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Hearthstone bot maker closes shop after Blizzard crackdown

A status screen from the now defunct Hearthcrawler software. Blizzard seems to have scored a decisive win in the never-ending battle against automated “bot” programs that play games like Hearthstone without human intervention. Crawlerbots, maker of the popular Hearthcrawler bot,  announced this morning that it is closing up shop in the wake of a recent crackdown on users of the automated play tools. In what’s dubbed as its “last official announcement,” Crawlerbots writes that “the recent ban wave in Hearthstone hit a lot of users. After discussing this with Blizzard, it’s clear we have to take off our services/products now. Please note that we’re not going to be commenting further on this.” “Thank you all for being part of our community,” the message continues. “We are very sad about this but you also know botting is against the rules and we all knew that the day when our products doesn’t [sic] work anymore would come. With tears in our eyes we have to say bye.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Hearthstone bot maker closes shop after Blizzard crackdown

NTSB: SpaceShipTwo broke apart when “feathering” activated early

Ground imagery showing the destruction of SpaceShipTwo. Kenneth Brown/Reuters The Guardian has a good summary of how things are proceeding with the two-day-old National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation into the destruction of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo , which occurred at approximately 10:12am PDT on October 31. Some eyewitnesses reported seeing an explosion when the craft broke up, prompting speculation that the accident had something to do with SpaceShipTwo’s hybrid rocket engine—an engine that was making its first flight with its new fuel. However, at a press conference Sunday afternoon, acting NTSB chairman Christopher Hart said that crash investigators had already located the cause of the accident that injured 43-year old pilot Peter Siebold and took the life of 39-year old co-pilot Michael Alsbury: the spacecraft’s “feathering” mode had been engaged early. This put SpaceShipTwo in a high-drag configuration unsuitable for powered flight, and the craft then broke apart. The feathering functionality is designed to be used in the later stage of SpaceShipTwo’s flight. It changes the shape of the craft, swinging its wings upward and allowing them to move to the optimum angle to slow the craft down on descent, like a shuttlecock falling to the ground in a game of badminton. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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NTSB: SpaceShipTwo broke apart when “feathering” activated early

“The Devil had possessed his netbook”—and other tales of IT terror

Few things are scarier than 4Chan. But our readers told a few stories that spooked us. Paul van der Werf Earlier this week, we asked readers to share their most frightening tales of technology terror and support horror. And via both comments and Twitter (using the hashtag #ITTalesofTerror), in poured stories that raised goosebumps from those of us who have worked in IT at one point or another. After reading through them, we’ve picked out some reader favorites and a few of our own. Some of us at Ars were inspired to recount further tales of horror from our own IT careers—including one of mine that I’ve saved for last; it should cause a shudder of recognition from our more veteran readers and a bit of schadenfreude from those too young to remember five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks. The chamber of horrors Many readers had short tales of terror about mishaps in the closed spaces where we hide our network infrastructure. Eli Jacobowitz (@creepdr on Twitter) shared a short, shocking scenario by tweet : “Raccoons in the network closet (not kidding).” David Mohundro shared another story of a somewhat more smelly infrastructure invasion that brings new meaning to “data scrubbing”: “I saw our IT guys lugging shop vacs through the lower parking deck one day. There was a sewage backup into the server room.” Read 24 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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“The Devil had possessed his netbook”—and other tales of IT terror

FTC fines online dating service $616,000 for using “virtual cupids”

More and more people are becoming familiar with the joys—and frustrations—of online dating. A recent Pew study found that 10 percent of the US public is using online dating services, and a full 38 percent of those people say they are “single and looking.” There’s enough money to be made as an Internet matchmaker that it’s apparently sparking some companies to push the boundaries of what’s legal. Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission disclosed that  it reached a settlement with JDI Dating Ltd. , a UK company that runs 18 dating sites that it claims have over 12 million members. The sites include CupidsWand.com, FlirtCrowd.com, and FindMeLove.com. JDI will have to pay $616,165 in redress, and it must stop business practices that were said to violate both the FTC Act and a newer law that regulates recurring billing online. JDI’s dating sites would make fake profiles, which the company called “virtual cupids,” and have them send computer-generated messages to new users who had created profiles but hadn’t yet paid. On JDI’s websites, users received an e-mail notifying them that another user sent them a “wink” within minutes of joining. Then they got additional winks, messages, and photo requests, supposedly from other members in their geographic area. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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FTC fines online dating service $616,000 for using “virtual cupids”

MPAA, movie theaters announce “zero tolerance” policy against wearables

Biblioteca de Art A movie theater industry group and the Motion Picture Association of America updated their anti-piracy policies and said that “wearable devices” must be powered off at show time. “Individuals who fail or refuse to put the recording devices away may be asked to leave. If theater managers have indications that illegal recording activity is taking place, they will alert law enforcement authorities when appropriate, who will determine what further action should be taken,” said a joint statement  from the MPAA and the National Association of Theatre Owners, which maintains 32,000 screens across the United States. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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MPAA, movie theaters announce “zero tolerance” policy against wearables

One week later, Google algorithm change hits streaming, torrent sites hard

One of Project Free TV’s domains has dropped in traffic since Google’s algorithm change. se Video streaming and torrent sites have dropped precipitously in Google rankings after the company altered its algorithm last Monday, according to reports from Searchmetrics. One of Project Free TV’s main operating domains, free-tv-video-online.me, fell 96 percent in Searchmetric’s rankings, one of the biggest drops alongside torrentz.eu and thepiratebay.se. Google committed to fighting piracy by decrementing search results that allow users to access illegal streams or torrents back in 2012. The first round of changes didn’t help much, according to interested parties like the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America. Google complies with takedown requests, of which it received 224 million in the last year, according to its own report.  The company responded to these within six hours on average, but industry parties pushed for Google to make content sites less visible overall. Even with its new solution, Google notes that this won’t be the same as removing domains from search entirely: “the number of noticed pages is typically only a tiny fraction of the total number of pages on the site,” the company said. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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One week later, Google algorithm change hits streaming, torrent sites hard

Comcast lost 81,000 video customers in Q3, “the best result in 7 years”

Comcast reported its third quarter earnings today with positive results—and even the bad news was good. “Video customer net losses declined to 81,000, the best third quarter result in seven years,” the company’s announcement said . “I am pleased to report strong revenue, operating cash flow, and free cash flow growth for the third quarter of 2014,” CEO Brian Roberts said. In addition to slowing video losses over the past three months, “cable results highlight the consistent strength of high-speed Internet and business services,” he said. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Comcast lost 81,000 video customers in Q3, “the best result in 7 years”

Bluetooth-tracking beacon programs uncovered in LA, Chicago

The Logan Square stop on the Chicago Transit Authority blue line. Kumar McMillan A report from BuzzFeed News Wednesday suggests that the tracking beacons that cropped up in New York phone booths last year have spread to new cities, including Los Angeles and Chicago. The beacons have been sprinkled around transit centers, including Chicago Transit Authority rail stops and LA bus stops. The beacons, created by Gimbal, connect with devices like smartphones via Bluetooth and can harvest information like the device’s Bluetooth address, as well as the date, time, and location of connection. The beacons in New York were installed as a “test” by advertising company Titan 360. Though officials called for their removal over a year ago, they were not taken out of phone booths until earlier this month, after they were used in promotions for the Tribeca Film Festival and shopping app ShopAdvisor. Marketing company Martin Outdoor Media confirmed the beacons’ existence in LA to BuzzFeed News, as did the CTA in Chicago. Martin called the beacons part of a “pilot program” in a press release last week, while the CTA stated its beacons were part of a “two-week test,” to be followed up by a bigger test for a longer period with beacons placed and tracked by Titan. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Bluetooth-tracking beacon programs uncovered in LA, Chicago

A huge Halo: Master Chief Collection clocks in at 65GB

Microsoft reportedly scrapped its original plans to ship Master Chief Collection in a “car full of 5.25″ disks” format. Lenore Edman About a year ago, we had to quickly get used to 50 GB download sizes for console games like PS4 launch title Killzone: Shadow Fall . Game size inflation hasn’t exactly stopped since then, as evidenced by word that the upcoming Halo: Master Chief Collection will take up a whopping 65 GB on Xbox One hard drives next month. Buried in Friday’s official “gone gold” announcement was word that the Xbox One’s remastered edition of the first four Halo games, which is currently available for pre-loading, would actually be bigger than a standard 50GB Blu-ray disc. Rather than splitting the 65GB across two discs for the retail edition, Microsoft has decided to include 45GB of data in the box and require players to download a 20GB day one “content update” to access “some features and multiplayer content.” Players will be able to play the bulk of the single-player content while the 20GB content pack is downloading and installing, Microsoft says. Why make even retail buyers download so much data? “The game is designed to run as a single, unified product,” 343 Industries Franchise Development Director Frank O’Connor explained on gaming forum NeoGAF over the weekend . “Digital is seamless obviously, but we also wanted disc users to have the same experience, without swapping discs. Since the bulk of [the download] is [multiplayer] or MP related, the logic is sound.” While it may have been feasible to simply install a single, unified game to the Xbox One hard drive from two discs, O’Connor elaborated that such a solution “simply wasn’t practical for this product, this year in this timeline.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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A huge Halo: Master Chief Collection clocks in at 65GB

First major update to Windows 10 Preview, delivered through Windows Update

We’ve written before about Windows 10’s new updating policy, and today we’re seeing the real-world result for the first time. The Windows 10 Technical Preview, build 9849, is being updated to build 9860. That update will roll out automatically to members of the Windows Insider program, and it will be delivered through Windows Update. The operating system upgrade is a little more heavyweight than a regular hotfix; systems will need to reboot to finish installation, and Microsoft says that the reboot will take longer than normal. The major feature of the new build is that it contains the first iteration of Windows 10’s notification center. At the moment, it’s a simple collection of historic notifications. Microsoft says that future builds will add more capabilities to the notification center, such as the ability to take actions in response to notifications. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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First major update to Windows 10 Preview, delivered through Windows Update