The F-35 program and the F-22 before it, coupled with budget sequestration, have put the Air Force into a strategic tailspin. US Navy

Yesterday, US Air Force leadership released a document called “America’s Air Force: A Call to the Future,” a 30-year plan focused on “strategic agility” according to its authors. Created by the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force and advisors to the Air Force Chief of Staff, the strategy document calls for the Air Force to focus on the ability to quickly adapt to the changing world by using incremental, agile weapons system development instead of budget-busting major programs that aim for giant leaps in capability.

That doesn’t mean that the Air Force is abandoning its present path right away. The more than $1 trillion acquisition of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter—the most expensive fighter aircraft development program in history—continues unabated. But the Air Force, which slashed the size of its force and much of its capability to fund the F-35 and the F-22 Raptor, is now realizing that it has run hard up against a fundamental law of defense procurement: Augustine’s sixteenth law.

The Ferengi rules of defense acquisition

In 1983, Norman Augustine, former CEO and president of Lockheed Martin, published a book through the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics entitled Augustine’s Laws. The “laws” in the book were a collection of observations and aphorisms about business in general with insights on aerospace and the defense industry in particular. Many were tongue-in-cheek jabs (Law XI states, “If the Earth could be made to rotate twice as fast, managers would get twice as much done…If the Earth could be made to rotate 20 times as fast, everyone else would get twice as much done since all the managers would fly off”).

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The Qi-compatible Nexus 5 on the Nexus Wireless Charger. New chargers will be able to increase the space between the device and the pad. Andrew Cunningham

The Wireless Power Consortium's Qi wireless charging standard is wireless in that the phone is not physically plugged into anything, but it still requires your device and the wireless charging pad to be touching each other to work. Today, the WPC announced (PDF) that version 1.2 of the Qi standard will add support for resonant charging, making it possible for your phone to be charged when near a Qi pad rather than directly on top of it.

A small image showing Qi 1.2 in action. WPC

It's a minor enough change that current Qi 1.1 receivers will be able to take advantage of it with no extra hardware, but it opens up a few different possibilities for companies that want to build Qi support into their products. The WPC says that Qi chargers can now be embedded within tables and desks rather than placed on the surface, making them less obtrusive. "New low power transmitter designs" will make it easier to build Qi chargers into cars, and a single Qi 1.2 transmitter will be able to charge multiple Qi devices simultaneously. Qi can also now supply up to 2,000 watts of power to household appliances (the release specifically mentions "kitchen applications").

Current Qi devices will be able to draw power from these new transmitters at distances of up to 30 mm (around 1.2 inches), while devices with purpose-build Qi 1.2 receivers increase the distance to 45 mm (about 1.8 inches). Engadget reports that the resonant version of Qi is roughly 70 to 80 percent efficient, while the old inductive version is around 85 percent efficient, and Qi 1.1 and 1.2 transmitters and receivers will be able to interoperate, so inductive charging pads like the Nexus Wireless Charger will still be able to charge Qi 1.2 phones. Just know that resonant charging will require a Qi 1.2 transmitter.

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Shondo, the reality series' MMA fighter, adds a lot of excitement and energy to a medieval-obsessed show whose lore and fictional world don't always keep up. ABC

The Quest, ABC’s latest reality TV series, debuts on Thursday with a shameless plea to lovers of fantasy and other self-identifying geeks. The show asks its 12 contestants to fake like medieval knights—which they do thanks to activities like living in a castle, wielding spears, bowing to a queen, and meeting creepy witches in the woods.

But for the producers who dumped real people into a Tolkien-obsessed world, that’s not enough. These “paladins” apparently all have a greater purpose beyond a cash prize or D-list celebrity status. Contestants don’t take long to reveal the massive chips on their shoulders, many of them recalling a younger life when they didn’t fit in, when they wore headgear and giant glasses, or when they hid with books or video games.

So only now, wearing leather armor and clutching the broken shards of the ancient “Sunspear,” do they see a path to confidence and redemption. The quotes come flowing while the dozen players take their first steps toward the show’s world of Everrealm: “It was my fate to embark on this journey,” one says, while another goes a little further: “I want to show the little kid I used to be, who was so shy and so quiet, that he doesn’t always have to be that way.”

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NFL

The surveillance society, it seems, is broadening at NFL stadiums.

Facial-recognition technology already tracks fans at some venues. But now, with its upcoming season just around the corner, the NFL is installing radio frequency identification (RFID) chips in players' shoulder pads to track all of their on-field movements in real time.

The NFL announced Thursday that it is partnering with Zebra Technologies, the company that already supplies RFID chips for applications from "automotive assembly lines to dairy cows' milk production." For the football nerd, it's a bonanza of sorts, possibly changing fantasy football and morning-after box scores forever. Zebra said the technology, known as "Next Gen Stats," will track player acceleration rates, top speed, length of runs, and even how much separation a ball carrier got from a defender. It's not just a Pandora's box of stats for fans and broadcasters, as coaches can immediately employ the data to decide what plays to run or how to defend them.

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Sprint isn't the only company trying to buy T-Mobile US.

Iliad, a telecom in France, "has made an offer for T-Mobile US in a bold bid to counter an offer for the country's fourth-largest wireless carrier by Sprint," The Wall Street Journal reported today. But it may be too late. While Sprint and T-Mobile haven't announced a merger, the two companies "have agreed on the broad outlines of a deal valuing T-Mobile US at more than $30 billion," the report stated.

The CEO of Sprint owner SoftBank, Masayoshi Son, has argued that Sprint needs more scale to compete against AT&T and Verizon Wireless and has vowed a "massive price war" if regulators let Sprint and T-Mobile merge. T-Mobile US CEO John Legere has spoken favorably of "consolidation" and is reportedly likely to be CEO of a combined Sprint/T-Mobile.

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The screen of the Oculus Rift DK2. iFixit

iFixit has gotten a hold of the Oculus Rift DK2, the second version of the virtual reality developer kit, which has slowly started shipping to customers. The site wasted no time in doing its traditional teardown, and what it found as Oculus' choice of display is a little surprising: it's the entire front half of a Samsung Galaxy Note 3.

Yes, you heard that right. The DK2 includes the Note 3's 1920×1080 AMOLED display, a (useless) Synaptics touchscreen controller, and even the glass display cover, complete with Samsung logo and cutouts for the sensors, earpiece, and the home button.

A previous report indicated that Samsung and Oculus had started up a mutually beneficial relationship, which would see Samsung providing display technology to Oculus and Oculus helping Samsung build a VR headset of its own. A leaked Samsung concept showed a head unit that was mostly an empty shell that the user's smartphone would slide into. The concept seems a lot more plausible now, since Oculus is basically taking a more-integrated approach of the same idea for its developer kit.

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dariorug

Apple's long-rumored content delivery network (CDN) has gone live in the US and Europe, delivering traffic directly to Comcast and other Internet service providers thanks to paid interconnection deals, Frost & Sullivan analyst Dan Rayburn reported today.

The CDN can deliver multiple terabits of data per second and will help Apple more efficiently distribute new releases of iOS and OS X.

Apple is still using Akamai and Level 3 CDN services for iTunes and app downloads, "but over time, much of that traffic will be brought over to Apple’s CDN," Rayburn wrote. "It’s too early to know how much traffic will come over and when, but Apple’s already started using their own CDN much faster than I expected. The pace of their build out and amount of money they are spending on infrastructure is incredible. Based on my calculations, Apple has already put in place multiple terabits per second of capacity and by the end of this year, will have invested well more than $100M in their CDN build out." Apple has been working on its CDN for about a year.

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The exact size and makeup of that "library of games" is going to be quite important to Now's success.

When pricing information for the closed beta of Sony's PlayStation Now streaming service leaked last month, many PS4 owners were up in arms over prices of up to $30 for 90-day rentals of games like Final Fantasy XIII-2, which sell new on disc for roughly half that price. While Sony hasn't significantly altered that ridiculous pricing scheme for today's public beta launch, the company wants customers to know that it has heard their complaints and is developing new pricing options.

"We’ve heard you loud and clear for an update on a PS Now subscription option and want to reassure you that we are working on it," PlayStation Now Senior Director Jack Buser wrote in an announcement of the service's public beta. "We think PS Now represents the next step toward the future of gaming and we’re excited to have the PlayStation Nation come along with us on the beginning of this journey."

Sony originally mentioned a subscription option for PS Now when announcing the service back in January. For now, though, streaming games are available for individual rental periods of four hours, seven days, 30 days, or 90 days. Buser also notes that users will soon "start seeing reduced pricing on some 4-hour rentals which will appear at $1.99."

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Just a few months ago, we were looking at Sony's end-of-fiscal-year financial reports and worrying about the consumer electronics giant's $10+ billion in losses over the past eight years. Today, things are looking a bit rosier, as Sony is riding strong sales of the PlayStation 4 and its associated games and services to an increase in profitability for the quarter ending in June.

The numbers for Sony's Game & Network services division tell the tale, flipping from a ¥16.4 billion (about $160 million) loss this time last year to a ¥4.3 billion (about $42 million) profit this year. Savvy industry watchers (or anyone with half a brain) will note that the PlayStation 4 launched in that time, and Sony confirms that the turnaround is "due to the contribution from sales of PS4 hardware which was launched in November 2013, as well as a significant increase in network services revenues accompanying the launch of the PS4."

Digging deeper into the numbers, we see that Sony sold 3.5 million game consoles (including both PS3 and PS4) worldwide for the quarter, up significantly from the 1.1 million PS3s it sold during the three-month period in 2013. Assuming PS3 sales didn't somehow increase well into the system's eighth year of life, that means Sony probably sold somewhere in the range of 2.5 to 3 million PS4s worldwide in the last three months. That's not far off from the sales pace Sony set earlier in the year, when it was selling roughly a million consoles a month in March.

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Saurabh R. Patil

When creators of the state-sponsored Stuxnet worm used a USB stick to infect air-gapped computers inside Iran's heavily fortified Natanz nuclear facility, trust in the ubiquitous storage medium suffered a devastating blow. Now, white-hat hackers have devised a feat even more seminal—an exploit that transforms keyboards, Web cams, and other types of USB-connected devices into highly programmable attack platforms that can't be detected by today's defenses.

Dubbed BadUSB, the hack reprograms embedded firmware to give USB devices new, covert capabilities. In a demonstration scheduled at next week's Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, a USB drive, for instance, will take on the ability to act as a keyboard that surreptitiously types malicious commands into attached computers. A different drive will similarly be reprogrammed to act as a network card that causes connected computers to connect to malicious sites impersonating Google, Facebook or other trusted destinations. The presenters will demonstrate similar hacks that work against Android phones when attached to targeted computers. They say their technique will work on Web cams, keyboards, and most other types of USB-enabled devices.

"Please don't do anything evil"

"If you put anything into your USB [slot], it extends a lot of trust," Karsten Nohl, chief scientist at Security Research Labs in Berlin, told Ars. "Whatever it is, there could always be some code running in that device that runs maliciously. Every time anybody connects a USB device to your computer, you fully trust them with your computer. It's the equivalent of [saying] 'here's my computer; I'm going to walk away for 10 minutes. Please don't do anything evil."

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FilmOn CEO Alki David shows off his company's Seattle antenna array in 2013. Like Aereo, he sought to avoid copyright problems by using an individual antenna for each user. FilmOn

After TV-over-Internet company Aereo lost its case against TV broadcasters at the Supreme Court, it quickly shut down. But a less high-profile company engaged in a similar type of video-on-demand service, FilmOn, just kept on going.

Now that decision is coming back to bite FilmOn and its eccentric owner, Alki David. FilmOn and David were slapped with a $90,000 contempt order on Friday—$10,000 for each day that it kept distributing network TV channels.

This isn't the first time FilmOn and David have tried to piggy-back on the strategy of another would-be TV-over-Internet pioneer. When an earlier company called ivi TV tried to fight in court to get Internet broadcasts defined as a "cable system," that legal argument was shot down. FilmOn surprised ivi TV's founder by pursuing that same legal strategy at the same time. But it didn't work.

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Kaveri was launched as a processor line, on desktop, back in January. At the time we were given information on three of the APUs, the A10-7850K, A10-7700K and A8-7600, and reviewed two of them, including the A8-7600 65W processor. However, at the time, AMD stated that the model we tested was to come out at a later date: that date is today, in a trio of 65W parts. The A10-7800 we are testing today is the locked down version of the A10-7850K with a slight speed reduction to hit 65W as well as a configurable TDP to 45W.

Back in January when AMD launched their first Kaveri APUs, we tested the A10-7850K and the A8-7600, with the former being at the top of the product stack featuring two Steamroller modules and 512 GCN cores with a 4.0 GHz turbo frequency. This part, along with the A10-7700K that was also released at the same time, has a nominal TDP of 95W. The interesting element in the mix was the 65W A8-7600, which AMD provided as a sample to review at the time, but was to be released ‘at a future date’. Today is that date, six months after the initial reviews.

AMD’s reason for the delay revolves around the 65W nature of the APUs but also their configurable TDP element. Rather than launch a new APU every two months, they combined all three in an effort to get out this new message that the 65W APUs can all be adjusted to fit within a 45W TDP by reducing the clock speeds.

When we examined the A8-7600 at 45W, we found that the killer application for this APU would be in the integrated graphics segment, where it offered some of the best processor graphics for power consumption on the market. The other two APUs being releases today, the A10-7800 and the A6-7400K, both aim to continue that trend above and below the A8 market.

I am currently waiting for the full specifications for these APUs from AMD, including memory support as well as core counts/frequencies of the processor graphics.

Users will note that the listed price for the A8-7600 has been reduced from the initial review by AMD in order to align the stack better for price against performance. All three new APUs will register as 65W to begin with, and the user will have to enable 45W mode in the BIOS of the motherboard. Enabling the 45W mode corresponds to an ~400-500 MHz drop of full loading frequency while still enabling a high turbo:

AMD quotes a 6-7% drop in performance in PCMark 8 and 3DMark by moving down to the 45W TDP mode, with SFF or low power systems seeing the most benefit.

The technologies that were part of the first Kaveri APU launch are also present with the 65W models, including the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA), Unified Memory for both CPU and GPU (hUMA), heterogeneous queuing of kernels (hQ), Graphics Core Next (GCN) with Mantle and AMD TrueAudio.

With the OpenCL support, AMD is keen to express their performance benefits in Adobe Photoshop CC (A10 vs i5), LibreOffice (A8 vs i3) and JPEG Decode (A6 vs Pentium). AMD also points out in its release that PowerDVD 14 is fully supporting HEVC compute via OpenCL on AMD APUs, with also AMD Fluid Motion Video in a later update.

AMD is running a promotion for the A10 series of Kaveri APUs during August through to October – purchase an A10 APU and choose from either a full copy of Thief, Sniper Elite III or Murdered Soul Suspect. This offer will be available in North America, Latin America, EMEA and Asia Pacific/Japan.

We have the A10-7800 APU in for testing, be sure to look out for that review. We have asked for an A6-7400K sample, which allows overclocking, and it will be interesting to see how the single module SKU stacks up against the Pentium CPUs we recently tested.

Gallery: AMD Officially Launches 65W/45W Kaveri APUs: The A10-7800, A8-7600 and A6-7400K

Samsung released its Q2 financial statements in South Korea on Thursday, and while the company turned a net profit to the tune of 6.25 trillion Korean won ($6.1 billion), that number represented a decline of 19.6 percent from a year earlier.

In a statement, Samsung said that the weak quarter was the result of slowing demand for smartphones and tablets, which led to increased marketing expenditures to reduce inventory. “Amid low seasonality, Smartphone demand remained flat [quarter-over-quarter] while [it] declined slightly QoQ for Tablet,” a Samsung presentation read (PDF). Samsung ships more smartphones than any other country in the world, and the company wrote that “slower demand for mobile devices also impacted Samsung’s logic chip business or System LSI.”

In addition to the slowed market growth, Samsung also said that the appreciation of Korea's currency played a part in eroding some of the company's profit. As the won strengthened, the company was able to bring back less of the revenue it made off consumers in foreign markets.

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Houston woman Meryem Ali has filed a $123-million lawsuit against both Facebook and a former friend who posted a picture of her on an "imposter" Facebook profile under her name, according to Texas Lawyer.

Photographs "that depict the true face of plaintiff" were altered with Photoshop and "attached to false, phony, naked body shots, and at least one pose where there is plaintiff in a graphic pornographic-like photo," states the complaint, which was filed on July 25 in Harris County.

"These phony photos falsely and maliciously depicted plaintiff in a clearly derogatory and false light ... as some overly bold and overly aggressive sexual person, which plaintiff in fact and truth is not," writes Ali's lawyer.

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Citizen Lab / Aurich Lawson

It was May of 2012 at a security conference in Calgary, Alberta, when professor Ron Deibert heard a former high-ranking official suggest he should be prosecuted.

This wasn't too surprising. In Deibert's world, these kinds of things occasionally get whispered through the grapevine, always second-hand. But this time he was sitting on a panel with John Adams, the former chief of the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), the National Security Agency's little-known northern ally. Afterward, he recalls, the former spy chief approached and casually remarked that there were people in government who wanted Deibert arrested—and that he was one of them.

Adams was referring to Citizen Lab, the watchdog group Deibert founded over a decade ago at the University of Toronto that's now orbited by a globe-spanning network of hackers, lawyers, and human rights advocates. From exposing the espionage ring that hacked the Dalai Lama to uncovering the commercial spyware being sold to repressive regimes, Citizen Lab has played a pioneering role in combing the Internet to illuminate covert landscapes of global surveillance and censorship. At the same time, it's also taken the role of an ambassador, connecting the Internet's various stakeholders from governments to security engineers and civil rights activists.

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Apple

Those hoping for a refreshed Apple TV box this year might need to keep on waiting, according to a new report from The Information (subscription required). Apple reportedly wants to launch new hardware with a revamped user interface that gives users access to both broadcasts and streaming content. However, the company's efforts to procure this additional content are apparently being held up by "cable companies 'dragging their heels'," the proposed merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, and other external factors.

The Information's sources say that Apple engineers are now being told to work "off of timelines that assume a launch next year," which contradicts previous rumors that said we could expect a new Apple TV in 2014. The first reports claimed that a new box would be released in the first half of 2014, which has already come and gone, and later rumors said "by Christmas."

In addition to a new interface and a deeper well of content to draw from, other rumors have suggested that Apple could position a new Apple TV box as a mini-game console or that it could serve as a hub for Apple's recently announced HomeKit initiative. While Apple continues to work behind the scenes on its next set-top box, the current Apple TV is competing against an ever-growing list of competitors, including the Roku, Amazon's Fire TV, and Google's Chromecast and upcoming Android TV operating system.

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August will soon be here, with one of the perks being a new list of games available to PlayStation Plus members. Like last month, Sony is offering up six games across the PS4, PS3, and Vita. If you’ve missed July’s games, check them out here and get them before it is too late!

PlayStation 4 Road Not Taken

For August, the first game for free is actually a brand new to the store game from developer SpryFox. This game has a release date of August 5th, and is a puzzle game where you play as a ranger travelling through a vast forest after a winter storm where you have to rescue lost children.

“From the creators of Triple Town, Road Not Taken is a rogue like puzzle game about surviving life’s surprises. You play as a ranger adventuring through a vast, unforgiving forest in the aftermath of a brutal winter storm, rescuing children who have lost their way. Randomly generated levels deliver a limitless supply of possibilities to explore and challenges to overcome. Your actions will influence not only your own story, but that of the villagers you hope to befriend and the town you call home.”

Fez

The second game for the PS4 is the puzzle platform game Fez, originally released on April 13, 2012. Indie developer Polytron Corporation created this award winning game which has an interesting 2D gameplay model in a 3D world, where rotating the aspect ratio is a key component of the challenge. Fez will also be available on the PS3 and Vita. Fez for the PS4 received a 90 Metascore and 7.2 User score on Metacritic.

“Gomez is a 2D creature living in a 2D world. Or is he? When the existence of a mysterious 3rd dimension is revealed to him, Gomez is sent out on a journey that will take him to the very end of time and space. Use your ability to navigate 3D structures from 4 distinct classic 2D perspectives. Explore a serene and beautiful open-ended world full of secrets, puzzles and hidden treasures. Unearth the mysteries of the past and discover the truth about reality and perception. Change your perspective and look at the world in a different way.”

PlayStation 3 Crysis 3

Crysis 3 is the award winning first-person shooter released by developer Crytek in February 2013. This sequel to the 2011 game Crysis 2 is set in New York City in 2047, where players take on the role of Prophet. Based on the Cryengine 3, Crysis is a stunningly beautiful game which scored a 77 Metascore and 6.1 User score on Metacritc.

“Seven Wonders of the Urban Rainforest – New York City has been contained in a giant nanodome and grown into a unique rainforest with seven distinct environments. Master the ultimate sandbox and turn it into your own personal hunting ground.

Assess, Adapt, and Attack – Crysis’s highly-acclaimed sandbox gameplay is back with more open levels to let players choose their path and approach. Your upgraded Nanosuit allows brute force or stealth, always giving you more than one option.

The Biggest and Most Explosive Arsenal in Franchise History – In addition to giving you an arsenal of human firearms, Crysis 3 lets you scavenge alien weapons and deploy an all-new Predator bow.”

Proteus

Developer Curve Studios release Proteus in January 2013. This open world exploration game (or anti-game?) is a first-person perspective game drawn in the pixel art style. Proteus got a 77 Metascore and 8.1 User score on Metacritic. Proteus will also be available to PS3 owners.

“Proteus is a game about exploration and immersion in a dream-like island world where the soundtrack to your play is created by your surroundings. The primary means of interaction is simply your presence in the world and how you observe it.”

PlayStation Vita Metrico

Also brand new to the store on August 5th is Metrico from Digital Dreams Games. This is a “atmospheric puzzle action game with a mindset of its own” which has received a lot of accolades by reviewers prior to it being released. The world looks fantastic with a great design theme.

“Metrico is a new world. A living world filled with infographics that react directly to your movement, actions and input. Metrico invites you to explore, experiment, test your skills and most of all: think outside the box.

 Immerse yourself in this experience, exclusive to PlayStation Vita system, and see if you have got what it takes!”

Dragon’s Crown

Dragon’s Crown by Vanillaware Ltd was released July 25, 2013. This 2D fantasy RPG with side scrolling action is a multiplayer experience that lets players choose from six heroes with unique strengths and weaknesses. Dragon’s Crown received a 78 Metascore and 8.9 User score on Metacritic. This game will also be available to PS3 owners.

“Dragon’s Crown is a multiplayer hack and slash beat ‘em up game with breathtaking visual style, a design built around cooperative play and epic boss fights, and the ability to discover a new adventure in every play session. Dragon’s Crown allows up to four players to team up online to clear out monster-ridden dungeons, discover precious treasure, and destroy awe-inspiring bosses.”

Final Thoughts

August looks like a fantastic month for PlayStation Plus members, with a great selection of games from puzzles to first-person shooters to hack and slash games. Also nice to see is that two of these games will be brand new and instantly available to Plus members. Six games over three systems should keep owners entertained for the month of August.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is not happy about Verizon Wireless' announcement that it will throttle 4G users with unlimited data plans. While he didn't go quite so far as to accuse Verizon of breaking FCC rules, he told the company that it needs to justify its policy.

Verizon's plan to slow down its heaviest data users when they connect to congested cell sites isn't surprising—other carriers do it too. But Verizon said it would only apply the policy to users who are no longer under contract and still have grandfathered unlimited data. In other words, the policy may help Verizon push customers onto newer, pricier plans with limited data and overage charges.

Wheeler wrote in a letter (PDF) to Verizon Wireless CEO Daniel Mead that he is "deeply troubled" by Verizon's policy.

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Virgin Mobile

Virgin Mobile has unveiled a new prepaid plan that allows its users to tailor their Internet use for specific applications for just $5 per month on top of a $7 monthly base fee that covers just 20 texts and 20 minutes of talk time. The plan will only be available at Walmart stores starting August 9.

Like many other new, non-traditional cell plans, Virgin Mobile Custom, which debuted Wednesday, requires the use of a custom version of Android that comes pre-installed on certain handsets, including the ZTE Emblem, the LG Pulse, and the LG Unify.

While this type of plan may not be appealing for data-heavy users, it could work well for parents of heavy Facebook users (read: teens), who are interested in little else online. App-specific add-ons (each for an additional $5 per month) are available for a handful of apps, including Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Pandora, and a few others. However, adding on more than a few apps puts the user far closer to Virgin’s normal unlimited text and data plan, which starts at $35 per month.

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