An edition of El Pais that pre-dates Google News. lacuadratura

Spain passed a new Intellectual Property Law yesterday, which includes a provision to levy fees on search engines that show snippets of other webpages. It's at least the third instance of a European government seeking to impose a fee on search techniques to support their traditional publishing industry. Such efforts are often labeled a "Google tax."

"We are disappointed with the new law because we believe that services like Google News help publishers bring traffic to their sites," Google told The Hollywood Reporter in a statement.  "As far as the future is concerned, we will continue working with the Spanish publishers to help increase their revenues while we evaluate our options within the framework of the new legislation."

The Spanish law allows for sanctions of up to $758,000 for those who violate the law. The penalty applies to anyone who "links to pirated content," according to THR, and in the Spanish view, that apparently includes Google News snippets.

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A Virginia Circuit Court judge ruled on Thursday that a person does not need to provide a passcode to unlock their phone for the police. The court also ruled that demanding a suspect to provide a fingerprint to unlock a phone would be constitutional.

The ruling calls into question the privacy of some iPhone 5S, 6, and 6 Plus users who have models equipped with TouchID, the fingerprint sensor that allows the user—and ideally only the user—to unlock the phone. It is possible for users to turn TouchID unlocking off and simply use a passcode, and Apple has provided certain extra protections to prevent TouchID privacy issues—requiring the entry of a passcode if the phone hasn't been used in 48 hours, for example. But if a suspect simply uses TouchID to open their phone, police could have a window to take advantage of that when apprehending them.

The case in question this week involved a man named David Baust, who was charged in February with trying to strangle his girlfriend. The Virginian Pilot reports that Baust's phone might contain video of the conflict but that his phone was locked with a passcode. Baust's attorney argued that passcodes are protected by the Fifth Amendment.

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Few things are scarier than 4Chan. But our readers told a few stories that spooked us. Paul van der Werf

Earlier this week, we asked readers to share their most frightening tales of technology terror and support horror. And via both comments and Twitter (using the hashtag #ITTalesofTerror), in poured stories that raised goosebumps from those of us who have worked in IT at one point or another.

After reading through them, we’ve picked out some reader favorites and a few of our own. Some of us at Ars were inspired to recount further tales of horror from our own IT careers—including one of mine that I’ve saved for last; it should cause a shudder of recognition from our more veteran readers and a bit of schadenfreude from those too young to remember five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks.

The chamber of horrors Danger: Intel inside. Cohesion

Many readers had short tales of terror about mishaps in the closed spaces where we hide our network infrastructure. Eli Jacobowitz (@creepdr on Twitter) shared a short, shocking scenario by tweet: “Raccoons in the network closet (not kidding).” David Mohundro shared another story of a somewhat more smelly infrastructure invasion that brings new meaning to “data scrubbing”: “I saw our IT guys lugging shop vacs through the lower parking deck one day. There was a sewage backup into the server room.”

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Mac users tired of their neglected four-year-old version of Outlook can heave a sigh of relief this morning, as Microsoft has released a new version of Outlook. Dubbed simply "Outlook for Mac," the upgraded release includes several standout features from the PC version of Outlook that Mac users have been forced to go without—and, unfortunately, it also brings with it a few features that Mac users probably wish would stay on the PC.

It's my inbox! As with many other companies, complaining about T&E and reimbursements is a popular topic at Ars.

There’s a caveat, though: the new version of Outlook for Mac can only be used if you have certain Office 365 subscriptions. This holds with Microsoft’s new policy of "prioritiz[ing] mobile first and cloud first scenarios," and it means that at least for now, users who don’t pay for monthly Office 365 subscriptions and prefer to buy "perpetual" licensed versions (in other words, users who prefer to buy Office the traditional way) will have to wait at least until the first half of 2015 to get their hands on the new version of Outlook. At least for now, it’s subscription-only. More confusing, not all subscriptions are eligible (more on that in a minute). Additionally, MSDN subscribers do not appear to be able to download the application through the MSDN software library (I have an MSDN subscription, and the new Mac Office is definitely not in my download library).

If you are a O365 subscriber and have the right licensing, you should be able to download the new version of Outlook immediately. Probably the most significant feature added in the new version is true push support for receiving Exchange e-mail. Office 2011 users have had to go without the instant e-mail delivery that Windows Office users have always enjoyed. Finally, the updated Outlook lets you receive e-mail immediately rather than making you wait anywhere between ten and sixty seconds for e-mail to show up in your inbox.

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Hidden services running on the Tor network got major support on Friday when Facebook began offering Tor users a way to connect to its services and not run afoul of the social network’s algorithms for detecting fraudulent usage of accounts.

On Friday, the company added a hidden service address with a .onion top-level domain, facebookcorewwwi.onion [updated to fix address], which allows Tor users to protect their data and identity all the way to Facebook’s datacenters. Hidden services accessed through the Tor network allow both the Web user and website to remain anonymous.

“Facebook’s onion address provides a way to access Facebook through Tor without losing the cryptographic protections provided by the Tor cloud,” Alec Muffett, a software engineer with Facebook’s security infrastructure group, said in a blog post. “It provides end-to-end communication, from your browser directly into a Facebook datacenter.”

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If you want to buy a PC with Windows 7 Home Basic, Home Premium, or Ultimate preinstalled, you'd better buy it today. As noted earlier this year, October 31 is Microsoft's cut-off date for OEM preinstalls of the consumer editions of Windows 7.

In truth, most major OEMs had all but ceased selling systems with these operating systems long ago. With Windows 8.1 available to OEMs at no cost in the form of its "with Bing" edition, Windows 7 becomes an expensive option.

Windows 7 Professional is still available as a preinstall for at least another year. There's no end date actually specified yet, but Microsoft says that it will give at least one year of notice before sales cease.

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Yesterday MSI announced their latest notebook addition, the GT80 Titan. I'm a bit unsure what to think of the notebook, but it's obviously unique in that it offers a SteelSeries keyboard with Cherry MX Brown switches. It also has a tweaked keyboard/palm rest area, somewhat reminiscent of the Acer R7 in that the keyboard is at the front…only now you have to throw in shades of Razer's Switchblade touchpad/UI as there's apparently a configurable touchpad/screen on the right of the keyboard.

I get the idea of doing a notebook with a mechanical keyboard, though obviously that will result in a thicker chassis. I'm not so sure about shifting the keyboard forward and turning the 10-key into a touchpad and getting rid of the palm rest. For actual gaming, most users will still use a dedicated mouse, but I for one like having a place to rest my palms when gaming (or just staring at the screen trying to think of what to type next), and with a notebook that will likely be a couple inches thick that's a bit of a problem.

As far as the remaining specifications go, MSI is not officially announcing the supported CPUs or GPUs, and the GT80 Titan isn't actually available for purchase yet. My bet is the GT80 Titan will support at least the GTX 980M, and given it's an 18-inch chassis it could very well include support for SLI 980M. Given the name, it's also possible the GT80 will support desktop components (e.g. GTX Titan GPUs), but that's less likely; a desktop CPU on the other hand is certainly a possibility. Hopefully the screen and other elements can keep pace with the high-end mechanical keyboard. You can follow MSI from the GT80 Titan's page to receive updates if you're interested in hearing more.

Today Samsung announced two new smartphones that fit into their portfolio of mid-range devices. They are the Galaxy A3 and A5. Normally there's not a lot to get excited about when it comes to the launch of mid-range phones, but there's something very unique about these two new phones from Samsung. Samsung has long been criticized for their primarily plastic construction on their phones and tablets. This was improved with the designs of the Galaxy Alpha and the Note 4 which sported a metal band that went around the edges of the device. The Galaxy A3 and A5 take this even further with full metal unibody designs, much like what HTC has been doing for quite some time now. Before getting into the design, I've laid out the specifications that Samsung has revealed in a chart below. Some of their listed specs like the CPU are unfortunately very vague.

  Galaxy A5 Galaxy A3 SoC 1.2GHz Quad Core 1.2GHz Quad Core RAM/NAND 2 GB RAM, 16GB NAND + MicroSDHC 1GB RAM, 16GB NAND + MicroSDHC Display 5.0" HD Super AMOLED 4.5” qHD Super AMOLED Network 2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Category 4) 2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Category 4) Dimensions 139.3 x 69.7 x 6.7mm, 123g 130.1 x 65.5 x 6.9mm, 110.3g Camera 13MP Rear Camera, 5MP Front Camera 8MP Rear Camera, 5MP Front Camera Battery 2300 mAh 1900 mAh OS Android 4.4 KitKat Android 4.4 KitKat Connectivity 802.11a/b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, NFC 802.11b/g/n/ac + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, DLNA, NFC SIM Size NanoSIM NanoSIM

As you can see, there's nothing too extraordinary with regards to the specifications. There's really no concrete way to determine if they use something like a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 part, or one of Samsung's own Exynos SoCs. Samsung has also not specified the exact resolution for the Galaxy A5, but based on its position in their lineup, and their past distinction between HD and Full HD Super AMOLED displays, it would make sense that the Galaxy A5 has a resolution of 1280x720. For connectivity both devices omit 802.11ac support, which is not surprising for devices in this segment of the market. Samsung is advertising their support for Cat4 LTE and Bluetooth 4.0.

The appeal of these phones is the design and materials. Both devices look similar to the Galaxy Alpha, with chamfered edges, flat sides, and a textured bezel surrounding the display. They both come in five colors, Champagne Gold, Light Blue, Pearl White, Midnight Black, Platinum Silver, and Soft Pink. Despite being budget devices, both the Galaxy A3 and A5 sport a metal unibody construction which is a major shift in Samsung's design for smartphones, and a shift that I never expected to see first made in Samsung's mid-range smartphones. It will definitely be interesting to see how this is extended to future flagship smartphones from Samsung.

Samsung hasn't stated the expected price for the Galaxy A3 and A5, and have only stated that it will be coming to select markets including China in November of this year. 

Source: Samsung via Android Police

The Wall Street Journal reports that Andy Rubin, the founder and former head of Android, is leaving Google. The report states that Rubin will be starting "an incubator for hardware startups."

The move shouldn't affect Android. Rubin left the mobile division in March of 2013, handing the reins over to Sundar Pichai. Pichai has turned into Larry Page's right-hand man and now controls just about every Google product.

For the last year and a half, Rubin has been running Google's mysterious robotics division. We've seen the company gobble up several high-profile robotics companies, including Boston Dynamics and SCHAFT, the winner of the DARPA Robotics Challenge. With Rubin out, James Kuffner will take over the division.

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Nearly a million websites running the popular Drupal content management system had only hours to update their software before attacks likely compromised the systems, thanks to a widespread vulnerability, the Drupal security team warned this week.

On October 15, the security team for the Drupal content management system announced the discovery of a critical security flaw that could allow attackers to steal data or compromise vulnerable sites. Within seven hours of the announcement, attackers had begun broadly scanning for and attacking Drupal sites, according to the project’s security team, which provided the details in an October 29 public service announcement.

“Systematic attacks were launched against a wide variety of Drupal websites in an attempt to exploit this vulnerability,” the group stated in its update. “If you did not update your site within < 7 hours of the bug being announced, we consider it likely your site was already compromised.”

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Oscar Swartz

After being convicted of “hacking and gross damage,” Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, better known by his nom de hacker "anakata," was sentenced (Google Translate) to 3.5 years in prison by a Danish court on Friday.

One day earlier, the Pirate Bay co-founder was found guilty of illegally accessing the country’s driver’s license database (Google Translate), social security database, and the shared IT system across the Schengen zone, Europe's common passport regions. Using this access, he obtained the e-mail accounts and passwords of 10,000 police officers and tax officials. All of that data was managed by CSC, a large American IT contractor.

Svartholm Warg's accomplice, who was only named in court documents as “T2” in accordance with Danish anonymity law, was sentenced to six months. T2, the court said, was only involved in hacking attempts that took place on February 13 and 14, 2012; Svartholm Warg continued his activities until the end of August 2012.

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Update: When this story was first posted, there was an error with the axis scale/bar size on the above graph that made the PS4's sales look smaller than they are. Ars regrets the error.

Last week, we waded into the somewhat murky waters of console sales number reporting. Our estimate was that Sony had at least 59 percent of the market share in the battle between the PS4 and Xbox One. Since then, newly released numbers, plus a new look at some assumptions about the Xbox One market, have us revising Sony's share of that market upward. We now think it's in the 65 to 67 percent range.

The revised numbers come in part from Sony's quarterly report, which shows that an impressive 13.5 million PlayStation 4 systems have been shipped in the period from the system's launch late last year through September. That's up substantially from 10 million systems sold to consumers through mid-August, suggesting that PS4 sales have picked up considerably during September. Perhaps the the high-profile release of Destiny and its PlayStation-exclusive content has something to do with that.

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Over the last couple of years, mini-PCs in the ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) have emerged as one of the bright spots in the troubled PC market. Zotac is no stranger to this segment. In fact, their nano xs units came to the market before the Intel NUC, even though the NUC is credited with kickstarting the UCFF trend. Starting with Ivy Bridge, Intel also began to experiment with Y series CPUs to bring the Core family to the fanless tablet market. Unfortunately, the impact of these SKUs in the tablet market has been minimal. However, Zotac has repurposed the Y series CPUs for the 'ZBOX C Passive Cooling Series' of mini-PCs. The ZBOX CI540 nano, equipped with a Core i5-4210Y, is currently the most powerful unit in the lineup. Read on to identify what Intel's Y series brings to the table for the mini-PC market.

While there were a variety of rumors that Microsoft would soon ship a wearable device of some kind, the actual announcement and release—with mere hours between them—was a bit of a surprise. It was so uncharacteristically un-Microsoft. Not only did the company manage to keep most of the information under wraps until a few hours before the planned public reveal, but it also managed a real launch of real hardware. Not "you can buy it in a few months" or "pre-orders open next week." Instead, we got "you can toddle along to the Microsoft store and pick it up as soon as the doors open."

All this, and a product that's the company's first entrant into a new market, too.

In the box.

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I had a Band delivered a few hours ago (thanks Jeff!) and have had a bit of an opportunity to play with it. The Band is a neatly packaged but rather chunky wristband. There are three sizes of Band available to accommodate different wrist sizes. Fine-tuning of the design is done with the clasp mechanism. The clasp can stick anywhere along a long groove offering perhaps a little over an inch of size adjustment.

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Sure, you can read all the words that follow (and you should!), but first, come with us on a whirlwind video tour of Turn 10 Studios. (video link)

REDMOND, WA—In a relatively anonymous office park about 30 minutes from downtown Seattle, one headquarters clearly stands out from its neighbors. There are unavoidable glimpses of automobile ephemera—Maserati, Lotus, and Mercedes flags, particularly—hanging in the windows, and the parking lot contains a significantly higher concentration of interesting cars than one would expect. It's subtle, but to the cognoscenti it signals "interesting car stuff happens here." Welcome to Turn 10.

Ars editor Sam Machkovech and I recently spent a few hours in the game studio's car-culture drenched halls to learn more about how the fine folks at Turn 10 turn out the various entries in the Forza franchise. If the outside features hint to the workings within, the reception area shouts this office's purpose. That metallic burnt orange McLaren P1 hanging out next to the front desk? It was a version of the car that played cover star for Forza Motorsport 5, although the one serving as gate guard here was, sadly, an undrivable shell and not a full-on, 900 horsepower hybrid hypercar. Despite that fact, it still cost more than $300,000! That carbon fiber bodywork didn't come cheap, it turns out.

Sam Machkovech

Quite a few racing drivers have sat there, helping to tune Forza.

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Sam and I were issued visitor passes, and our host for the day, Turn 10 Content Director John Wendl, led us past the studio’s assorted trophies and into his world. There were fewer racing cockpits in the office than you might expect. A three-screen Xbox One setup took pride of place in the center of the office, complete with the rather good Thrustmaster TX racing wheel we reviewed recently. Sitting forlornly under the stairs was an older, three-screen cockpit that appeared to have the ability to tilt the seat around. This veteran of many a trade show was now gathering dust, obsolete with the move from the Xbox 360 (and Forza Motorsport 4) to the Xbox One.

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A breeder in China's Chendgu province was trying to give these two baby pandas medicine instead of their usual bamboo leaves- and they were having none of it.

The flagship ASUS gaming motherboards are designed to offer the best ASUS’ R&D have to offer and are often the lynchpin in a number of enthusiast builds.  These feature a number of components and software elements that the channel motherboard range does not have, such as GameFirst, SupremeFX or Sonic Radar. ASUS has brought some of these features down their ROG product line to the Maximus VII Gene, Hero and Ranger for more budget oriented builds, however when it comes to pairing a $70 CPU like the overclockable Pentium G3258 with an ROG board, the ROG board might still be 2-2.5x the cost. As a result, ASUS is today announcing a semi-ROG board combining elements from the channel range and the ROG range in order to offer something more cost effective for budget users interested in a bit of overclocking and gaming.  This is the Z97-Pro Gamer.

The Z97-Pro Gamer is almost a cut down version of the Z97-Pro, but with ROG gaming features added. From the channel side of the equation we have M.2 x2 and SATA Express support along with ASMedia controllers for extra USB 3.0 ports and PCIe to PCI connectors. From ROG it borrows some of the aesthetic qualities (red/black heatsinks), SupremeFX audio, ROG oriented DIGI+ control of the power delivery, extended BIOS options and the ROG software package.

The PCIe layout focuses on an x8/x8 split for SLI and Crossfire, with a final PCIe 2.0 x4 from the chipset for additional cards rather than an x8/x4/x4 split overall for tri-AMD gaming which might not scale appropriately with a Pentium CPU. The USB and Ethernet ports are protected individually against electrostatic discharge, with that Ethernet port being an Intel (I218-V I would assume) to be used alongside the GameFirst II packet prioritization software.  The SupremeFX audio hides an ALC1150 codec with PCB separation, EM shields and auto-detecting headphone amplifiers.

As this announcement was made via the ROG website, the North American official announcement might not be far away. At the point in time where the board is officially released, we should learn more about pricing and availability.

Source: ROG

Gallery: ASUS Announces Z97 Pro Gamer: Semi-ROG for Pentium-AE Gaming

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler speaking to the cable industry in April 2014. NCTA

The head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is reportedly close to proposing a "hybrid approach" to network neutrality in which Internet service providers would be partially reclassified as common carriers, letting the commission take a harder stance against Internet fast lane deals.

However, the proposal would not completely outlaw deals in which Web services pay for faster access to consumers.

As reported Thursday by The Wall Street Journal, the broadband service that ISPs offer to consumers would be maintained as a lightly regulated information service. But the FCC would reclassify the service that ISPs offer at the other end of the network to content providers who deliver data over Internet providers' pipes. This would be a common carrier service subject to utility-style regulation under Title II of the Communications Act.

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A look around a new lab at Pirbright Institute in Surrey, where the world’s most contagious livestock viruses will be kept.

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (center) could be barred from entering Denmark at his sentencing hearing on Friday. Nicolas Vigier

One of the co-founders of the notorious Pirate Bay website was convicted (Google Translate) Thursday in a major hacking case in Denmark, and could face up to six years in prison.

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, better known by his nom de hacker "anakata," was found guilty of "hacking and gross damage" after being accused of illegally accessing the country’s driver’s license database (Google Translate), social security database, the shared IT system across the Schengen zone, and the e-mail accounts and passwords of 10,000 police officers and tax officials. All of that data was managed by CSC, a large American IT contractor.

Under Danish law, even after conviction, the defendants are only officially known by anonymous monikers: Svartholm Warg was dubbed "T1," while his still-unnamed 21-year-old Danish co-defendant was named "T2."

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