Google's Nest Learning Thermostat is one of the better smart home gadgets out there, but at $250 for something that is normally under 50 bucks, it's an expensive upgrade. According to CNET, Nest is going to remove this barrier to entry by taking a page out of the smartphone playbook: it's offering the thermostat for free with a two-year contract.

For now the program is only in Ireland, where a deal with Electric Ireland subsidizes the Nest device with an electricity contract. Ireland seems like an odd place to start, but Nest Chief Executive Tony Fadell says the company will "bring it out to hopefully many more countries."

Back in February of this year, Google bought Nest for 3.2 billion. Nest is run as a separate subsidiary, and so far we haven't heard much from the combined-but-not-combined group—it's been business as usual.

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Senator Udall visiting a wind power plant in Boulder in 2013. Mark Udall

Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) was one of just a few US Senators decrying widespread surveillance even before the Snowden leaks. Udall has been a sharp critic of intelligence agencies since then as well, asking for CIA Director John Brennan to resign after allegations emerged that the intelligence agency gained access to Senate files.

He won't be in office much longer. Udall lost his election last night against Republican challenger Rep. Cory Gardner. By 1:00am Eastern time, Gardner was ahead by six percentage points, with 87 percent of precincts reporting. At that point, several news agencies called the election for Gardner. The Senate seat was one of several that flipped from Democratic to Republican control last night, causing Republicans to take control of the upper house.

Udall's positioning as a tough critic of the NSA wasn't a big issue on the campaign trail, although in the final days of the election he did release an ad saying he “won’t tolerate” overbroad government surveillance. But much of Udall's campaigning came across as out of touch, running an old playbook. Udall hammered his opponent on womens' issues in socially liberal Colorado, noting that Gardner supported a "personhood amendment" to limit abortion and suggesting he wanted to ban some types of birth control.

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Underscoring just how broken the widely used MD5 hashing algorithm is, a software engineer racked up just 65 cents in computing fees to replicate the type of attack a powerful nation-state used in 2012 to hijack Microsoft's Windows Update mechanism.

Nathaniel McHugh ran open source software known as HashClash to modify two separate images—one of them depicting funk legend James Brown and the other R&B singer/songwriter Barry White—that generate precisely the same MD5 hash, e06723d4961a0a3f950e7786f3766338. The exercise—known in cryptographic circles as a hash collision—took just 10 hours and cost only 65 cents plus tax to complete using a GPU instance on Amazon Web Service. In 2007, cryptography expert and HashClash creator Marc Stevens estimated it would require about one day to complete an MD5 collision using a cluster of PlayStation 3 consoles.

The MD5 hash for this picture—e06723d4961a0a3f950e7786f3766338—is precisely the same for the one below. Such "collisions" are a fatal flaw for hashing algorithms and can lead to disastrous attacks.

The practical ability to create two separate inputs that generate the same hash is a fundamental flaw that makes MD5 unsuitable for most purposes. (The exception is password hashing. Single iteration MD5 hashing is horrible for passwords but for an entirely different reason that is outside the scope of this post.) The susceptibility to collisions can have disastrous consequences, potentially for huge swaths of the Internet.

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Volunteers and residents in New Zealand manage to help free some pilot whales which had become beached in Ohiwa Harbour.

Image courtesy of Google

NFC-based mobile payments have had a boost in recent months, possibly thanks to the launch of Apple Pay, which was announced in September. Now, a person with knowledge of the matter tells Ars that Google Wallet, which launched back in 2011 and saw tepid success in the ensuing three years, has had considerable growth in the last couple of months. According to our source, weekly transactions have increased by 50 percent, and in the recent couple of months, new users have nearly doubled compared to the previous month.

Although it's still unclear whether Apple Pay will gain the critical mass of users necessary to become a true checkout stand alternative, Tim Cook recently said that one million cards were activated on Apple Pay in the first 72 hours of the platform's launch (although ReadWrite notes that one million cards is hardly a revolution). It seems that interest in the platform is buoying Apple's predecessor among Android users as well. Although there are some key differences in the way the two platforms work behind the scenes, the experience from the average user's perspective is close to identical.

Retailers want in on the game

The reinvigorated interest in using a phone to pay at a merchant's terminal has also fueled a bit of outrage toward retailers’ consortium Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) and its competing payments platform called CurrentC.

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Last year, the US Supreme Court finally banned patents on human genes after they were handed out by the US Patent and Trademark Office for decades.

The effort was powered by the ACLU and Public Patent Foundation, which gathered a group of plaintiffs who were paying high prices for the patented gene tests on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.

Now Canada is about to see a similar suit. The Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) has filed suit (PDF) in Canadian federal court seeking to invalidate patents related to "Long QT syndrome," an inherited heart disorder that affects somewhere between 1 in 3,000 and 1 in 5,000 people. The patents were created at the University of Utah. That's the same US university that was connected to the landmark Myriad case. University of Utah got patents on the BRCA genes and then licensed them exclusively to Myriad Genetics.

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Following a string of catastrophic vulnerabilities recently discovered in HTTPS encryption protections, Google engineers have released an app that allows developers to detect bugs and glitches that may leave passwords and other sensitive information open to snooping.

The open source tool is dubbed nogotofail, a reference to the so-called goto fail flaw that gave attackers an easy way to surreptitiously circumvent HTTPS-protected connections of Apple iOS and OS X devices. Since its discovery in February, various implementations of the underlying secure sockets layer (SSL) and transport layer security (TLS) protocols have suffered several other devastating vulnerabilities, including a flaw in the GnuTLS library, the catastrophic Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL, and the more recently disclosed in version 3 of SSL.

"The Android Security Team has built a tool, called nogotofail, that provides an easy way to confirm that the devices or applications you are using are safe against known TLS/SSL vulnerabilities and misconfigurations," Google engineers wrote in a blog post published Tuesday morning. "Nogotofail works for Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, Chrome OS, OSX, in fact any device you use to connect to the Internet. There’s an easy-to-use client to configure the settings and get notifications on Android and Linux, as well as the attack engine itself which can be deployed as a router, VPN server, or proxy."

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Since its launch as a top-down, sprite-based crime simulator in 1997, the Grand Theft Auto series has always taken place strictly from a third-person perspective. That's set to change on November 18, as the previously announced re-release of Grand Theft Auto V hits the Xbox One and PS4 with a series-first optional first-person perspective.

The new first-person mode goes a lot farther than unofficial mods that have tried to add a behind-the-eyes perspective to GTA games in the past. “You have to change pretty much everything,” GTA V animation director Rob Nelson told IGN in a promotional interview talking about the new feature. "I mean, if you want to do it right. We have a very solid third-person animation system, but you don’t just put the camera down there and expect to see the guns, aim, and shoot. All those animations are new when you switch to first-person, because it all has to be animated to the camera, to make it feel like a proper first-person experience that I think people would expect. All the timings have to be re-evaluated."

Other little details added for the benefit of the new view include recoil on weapons, view-restricting goggles and helmets when piloting certain vehicles, and a cell phone menu that your character now actually holds in front of his face. The official trailer for the new mode seems to show the perspective automatically swiveling around to view important story and character moments.

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The ebola virus, magnified 108,000 times. Thinkstock

Let's get something out of the way first: it's Eh-bowl-a, with an emphasis on the middle syllable.

If only other facts about the virus were that easy to clear up. Unfortunately, concerns and fears have rapidly outstripped knowledge. Despite the public fears, we do know a fair amount about Ebola and its activities, and what we know tells us a lot about the prospects for treatments and vaccines.

To get a clearer picture of what we know about the virus and the illness it causes, we've spent some time diving into the papers that describe the virus' biology. We also called up Vincent Racaniello, a researcher at Columbia University's Medical School and host of the This Week in Virology podcast, who helpfully provided us with a professional's perspective on Ebola.

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It may be hard to believe, but there are big cities in the US where 30 to 40 percent of residents have no Internet service at all. And among those who are online in America's worst-connected cities, a sizable percentage get by with only cellular Internet.

That's according to 2013 census data compiled by Bill Callahan, director of Connect Your Community 2.0, a group promoting Internet access for residents of Cleveland, OH, and Detroit, MI.

Callahan published charts on his blog yesterday showing how many households lack Internet access in the 25 worst connected cities in the US (out of 176 that have at least 50,000 households). In Laredo, TX, 40.2 percent of the 65,685 households have no Internet access, not even mobile broadband on a phone. Detroit was second in this list with 39.9 percent of households lacking Internet. In all 25 cities, at least 29.8 percent lacked Internet access. The 25 cities varied in size from 52,588 households (Kansas City, KS) to 255,322 households (Detroit).

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NapInterrupted

A handful of jurisdictions nationwide reported various computer-related problems that hampered some voters as Americans went to the polls on Tuesday.

As Ars has noted over the last two years, electronic voting (much less Internet voting) is on the decline in the United States as voters and voting officials have placed less and less confidence in machines that were designed to replace confusing paper ballots in the controversial 2000 presidential election and the resulting Help America Vote Act.

On Tuesday, the problems included 11 voting machines in Virginia Beach and Newport News, Virginia that were “knocked out of calibration.” In a statement, the Virginia Department of Elections said that some AccuVote TSX Touch Screen voting machines changed votes to something other than what the voter intended.

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Did somebody say "lawsuit"?

Verizon is gearing up for a fight over the government's latest net neutrality plan, which could impose stricter rules on Internet service providers than a previous net neutrality order that Verizon also sued over.

Verizon sued to overturn the Federal Communications Commission's 2010 Open Internet Order, forcing the FCC to try again. The commission tentatively approved rules in May that would prevent Internet service providers from blocking or degrading traffic from third-party Web services while allowing "fast lane" deals in which companies could pay for faster access to consumers.

But after protest from consumer advocates, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is reportedly close to proposing rules in which ISPs would be treated as utilities. This wouldn't outlaw fast lane or "paid prioritization" deals but would make it easier for the government to block arrangements deemed harmful to consumers. In a blog post today, Verizon General Counsel Randal Milch said the plan "fairly guarantees litigation."

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HP today announced the availability of their new Omen laptop, a name that hearkens to their acquisition of Voodoo PC clear back in 2006. It's been a while since we've seen much in the way of references to the former gaming brand, and while there's no explicit mention of Voodoo anywhere, Voodoo used to have a line of gaming desktops sold under the Omen brand.

What's interesting about the new Omen laptop is that it goes after the thin gaming laptop market. The Omen is sure to draw comparisons with Razer's Blade line of gaming notebooks, or if we cast a wider net the MSI GS60 and of course Apple's MacBook Pro could also be part of the comparison. Of course this isn't just a straight clone, as the Omen is a laptop with a 15.6-inch screen and the chassis design is clearly different from the other options we just listed. Let's start with the specifications:

HP Omen Specifications Processor Intel Core i7-4710HQ
(Quad-core 2.5-3.5GHz, 6MB L3, 22nm, 47W) Memory 8GB or 16GB DDR3L-1600 Graphics GeForce GTX 860M 2GB/4GB GDDR5
(640 cores, 1029MHz + Boost 2.0, 5GHz GDDR5) Display 15.6" IPS 1080p Touchscreen (1920x1080) Storage 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB SSD Optical Drive N/A Networking 802.11ac WiFi
(2x2:2 866Mbps capable)
Bluetooth
USB Ethernet Adapter Audio Stereo Speakers
BeatsAudio
Headphone/microphone combo jack Battery/Power 4-cell, 58Wh
120W Max AC Adapter Front Side N/A Left Side N/A Right Side N/A Back Side 2 x Exhaust vent
Headphone/mic jack
4 x USB 3.0
1 x HDMI
1 x Mini-DisplayPort
AC Power Connection Operating System Windows 8.1 64-bit Dimensions 15.07" x 9.67" x 0.61-0.78" (WxDxH)
(383mm x 245.5mm x 15.5-19.8mm) Weight 4.68 lbs. (2.13kg) Extras 1080p Full HD Webcam
80-Key Configurable Colors Backlit Keyboard +
6 Programmable Keys Pricing $1600 Online (with 256GB SSD)

At its core, the new HP Omen 15-5010nr (if you want the complete name) is a thin gaming notebook with a decent midrange mobile GPU. The base model features a 15.6" IPS touchscreen display, Core i7 processor, GeForce GTX 860M GPU, and an SSD. Battery life is rated at 4.75 hours, which is less than we measured with the latest Razer Blade 14, but HP is using a slightly lower capacity 58Wh battery.

That said, there's no mention of Optimus or graphics switching, so HP may simply be leaving the GPU enabled at all times; in that case, 4.75 hours would be quite respectable, but we'll need additional information to know what's going on. HP also has a lower resolution 1080p display, but after using a few High DPI displays I've reached the conclusion that for the time being, 1080p with 100% scaling is generally preferable right now. (This is a personal opinion, of course, but things like games breaking UI interaction when you're not at 100% scaling are not helping.)

The dimensions are certainly worthy of note, as the Omen measures just 0.78" (19.8mm) thick, putting the Omen into the Ultrabook class of laptops (though it's not technically an Ultrabook as it doesn't have a low voltage CPU). It's basically slightly thicker than the Blade 14 but with a larger screen to go with it. Of course, Razer managed to get a GTX 870M into the Blade 14, and while the laptop can certainly get warm it's interesting that HP didn't go after a higher spec GPU like the GTX 970M. The GTX 860M can certainly game at 1080p, but there are titles where you'll need to drop to High or even Medium settings to stay above 30FPS. (HP also offers an upgrade to a 4GB 860M, though I'm not sure the additional VRAM is really needed on this class of GPU.)

Other features include BeatsAudio, a backlit keyboard, four USB 3.0 ports, and 2x2 802.11ac WiFi. The Omen is available starting today for order, though I can't seem to bring up the HP Omen store page right now – possibly because they're getting slammed with hits, though more likely it's just that the page isn't properly exposed right now. (I'd expect the site to be up later today/tomorrow; it took about eight hours for this HP Omen page to get updated after the countdown ended.) There are also HP Omen accessories including a Gaming Mouse X9000 and a Gaming Backpack, priced at $60 and $80 respectively.

HP currently lists three pricing options, which is where they take a nice departure from Razer. The base model includes a 128GB SSD and 8GB RAM with a Core i7-4710HQ and a 2GB GTX 860M for $1500. Bumping up to a 256GB SSD will increase the price to $1600, while $1700 will get you the 256GB SSD and a 4GB GTX 860M. There are other options available like 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD, which you should be able to find at the HP Store (again, when the link is live).

I do have a few concerns with the Omen, though without hands-on time it's difficult to know if these are real problems or not. One is that all of the ports appear to be located on the back of the laptop, which is rather inconvenient when you're trying to plug in a mouse, headphones, external display, etc. I've also seen more than a couple bent ports if users aren't careful, though that's a risk with any portable PC I suppose. Another potential problem is endemic to any thin gaming notebook: effectively cooling both a reasonably high-end CPU and GPU in a slim chassis is difficult, and in most thin gaming notebooks we've seen higher temperatures and noise levels compared to their bulkier siblings.

Overall, I do like the styling of the Omen, and it's good to see HP making more of an effort in the gaming market again. I also like that the keyboard appears to have per-key configurable backlighting, which puts it a step ahead all of the competition in that area. There are a few other thin gaming notebooks out there (e.g. the MSI GS60 and GS70 also compete with the Razer Blade offerings), but most of the time going thin means dropping from a GTX class GPU (e.g. to a GeForce 840M) to something that provides half the performance (or less).

What I want to see now is one that can do seven hours of battery life for everyday tasks while still packing at least a GTX 860M. Dell's XPS 15 was able to hit that mark for battery life with a lower performance GPU, but the GPU shouldn't be using any power for non-gaming tasks so a GTX 860M shouldn't be any worse than a GT 750M for Internet surfing. So far we always seem to fall short of that mark on "gaming" laptops, unfortunately.

Gallery: HP Launches Omen: A Thin Gaming Laptop

A couple of days after the Xbox games were announced, Sony has now revealed the free game lineup for PlayStation Plus members. One note about last month’s games though – DriveClub PlayStation Plus Edition has still not shipped, so if you are waiting for that unfortunately you will have to wait a bit longer. As I mentioned in the Xbox article, Microsoft needs to ramp up the Games with Gold program because once again, Sony has six games available across the three platforms, and three of them are day one releases. Let’s check out what is in store for November.

PlayStation 4 The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

The first game on tap for the PlayStation 4 is also the first day one release for this list. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is from developer Nicalis, and is a remake of The Binding of Isaac which originally came out in 2011 and was built on Flash. The game is a top down RPG similar in style to the original The Legend of Zelda, at least as far as the dungeon crawling goes. Players start the game as Isaac, who tries to escape from his mother and runs away into their monster filled basement. The levels are randomly generated. The original PC version scored a very high 84 Metascore, and 8.3 user score on Metacritic. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth will also be made available on the PS Vita.

“The Binding of Isaac is a randomly generated action RPG shooter with heavy Rogue-like elements. Following Isaac on his journey, players will find bizarre treasures that change Isaac’s form giving him superhuman abilities and enabling him to fight off droves of mysterious creatures, discover secrets and fight his way to safety. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is the ultimate of remakes with an all-new highly efficient game engine, all-new hand-drawn pixel style artwork, highly polished visual effects, all-new soundtrack and audio by Ridiculon, and hundreds upon hundreds of designs, redesigns and re-tuned enhancements by series creator, Edmund McMillen.”

SteamWorld Dig

The second PS4 game for November is SteamWorld Dig, from developer Image & Form. This game was originally released in August 2013 on the Nintendo 3DS, and ported to the PS4 in March of this year. In this 2D Platformer, you control Rusty, who is a steamboat miner. Collecting ore and gems is your goal. SteamWorld Dig scored an 82 Metascore and 7.4 User score on metacritc. It normally sells for $9.99, and it will also be available for the PS Vita.

“SteamWorld Dig is a platform mining adventure with strong Metroidvanian influences. Take the role of Rusty, a lone mining steambot, as he arrives at an old mining town in great need. Dig your way through the old earth, gaining riches while uncovering the ancient threat that lurks below…”

PlayStation 3 Frozen Synapse Prime

The first game available on the PS3 is also a day one release for this platform. Frozen Synapse Prime is an asynchronous turn-based strategy game from developer Double Eleven. Players can take on several multiplayer matches simultaneously, or play the single player campaign, which is set in a dystopian future where an evil corporation is attempting to take over the city. The Vita version was released in September, and scored an 84 Metascore and 7.3 User Score on metacritic.

“Take on the role of Tactics, leading a small rebel faction to overthrow a powerful corporation controlling the city of Markov Geist. Control an elite strike team of futuristic soldiers from shotgunners and snipers, to grenadiers and machine-gunners in the ultimate turn-based strategy game. Plot paths and issue orders to your units, test your plans and predict your opponent in each turn. Combat plays out on procedural, 3D, destructible and customizable battlefields.”

LUFTRAUSERS

The second game for the PS3 this month is LUFTRAUSERS from developer Vlambeer. This single-player game is an airplane-based shoot’em up, which originally launched in March 2014. Players control an airplane and are given a full 360° of motion for the plane. As you progress through the game, you can customize your plane to increase your potential. LUFTRAUSERS scored an 80 Metascore and 7.5 User Score on Metacritic, and normally retails for $9.99. The PS Vita version will also be available.

“The skies will be set aflame and the seas will overflow with wreckage in Vlambeer’s stylish arcade shooter LUFTRAUSERS! Select from over 125 combinations of weapons, bodies, and propulsion systems and take to the skies to battle enemy fighter planes, battleships, submarines, and rival aces for glory, honor, and high scores. Bravely volunteer for one of over 100 daring missions and become the most legendary Rauser pilot of all time!”

PlayStation Vita Escape Plan

The first PS Vita game is Escape Plan from developer Fun Bits Interative. This puzzle game was first released as a launch title for the Vita in February 2012. The goal of the game is to control Lil and Laarg through a series of booby-trapped rooms. The artistic style of the game certainly makes for a great looking game. Escape Plan scored a 71 Metascore and 7.5 User Score on metacritic, and normally retails for $14.99. The PS4 version will also be available.

“Escape Plan takes advantage of the PlayStation®Vita system’s multi-touch display, rear touch panel, swipe interfaces and motion sensor, putting the fate of Lil & Laarg in the palm of your hand. Players can swipe, tap, poke, squeeze and slap our hapless heroes and interact with the unique and twisted puzzles of each room. Only you can help them survive before their captor and nemesis, Bakuki, recycles them and turns them into his minions. Swipe as if your life depended on it in this exclusive survival-humor game for the PS Vita system.”

The Hungry Horde

The final game for the month is also a new one to the Vita store. The Hungry Horde, from developer Nosebleed Interactive, has the player leading a horde of zombies on a quest to destroy humanity. What else can be said about zombie rampage games? The Hungry Horde normally retails for $9.99

“Lead a horde of zombies on a manic mission to expand the ranks of the undead and destroy humanity. Battle the clock and attempt to trash the planet in this highly addictive, run-till-you-die zombie rampage – one game and you’ll be “turned”!”

November brings six more games, and three new games to their respective platform. While none of November’s titles would be considered AAA games, there is a good selection again for all platforms. Sony also does a great job of promoting their cross-platform ecosystem with these bundles, and most of the time when a game is available on more than one Sony platform, the PlayStation Plus membership gives the player access to the game on all of the platforms. It is not always the case, but often. If you are interested, the games should be available starting today, as it is the first Tuesday of the month. If you are interested in what's coming for December and January, Sony has also teased those month's games here.

Source: PlayStation Blog

Only six out of 39 messaging applications have the features needed to guarantee the security of communications sent over the Internet, according to an analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The results of the analysis, published as a scorecard on Tuesday, found that popular messaging apps—such as Facebook Chat, Apple’s FaceTime and iMessage, Microsoft’s Skype, and Yahoo Messenger—failed to meet all seven criteria, such as whether the application implements perfect forward secrecy and whether the source code had been audited for security. The group did the analysis as part of its campaign to promote the development of secure and usable cryptography, which is necessary in a world where government surveillance has become more common, Peter Eckersley, EFF’s technology projects director, told Ars.

The study is intended to help direct companies who are actively developing secure-communication software, he said.

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You want to know where you can go? To f***ing vote, that's where.

It’s Election Day, damn it. And thanks to non-partisan tech efforts by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Google, Facebook, and others—including sites like Your Fucking Polling Place—you’ve got no damn excuse not to if you’re registered. Polling places, ballots, and other information about Election Day are available online in all 50 states for today’s election—including sites that use what David Becker, director of elections initiatives at the Pew Charitable Trusts, calls a “more family friendly version” of the same Google API that powers Your Fucking Polling Place. At the same time, political candidates’ campaigns are getting increasingly better data about registered voters to help get out the ones they think will go their way.

Get-out-the-vote technology was a focal point of the 2012 presidential elections—and the source of a great deal of controversy for the Mitt Romney campaign, as Ars reported. Now both the Republican and Democratic national parties have built their own internal “big data” startups internally to help deliver targeted voter data to campaigns across the country—the Republican National Committee’s Para Bellum and the Democratic National Committee’s Project Ivy. This midterm election is the first big test for their investments.

While the big national parties throw money at their own partisan systems, the Pew Charitable Trusts’ election initiatives program has tried to make the same sort of data available to candidates at every level, starting by improving the quality of state voter rolls. “The problem in most states is that voter rolls are just not that accurate,” Becker said.

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Earlier this year NVIDIA released the SHIELD Tablet which utilized their Cortex-A15 based Tegra K1 chip. In our review we felt it offered a good value proposition, and stood out as a very capable tablet for gamers. Today Nvidia has put a sneak peak at Android 5.0 Lollipop running on the SHIELD Tablet on their Youtube channel. Along with the video, they have announced that the SHIELD Tablet will receive the update to Android Lollipop by the end of November, which means that it will be receiving the update not long after Nexus and Google Play Edition devices, despite being neither. NVIDIA's preview video has been embedded below so SHIELD Tablet users can get a sneak peak at what will be arriving on their tablets in the near future.

 

@NVIDIA is being cheeky again. In case anyone was wondering whether Lollipop is coming to SHIELD Tablet, yes, it is.. pic.twitter.com/Ewnq608FyY

— AnandTech (@anandtech) October 30, 2014

Sorry for the spate of NVIDIA posts, but this is the last one for now. Today, NVIDIA also released their 344.60 Game Ready driver for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. As usual, these drivers include all of the previous optimizations from the 344 series, building off of the previous 344.48 driver released just two weeks back (which included DSR support for Fermi and Kepler GPUs). Unlike the last release, the only noteworthy change mentioned in the release notes (PDF) this time appears to be Call of Duty support/optimizations (including an SLI profile), though with a 57 page document I may have missed something.

You can grab the drivers at the usual place, or if you're running GeForce Experience that will allow you to update directly. Note also that searching for Windows 64-bit desktop drivers for GTX 980 (and perhaps other GPUs) is currently coming up with 344.48 as the latest release, so here's a direct link to the Windows 7/8/8.1 64-bit drivers. Notebook drivers are also available for all recent notebooks (GeForce 400M and later), if you need them.

Going along with their Ubisoft Bundle for high-end GPUs, NVIDIA also announced an updated Fall 2014 Free To Play gaming bundle that applies to their "mainstream" GPUs. As with previous Free To Play bundles, you get $150 worth of in-game currency for use in three recent F2P games ($50 per game). The F2P bundle is for new buyers of GTX 750 Ti and GTX 750 desktop GPUs, and it is also available for purchases of notebooks with GTX 880M, 870M, 860M, and 850M GPUs.

The three games are War Thunder, Strife, and Infinite Crisis, and at least two of the games make use of one or more of NVIDIA's GameWorks libraries – to be specific, War Thunder includes support for WaveWorks and Destruction, and Strife uses PhysX, Particles, and HairWorks. (There's no mention of any NVIDIA technologies for Infinite Crisis.)

Of course Free To Play game currency as part of a bundle is often viewed as less desirable than a full game – the business idea with F2P is to basically get you hooked so you end up spending money. Still, for those that are interested in any/all of the above titles, the in-game credits can prove useful. The bundle gives you 1000 Strife "Gems", 10000 War Thunder "Golden Eagles", and 5000 Infinite Crisis "Crisis Coins" to get you started.

All three games are already available in various forms. Strife is in open beta and targets the popular MOBA segment. Along with the usual MOBA aspects, Strife heroes also have access to pets that accompany you and level along with your hero. Infinite Crisis is another MOBA, with characters from the DC Legends universe (e.g. Batman, Joker, Green Lantern, Superman, etc.) War Thunder goes a different route and is a WWII combat simulation focusing on aerial, vehicular, and fleet battles.

Gallery: NVIDIA Free To Play 2014 Fall Bundle

US EIA

A few years back, when I got my first LED-based lightbulb, it seemed natural to stick it into a wattmeter to get a sense of its efficiency. At under 15 Watts of power drawn, it clearly beat any incandescent bulbs I'd ever put into the same lamp. But I was disappointed to find that it wasn't any better than a compact fluorescent bulb.

Based on the graph shown above, my experience was hardly unique; in fact, it was decidedly average. Although the technology behind LEDs had the potential to be far more efficient than any other lighting source, the complete LED bulb package wasn't doing that much better at the time than the far more mature fluorescent bulbs, which output roughly 60 lumens for every Watt put in.

After some small boosts in 2013, however, a new generation of more efficient LEDs hit the market this year, raising the typical efficiency to nearly 100 lumens per Watt. The increased efficiency is coming at a time when prices for the bulbs continue to drop; given their expected lifetimes, they're now far and away the most economical choice for most uses.

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