Tor Project

Comcast has lately found itself issuing public apologies on a somewhat regular basis as subscribers share tales of horrible customer service.

But the latest accusation leveled against Comcast—that it is threatening to disconnect customers who use the anonymity-providing Tor browser—hasn't been backed by convincing evidence that it's happening. And Comcast dismisses the rumor as “wildly inaccurate.”

It began Saturday with a site called DeepDotWeb claiming that Comcast has “declared war on Tor Browser.”

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Google

Today, Google is launching "Android One" in India, an effort to get high-quality, cheap smartphones into the hands of people in developing countries. Google provides a reference design to OEMs, which then build devices to Google's spec. The devices run stock Android, and Google provides all the updates—you can think of it as a non-flagship version of the Nexus program.

Google has high hopes for Android One, as its blog says it hopes to reach "the next 5 billion" people with the program. Google says only 1.75 billion people have a smartphone, leaving over five billion potential Android users out there.

Most of those five billion people don't have any Internet access at all. These smartphone statistics line up pretty well with stats for the world's disconnected: only one-third of the world is online. A big part of getting online is having a device that can download and render the Internet, and smartphones are the smallest, cheapest Internet browsers we have. Google isn't doing anything to ensure that its Android One phones come with Internet service, but it no doubt hopes getting devices into the hands of users will drive demand for cheap Internet access.

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It went relatively under the radar during the past two weeks of intensive launches, but AMD is launching a new campaign specifically for system builders dubbed the AMD Power Pack.

Normally system builders (including both the mass production sellers and boutique builders) have the option of buying a Product-In-Box (PIB) retail APU with a CPU cooler, bundled codes and all the manuals, or the tray processor which comes just as the processor. The AMD Power Pack meets the PIB and Tray parts half way, offering in one package a set of six processors with bundled codes and CPU coolers, but no manuals and in a single box arrangement. This helps to save on the packaging and offer a price point between the PIB and Tray cost.

We caught up with Adam Kozak, Product Marketing Manager from AMD, for some inside information.

Can you give us a little bit of the history of the AMD Power Pack?

We previously had a Power Pack scheme back in the days of Athlon, which had success. At the request of system builders around the world, we have reintroduced the scheme with some of our most popular AMD APUs. We ran a successful test back in February and March of this year, and now we are pushing ahead with offering the Power Packs initially to EMEA and North America with other regions to follow.

What is the current AMD Power Pack all about?

We want to offer system builders some savings and encourage them to design systems around AMD products that might offer some better value than before. Secondary to this, noting how much waste goes on with PIB type bulk purchases, it offers a chance to cut down on waste and recycling as well. It offers that combination of PIB and Tray at a lower cost than PIB alone but with all the bundled extras, especially if we are running a promotion at the time.

What sort of buyers are you expecting for the Power Pack?

At this point in time we are selling to system builders through our distribution channels. This includes those who build hundreds of systems a week down to the boutique builders who specialize in custom designs and configurations. Both of these types of system builders are prevalent through EMEA and NA. We currently do not have plans to these direct to end-users, however system builders might sell spare processors as OEM parts.

Which APUs will be available in the Power Pack?

At this point in time we have two options: a bundle of six A8-6600K APUs or a bundle of six Athlon X4 760K CPUs. This are both Richland parts, and we are looking into expanding the selection based on regional requirements and demand.

What is the expected discount to be over buying them separately?

Currently the difference between PIB and Tray is 5-10% depending on the APU, so the Power Packs will be somewhere in the middle of that, to both offset the semi-bulk purchasing with coolers and without a large chunk of the packaging that might come with a PIB version. Exact discounts will vary between regions.

Will there be different power packs for different regions, e.g. AM1 Kabini Power Packs for those target markets?

As time goes on, we are evaluating each region on what product segments are selling well and what our customers demand. AM1 is doing well in the regions where it is focused for – South America, Latin America, Africa and South Asia. We look at our quarter-on-quarter sales against demand, as well as talking to customers, to find where the Power Pack is best suited. Also, if we see an opportunity before we examine sales figures, we might make a strategic move and offer a particular Power Pack in that region.

How will it be sold?

System builders will have to inquire direct with their local distributor.

What will the warranty situation be for these parts?

An end-user will not notice if they buy a system with a Power Pack part – it is up to the system builder and the distributor to determine which segments of the warranty are held, depending on the region. Typically the system builder will honor the warranty you purchase with the system.

Will there be GPU versions of the Power Pack? If not, is this an opportunity missed?

GPUs are a little different to our processor line, purely because we sell the chips to our GPU partners who then make the cards. We have discussed in the past organizing bundles with our GPU/Motherboard partners combined with our APUs from the distribution level, however that tends to be highly region specific.

What plans does AMD have for the Power Pack in the future? How long will the promotion go on / will it emulate Never Settle and continually get updated with newer APUs?

At this point in time we are hoping to push forward into more regions as our research shows is the best way to go. As I mentioned, sales figures are usually organized into quarters so that is how we will make sense of the obvious markets to push into, however if there is a strategic opportunity with the Power Pack then we can push ahead before sales numbers come through.

Our initial phase-in back in Q1 2014 was very well received, so we hope to continue in the same fashion. If we see demand for our flagship processors such as the A10 series on our coolers, then it makes sense to follow that route. At this point in time our FX line is more oriented towards the boutique builders who tend to use their own cooling systems, so it makes more sense for them to buy our Tray units rather than us to offer a Power Pack.

Closing Thoughts

The Power Pack is essentially an extra SKU for system builders between buying a batch of tray processors (100 or 1000) against a bulk order of product-in-box units. By adding in the coolers and promotion cards while reducing the amount of waste and the price vs. six individual PIB units, I can see a Power Pack being preferential against PIB as long as the system builder plans to use the stock cooler.

The only issue AMD has is with choosing which APUs to use. I would have assumed Kaveri (A6-7400K, X4-840) would be the first choice over Richland, but it would seem there is still demand for Richland in the pipeline. There is the potential for a lower end-user system cost. Depending on the unit, we might be talking only $1 or $2 savings per system based on the Richland APUs.

If AMD sold Power Packs for all APUs, the end user might end up with a larger discount (for example, $3-$7 for FX-9590 + AIOs) if the system builder passes it on, but that might end up detrimental to AMD and cut into margins or cause over-demand increasing the difficulty to react dynamically. It is a balancing act between trying to encourage system builders to use APUs while still turning some profit per unit, but I do hope AMD keep up the sentiment and apply the same philosophy with the latest architectures.

Awesome Minecraft architecture by Arsian qchronod. Lee Hutchinson

As predicted last week by the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft used its Xbox blog to announce that it has acquired Mojang AB, the Swedish company behind the blocky sandbox game Minecraft. Last week the rumors were that the company’s acquisition price would be a whopping $2 billion, although Reuters and a few others suggested a higher amount.  According to Mojang AB’s blog, those guessing high had it right—the total amount was, as Mojang puts it, "a smooth 2.5 BILLION dollars."

The obvious fear when a large company swallows a small one for a valuable IP like Minecraft is that the large company is going to radically change the formula that made the IP successful in the first place. For Minecraft, radical change would mean altering the egalitarian, open-platform nature of Minecraft or undermining the vast community of livestreamers who monetize their own Minecraft experiences.

Though the deal is only just now being made public, early indications from both Microsoft and Mojang are that fundamental changes to Minecraft's formula won’t be happening—at least, not yet. "There’s no reason for the development, sales, and support of the PC/Mac, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Vita, iOS, and Android versions of Minecraft to stop," says Mojang’s blog. On streaming, Mojang notes that "stopping players making cool stuff is not in anyone’s interests."

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The normal route for workstation level motherboards is from the server business unit of a motherboard manufacturer, which then works its way into full systems rather than being sold separately. The other, less used alternative is for the mainstream end-user motherboard business units to develop their own and sell directly to end-users building their own workstation. While some of the motherboard manufacturers are slowly jumping on this bandwagon, ASUS has been at it for a number of generations now, with enough success to continue into their new Haswell-E designs which have just been announced.

ASUS X99-E WS

The X99-E WS follows on from the X79-E WS and the X58-E WS, and the most obvious thing to notice is the seven full-length PCIe slots. ASUS’ workstation line of motherboards, as I was told during my time at their HQ, is focused at maintaining compatibility and function with as many different types of PCIe devices possible. This includes RAID cards, PCIe storage, video capture cards, PCIe co-processors, FPGAs, normal GPUs and any other form of throughput accelerant. In order to assist with bandwidth, it would seem that this motherboard uses a PLX chip to give a full PCIe 3.0 x16/x16/x16/x16 for four-way or x16/x8/x8/x8/x8/x8/x8 when all the slots are populated.

The system includes exclusive Beat Thermal Chokes (v2), 12K capacitors and enhanced power connectors. For onboard storage, M.2 x4 is supported along with dual SATA Express and ASUS’ PIKE II (Proprietary I/O Kit Expansion). Thunderbolt support is also provided via the onboard header. Networking comes via a dual Intel solution (I210-AT and I218-LM) with audio from a Realtek ALC1150. ASUS’ WS line of motherboards includes maintenance tools such as the Q-Code Logger and Dr. Power, the latter being for power supply monitoring.

Gallery: ASUS Announces Haswell-E Workstation Motherboards: X99-E WS (1P) and Z10PE-D8 WS (2P)

While pricing and release date has not been released yet, we expect the X99-E WS to be in the $520 price bracket and should be available in North America in the next few weeks.  Note that this motherboard acts more like an end-user product, and thus comes without AST2300/IPMI monitoring tools. This would lower the price, however the upshot is an enhanced BIOS/software package more akin to a consumer level product than a server one.

ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS

The dual processor line of motherboards is typically the mainstay for system builders alone, but over the years various manufacturers have floated the concept of an end-user model. This is shown by our recent increase 2P motherboard reviews. The main barrier here is that to take advantage of a 2P system, Xeons get promoted to the main cost. For home-users, that cost is largely prohibitive however for the prosumer or small-business IT specialist, it becomes part of the business cost instead. With Ivy Bridge-E, the Z9PE-D8 WS seemed to be well received, and thus the Z10PE-D8 WS launch seems a logical choice.

Using the SSI EEB form factor, this motherboard supports one DIMM per channel but has the full array of PCIe 3.0 x16 slots similar to the X99-E WS. It would seem that UDIMMs are not supported here, although the specification list does mention up to 512GB RDIMM/LRDIMM/NVDIMM support. The motherboard is based on the C612 chipset, which is the primary chipset for most workstation 2P motherboards. Storage comes via 12 SATA ports with two SATA Express and M.2 x4 support as well. Similar to the X99-E WS, Beat Thermal Chokes and 12K capacitors are being used here as well. This time the WS motherboard does have management via an AST2400.

One of the more interesting features from ASUS’ PE line of WS motherboards has always been the ability to overclock using the BCLK, to which extent ASUS is promoting a potential 10% improvement in performance using their OC Tuner and Xeon Turbo Charger platform.  We’ve tried testing some Xeons in house in a 1P environment and only achieved 4-7%, so it would be interesting to see this in action and observe what else is adjusted.

The Z10PE-D8 WS will be priced at $599 and will be available soon.

 

Nick Higham talks to Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari about his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

There have been no less than 11 federal judicial rulings striking down patents as "abstract" since the US Supreme Court's June 26 decision in Alice v. CLS Bank.

It's a high number. The case was recognized as a big decision by commentators when it came, and what's happened since suggests the ramifications may be broader than first thought. Vox Media's Tim Lee (former Ars contributor) has an article rounding up the 11 rulings.

The list only highlights patents that have lost under Section 101 of the US patent law, which governs when a patent is an "abstract idea" that can't be patented. Section 101 wins are important to repeat defendants, because they're wins without going through discovery and hiring costly experts. However, some members of the patent bar see Section 101 as an overly blunt tool for weeding out bad patents from true innovations. Many of the patents being knocked out under 101 are "do it on a computer" patents that take everyday activity and add a lot of computer jargon.

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Space Shuttle Enterprise: namesake of the Star Trek spaceship, and one of NASA's greatest, and biggest, behind-the-scenes testing tools. (video link)

NEW YORK—The space shuttle Enterprise has been ensconced aboard the USS Intrepid for just over two years. It sits in a silent warehouse, dramatically lit so it appears to be cruising in a dark vacuum. Tourists can wander around or under it at the exhibit; they can even walk up some stairs and get nose-to-nose with the Enterprise, staring down its long axis through a thick layer of glass.

While the whole thing evokes space exploration, the Enterprise has never actually made it out of Earth's atmosphere. The shuttle on display has the distinction of being one of NASA's biggest workhorses despite earning perhaps the least amount of glory among the entire space shuttle fleet. So while visitors look closely at the Enterprise, they can see what has stopped it from earning more prestige and examine the scars its body has retained from experimentation during its years in service from 1976 through 2012.

Casey Johnston

Like the USS Enterprise it's named after, the Enterprise shuttle is more or less fake. Where a shuttle's $40 million engines should be, the Enterprise has mere mockups, covered by a cone for aerodynamic purposes. A shuttle should be speckled with reaction control system thrusters to help maintain or change its orientation in space. But since the Enterprise has always been Earth-bound, it has nothing but covered holes.

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Opium poppies—soon to be a thing of the past? Stanford

The past few decades have seen enormous progress being made in synthetic biology—the idea that simple biological parts can be tweaked to do our bidding. One of the main targets has been hacking the biological machinery that nature uses to produce chemicals. The hope is that,once we understand enough, we might be able to design processes that convert cheap feedstock, such as sugar and amino acids, into drugs or fuels. These production lines can then be installed into microbes, effectively turning living cells into factories.

Taking a leap in that direction, researchers from Stanford University have created a version of baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) that contains genetic material from the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum), bringing the morphine microbial factory one step closer to reality. These results, published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, represent a significant scientific success, but eliminating the need to grow poppies may still be years away.

More than bread and booze

If dog has been man’s best friend for thousands of years, the humble yeast has long been man’s second-best friend. The single-cell organism has been exploited by human societies to produce alcoholic beverages and bread for more than 4,000 years.

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"Apple Pay beta" TheTruthAbout

A couple of months ago I was visiting New York City and had to catch an early flight out of La Guardia. At 4:30am I hailed a taxi on Houston Street, and the driver and I sped to the airport over dark, empty streets.

On the way, I found a Samsung Note 3 in my bag that Review Editor Ron Amadeo had sent me a few weeks before. The thing had a Near-Field Communications (NFC) chip in it, and I had set up my Google Wallet account on it earlier. I also noticed that the taxi I was in had a tap-to-pay terminal displayed in the backseat. I am a consummate morning person, and a rush of new-day adrenaline told me that it was time to make my first Google Wallet purchase in three years—my last one occurring in 2011 when I reviewed the service at its debut for PCWorld.

As we pulled up to the curb, the driver continued to ignore me as I got out my phone. I touched the Note 3 to the terminal. The phone vibrated, but nothing happened. At this point, the driver turned around. I gave an embarrassed laugh and he said a few polite words, but he had no idea how to help me. “Nobody ever uses their phone to pay,” he said. I tried again. Nothing. But the driver was curious now, and maybe because it was so early in the morning and he had nothing else going on, he got out of the taxi and came around to my side.

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Stack Exchange

This Q&A is part of a weekly series of posts highlighting common questions encountered by technophiles and answered by users at Stack Exchange, a free, community-powered network of 100+ Q&A sites.

durron597 asks:

I was naughty. Too much "cowboy coding," not enough committing. Now, here I am with an enormous commitment. Yes, I should have been committing all along, but it's too late now.

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Aurich Lawson

It's now been nearly 10 months since we first sized up the launch day competition between the Xbox One and PS4 (and even longer since we took a holistic look at the Wii U experience). Back then, we didn't really recommend upgrading to either system immediately. But given every head to head needs a winner, we gave a slight edge to the Xbox One for its superior game lineup and media features.

Those consoles, as they existed on their respective launch days, don't really exist anymore. In the intervening months, the system software changed through downloadable updates, and the game library grew with dozens of new releases. So naturally, our general opinions of the systems evolved as we kept using them over the weeks and months. Today we have a fuller picture of the Xbox One and PS4 instead of a quick peek based on a few hectic usage days before "comprehensive" launch reviews.

With that in mind, it's time to revisit the state of the console wars as it stands today and potentially amend our launch day thoughts with the benefit of a few hundred days of extra experience.

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Coverage of Thunderbolt devices has been expanded on our site over the last few months. At IDF, we took the opportunity to chat with Intel about where Thunderbolt was headed.

The current market perception is one of Thunderbolt being relevant only to Mac users. But, a look at the products that Intel showcases, indicate that there are plenty of PC components (motherboards as well as workstations) that come with the technology integrated. Thunderbolt users on Windows have traditionally found that the technology doesn't live up to its advertised potential. Common complaints include

• Purchased peripherals don't carry certification on Windows
• Hot plugging peripherals doesn't work reliably
• Performance in terms of both bandwidth and latency end up being better on Mac compared to Windows for the same workloads

These issues have turned out to be a vicious circle - Mac users end up getting targeted with more Thunderbolt peripherals (for example, storage manufacturers pre-format their devices in HFS+ format), and this, in turn, lowers the appeal of these devices to Windows users. Irrespective of one's personal preference, it is an undeniable fact that Windows still rules the desktop and notebook market by a big margin. Without extensive adoption on the PC side, there is no doubt that Thunderbolt would go the way of FireWire, a technology that slowly faded into oblivion because Apple was the only vendor who invested in promoting it.

Expanding Thunderbolt's Reach with PCIe Expansion Cards

In the process of migrating from the Z77 / Z87 to the Z97 chipset, Intel tried to drive up Thunderbolt adoption by allowing motherboard makers to provide support via an add-in card. This kept the price of the motherboard low by avoiding the cost of integrating and verifying the Thunderbolt ASIC. The board layout only had to support a Thunderbolt header. The routing of the Display Port was also done externally.

Only interested consumers needed to pay the premium for the interface. In their motherboard segmentation plans for Thunderbolt, Intel intended these Add-In Cards (AICs) only for the X79 and H87 / H97 / Q87 chipsets. Z87 and Z97 motherboards were supposed to have Thunderbolt silicon on board. Unfortunately for Intel, many motherboard makers (including Asus) decided that the add-on card would be the best way to go forward, and didn't release any Z97 boards with integrated Thunderbolt support. This meant that the DIY market, for the most part, completely ignored Thunderbolt.

Thunderbolt on PCs: A Crippled Experience

The reason for the far from optimal experience with Thunderbolt on PCs boils down to two different aspects, the hardware and the software. In terms of hardware, Intel has never allowed motherboard vendors to hang the Thunderbolt silicon / add-in card off the CPU's PCIe lanes. These have to hang off the platform controller hub (PCH). On the other hand, Apple was allowed to hook up the Thunderbolt silicon directly to the CPU. The reason behind this leads us to the software side of things.

Apple has full control over the operating system. Hanging Thunderbolt peripherals directly off the CPU's PCIe lanes requires extensive support from the operating system, particularly when it comes to hot plugging devices and/or waking up peripherals from sleep mode. Over the PCIe lanes off the PCH, Intel has more control via its chipset drivers. Ultimately, it looks like Microsoft dropped the ball and Intel decided to come up with a certification solution by only allowing Thunderbolt silicon to talk to the PCH for all PC boards.

While Microsoft continues to twiddle its thumbs, Intel has decided to come up with less restrictive hardware suggestions to bridge the Thunderbolt experience gap between Macs and PCs.

Thunderbolt's Future - X99 Brings Promise, Driver Features Add Utility

The X99 platform's Thunderbolt capabilities were barely touched upon in the initial Haswell-E reviews. Part of the problem was that none of the motherboards from major vendors had support with on-board silicon. However, it is actually a very important chipset launch for the Thunderbolt on PCs ecosystem because Intel has finally allowed the AICs to hang off the CPU's PCIe lanes. A restriction is that the AIC must have support for a switch to disable the sleep mode for all the Thunderbolt devices in the chain, though this could conceivably go away if Microsoft fixes Windows for this issue.

In terms of updates to Thunderbolt itself, we are yet to see a move to PCIe 3.0. However, the drivers have been updated to enable 'Thunderbolt Networking'. This involves linking multiple PCs / Macs with Thunderbolt cables. A 10 Gbps network is automatically created (in the form of a 'dummy' network adapter). Macs and PCs can talk with each other to share printers and folders. For small workgroups, this could be an effective way to achieve 10 Gbps networking without the costly and noisy switches.

In conclusion, Thunderbolt is making great progress and PC users can expect things to get better in the future. In addition to Apple, lots of other vendors are also throwing in support for Thunderbolt in their workstations and notebooks. It would have been great to have a new version of Thunderbolt with PCIe 3.0 along with the X99 launch. But, we already know it is not going to be the case till Skylake launches. That said, it will be a priority for Intel and Microsoft to get the performance and experience right with current silicon for now.

US Forest Service

Chickens are not fussy eaters. Any object resembling food is worth an exploratory peck. But give a chicken the choice between sugary sweets and seeds, and they will pick the grains every time. This is odd. Many animals, including our own sugar-mad species, salivate for sugar because it is the flavor of foods rich in energy. New research suggests that many birds’ lack of interest in sugar is the result of genes inherited from their dinosaur ancestors.

Most vertebrates experience sweet taste because they possess a family of genes called T1Rs. The pairing of T1R1 and T1R3 detects amino acids and gives rise to the savory “umami” taste, while the T1R2-T1R3 pair detects sugars, giving us our sweet tooth.

Maude Baldwin, a postgraduate student at Harvard University, searched the genomes of ten species of birds, from chickens to flycatchers. She found that insectivorous and grain-eating birds possess the gene pair that detects the amino acids present in insects and seeds, but none of them had the T1R2 gene responsible for the ability to taste sugar. These modern birds evolved from carnivorous theropod dinosaurs that had diets that were rich in proteins and amino acids, but lacked sugar. So Baldwin reasoned that without a need to detect sweetness, ancient birds lost their T1R2 gene.

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Wikipedia The head of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee is urging the federal bureaucracy to restore a decade's worth of electronic court documents that were deleted last month from online viewing because of an upgrade to a computer database known as PACER.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) said the removal of the thousands of cases from online review is essentially erasing history.

"Wholesale removal of thousands of cases from PACER, particularly from four of our federal courts of appeals, will severely limit access to information not only for legal practitioners, but also for legal scholars, historians, journalists, and private litigants for whom PACER has become the go-to source for most court filings," Leahy wrote Friday to US District Judge John D. Bates, the director of the Administrative Office of the Courts (AO).

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Engineers from Stanford and Berkeley Universities have figured out how to make radios the size of an ant, which have been created specifically to serve as controllers and sensors in the Internet of Things.

The radios are fitted onto tiny silicon chips, and cost only pennies to make thanks to their diminutive size. They are designed to compute, execute, and relay demands, and they are very energy efficient to the point of being self-sufficient. This is due to the fact that they can harvest power from the incoming electromagnetic signal so they do not require batteries, meaning there is no particular lifetime associated with the devices.

"We've rethought designing radio technology from the ground up," said Amin Arbabian from Stanford, who worked on the project. "The advantage of moving to this architecture is that we can have the scalability we want." This means that they can scale the technology to potentially thousands of devices within a very dense area.

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On Friday, Nintendo's Twitch channel hosted an all-day livestream of testers playing the company's upcoming holiday and 2015 releases, including Ultimate NES Remix, Bayonetta 2, and the 3DS version of Super Smash Bros. While showing off the fighting game, Nintendo used the livestream to confirm a surprise announcement: Its portable version was coming to the 3DS eStore in the form of a free, downloadable demo version, and it launched simultaneously with the announcement.

However, the demo hasn't been made available to all users, yet it doesn't require pre-ordering the game, either. Instead, the demo must be claimed by a download code, and those are only being sent to Club Nintendo users who achieved platinum status before June 30 of this year. While Club Nintendo allows fans to register purchased games and rack up points, which can be spent on merchandise and downloadable games, this is the first time it has offered Club Nintendo-exclusive software to its users. (As of right now, however, this distribution of codes comes with a catch: They're only being sent to users who gave Nintendo permission to send promotional e-mails, meaning if you made the no-spam call back when you signed up, you're out of luck.)

The demo isn't as expansive as the ones that launched at Best Buy stores across the country this summer; instead, it lets players pick from five combatants—Mario, Mega Man, Link, Pikachu, and the Animal Crossing villager—and fight in a single arena via local multiplayer. That same demo will see wide release on the eStore the following Friday, September 19, ahead of the game's full retail 3DS launch on October 3rd; the Japanese version hits stores tomorrow, but review copies have already hit the wild, confirming many of the game's so-far unannounced characters. Its Wii U version still doesn't have a release date beyond "Winter 2014."

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor visits Rosa Parks Elementary School in Berkeley, Calif. in 2011. Berkeley Unified School District

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor says that without proper privacy safeguards, the advancement of technology could lead to a world like the one portrayed in "1984" by George Orwell.

Speaking to Oklahoma City University faculty and students, the justice said Thursday that technology has allowed devices to "listen to your conversations from miles away and through your walls." She added: "We are in that brave new world, and we are capable of being in that Orwellian world, too."

The President Obama appointee also discussed the lack of privacy standards concerning drones.

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"If you ask anyone my name, in or out of drag, they will tell you it's Roma. Is it the name on my driver's license? No. But it is my name."

On Wednesday, Facebook's policy of only allowing legal names on personal accounts ran headlong into a drag queen. According to a report by the Daily Dot, performer Sister Roma, whose legal ID actually reads Michael Williams, found herself locked out of her account with a prompt asking that her profile name be changed to the legal one as it "appears on your driver's license or credit card," as per Facebook's official real-name policy.

This was the first such request Roma had seen since opening her Facebook account in 2008. When she complied to reopen her Facebook page, she wasn't asked to confirm her name via an ID card—"They seem to know my real name already," she said in an e-mail interview with Ars—and she didn't take the name-change requirement lightly: "I've been Sister Roma for 27 years," Roma said. "If you ask anyone my name, in or out of drag, they will tell you it's Roma. Is it the name on my driver's license? No. But it is my name."

Roma is also a decades-long member of the famed Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI), an LGBT-friendly human rights advocacy nonprofit, and she immediately rounded up the social media troops to spread the word about Facebook's real-name policies. She soon found out that she was far from alone. "Every few minutes, I get a message from a friend or see a post of someone complaining that they've been forced to change their name," Roma said to Ars. "It's happening all over the country."

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Satellite view of the remains of the Larsen B ice shelf on March 7, 2002. NASA/Earth Observatory

A number of noteworthy studies have recently highlighted the importance of what's going on at the bottom of glaciers that flow into the ocean. The topography beneath the glacier—as well as the “grounding line” beyond which a glacier becomes thin enough to float in the water rather than rest on the seafloor—have a lot to do with its stability.

In 2002, the Larsen B ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula abruptly collapsed, scattering 3,200 square kilometers (yes, approximately one standard Rhode Island unit of area) of 200 meter thick ice into the waves. But why? Did warming water beneath the ice shelf loosen it from the grounding line and destabilize the ice shelf in front? Or can we pin the blame on the warming temperatures of the region?

With the ice shelf gone, researchers looking for answers have been able to look at the seafloor that once sat beneath it. In 2006, a research vessel spent some time at the site of the collapse, looking for clues. The findings of that team, led by the Italian National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics’ Michele Rebesco and the University of South Florida’s Eugene Domack, have now been published in the journal Science.

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