Greetings, Arsians! Our partners at LogicBuy are back with a ton of deals this week, and the top item is a Dell XPS 12 convertible touchscreen ultrabook.

For $749.99, you get a 1080p touchscreen, Core i5-3437U processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. We actually did a full review of this bad boy earlier, so if you're on the fence, check it out. (Spoiler: it's nice.) That and a ton more deals are below.

Featured deal

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Meier holds forth with fans at last weekend's Firaxicon fan gathering.

BALTIMORE—Ask most game designers what in their childhood inspired them to get into the business, and they'll give you a list of their favorite early video game experiences. For Firaxis co-founder and Civilization creator Sid Meier, those youthful inspirations don't include any video games, because video games didn't actually exist when he was a child.

"I remember covering the living room floor with toy soldiers and bricks and whatever it was," Meier told a crowd of nearly 200 at last weekend's first ever Firaxicon fan gathering outside Baltimore, which Ars attended. "As I got a little older, [I was] getting into Avalon Hill, strategy games... [Designing games] is really reliving my youth in a lot of ways, the fantasy of pirates or trains or airplanes, things like that... the fun of the way a kid approaches a topic, exploring it. I think there's a sense of uncovering and exploration in a game, the same thing I'd experience as a kid..."

Meier wasn't fated to continue that childlike fun into his adult career, though. He started out studying physics and math in college, installing cash registers as his first job. "But computers were so empowering," he recalled. "The idea that you could write a program that would calculate pi to 10,000 digits, or just do cool things with just a few instructions was very exciting to me... I think game designers like to do new things, explore new frontiers, and it was really a new frontier at that time."

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British scientists are hoping robots will be able to give the most detailed picture yet of life deep below the waterline. The BBC's Science Editor David Shukman reports

A new Nexus phone is coming out soon. We've seen rumors, reports, mockups, and everything else flying around about the upcoming 5.9-inch device from Motorola. We've mostly spared you the excruciating play-by-play (someone made one out of wood!), but for the first time in a long time, there's a real news tidbit to report—there are pictures.

Android Police

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Android Police scored the above two pictures of someone using the upcoming Nexus device during their commute. The Motorola Nexus—codenamed "Shamu"—was expected to look a lot like the 2014 Moto X, just bigger. That appears to be the case based on the pictures above. And we know it's not just a Moto X, because the power and volume buttons are in a different spot. The 2014 Moto X has them toward the top of the device, and these are more toward the center.

For more evidence, the device is running a version of Android L that we haven't seen before. The navigation buttons are similar to the buttons on the preview build, but they're smaller. The status bar icons are also no longer segmented. For instance, the cell signal is normally a series of bars, but here it's just a triangle. Additionally, there's a heart icon on the left of the status bar, but the jury is still out on whether that's Google Fit in action or just some third-party app.

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Sen. John McCain threatened to take away the NFL's antitrust exemption if it doesn't stop blacking out TV broadcasts. Jim Greenhill

The National Football League must "end blackouts once and for all [or] Congress will be forced to act," two senators told the league yesterday.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) wrote a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell after the Federal Communications Commission eliminated rules that helped support the NFL's blackout policies. Commission members urged the NFL to stop blacking out games but acknowledged that the league still has the power to enforce blackouts through private contracts."[W]e write to urge the NFL to view this as an opportunity to recognize that unpopular blackouts are no longer justified in today’s environment," McCain and Blumenthal wrote to Goodell. "We ask that you capitalize on the FCC’s vote this week and voluntarily rescind your requirement that local television stations black out games that fail to sell out. The NFL has received substantial benefits from the public in the form of antitrust exemptions, a specialized tax status, and direct taxpayer dollars that subsidize football arenas and stadiums. These generous benefits were extended to leagues like the NFL in part based on recognition that sports leagues play a central role in our national culture, promote teamwork, and generate jobs and economic activity across the country. But, the provision of these substantial public benefits requires that the NFL meet basic obligations to the American public and loyal fans, and this includes abandoning rules that punish those same fans."

The NFL issued a statement after the FCC's vote on Tuesday, saying it would make no change to its policies. The NFL praised itself for being "the only sports league that televises every one of its games on free, over-the-air television." However, the NFL prevents games from being shown on local TV when tickets don't sell out. Teams are allowed to reduce the likelihood of a blackout by only requiring that 85 percent of tickets be sold, but the NFL has refused to end the blackouts entirely.

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Waleed Alzuhair

After announcing disappointing earnings earlier this year, Angry Birds maker Rovio has decided to cut 130 jobs, or approximately 16 percent of its workforce, according to a Thursday blog post by the company’s CEO.

"... We announced today that we plan to simplify our organization around our three key businesses with the highest growth potential: games, media, and consumer products," Mikael Hed wrote. "Unfortunately, we also need to consider possible employee reductions of a maximum of 130 people in Finland (approximately 16 percent of workforce). It is never easy to consider changes like this, but it is better to do them sooner rather than later, when we are in a good place to reignite growth."

In April 2014, Rovio announced 2013 annual profits of €26.9 million ($34 million), a notable drop from €55.5 million ($70.2 million) from the year before and €35.4 million ($44.7 million) in 2011.

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Steven Kreuzer

This summer, the Supreme Court made it easier for defendants to collect fees when they win patent cases. The decision is starting to have an effect—the nation's largest patent troll just got slapped with an order to pay $1.4 million in attorneys' fees to NetApp, which it sued in 2010.

The case brought by Summit Data Systems, a branch of Acacia Research Corp., hinged on an accusation that NetApp infringed when its server-based software interacted with an end user on a Microsoft operating system. The two patents-in-suit, 7,392,291 and 7,428,581, relate to "block-level storage access over a computer network."

But just two months before Summit filed its lawsuit, it sold licenses for those patents to 43 companies that were member companies of defensive patent aggregator RPX—including Microsoft.

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The new status page will let you use your device's serial number or IMEI to see its activation lock status. Andrew Cunningham

Apple introduced the Activation Lock feature in iOS 7 to help deter phone theft—if you've signed into iCloud and enabled Find My iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, you can't erase your phone without entering your account password first. Even if a thief put your phone into Recovery Mode and wiped its data manually, you need to enter the previous owner's Apple ID password as part of the first-time setup process before you can actually use it. Activation Lock renders a stolen iPhone much less useful to someone who intends to use it themselves or resell it.

The feature can be misused, though. If you sell your iPhone to a legitimate reseller and forget to wipe it first, you might leave that seller with an unsellable brick that's useful for parts but not much else. For buyers and sellers who want to check a device's Activation Lock status without having it in-hand, Apple has just introduced a new Activation Lock status page that will tell you whether any device is locked if you punch in its serial number or IMEI.

The page will tell you whether Activation Lock is enabled and what kind of device you're looking at. Andrew Cunningham

This page is strictly used to check the status of Activation Lock, and it has no other features aside from some links to Apple help pages. It can't be used to override Activation Lock, nor can it give you any information about the Apple ID that's been used to lock the device. If you're buying (or selling) a secondhand iPhone and want to check its lock status before you do, this is the way to do it, and that's all it does.

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Matt Wade

After a distinguished career in the Secret Service, Joseph Clancy left for a new job at Comcast in 2011 and has since overseen protection of the cable company's employees and property. But with Secret Service Director Julia Pierson having resigned after security failures, Clancy is going back to the Secret Service as acting director of the law enforcement agency.

“Joe Clancy is an exceptional security professional who served our country as a member of the US Secret Service and in the US Department of Homeland Security and who has distinguished himself throughout his career for his integrity and strong management skills," a Comcast spokesperson said in a statement sent to Ars yesterday. "During more than three years at Comcast, he was an integral part of our security team and we are sad to see him leave. We are highly confident he will be an outstanding interim leader for the Secret Service and we wish him the very best.”

Clancy personally led Obama's security before "he retired from the agency in July 2011 as special agent in charge of the Presidential Protective Division," NBC News wrote.

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Tesla founder Elon Musk made an ambiguous post on Twitter yesterday evening, announcing that the company will unveil something on October 9:

"About time to unveil the D and something else," the tweet stated. It was accompanied by a shadowy picture of what appears to be the nose of a Tesla Model S peeking out from a half-open garage. The garage has the letter "D" emblazoned on it. Beneath the car, the date "October 9, 2014" is written.

We know that the next vehicle due out from Tesla is an SUV known as the Model X; after that, the company has previously said that it will turn its focus to releasing a lower priced entry-level vehicle it’s calling the Model 3 (speculation prior to the Model 3’s announcement was that the entry-level car would be called the "Model E," but this was changed to avoid a trademark dispute—and possibly also to avoid Tesla’s line-up spelling out S-E-X). The headlights, fog lights, and nose cone in the poster do indeed look like those on the Model S. Compare them to this still from our Model S video review:

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ASRock is quietly confident of its OC Formula range. We awarded the Z77 version because of its aggressive tactics at the $240 price point and while the Z87 model offered even more but at $330 it missed that sub-$250 market which cheaper overclocking builds are built on. The Z97 OC Formula ditches the Lamborghini on the box and comes back down to earth at $210, although the feature set becomes lighter as a result. The mainstream overclocking motherboard market is always hot at $200, so today we are putting the Z97 OC Formula through its paces.

Not pictured: a wealth of pizza, beer, and cupcakes. We were trying to be sly about our photo-snapping! Sam Machkovech

SEATTLE—On Friday night, I showed up at the predetermined location just a few blocks from a Seattle pier. I hopped some shrubs, showed up at the keypad-locked door, and waited for my insider, Dave, to grant me access, all the while remembering our agreed-upon story: I was a paralegal, and we had recently met playing pick-up basketball. "Let's keep it simple," he'd told me over the phone earlier that day.

This all seemed like overkill, just to sneak me into an apartment pizza party, but my anonymous source was a little nervous. The party was being hosted by Comcast. Was he overdue on his bill or something?

"My building is a little weird about these residents-only events," Dave explained as he let me in. Then he added, "I don't use Comcast, anyway."

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Last month 4A Games released updated versions of the two earlier games in the Metro series, Metro 2033 Redux and Metro: Last Light Redux. The games have both been remastered using the latest version of 4A Engine, with updates for the latest generation of console hardware among other things. Fundamentally, that means less for Metro: Last Light than it does for Metro 2033, but there are still some visual changes, and that potentially means performance changes as well. We've been using Metro: Last Light as one of our gaming performance benchmarks almost since it first came out in May, 2013, and it's still one of the most demanding games around. Of course part of that stems from the use of super-sampling anti-aliasing at the highest quality settings, but even without SSAA Metro: Last Light can be a beast.

Something we've wanted to do more in the past is to provide smaller updates looking at the performance of recent game releases. Our GPU reviews do a good job of giving a broad overview of the performance from the latest graphics cards on a smaller subset of games, and it's basically impossible to test every new GPU on every game at the time of launch. But if you're in the market for a new GPU, you probably want to use if for playing games, which means seeing how new games perform on a selection of hardware is useful. To be clear, we're not replacing our GPU reviews, but we hope to augment our other coverage with increased coverage of the recent gaming releases.

It's worth noting that testing gaming performance at the time of launch may also tell an interesting story about the state of drivers from the various GPU companies. AMD and NVIDIA are the two obvious participants, but with Intel continuing to increase the performance of their Processor Graphics solutions it's also important to see how they fare with new releases. In some cases we may see serious performance issues or rendering errors early on, and if/when that happens we may elect to revisit the performance of certain games a month or two after launch to see what has changed. We've encountered instances in the past where drivers tended to target and fix issues with the most commonly benchmarked games, and while things are certainly better these days it's always good to look at empirical data showing how the various companies stack up.

With that out of the way, let's see what has changed with Metro: Last Light Redux, both in terms of graphics as well as performance. Starting with the former, in most areas you'll be hard pressed to see substantial differences. The most noteworthy exception is the use of red lights and smoke in place of white lights/smoke in some areas; this is particularly apparent in the built-in benchmark. There also appears to be more tessellation in some areas, and at the end (when the "train" gets blown up), you can see in Redux that there's more deformation/destruction of the concrete barrier. I've created a split-screen video showing the original Metro: Last Light on the left and Metro: Last Light Redux on the right. The games were both run at 1080p maximum quality settings, with Advanced PhysX disabled. (Note that with video recording I limited the frame rate to 30 FPS, so disregard the performance shown in that clip.)

Other than the aforementioned changes in lighting color for the smoke, it's difficult to say how much the graphics have improved versus simply being different from the initial release. I've benchmarked Metro: Last Light hundreds of times over the past year (perhaps even thousands), but I have to admit that I haven't actually taken the time to play the game that much, so many of the more subtle changes might go unnoticed.

The list of updates notes that there are graphical upgrades, lighting enhancements, improvements to the gameplay and gunplay, and Redux also includes all of the DLC released for the original game. There have been some updates to certain maps/areas as well, all the weapons that were added via DLC are integrated into the game, and there are some minor UI tweaks (e.g. you can check your watch and inventory as in the original Metro 2033). Finally, there are new achievements/trophies along with two new modes – Spartan and Survival – in Redux. Spartan is basically the way the original Last Light worked (more run-and-gun gameplay, more ammo, not as "hard") while Survival mode is more like the original Metro 2033 (less ammo and health, more difficult enemies). From what I can tell, though, having more (or less) ammo in either game doesn't really change things too much.

But what about performance – is Metro: Last Light Redux any faster (or slower) at rendering its updated graphics compared to the original? To answer that, I've got a rather different set of hardware than what Ryan uses for our GPU reviews, as all of the hardware has been purchased at retail over the past year or so. For now I'm going to focus on single GPU performance, and while I do have a moderate collection of both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, for the time being my hardware is slanted towards the high-end offerings than lower tier parts. On the laptop side, we'd also like to thank MSI for letting us use three of their latest notebooks, the GT70 Dominator Pro with GTX 880M, the GS60 Ghost Pro 3K with GTX 870M, and the GE60 Apache Pro with GTX 860M. Here's the short list of hardware that I've used for testing:

Gaming Benchmarks Test Systems CPU Intel Core i7-4770K (4x 3.5-3.9GHz, 8MB L3)
Overclocked to 4.1GHz Motherboard Gigabyte G1.Sniper M5 Z87 Memory 2x8GB Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR3-1866 CL9 GPUs Gigabyte Radeon HD 6970
Sapphire Radeon R9 280
Sapphire Radeon R9 280X
Gigabyte Radeon R9 290X
EVGA GeForce GTX 770
EVGA GeForce GTX 780
Zotac GeForce GTX 970

Laptops:
GeForce GTX 880M (MSI GT70 Dominator Pro)
GeForce GTX 870M (MSI GS60 Ghost 3K Pro)
GeForce GTX 860M (MSI GE60 Apache Pro) Storage Corsair Neutron GTX 480GB Power Supply Rosewill Capstone 1000M Case Corsair Obsidian 350D Operating System Windows 7 64-bit

The obvious omission here is the new GeForce GTX 980, though we're also missing GTX 780 Ti, R9 290, not to mention all of the mainstream GPUs like the GTX 750/750 Ti, the whole AMD R7 series, etc. The good news is that the laptops at least give us some idea of what to expect from such cards – the GTX 860M for instance is clocked very similarly to the GTX 750 Ti, and GTX 870M is similar to the OEM GTX 760 192-bit. Again, we'll work on improving the selection of cards tested and try to cover a broader range in the future, but for now let's see how performance differs between the two releases of Metro: Last Light.

We've tested at 1080p with maximum quality (Very High Quality) and we also ran a second test at 1080p with High Quality and without SSAA. In both cases we're testing without enabling Advanced PhysX. While PhysX can make a noticeable difference at times (the Batman games being a prime example), I can't say I've noticed anything but lower frame rates from the feature in the Last Light benchmark – it basically drops performance about 10-15% on NVIDIA cards, and minimum frame rates in particular can be very poor. Advanced PhysX also seems to cause issues with some NVIDIA cards (see below). Our settings then are essentially "Ultra" quality and "High" quality; here's what performance looks like for the two releases on our selected hardware:

So this is where things get interesting. At our maximum quality settings, performance is lower almost across the gamut of hardware with Metro: Last Light Redux. The R9 280 and MSI GE60 are the two exceptions, where performance basically stays the same; everywhere else we see anywhere from a 2% to an 11% drop. When we drop the quality settings a notch and disable SSAA on the other hand, Redux performance is only slightly lower (essentially the same) in one instance, and that's the HD 6970; all of the newer GPUs are anywhere from 10% to 19% faster. That could mean that optimizations have been made for all the modern GPUs but they just don't translate as well to SSAA performance.

As far as AMD vs. NVIDIA, similar to what we saw in our recent GTX 970 review NVIDIA's new "budget friendly high-end GPU" basically offers performance on par with AMD's top of the line R9 290X at a much lower price. GTX 970 also tends to be roughly the same level of performance as GTX 780, with the 780 now being cleared out at lower prices. The GTX 770 meanwhile offers roughly the same performance as the R9 280X, though in this case the AMD GPU has the lower price, but of course GTX 770 is being phased out in favor of GTX 970 as well.

One other item worth mentioning is that I noticed my Zotac GTX 970 GPU was a bit flaky with Redux, particularly at even higher settings (e.g. 2560x1440 maximum or 1080p high quality, with Advanced PhysX). I was running at the card's stock settings initially (which have a mild 26MHz bump on the base GPU clock), and I thought perhaps temperatures were getting too hot on some components. It turns out the real culprit is Advanced PhysX, which tends to crash Redux every few minutes on the GTX 970.

I haven't tested with PhysX extensively, but some additional testing of the GTX 780 also showed crashes with PhysX enabled (but it takes about twice as long as the GTX 970 to crash to the desktop, so 10 minutes instead of five minutes). Either Metro: Last Light Redux has some poorly implemented PhysX code, and/or NVIDIA may need to tweak their drivers for Redux to achieve stability at certain settings with Advanced PhysX enabled. This is definitely a fringe case, however, so it's not likely to affect a lot of users either way.

Overall, the Redux release of Metro: Last Light won't be any more – or less – playable on most systems than the original game. Of course, Metro 2033 Redux saw a much greater overhaul in terms of graphics and gameplay, but in that case it means the system requirements are higher than the original game, likely at the same level as Last Light Redux. In other words, if you're looking for the poster child of why gamers might want SLI or CrossFire builds, the Metro Redux games are right up there with other punishing titles like the Crysis series, at least if you want to crank up every quality settings. SSAA is as usual a major hit to performance, so turning that off can boost performance by almost 100% at the cost of having jaggies.

And on a final note, there's a huge onslaught of games coming, and we're hoping to test many of them in a format similar to this. Your feedback is welcome as always, and if you have any requests for games that are already available or coming soon that you'd like to see benchmarked, let us know. Also let us know if you'd like to see additional settings tested; I confined the results reported to 1080p at High and Ultra quality, but we could certainly run other settings. Since these are all single GPU configurations, 2560x1440 with Redux proves to be too much in most cases, unless we drop SSAA; the laptops meanwhile might benefit from 1920x1080 and medium quality settings, though that's a bit too light on the faster desktop GPUs. Anyway, let us know what you'd like to see.

October is now here, and so is the news from Sony about which games will be available this month for subscribers to PlayStation Plus. For the last couple of months, PlayStation Plus members have been fortunate enough to get access to a brand new game, and this month Sony has pulled out all of the stops and have three brand new games to the respective platforms in the PlayStation Plus lineup. Two of those new games are on the PS4, with the final on the PS Vita. Also there is a bonus game for October. The free games will be available starting on the 7th of October.

PS4 Dust: An Elysian Tail

PS4 owners get access to two brand new games to the store. The first game is Dust: An Elysian Tail from independent developer Dean Dodrill. This action role playing game was first released on Xbox Live Arcade in August 2012, and has now made the jump to the PlayStation store. Dust presents itself as a 2D side scrolling game centered on the main character, Dust, who is united with a sentient sword and its guardian at the beginning of the game. Dust was well received by critics and users alike, with a Metascore of 83 and a User Score of 7.9 for the Xbox 360 version on metracritc.

“Immerse yourself in a gorgeous hand-painted world on a search for your true identity. As the mysterious warrior, Dust, your action-packed journey will take you from peaceful glades to snowy mountaintops and beyond. At your disposal is the mythical Blade of Ahrah, capable of turning its wielder it into an unstoppable force of nature, and the blade’s diminutive guardian, Fidget.”

Spelunky 

The second new game to the store available for the PS4 is Spelunky from independent developer Derek Yu. While new to the PS4 store, the game itself was first released on the PC in 2009, and then came to Xbox Live Arcade, the PS3, and the Vita. Players control an adventurer who is known as the spelunker. This platformer is set in underground tunnels and players gather treasure and avoid enemies and traps. The PS3 version scored an 83 Metascore and 7.7 User Score on metacritic. Spelunky will be cross-buy with the PS3 and Vita.

“Spelunky is a unique platformer with randomized levels that offer a challenging new experience each time you play. Journey deep underground and explore fantastic places filled with all manner of monsters, traps, and treasure. Go solo or bring up to three friends to join you in cooperative play or frantic deathmatch!”

DriveClub PlayStation Plus Edition

The bonus game is DriveClub PlayStation Plus Edition. This is also a new game to the store, and was developed by Evolution Studios. DriveClub, as you can surmise from the name, is a racing game but not a simulator type like Gran Turisomo. Instead, players make clubs of up to six players and complete challenges on road courses. The PlayStation Plus edition available for free has access to eleven tracks, and ten cars. Players who want to upgrade to the full game version can do that for $49.99.

“DRIVE TOGETHER, WIN TOGETHER. Fuel the thrill of high-octane racing by downloading DRIVECLUB PlayStation Plus Edition. Take a test drive of the world’s most social racer: Features unrestricted access both offline and online to the 11 tracks of India & 10 cars for your garage.”

PS3 Batman: Arkham Asylum

Much like the Xbox 360, the PS3’s vastly larger game catalog opens up a lot more content than new release indie games. The first free game for the PS3 is Batman: Arkham Asylum. This is the first of the Batman Arkham games, and was released in 2009 by Rocksteady Studios. This action-adventure game has a great story told through the third-person perspective. Arkham Asylum holds the Guinness World Record for “Most Critically Acclaimed Superhero Game Ever” and of course who doesn’t want to play as Batman? Arkham Asylum has an amazing 91 Metascore and 8.9 User score on metacritic. It normally sells for $19.99.

“Batman: Arkham Asylum exposes players to a unique, dark and atmospheric adventure that takes them to the depths of Arkham Asylum –Gotham’s psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. Gamers will move in the shadows, instigate fear amongst their enemies and confront The Joker and Gotham City’s most notorious villains who have taken over the asylum. Using a wide range of Batman’s gadgets and abilities, players will become the invisible predator and attempt to foil The Joker’s demented scheme.”

Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara

The second PS3 game is Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara. This action role playing game was released August 22, 2013, and is from developer Iron Galaxy Studios. It is a compliation of D&D Tower of Doom and D&D Shadow of Mystara, both of which are classic D&D games from the 1990s. Chronicles of Mystrara got an 83 Metascore and 6.9 User Score on metacritic, and normally sells for $14.99.

“Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara combines two timeless D&D arcade classics -Tower of Doom and Shadow over Mystara- into one definitive package. Battle through a rich fantasy universe with a host of new features, including HD visuals, drop-in/drop-out 4 player online co-op, customizable House Rules, leaderboards, and a trove of extras.”

PS Vita Pix the Cat 

The first PS Vita game is also new to the store, and that is Pix the Cat. Pix the Cat is an arcade game which is a follow up to Pix’n Love – Rush from Pastagames. Save the ducklings in this 2D level based scoring game which will also be available on the PS4.

“PIX the CAT is an intense arcade game designed to boost your heart-rate! Rescue forsaken ducklings from the nested levels of the infamous GRID of INFINITY. Perfect your skills to SPEED and COMBO UP until you reach the explosive FEVER TIME!”

Rainbow Moon

The final game for October is Rainbow Moon, developed by SideQuest Studios and originally released in July 2012 on the PS3, and then was made available on the Vita in December 2013. This tactical role-playing game features turn based combat and allows the player to explore the created world. Rainbow Moon scored a 70 Metascore and 7.8 User score on metacritic. Rainbow Moon normally sells for $14.99, and is also available on the PS3.

“Rainbow Moon is a beautiful role-playing game filled with exploration, turn-based battles, and character development. Six playable main characters with upgradeable weapons and armor, and more than 20 challenging dungeons await you in a fascinating story that lasts over 40 hours.”

Another month, more games. PlayStation Plus members get a good assortment this month from indie arcade games right up to AAA titles like Batman: Arkham Asylum. All of the games will be available as of October 7th.

Intel Free Press

In the early 2000s, William "Trip" Hawkins—founder of video game publisher Electronic Arts—was living the good life. He owned a private jet, two multi-million-dollar homes, sent his kids to private school, had four vehicles between himself and his wife, held San Francisco Giants season tickets, and employed a private staff.

Hawkins appeared to be flush with cash. He once had an estimated worth of $100 million while manning the video game company that has long produced best-sellers like the Madden NFL franchise, and he cashed out company stock repeatedly. He sold $24.4 million of EA stock in 1996. The following year, he sold $3.7 million more. In 1998, he sold $38.76 million.

But Hawkins had a peculiar way of keeping his cash flow up; he wasn't paying all the taxes connected to the proceeds of some of his stock sales. Instead, he participated in a tax sheltering setup designed to produce on-paper "monetary losses" to offset the gains. The scheme was all done through accounting firm KPMG, which used convoluted Swiss and Cayman Islands deals that eventually raised the eyebrows of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax auditors. The IRS and the California Franchise Tax Board eventually cried foul.

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Back in June, the United Kingdom outlined new copyright rules that would allow citizens to make backups of their music, movies, and e-books. Previously, making copies of media was illegal.

Today, those laws officially go into effect.

It is, however, still illegal to share those backups with friends or family, and making copies of rented media, or media that a person pays a subscription for (like Rdio or Netflix), likewise remains illegal. Media consumers are allowed to change formats—burning MP3s on a CD, for instance—but media vendors are allowed to use all kinds of DRM to keep users from doing just that (like Amazon does with its e-books, for example). Also, consumers are not allowed to resell an original copy if they keep the duplicates of it.

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We're starting fresh with a clean install of Windows 10.

13 more images in gallery

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The redesigned Start menu is one of the biggest changes in Windows 10 and probably the first most people will notice. While it looks similar to the Windows 7 Start menu, it acts a lot like the full-screen Start experience from Windows 8. You can make the menu about as big or as small as you want by adding and subtracting live tiles, or ditch it altogether and use the full-screen version introduced in Windows 8. Here's a quick look at the new, customizable, Metro-ish, desktop Start menu. If you want to use it yourself, download the Windows 10 Technical Preview that came out today.

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Defense Distributed

Eighteen months after demonstrating that he could make a 3D-printed gun, Cody Wilson announced Wednesday that his nonprofit group, Defense Distributed, has now moved on to simplifying the process of manufacturing traditional metal guns.

Defense Distributed is now selling a $1,200 computer-numerically-controlled (CNC) mill—dubbed the "Ghost Gunner"—that can complete an unfinished lower receiver for an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle as part of a limited pre-order. While designed to mill an AR-15 lower, the CNC could theoretically mill anything of a similar size.

Wilson’s new Ghost Gunner makes home gunsmithing faster, cheaper, and more portable than ever before.

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Verizon Wireless was scheduled to begin throttling certain LTE users today as part of an expanded "network optimization" program, but it has decided not to follow through with the controversial plan after criticism from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler.

Since 2011, Verizon has throttled 3G users who have unlimited data plans when they connect to congested cell sites if they fall within the top five percent of data users. That's 4.7GB or more per month. In July, Verizon announced plans to extend this policy to 4G users with grandfathered unlimited data plans starting in October. But Verizon pulled the plug today, announcing its decision in a statement to Ars and other media outlets.

"Verizon is committed to providing its customers with an unparalleled mobile network experience," the company said. "At a time of ever-increasing mobile broadband data usage, we not only take pride in the way we manage our network resources, but also take seriously our responsibility to deliver exceptional mobile service to every customer. We’ve greatly valued the ongoing dialogue over the past several months concerning network optimization and have decided not to move forward with the planned implementation of network optimization for 4G LTE customers on unlimited plans. Exceptional network service will always be our priority, and we remain committed to working closely with industry stakeholders to manage broadband issues so that American consumers get the world-class mobile service they expect and value."

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Sister Roma's selfie from early Wednesday before the meeting in which Facebook issued an apology to drag queens and performers affected by the social network's real-name policy, which should see sweeping changes in the near future. Sister Roma Two weeks ago, Facebook was forced to address a firestorm over its real-name policy after "several hundred" drag queens and performers were targeted in a spree of user reports. On that day, Facebook responded by sending a message to those account holders: either switch their public Facebook names to "legal" names or convert their accounts to public "pages," which lack certain normal-profile features. The affected users had two weeks to do so, which ran out today.

However, instead of disabling those hundreds of accounts, Facebook went in a decidedly different direction. A meeting between affected performers, including original complainant Sister Roma, and company officials took place at the Facebook campus today, and according to a Valleywag report, it ended with Facebook issuing an official apology and promising "substantive changes" to the real-name policy.

"Facebook agreed that the real names policy is flawed and has unintentionally hurt members of our community," San Francisco Supervisor David Campos said to Valleywag. "Facebook apologized to the community and has committed to removing any language requiring that you use your legal name. They're working on technical solutions to make sure that nobody has their name changed unless they want it to be changed and to help better differentiate between fake profiles and authentic ones."

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