A large text file billed as a list of usernames and passwords for more than 4.9 million Google accounts is likely a collection of credentials from different sources, not from a breach of the company's systems, Google stated on Wednesday.

The file was leaked to the Bitcoin Security board on Tuesday by a user known as "tvskit" who claimed that more than 60 percent of the passwords were good, according to translated content on Russian news site RT. Yet, in its own analysis, Google found that only 2 percent of the credentials would have worked and an even smaller number been used successfully.

"Our automated anti-hijacking systems would have blocked many of those login attempts," the company's spam and abuse team said in the analysis. "We’ve protected the affected accounts and have required those users to reset their passwords."

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

(video link)

CUPERTINO, CA—Yesterday Ars brought you some coverage of a couple of highly anticipated products from Apple: the iPhone 6, the iPhone 6 Plus, and the Apple Watch. Because the company is so secretive, its event was the first time the public was able to see what products would be in stores in the coming year.

Apple has long been a trend-setter in consumer electronics, though it seems that its latest product line doesn’t take too many conceptual chances, but instead offers an alternative to products that other companies have already put forward in the market—a phone with an oversized screen, a wristwatch, and of course, Apple Pay, which was also announced on Tuesday, has long existed in the Android universe as Google Wallet.

With this in mind, Ars was eager to get our hands on these new products and take them for a spin to see what it means for consumers, who now have more options in smartphones and wearables, but also for developers who now have a new market to make apps for. Unfortunately, our time with the phones and the watch was short, and the space in which we were able to test them was jam-packed with people. We’ll have to wait until later this month for a true iPhone 6 and 6 Plus review. And we’ll have to wait even longer for an Apple Watch review, or even for a proper hands-on, as the only Apple Watches we were allowed to wear were set on a pre-selected loop of watch faces and haptic feedback (which Apple calls “taptic feedback”). Apple handlers, however, were equipped with Apple Watches that had some limited interactive capability.

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

rtThe competition in the cloud storage space has never been so intense. It is also a vast landscape of different features, free storage sizing, paid storage tiers, and API support. Today Microsoft has addressed some of the criticisms against OneDrive with an increased file size limit, faster syncing, Windows shell integration, and tweaks to the web interface to make the cloud storage easier to use, and more flexible.

One of the limitations of OneDrive has been the maximum file size of 2 GB. That is being bumped up today to 10 GB per file. That will certainly help with most files bumping into the limit, but is certainly not class leading. Dropbox also has a 10 GB upload limit, but that is only on the web interface, with files uploaded via the desktop application or mobile apps have no file size limit. Google Drive has a 5 TB limit on an individual file. It is good to see OneDrive increase this limit, but it seems shortsighted to set it so low especially when they have upgraded all Office 365 plans (personal and business) to 1 TB of storage per user. This feature is available today for OneDrive, and will be coming soon for OneDrive for Business.

Consumer Cloud Offerings   OneDrive Google Drive iCloud DropBox Box Amazon Cloud Drive Free Storage 15 GB 15 GB 5 GB 2 GB 10 GB 5 GB Paid Storage (USD/year) 100 GB - $24
200 GB - $48
1 TB (Office 365 Personal) - $70
5 x 1 TB (Office 365 Home) - $100 100 GB - $24
1 TB - $120
10 TB - $1200
20 TB - $2400
30 TB - $3600 20 GB - $12
200 GB - $48
500 GB - $120
1 TB - $240 1 TB - $100 100 GB - $120 20 GB - $10
50 GB - $25
100 GB - $50
200 GB - $100
500 GB - $250
1 TB - $500 Versioning Office files (30 days) Yes (30 days) No Yes (30 days)
Unlimited with PackRat addon No (Personal Tier) No File Restore Yes (30 days) Yes (30 days) No Yes (30 days)
Unlimited with PackRat addon Yes (30 days) Yes Operating System Support Windows
OS X
Android
iOS
Windows Phone Windows
OS X
Chrome OS
Android
iOS Windows
OS X
iOS Windows
OS X
Linux
Android
iOS
BlackBerry
Kindle Fire Windows
OS X
Android
iOS
Windows Phone
BlackBerry Windows
OS X
Android
iOS
Kindle Fire

Another improvement to the service is to increase the number of files that can be uploaded or downloaded at any one time. If you are syncing a directory, this should dramatically increase the sync speed with Microsoft’s internal testing giving approximately a 300% increase in speed.  Assuming you have enough bandwidth from your ISP, this could be a very welcome change. The parallel syncing feature will be rolling out worldwide in the coming weeks.

A missing feature that I have personally bumped into many times is the inability to share OneDrive files from within Windows Explorer. This is also changing beginning with Windows 7 and Windows 8 clients. Right clicking in the shell will now offer the ability to share a link, or give more options if you would rather share by account name. This feature is a part of the Modern version of OneDrive, so it is good to see it coming to the desktop as well, and continues the trend of de-emphasizing the Start Screen experience. Windows 7 and 8 clients have begun rollout of this new feature, and Windows 8.1 and Mac should be available soon.

The final change to OneDrive affects only the web interface. As of today, folder uploads are now supported over the web, which is a feature that was previously only available in the client applications. Folders can be uploaded by using the Upload button and choosing a folder, or folder drag and drop is also supported in the web interface for browsers that support that feature. Currently, only Google Chrome supports this feature, but other browsers will be able to if the browser adds support.

OneDrive faces stiff competition in the cloud storage market, and these features are a welcome addition. The 10 GB file size is clearly a big improvement over the previous 2 GB limit, but when you offer 1 TB of space, 10 GB files may not be the largest a client wants to upload, so hopefully this will be increased again in the near future, if even for just the OneDrive client applications. Improved sync speed is of course always welcome. The folder uploads is also a nice bonus, but being able to share OneDrive files and folders by using Windows Explorer is the most welcome addition to how I use the service.

U2's new Songs of Innocence. U2

I'm not here to tell you what music you should be listening to, but I can tell you I haven't really liked an album that U2 has put out since 1991's Achtung Baby. That's why I wasn't really excited when Tim Cook and Bono told me I could download the band's new album, Songs of Innocence, for free on iTunes as part of Apple's big product event yesterday. Thanks but no thanks, fellas.

I forgot that the album release even happened within an hour of leaving the Flint Center yesterday, which is why I was surprised to see it show up in my iTunes library all by itself today. I had assumed the album would be something you'd need to opt into, but apparently in its quest to be part of the "biggest album release in history," Apple went ahead and attached it to iTunes accounts by default. It has begun to show up in iTunes libraries automatically, and if you have automatic music downloads enabled on your iPhone, it may have even downloaded without you realizing it.

People don't tend to like it when their digital media libraries are altered without their consent. Just look at the time when Disney pulled purchased movies from customers' libraries this past holiday season, or the time Amazon deleted copies of George Orwell's 1984 from customers' Kindles. This U2 thing, while adding to your media library rather than subtracting from it, has already caused a minor rash of Twitter complaints nonetheless (just search "iPhone U2").

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

We reported last week that Microsoft's OneDrive cloud service was finally syncing files larger than 2GB. The company today confirmed the change and disclosed what the new size limit is: 10GB. Not quite enough for a Blu-Ray, but it should solve the file size problem for most users.

That's not the only improvement that Microsoft has made. The desktop client will, at long last, make it easy to share files in OneDrive with other people; right clicking the file in Explorer will have a straightforward "Share a OneDrive link" menu item to create a link that can be e-mailed, tweeted, or otherwise passed around. The lack of such a feature has long made using OneDrive much more annoying than using the competing Dropbox service.

The new menu item is rolling out to OneDrive users on Windows 7 and Windows 8 over the next few weeks. The client for Windows 8.1 and OS X will be updated at some time after that.

Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Apple/Ron Amadeo

We'll start off with the biggest difference between the two devices: the home screen. The Apple Watch shows a bunch of app icons, while the 360 shows the time and last notification.

18 more images in gallery

.related-stories { display: none !important; }

No one has really figured out what a smartwatch should look like yet, but one thing is for sure: Google and Apple have taken vasty different routes to getting a computer on your wrist. To show just how different, we put together this gallery of similar screens from the Apple Watch and Android Wear. They should be easy enough to tell apart: the Apple Watch is the square one, while the Android Wear screenshots are all from the Moto 360 and are therefore (mostly) round.

While we know just about everything there is to know about the Moto 360, the Apple Watch isn't actually a released product yet, so we're going off our best educated guess for some of these. We had to swipe pictures from Apple's promotional images (which sadly weren't a super-high resolution), and it was up to us to crop them into a "screenshot."

Apple hasn't released specs for the screen, and where exactly the bezel stops and starts in many of Apple's promotional shots is up to interpretation. By our calculations, though, and by using enlightening images like this, it looks like the Apple Watch has a 4:5 aspect ratio. The watch OS (we don’t know the operating system’s name yet) usually has a black background picture on a black bezel, so to maximize screen space, Apple often puts UI elements right against the edge of the screen, allowing the bezel to act as the "padding" that would traditionally be in a well-designed interface.

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Four years ago, Google teamed up with Verizon to argue that most network neutrality rules should not apply to cellular networks. The companies got much of what they wanted, with the Federal Communications Commission passing rules that let wireless operators discriminate against third-party applications as long as they disclose their traffic management practices. Wireless companies were also allowed to block applications that don't compete against their telephony services.

Verizon sued anyway and won when a federal appeals court struck down the FCC’s prohibitions against blocking and discrimination. The decision has set off months of debate, yet Google—once a strong supporter of net neutrality—has largely remained silent.

That changed today with Google sending a message to subscribers of its “Take Action” mailing list urging them to “Join Take Action to support a free and open Internet.” Within this page is evidence that Google has changed its mind on whether net neutrality rules should apply to wireless networks.

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Jailbreaking an iPhone to steal its secrets in the name of security research, we unleash Elcomsoft iOS Forensics Toolkit. Sean Gallagher

Apple executives never mentioned the words "iCloud security" during the unveiling of the iPhone 6, iPhone 6+, and Apple Watch yesterday, choosing to focus on the sexier features of the upcoming iOS 8 and its connections to Apple's iCloud service. But digital safety is certainly on everyone's mind after the massive iCloud breach that resulted in many celebrity nude photos leaking across the Internet. While the company has promised fixes to both its mobile operating system and cloud storage service in the coming weeks, the perception of Apple's current security feels iffy at best.

In light of one high profile "hack," is it fair to primarily blame Apple's current setup? Is it really that easy to penetrate these defenses?

In the name of security, we did a little testing using family members as guinea pigs. To demonstrate just how much private information on an iPhone can be currently pulled from iCloud and other sources, we enlisted the help of a pair of software tools from Elcomsoft. These tools are essentially professional-level, forensic software used by law enforcement and other organizations to collect data. But to show that an attacker wouldn’t necessarily need that to gain access to phone data, we also used a pair of simpler “hacks,” attacking a family member’s account (again, with permission) by using only an iPhone and iTunes running on a Windows machine.

Read 30 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The Earth's protective ozone layer is starting to repair itself, according to a panel of United Nations scientists.

zodman

If what "weev" did could be considered hacking, the FBI just might be a hacker, too, a former federal prosecutor says.

The trial attorney for Andrew "weev" Auernheimer, Orin Kerr, says the actions the FBI took to find the servers of the online drug haven Silk Road could fall under the same hacking statute in which his high-profile client was charged.

Orin Kerr The George Washington University

Kerr, a former federal prosecutor and an expert on the hacking statute called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, said there's a lot of similarities between the Silk Road prosecution and his client's case.

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

While it was alluded to in the iPhone 6 announcement, today T-Mobile is announcing WiFi Unleashed, which enables WiFi calling and texting for all Simple Choice customers and seamless hand-off of calls to cellular. In addition, T-Mobile is also partnering with GoGo to provide free text messaging and visual voicemail in flights that use GoGo to provide WiFi.

On the Personal CellSpot side, T-Mobile will give a free Asus 802.11ac WiFi router with 25 USD refundable deposit to Simple Choice customers starting on September 17th, which also acts as a femtocell and will provide signal to improve capacity and coverage of the network.

Overall, this seems to only extend the lead that T-Mobile already has with their extensive focus upon disrupting how mobile network operators do business in the US, and it'll be interesting to see what's in the Personal CellSpot.

Hit it too soft, and get stuck in the valley. Too hard, and bounce and roll down the back end. That's Desert Golfing, repeated thousands of times over.
If you want a picture of the future of mobile gaming, imagine a ball rolling along a sandy landscape—forever.

Apologies to Orwell, who meant something much darker with his original quote, but this silly little mobile game I've been playing recently has gotten me feeling a little philosophical about game design, and even life in general. The sublime, minimalist simplicity of Desert Golfing has made the game my go-to mobile time-waster these days, and I can see continuing to play it in quick, stolen little intervals maybe forever.

On the surface, Desert Golfing is an almost insultingly simple game to play. You tap the screen, drag back to set your shot's aim and power via a large white arrow, then let go to send a tiny white golf ball flying over the uniformly sandy 2D landscape. Bounce into the hole, and the landscape scrolls a bit to show your next target. The physics modeling is surprisingly delicate, meaning you often have to give just the right finesse on a shot to get the precise gentle bounce off a hill or wall needed for the ball to roll into the hole.

There are other 2D golf games on mobile platforms, such as the excellent Super Stickman Golf series, but they tend to be weighed down with all sorts of complications in a misplaced effort to add "depth." Desert Golfing sets itself apart with its monastic design simplicity. Every hole is a single screen, with no music, no visible player character, and no background scenery (save for the very occasional cactus). There's no club selection, no items, and no changes in the uniformly sandy terrain.

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Western DIgital / HGST

Western Digital’s HGST unit announced on September 9 that the company has begun to ship a new version of its helium-filled disk drive, the Ultrastar He8—with 8-terabytes of data storage capacity. And the company has an even bigger capacity drive waiting in the wings. That drive, which uses a new magnetic recording technology, will have a capacity of 10 terabytes.

Seagate began shipping its own non-helium 8TB drive in August, cramming more capacity onto five disk platters (though the company has said little about the recording technology used to achieve that). HGST’s 8TB drive, however, uses pressurized helium to help it cram two more disks into the drive, while still relying on widely used perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology.

That isn’t the case for the next drive in HGST’s arsenal. The 10TB drive, now being “sampled” to select customers, is based on “shingled magnetic recording” (SMR)—a technology that partially overlaps data tracks like roof shingles.

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Reddit took down the subreddit created to trade links to stolen nude photos of celebrities, but only after the traffic had crested. reddit.

After temporarily linking to recently leaked celebrity nude photos, reddit collected enough money in subscriptions to cover its server costs for nearly a month. The revelation comes via John Menese, a mod who ran the subreddit in question (r/TheFappening) and spoke with Wired about the experience.

reddit doesn't disclose its server costs as a matter of course, and the company did not respond to a request for comment. Instead, the revenue calculation is based on an October 2013 post from CEO Yishan Wong stating that one month of a reddit gold subscription priced at $3.99 covers 4.6 hours of use for one server. Each subreddit displays how much server time is paid for by its reddit gold members, and Menese told Wired that r/TheFappening earned 27 days' worth of server time before the forum was banned. (For the back of napkin math, 27 days multiplied by 24 hours is a total of 648 hours. Dividing 648 hours by 4.6 equals 140.9. And 140.9 subscriptions at $3.99 a piece would be $562 earned per server. reddit presumably has quite a few servers, and this take doesn't include what the site would have also made from display and self-serve ads.)

The celeb photos originally surfaced on 4chan around August 31, reportedly obtained through a brute-force attack on iCloud account logins. The photos were hosted on various sites across the Internet, and r/TheFappening sprang up as a clearinghouse for links to the stolen photos. The subreddit was shut down on September 6, nearly a week after the photos originally started circulating.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Megan Geuss

Battery life is just one of the many question marks surrounding the Apple Watch announcements yesterday, but early reports indicate that it's not going to be much better than what's already available. Re/code reports that the watch currently lasts "about a day." While Apple is reportedly working to improve that figure before the watch launches in 2015, buyers should expect to charge the watch every night along with their iPhones.

The "hands-on" sessions available to most media representatives were decidedly hands-off, but we're also hearing more details from journalists who were given individual sessions after the show. Yahoo's David Pogue reports that the watch will be "water-resistant," enough to be worn in the rain or sweated on but not enough to be thrown in a bathtub. A built-in microphone and speaker will let you make phone calls, and you'll apparently load applications on the watch through your iPhone, not the watch itself. Finally, a "ping my phone" feature on the watch will make your iPhone ring out to help you find it, and the gold Apple Watch Edition will have a jewelry box case that doubles as its charger.

None of these extra features are completely new to smartwatches; Android Wear and Samsung Gear watches have covered this ground before. Still, given the dearth of detailed information about the hardware and software of the Apple Watch, any details are welcome at this point.

Read on Ars Technica | Comments

Today Apple announced a price cut for iCloud storage and a new 1TB tier for power users. Still, the price drops were not as dramatic as some might have hoped, and Apple remains undercut by rivals like Google and Dropbox.

Apple gave details about its price cuts back at its developer conference in June, but today those prices included two higher-tiered plans for people who want 500GB and 1TB of storage on the company's servers. On its website, Apple says that users of iCloud drive will continue to get 5GB for free, and pricing starts at 20GB for $0.99 per month, 200GB for $3.99 per month, 500 GB at $9.99 per month, and 1TB for $19.99 per month. (Tiers were originally priced at $20 a year for 10GB, $40 a year for 20GB, and $100 a year for 50GB). Critics of Apple's earlier, more limited cloud storage service had long pushed for an updated storage pricing scheme as Dropbox, Google, and Microsoft have been competing in a race to the bottom when it comes to cloud storage rates.

The changes come ahead of the launch of iCloud drive, which will allow users of Yosemite or iOS 8 to view and edit files uploaded to Apple's servers in a Finder window. iCloud drive will also permit the sharing of files, much like Dropbox and Google Drive. In iOS 8, photos will automatically be backed up to iCloud so that all photos are available on all devices.

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

At BattleForTheNet, protest organizers make it clear that Comcast is on the opposing team. BattleForTheNet

Today is the "Internet Slowdown," a protest of the Federal Communications Commission's proposed net neutrality rules that would allow Internet service providers to charge Web services for priority access to consumers. Organized by advocacy groups such as Fight For the Future and supported by big tech companies, the SlowDown has websites altering their home pages to show users what the Web could look like if it was divided into "fast lanes" for companies who pay ISP fees and "slow lanes" for everyone else. Visitors are urged to visit the protest website and sign a letter to Congress, the FCC, and the White House.

Naturally, cable companies got in on the action, trying to convince Internet users that they're really the ones on the side of good. Let's take a look at how the Internet Slowdown has played out so far.

Read on Ars Technica | Comments

Today, Intel showed off a reference design codenamed Llama Mountain, which is an incredibly thin tablet running Intel's Core M 5Y70. While we've covered Core M previously it's worth going over again for those unfamiliar with this chip. For reference, it's the first shipping implementation of Broadwell and designed to target a 4.5W TDP. This means that it's fully possible to integrate a full Windows PC into a thin, fanless formfactor. We've already seen the announcement of the ThinkPad Helix 2 with Core M, so it's clear that this new chip can support such formfactors.

One of the biggest surprises for me was how much smaller the PCB was in Llama Mountain. For reference, the photo above is from our Surface Pro teardown. The PCB takes up almost the entirety of the tablet, and there's a great deal of extra thickness from the fans in the device. I managed to get a photo of the entire Llama Mountain board below. The second green PCB contains the storage (a SanDisk iSSD solution) and a WiFi chip (Intel 7260AC).

The resulting tablet is incredibly light at 684 grams. For reference, the iPad Air is 469 grams. Of course, the real question is whether the extra ~200 grams is worth it. To get an idea of whether or not it is, Intel showed the performance of Llama Mountain in Sunspider 1.0.2 and 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited. I've put the results into the graphs below.

Needless to say, the Core M 5Y70 is the fastest tablet that we have test results for. The Surface Pro line has 15W TDP parts, while Core M operates in a 4.5W TDP. However, for this reference design Intel is leveraging the large amount of surface area to drive a 6W TDP. Despite this, it seems that it manages to equal or better the Surface Pro line in performance. Intel also emphasized that only an aluminum back cover would be needed to dissipate the heat to keep costs down. In fact, there were versions of Llama Mountain with copper and gold-plated back covers, but had no noticeable effect in performance. I'm definitely looking forward to future tablets and 2-in-1 devices launching with this chip, as this could enable laptop levels of performance in a tablet formfactor without the compromise we see now.

A Core M CPU package based on the Broadwell architecture. Intel

Intel's Broadwell CPU architecture has only just started rolling out, and most of the processors that use it aren't even supposed to launch until early next year. The new 14nm manufacturing process is causing the delay, but yesterday at the Intel Developer Forum the company tried to demonstrate that Broadwell's lateness wouldn't affect the rest of its roadmap.

To that end, Intel highlighted a couple of working developer systems based on the new "Skylake" architecture, as summarized here by Anandtech. The company didn't go into specific performance or power consumption numbers (both because it's early and because Intel probably doesn't want to take the wind out of Broadwell's sails), but it showed working silicon rendering 3D games and playing back 4K video to prove that the chips are working. The first Skylake processors are reportedly due out late in 2015 following the beginning of volume production in the second half of the year.

Here are the basic facts we already know about Skylake: it's a "tock" on Intel's roadmap, meaning it introduces a new architecture on a manufacturing process that's already up and running. In this case, that's Intel's 14nm process, which Intel insists has recovered from its early problems. Some of the CPUs in Intel's lineup—specifically mid-to-low-end socketed desktop CPUs—will get their next refresh using Skylake instead of Broadwell. Whether this is because Intel wants to reserve 14nm manufacturing capacity for lower-power, higher-margin chips or because it just doesn't think the power-consumption-obsessed Broadwell is a good fit for regular desktops is anyone's guess.

Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

INFERNOS project

Maxwell's demon is one of the most famous thought experiments in physics. In its traditional formulation, a demon sits next to a small hatch that separates two chambers. It observes the velocity of any gas molecules heading toward the hatch from one room and only opens the hatch when the velocity exceeds a certain value. Over time, the demon will raise the temperature of one room while cooling the second—something we know is thermodynamically impossible.

Over time, the demon's domain has been expanded, as researchers realized the same issue applied to a variety of other problems. One reformulation came from physicist Leo Szilard, who noted you can have a demon-based engine. Now, 90 years later, researchers have built a Szilard engine that operates using a single electron. In the process, the researchers confirm that setting the digital bit of information describing the engine's state has an energetic cost.

In its original formulation, the Szilard engine was a chamber with pistons at either end and a single gas molecule in the middle. Slide a divider down in the middle, and the gas molecule will wind up on one side or the other. This will push one of the pistons out, providing the potential for doing some work for "free" without the input of energy. (This being a thought experiment, the pistons are assumed to move without friction.) You can then remove the divider, let the chamber re-equilibrate, and do it all over again.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments