Tag: vanity-fair

Xbox One gamepads finally, unofficially supported on PC

Not seen here: the Xbox One controller’s USB port that hackers have finally bent to their will. We at Ars have argued about which next-gen video game controller is more comfortable , but what hasn’t been up for discussion is that we want to use both pads on our computers. Both have USB connections, after all, and we’ve been racking up controller-friendly PC games lately. But neither Microsoft nor Sony has released official drivers to get their newest controllers working via that connection. That’s a bit crazy, as Microsoft’s choice to officially support PC gaming using the 360 pad helped make it the de facto standard for non-mouse-and-keyboard play for computer gamers. With the Xbox One controller, on the other hand, we’ve had to go the seedy, indirect path, installing unofficial drivers while crossing our fingers. Shortly after its launch, DualShock 4 buyers lucked out with an unofficial PC patch, but Xbox One controller owners had their chance shot down after Microsoft asked hacker Chris Gallizi  to stop developing his own workaround . Thankfully, another hacker made his own attempt this month before conferring with Microsoft, meaning that Windows users can finally add next-gen pads to their PC arsenal. At this time, hacker  Lucas Assis’ patch is quite inelegant, even though it received an update last week that fixed issues with the controller’s triggers. You’ll need to install an unofficial driver and two applications (linked in the video tutorial above) before the controller will even work, and you’ll probably want to install the paid XPadder app afterward to enjoy full support for your Steam library. Many games we tested didn’t work without that latter addition tossed on top. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Xbox One gamepads finally, unofficially supported on PC

Verizon accused of refusing to fix broken landline phone service

Matt Reinbold Verizon has been accused of refusing to fix landline phone service in order to force customers onto Internet packages with voice service that may falter during power outages.The Utility Reform Network (TURN) filed an emergency motion ( PDF ) last week with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) that asked the agency to “order Verizon to repair the service of copper-based landline telephone customers who have requested repair or wish to retain the copper services they were cut off of,” TURN announced . The group accused Verizon of “deliberately neglecting the repair and maintenance of its copper network with the explicit goal of migrating basic telephone service customers who experience service problems.” Verizon spokesperson Jarryd Gonzales told Ars that these claims are “blatantly false.” “We have identified certain customers in fiber network areas who have had recurring repair issues over their copper-based service recently or clusters of customers in areas where we have had recurring copper-based infrastructure issues,” Gonzales wrote in an e-mail. “Moving them to our all-fiber network will improve the reliability of their service. When these customers contact us with a repair request, we suggest fiber as a repair option. If the customer agrees, we move their service from our copper to our all-fiber network. There is no charge for this work, and customers will pay the same rate for their service. Most customers recognize and appreciate the increased reliability of fiber and gladly agree to the move to fiber. Few customers across our service area have chosen to stay with copper and, once on fiber, few ask to return to copper.” Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Verizon accused of refusing to fix broken landline phone service

Spectacular fossil fern reveals Jurassic-era chromosomes

The internal tissues of the fossilized fern. Benjamin Bomfleur A violent death has led to a remarkably lucky preservation. Researchers in Sweden have discovered ferns that were buried suddenly in a volcanic eruption during the Jurassic period. The sudden burial has preserved stunning details of the fern, down to showing the plant’s chromosomes being separated during cell division. In fact, the details are sufficient to determine that its genome hasn’t undergone major changes in at least 180 million years. The fossil was found in a volcanic deposit in southern Sweden. It belongs to a group of plants called the royal ferns (technically, the Osmundaceae ). The group, which includes a number of different species, was already known as a bit of a living fossil, since some of its distinctive features have been seen on plants that are 220 million years old, and a variety of other fossil species look indistinguishable from modern forms. The samples themselves are simply stunning. Not only are the internal details of various plant tissues preserved, but internal details of individual cells have been preserved. These include cells at various stages of the cell division process; darker, dense material shows the chromosomes being split up between the two incipient daughter cells. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Spectacular fossil fern reveals Jurassic-era chromosomes

Oculus Rift “DK2” eyes-on: Finally, VR without the Ocu-latency

Calm down, Oculus DK2! Now’s not the time for fear. That comes later. Today’s announcement about the latest improved version of the Oculus Rift headset was good news for virtual-reality geeks, but it came with two caveats. First, this still isn’t the final model meant for wide consumption, but rather a second stab at the headset’s development kit. And second, it won’t reach its intended, limited audience of developers until July of this year. That’s not soon enough for the GDC-attending contingent at Ars! After all, we’re already desperate to escape our current tech-conference reality, mostly comprising grumpy faced games industry professionals. Thus, gaming editor Kyle Orland and I grabbed our press laminates and hopped the giant Oculus Rift line,  Wayne’s World -style , to take the refreshed headsets for a spin—and grill company founder Palmer Luckey in the process. I have shoved my eyes into the original Oculus headset a few times now, which means that I have no patience for its largest failings: latency and refresh. The original responds just slowly enough to your head’s motions to feel detached, but worse, its tiny screens suffer from a slight frame refresh hitch. Couple those with a low-resolution screen pushed directly into your skull, and even first-person gaming freaks like myself can expect a one-way ticket to Headache Town. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Oculus Rift “DK2” eyes-on: Finally, VR without the Ocu-latency

Sony reveals Project Morpheus, its virtual reality headset for PS4

Kyle Orland At a “Driving the Future of Innovation at Sony” panel today, Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida revealed the company’s long-rumored plans to enter a virtual reality headset space that has gained new relevance in the wake of the Oculus Rift’s development . The headset, codenamed Project Morpheus (after the god of dream, not the Matrix character, Sony clarified), is being developed by an international team of Sony engineers. “Virtual Reality is the next innovation from PlayStation that may well change the future of games,” Yoshida said. “Nothing elevates the level of immersion better than VR,” he continued, adding that VR “goes one step further than immersion to deliver presence.” The headset will have its position and orientation tracked 100 times per second in a full 360 degrees of rotation within a three cubic meter “working volume.” Tracking will make use of high-fidelity inertial sensors in the unit itself, tiny tracking markers on the surface of the headset, and the same stereo PlayStation Camera that tracks the DualShock 4 and PlayStation Move. Sony R&D engineer Dr. Richard Marks wryly noted at the panel that the PlayStation Camera “almost seems as if it was designed for VR, actually,” to laughs from the audience. Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Sony reveals Project Morpheus, its virtual reality headset for PS4

10,000 Linux servers hit by malware serving tsunami of spam and exploits

Researchers have documented an ongoing criminal operation infecting more than 10,000 Unix and Linux servers with malware that sends spam and redirects end users to malicious Web pages. Windigo, as the attack campaign has been dubbed, has been active since 2011 and has compromised systems belonging to the Linux Foundation’s kernel.org and the developers of the cPanel Web hosting control panel, according to a detailed report published Tuesday by researchers from antivirus provider Eset. During its 36-month run, Windigo has compromised more than 25,000 servers with robust malware that sends more than 35 million spam messages a day and exposes Windows-based Web visitors to drive-by malware attacks. It also feeds people running any type of computer banner ads for porn services. The Eset researchers, who have been instrumental in uncovering similar campaigns compromising large numbers of servers running the nginx, Lighttpd , and Apache Web servers, said the latest campaign has the potential to inflict significant harm on the Internet at large. They explained: Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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10,000 Linux servers hit by malware serving tsunami of spam and exploits

Sextortionist who hacked Miss Teen USA’s computer sentenced to 18 months

Andrew Cunningham The California computer science student who hacked various women’s computers for the purposes of “sextortion”—including Miss Teen USA 2013, Cassidy Wolf —has been sentenced to 18 months in prison. The sentence comes after Jared James Abrahams pleaded guilty to one count of computer hacking and three counts of extortion last November. According to a press release published Monday afternoon by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, Abrahams “used the nude photos to extort victims by threatening to publicly post the compromising photos or videos to the victims’ social media accounts—unless the victim either sent more nude photos or videos, or engaged in a Skype session with him and did what he said for five minutes.” As Ars Deputy Editor Nate Anderson wrote last year , Abrahams became decently adept at using remote administration tools (RATs), a malware used to spy on victims. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Sextortionist who hacked Miss Teen USA’s computer sentenced to 18 months

GitHub puts founder on leave, kicks wife out of office after harassment claim

GitHub’s staff. GitHub GitHub has placed one of its three cofounders on leave and barred the cofounder’s wife from the office while it investigates allegations made by a former employee. Engineer Julie Ann Horvath announced this past weekend that she had left GitHub, describing a toxic office culture in an e-mail interview with TechCrunch . The wife of the cofounder played a prominent role in Horvath’s account. Julie Ann Horvath. “I met her and almost immediately the conversation that I thought was supposed to be casual turned into something very inappropriate,” Horvath told TechCrunch. “She began telling me about how she informs her husband’s decision-making at GitHub, how I better not leave GitHub and write something bad about them, and how she had been told by her husband that she should intervene with my relationship to be sure I was ‘made very happy’ so that I wouldn’t quit and say something nasty about her husband’s company because ‘he had worked so hard.’” Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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GitHub puts founder on leave, kicks wife out of office after harassment claim

Comcast and Time Warner Cable lost 1.1 million video customers in 2013

Mr.TinDC Comcast, Time Warner Cable (TWC), and all other top cable companies lost pay-TV subscribers in 2013, but the companies were able to boost their total broadband Internet subscribers, according to research by Leichtman Research Group. Comcast and TWC, the two biggest cable companies in the US, combined for 1.1 million lost video subscribers. Comcast finished 2013 with 21.7 million multi-channel video subscribers, down 305,000 according to  Leichtman’s research . TWC lost 825,000 video subscribers, dropping to 11.4 million.”The top nine cable companies lost about 1,735,000 video subscribers in 2013—compared to a loss of about 1,410,000 subscribers in 2012,” the research said. At the same time, Comcast added 1.3 million broadband Internet subscribers to hit a total of 20.7 million . TWC gained 211,000 broadband subscribers to bring its total to 11.6 million. Comcast’s 1.3 million broadband subscriber gain accounted for “49 percent of the total net additions for the top providers in the year,” the research said. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Comcast and Time Warner Cable lost 1.1 million video customers in 2013

In sudden announcement, US to give up control of DNS root zone

Photograph by David Davies In a historic decision on Friday, the United States has decided to give up control of the authoritative root zone file, which contains all names and addresses of all top-level domain names. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), under the United States Department of Commerce, has retained ultimate control of the domain name system (DNS) since transitioning it from a government project into private hands in 1997. With Commerce’s blessing, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) acts as the primary essential governing body for Internet policy. The new change is  in advance of the upcoming ICANN meeting to be held in Brazil in April 2014. Brazil has fumed at revelations of American spying on its political leaders and corporations, which were first revealed in September 2013 as the result of documents distributed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The South American country also threatened to build its “own cloud,” as a consequence of the NSA’s spying. Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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In sudden announcement, US to give up control of DNS root zone