced telecommunications capability,” as it’s called in policy documents. The FCC last updated that definition in 2010 , raising it from 200Kbps to the current 4/1 standard. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 said that advanced telecommunications capability must “enable users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology.” Wheeler’s proposed annual report says the 4/1 definition adopted in 2010 “is inadequate for evaluating whether broadband capable of supporting today’s high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video is being deployed to all Americans in a timely way.” (Despite the annual requirement, this would be the first such report since 2012 .) Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Only 25Mbps and up will qualify as broadband under new FCC definition

Former US cybersecurity official gets 25 years for child porn charges

On Monday, a federal judge in Nebraska sentenced the former acting director of cybersecurity for the US Department of Health and Human Services to 25 years in prison on child porn charges. Timothy DeFoggi, who was convicted back in August 2014, is the sixth person to be convicted in relations to a Nebraska-based child porn Tor-enable website known as PedoBook. That site’s administrator, Aaron McGrath, was sentenced to 20 years last year by the same judge. McGrath famously did not have an administrator password, a mistake that federal investigators were easily able to make use of. DeFoggi’s attorneys did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment, but he was almost certainly unmasked via an FBI-created malware exploit designed to expose him and other PedoBook users. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Former US cybersecurity official gets 25 years for child porn charges

Pope to push for action on climate change

Over the weekend, The Guardian reported that Pope Francis will issue an encyclical urging Catholics to push for action on climate change. The push will coincide with the efforts to follow up on the Lima agreement in the hope that they will lead to binding agreements for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Although the Vatican has not confirmed that the document is in the works, the article quotes several authorities by name, and they speak as if it is a done deal. The document would be in keeping with the Pope’s messages on environmental stewardship; the article quotes Francis as telling an audience in Latin America, “Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness.” It’s also consistent with his general high regard for scientific findings. The Pope will join a variety of voices pushing for action next year and will undoubtedly add to the political pressure for an agreement. A more relevant question may be whether Francis can sway anyone who wasn’t already interested in seeing progress made on the climate. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Pope to push for action on climate change

North Korea suffers another Internet outage, hurls racial slur at Pres. Obama

With its latest response in the country’s on-going flap with the US, Agence France-Presse reports North Korea called President Barack Obama a “monkey” today. The racial slur comes after a recent double blow to North Korea: the country suffered yet another Internet outage Saturday and  Sony officially released The Interview , its fictional Kim Jong-Un assassination film, on Thursday. North Korea has fingered Washington for the outages and insists President Obama encouraged US theaters to re-embrace  The Interview.  “Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest,” a spokesman for North Korea’s National Defence Commission said in a statement published by the country’s official KCNA news agency. “If the US persists in American-style arrogant, high-handed, and gangster-like arbitrary practices despite repeated warnings, the US should bear in mind that its failed political affairs will face inescapable deadly blows.” An apparent DDoS attack knocked North Korea off the ‘net earlier this week, and it experienced another mass outage Saturday evening. This one even affected North Korea’s telecommunication networks, according to Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency (via AFP ). Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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North Korea suffers another Internet outage, hurls racial slur at Pres. Obama