In an age when Apple has become the top music retailer without selling a single physical disc, audio engineers are increasingly creating specially mastered versions of songs and albums designed to counteract the audio degradation caused by compression. Though audiophiles typically scoff at paying for compressed audio, p...
Superconductivity—the ability of certain materials to conduct electricity with no resistance—continues to be one of the most challenging fields in materials science. On the one hand, the effect appears reliably in a number of materials, although only at very low temperatures. Those temperatures went up with...
This morning, Google announced some added features to its Google Docs app for Android that will surely make frequent users of the online office suite happy: most notably, the updated version will now allow collaboration on documents from Android phones or tablets. Previously, Google Docs opened in the app were restricted to a...
Intel is opening up its manufacturing facilities to third parties, as it takes the further tentative steps toward building a chip-to-order foundry business. The microprocessor giant announced last year that it would build FPGAs for Achronix Semiconductor, and on Tuesday a second FPGA designer, Tabula, said that it would have ...
Over the past week, Google has been called out for bypassing default privacy settings in both Safari and Internet Explorer in order to serve up advertising cookies. The two cases were quite different. With Safari, Google acknowledged the problem and said it was an accident. With Internet Explorer, Google said it was usi...
A few days after I received my PlayStation Vita review unit in the mail, I got a set of six plastic cards with boxy black and white patterns on them. The free "augmented reality" games that rely on those cards were made available for download on the PlayStation Network today, and while the games definitely take place on...
The makers of the most widely used mobile app stores have agreed to comply with a California law requiring mobile apps that collect personal information to have a privacy policy. California Attorney General Kamala Harris announced the agreement today with Apple and Google, which run the two most popular mobile app stores, as ...
Apple has given developers yet another few months to implement application sandboxing for OS X apps, a security feature brought over from iOS: the deadline is now June 1, 2012. While the intent of sandboxing is to prevent hacked apps from taking over a user's system, however, the sandbox design inherently limits functionality...
The nation's fourth-largest cellular firm has asked the Federal Communications Commission to block a spectrum acquisition by its largest competitor. T-Mobile argues that allowing Verizon to purchase more spectrum would make it too difficult for smaller wireless firms to build next-generation networks of their own.
The ...
Since September, scientists have been scratching their head over results that appear to show neutrinos traveling between Switzerland and Italy faster than light would. As far as anyone could tell, the team behind the results had done everything they could to eliminate errors, and had even released some preliminary data that...
The prospects for quick European approval of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement dimmed Wednesday as the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, announced plans to seek an opinion from the European Court of Justice about ACTA's constitutionality.
In a statement, Viviane Reding, the EU Commissioner for Justi...
Nokia is gearing up for some big smartphone announcements at Mobile World Congress next week, and not all are related to Windows Phone. In addition to a few Windows Phone handsets, the company is also teasing a camera-centric Symbian phone with one of the largest camera sensors on a mobile phone yet.
First, the Symbia...
Trying to pass unconstitutional restrictions on a burgeoning artistic medium is not cheap. Just ask the state of California, which will end up paying $1.8 million in attorney's fees in its failed effort to restrict violent game sales to children with a law that was overturned by the Supreme Court last year.
It was widely rep...
Last week, several documents that purportedly came from the Heartland Institute appeared on the Web, laying out the organization's financial efforts to undercut the mainstream understanding of climate science. Although the Heartland admitted that most of the materials were genuine, it claims they had been obtained via ...
Apple's massive North Carolina data center is apparently only the beginning when it comes to handling the deluge of content traffic flowing through Apple's servers. The company has now confirmed that it has plans to build another large data center in Prineville, Oregon, continuing the green efforts that it initiated with its...
These days, it seems, it's not enough for a digital device to just play games. To keep up with the smartphones and tablet computers of the world, any game system needs to at least nod in the direction of cloud-based and social networking "apps" that are all the rage with the kiddies. Sony's PlayStation Vita has now done...
Microsoft today filed a competition law complaint against Motorola Mobility with the European Commission, claiming that the company—and, by extension, its soon-to-be-owner Google—is charging outrageously high licensing fees for patents essential to complying with industry standards.
In a blog post titled "G...
The Apache Software Foundation has announced the availability of Apache 2.4, a major update of the popular open source HTTP server. The arrival of the new version, which is the first major release of Apache in six years, coincides with the software's 17th anniversary.
The Apache project emerged in 1995 around a fork of a Web...
AUCKLAND, New Zealand—File-sharing magnate Kim Dotcom was granted bail Wednesday morning New Zealand time, after the judge hearing his application ruled that the Megaupload founder has no access to funds to help him flee the country.
As part of the bail conditions, Dotcom must reside at his leased Coatesvill...
President Obama last week signed the FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act of 2012. Tucked inside the legislation is a provision that could have far-reaching implications in the coming decade: widespread civilian use of unmanned aerial drones.
Until now, the use of unmanned drones has been tig...
Comcast is launching its own video streaming service this week, the company announced on Tuesday. Dubbed "Xfinity Streampix," the new service appears to address concerns that customers are increasingly attracted to online services such as Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand, and Hulu Plus.
Comcast already offers limited streamin...
There are hundreds of games that ask you to save the world/galaxy/universe, but precious few that put that epic mission in the context of the regular people that your efforts will effect. That's part of why the new, extended "Save the Earth" trailer for Mass Effect 3 has me so excited about the game's direction.
Sure, the tr...
As the game industry manages the awkward transition from a focus on retail distribution to a focus on purely downloadable titles, Sony seems to have come up with an interesting compromise position for its new handheld, Vita. The company has promised that any retail game for the system will also be available for download...
The system requirements for the OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) developer preview released last week indicated that quite a few "modern," 64-bit capable Macs would not be able to upgrade to the new OS. How Apple determined the cutoff still remains fuzzy, but according to our research, we believe the issue is related to the gr...
Microsoft declined to comment on rumors that it's about to release an iPad version of its Office productivity suite. "We have nothing to share at this time," a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars via e-mail—a statement that will do nothing to curb the apparent enthusiasm for the as-yet-unannounced iOS app.
On Tuesday...