Earlier this month, a Quebecois court in Montreal decided that Google owed a woman $2,250 for picturing her with “part of her breast exposed” in a Street View image. The woman was sitting in front of her house, and although her face was blurred out, she was still identifiable by her coworkers, especially as her car was parked in the driveway without the license plate blurred out.

As GigaOm writes, “Maria Pia Grillo suffered shock and embarrassment when she looked up her house using Google Maps’ Street View feature in 2009 and discovered an image that shows her leaning forward and exposing cleavage.” Grillo complained to Canadian authorites and Google, but when she had no response from Google after several weeks, she wrote a letter to the company saying:

I have informed myself as to my rights concerning this situation through the office of the privacy commissionars of Canada. Under the law my lisence plate should not appear. Moreover, from a safety and security standpoint, the information shown constitutes a total violation. This puts me, my house, my vehicule and my family members that I live with at the mercy of potential predators. I feel very vulnerable knowing that the information is available to anyone with internet access. The damage has been done.

Google never responded—it later told the court that it never received the letter and could not find it in a search. Grillo filed a complaint in 2011 asking Google to blur out more of the image, including most of her body and her license plate. She also asked that Google pay her CAD $45,000 for the depression she suffered when her coworkers “at a well-known bank” found the image and mocked her for it. According to Canadian tabloid Journal de Montreal, Grillo eventually quit her job.

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Motorola

Motorola has announced that it is now officially under control of Lenovo, closing the deal that was announced at the beginning of the year.

Lenovo isn't a well-known brand when it comes to smartphones, but the company is a major player in the laptop market, where it usually ranks #1 or #2 in worldwide sales for any given quarter. Lenovo hopes to combine Motorola's brand with its distribution network and the aggressive pricing that allows it to be number one in the low-margin, highly-competitive laptop business.

Under Google, Motorola has been one of the more exciting OEMs out there. It produced the first round Andorid Wear device, the Moto 360, and great flagships like the Moto X. It made best-in-class low-end phones with the Moto G and Moto E, and now with Google it produced the Nexus 6.

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Retailers say the real culprit in poor cyber-security is those darned uncooperative credit unions. Kenneth Allen

Reeling from the bad press associated with an ongoing parade of data breaches caused by criminal infiltration of their payment systems, representatives of six retail industry associations signed a joint open letter that pushes back against a vocal critic of retailers' cyber-security practices—credit union associations.

In the letter addressed to the presidents of the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) and the National Association of Federal Credit Unions (NAFCU), retail industry representatives accused the associations of spreading “a number of misleading and factually inaccurate points… in the media and before Congress in regards to the cyber security in our country.” The industry group executives insisted that retailers already share the burden of dealing with the cost of lost data—at least to the degree that they are contractually obliged by credit card organizations. But given how much they actually do pay, the retailers may protest too much.

Unsafe at any register

The letter is a direct response to comments made in a letter to House Homeland Security Committee chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) by Carrie Hunt, the NAFCU’s senior vice president of government affairs, posted on October 28. In her letter, Hunt called out the retail industry for not carrying enough of the burden associated with the loss of customers' financial data.

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Somehow, October has already come and gone. Some of you may be wondering what to wear for All Hallows' Eve, or if you need to run out for some last minute treats. But the folks at Xbox are lining up the free games as part of Xbox Live Gold membership. November does not look to be the strongest lineup ever for the program though, with only a single game (again) on the Xbox One, and two Xbox 360 games that date back to several years ago. The Xbox One in particular needs to raise the bar with the program, especially now that the console has been out for a year and the catalog of games is actually OK. But enough complaining for now – let us see the games.

Xbox One Volgarr the Viking

For several months now, there has only been a single game made available at no cost for the Xbox One. Last month, it was Chariot, and the saving grace for that game was that it was brand new to the store, and this month it is the same. Volgarr the Viking is a 2D side scrolling action game, which harkens back to the days of Contra and the like. Crazy Viking Studios developed this game which was originally launched on the PC just over a year ago. The side scroller is unapologetically difficult, and was brought to life with the help of a kickstarter campaign. This is another of the latest round of retro looking games with an 8-bit graphical feel to it, but it does include a soundtrack from Kochun Hu. The PC version scored a 76 Metascore and 7.7 user score on metacritic, and while Xbox pricing has not been announced, the PC version is currently selling for $12.

“Volgarr the Viking, the newest ID@Xbox game, will debut on Xbox One as a free download. For Xbox One gamers, this is a journey back to the days of yore, when times were tougher, and you really only needed a couple buttons to play a game.”

Xbox 360 Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise

On Saturday, November 1st, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise will be the first Xbox 360 game available for the month. This is the sequel to the original Viva Piñata, from Microsoft Game Studios and Rare. This life simulation game was originally released in September 2008, so it is far from a new title, but it still has some appeal especially to a younger audience. It scored an 82 Metascore and 7.7 user score on metacritic, and normally sells for $14.99.

“Welcome back to Piñata Island where Prof. Pester's latest scheme has lead to disaster. Visit the scorching desert or icy wastes to trap new species. Train them, dress them, then send them to a party! We’ve new Piñatas, new activities, new features and new secrets, so come visit and find out why people never want to leave. There are no refunds for this item. For more information, see www.xbox.com/live/accounts.”

Red Faction: Guerilla

The final Xbox 360 game for the month is Red Faction: Guerilla, which will become available on November 16th. This open world third-person shooter is from developer Volition, Inc, and was originally launched on the Xbox 360 in June 2009. This is the third installment of the Red Faction series, and was released to positive reviews. Red Faction: Guerilla scored a pretty high 85 Metascore and 8.1 User Score on metacritic, and normally sells for $19.99.

“Lured by the rich veins of Martian ore, miner Alec Mason arrives on Mars hungry for a new life. But the promise of a brighter future for Mason quickly fades. The Earth Defense Force, once protectors of Martian colonists, have adopted heavy-handed checkpoints and omnipresent armed patrols. As violence escalates, an underground resistance known as the Red Faction is swiftly gathering strength to combat the EDF. Mason’s quest for a new life has become a battle for survival, and the fate of the planet now rests with him and the Red Faction. There are no refunds for this item. For more information, see”

I can’t say I am particularly thrilled with the November lineup of games. The Xbox One selection is ok as a new release, but we have had a steady stream of indie game titles with GWG on the Xbox One and it is time to see some of the launch titles become available. The Xbox 360 games have historically had the better lineup due to the larger back catalog of games, and that is the case here again, even though they went way back in the catalog. Hopefully December brings a better lineup.

Source: Major Nelson Blog

An illustration showing how Share Play works.

When Sony announced the new "Share Play" feature for PlayStation 4 owners two months ago, it was one of the most unexpected and interesting potential uses for its cloud-based gaming infrastructure that we'd heard of. The promise: a "virtual couch" that lets remote players join your games as if they were sitting right there with you. That means the ability to take part in competitive or cooperative multiplayer, even in games not designed for online play, or just the freedom to "borrow" a friend's system and screen to briefly try out a single-player title.

With the launch of the PS4's firmware version 2.00 this week, the Share Play promise has become a reality for millions of PS4 owners with PlayStation Plus. After tinkering with the new feature for the better part of an afternoon, we found Share Play on the PS4 to be far from unusable, but also far from the seamless experience of actually playing with a friend in the same room.

Setting up a Share Play session is a bit of an onerous process. First, both players have to join a chat party. Then one player has to start the Share Play session though the Party menu. The "guest" then has to connect to that Share Play session. After all that, the host has to virtually "hand a controller" to the guest through another Party screen menu, and the guest has to accept the controller.

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My gamut measurement of the Retina iMac's screen. Unfortunately, the 1931 CIE diagram produced by our measuring software is "non-uniform and obsolete."

I originally wanted to devote at least one story to a qualitative analysis of the Retina iMac’s screen, including a list of physical measurements (gamut, gamma, intensity, and anything else I could measure). However, although I measured like a crazy fiend, my hopes of a constructive analysis were dashed when my expert—Dr. Ray Soneira of DisplayMate—told me that the data gathered was mostly unusable. Primarily, it's due to my choice of instruments. Sadly, our Spyder4 Elite just wasn’t quite up to the task.

"Your Spyder measurements indicate that the Color Gamut is close but not accurate enough for video production. The most likely reason is that the Spyder is inaccurate because Apple most likely did a better job of accurately calibrating the monitor. The 1931 CIE Diagram that you use is highly non-uniform and obsolete," Soneira said.

However, he gamely took a look through the results anyway, and the e-mail conversation turned to resolution. Soneira quickly put forward a handy explanation for why Apple chose the "5K" resolution of 5120×2880 rather than one of the myriad of "standard" 4K resolutions. There are of course a lot of technical reasons to pick 5120×2880—at double the older 27-inch iMac’s resolution of 2560×1440, it makes for precisely four times as many pixels and easy scaling—but Soneira’s explanation was particularly insightful.

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Don McCullough

The French Interior Minister told French public radio (Google Translate) on Thursday that the government has begun an investigation into who has been flying drones above as many as 10 nuclear power plants nationwide this month.

"There's a judicial investigation under way," French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in an interview on France Info radio. “Measures are being taken to know what these drones are and neutralize them."

Le Monde reported this week that the drones have been variable in size, with some “a few dozen centimeters" in size, while others had a diameter of up to two meters.

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A false-color image of the virus, showing its unusual filamentous appearance. CDC

The outcome of Ebola infections often depends on a patient's access to sophisticated medical care. But there's the possibility that it could be influenced by genetics as well. That suggestion comes from the authors of a new paper that looked at what happens when genetically diverse groups of mice were exposed to the virus. As it turns out, the results ranged from losing a bit of weight to complete mortality.

The work doesn't seem to have been inspired by looking for insight into the progression of hemorrhagic fever in humans. Instead, the researchers involved appear to have been frustrated by the fact that the most convenient research mammal, the mouse, doesn't experience the symptoms typical of Ebola infections in humans: no problems with blood coagulation, no hemorrhages, and no shock. So they decided to see if they could find a mouse strain that did show these symptoms (and would thus enable convenient studies).

To do so, they started with something called the Collaborative Cross collection. Most of the mouse strains used in research have been inbred until all members of the strain are genetically identical. There are, however, differences between strains; C57 mice are genetically distinct from 129 mice. So it's possible to see very different things happen if you do the same experiment in different strains.

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More and more people are becoming familiar with the joys—and frustrations—of online dating. A recent Pew study found that 11 percent of the US public has used online dating services, and a full 38 percent of people who say they are "single and looking" have used such sites.

There's enough money to be made as an Internet matchmaker that it's apparently sparking some companies to push the boundaries of what's legal. Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission disclosed that it reached a settlement with JDI Dating Ltd., a UK company that runs 18 dating sites that it claims have over 12 million members. The sites include CupidsWand.com, FlirtCrowd.com, and FindMeLove.com. JDI will have to pay $616,165 in redress, and it must stop business practices that were said to violate both the FTC Act and a newer law that regulates recurring billing online.

JDI's dating sites would make fake profiles, which the company called "virtual cupids," and have them send computer-generated messages to new users who had created profiles but hadn't yet paid. On JDI's websites, users received an e-mail notifying them that another user sent them a "wink" within minutes of joining. Then they got additional winks, messages, and photo requests, supposedly from other members in their geographic area.

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Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock

In the fourth day of the Ars UNITE virtual conference, we took a look at how the promise of cheap virtual reality head-mounted displays from Oculus and others are already revolutionizing fields well outside of the gaming industry that gets the most attention. This morning's feature on the topic attracted a number of comments, ranging from skepticism to excitement.

"I remember the last time it was all the rage. E3 1995 IIRC," commenter Feniks noted, echoing others who remember the last time VR was the "next big thing." But our expert live chat panel agreed that things are different this time around. "For starters, the technology is more affordable today than it was back then," Virtually Better Inc.'s Dr. Marat Zanov said. "I think what happened in the 90's wasn't nearly the scale of what we're seeing now. The number of companies, from tiny startups to megacorps, that are investing in the technology at this point is unprecedented," added NASA JPL engineer Jeffrey Norris.

Other commenters said they feel the technology isn't quite there yet, with commenter DisplayNameTaken complaining about feelings of nausea, even on the Oculus DK2 with additional head-tracking hardware. "This is a technology where fine tuning the apps is what's going to sell it at this point because I can see people having a bad experiences and swearing it off for good. The first time, I was in 5 minutes and had to lay down an hour [because] my head was swimming so bad. I really want this to take off."

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Inflation—in the cosmic sense, at least—has been in the news lately. Early this year, researchers announced that they found conclusive evidence that our Universe experienced a period of rapid expansion fractions of a second after the Big Bang, an event that left its mark on the present-day Universe. Unfortunately, that result hasn't held up well under more intense scrutiny.

But it's worth understanding what all the fuss is about. Inflation is the only way we have of explaining how the Big Bang could possibly produce the Universe that we find ourselves in today. And the theory has consequences, including the implication that our Universe is not alone; other universes would pop into existence as inflation sped faster than the boundaries of our Universe expanded.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, then you'll have a great opportunity tomorrow afternoon. Alan Guth, the theoretical physicist who was instrumental in developing inflationary theory, is doing a live session in which he'll explain inflation and field questions about it.

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Nintendo

Nintendo's latest internal financial report came with a Tuesday presentation from company president Satoru Iwata, who took the opportunity to announce a new type of product being developed by the game maker: a touchless sleep sensor. (Wait, really?)

Though neither a design nor product name was announced, Iwata repeatedly described a forthcoming "Quality of Life Sensor" meant to sit next to a user's bed during sleep. Overnight, the product will visually record "movements of your body, breathing, and heartbeat," then upload resulting data to Nintendo's cloud servers so that a corresponding app can analyze your sleep and offer suggestions for better rest in the future.

"Fatigue and sleep are themes that are rather hard to visualize in more objective ways," Iwata said. "At Nintendo, we believe that if we could visualize them, there would be great potential for many people regardless of age, gender, language, or culture."

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Intel Free Press

The Internal Revenue Service asked a federal appeals court Thursday to reconsider its September ruling that allowed Electronic Arts founder William "Trip" Hawkins to avoid paying $26 million in California and federal taxes.

The IRS said that Hawkins is not qualified to enjoy the tax relief benefits from his 2006 bankruptcy. The taxing agency claims that Hawkins maintained a wealthy lifestyle ahead of his bankruptcy filing instead of satisfying his tax debt. But the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals didn't agree, and a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based court ruled 2-1.

"A mere showing of spending in excess of income is not sufficient to establish the required intent to evade tax; the government must establish that the debtor took the actions with the specific intent of evading taxes," the court said. "Indeed, if simply living beyond one’s means, or paying bills to other creditors prior to bankruptcy, were sufficient to establish a willful attempt to evade taxes, there would be few personal bankruptcies in which taxes would be dischargeable. Such a rule could create a large ripple effect throughout the bankruptcy system. As to discharge of debts, bankruptcy law must apply equally to the rich and poor alike, fulfilling the Constitution’s requirement that Congress establish 'uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States.'"

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A different RNA-based enzyme, showing how complex even short molecules can be. UCSB

Even the simplest forms of life, like bacteria, have a handedness, one that's built into the chemicals they're composed of. The complex, three-dimensional molecules that are essential to life can have the same exact set of atoms, yet be physically distinct—one the mirror image of the other. Almost all the amino acids that life uses have a single orientation; same with the sugars.

While life is very good at operating with this handedness, called chirality, nature isn't. Most chemical reactions produce a mixture of left and right forms of molecules. This seemingly creates a problem for the origin of life—if both chiral forms were available, how did life pick just one? The problem is even more severe than that. If both forms are present, then the reactions that duplicate DNA and RNA molecules don't work. And without those reactions, life won't work.

Now, researchers have found this doesn't pose much of a barrier at all. Through a little test-tube based evolution, they were able to make an RNA molecule that could copy other RNA molecules with the opposite chirality. In other words, they made a right hand that could only copy the left. But the duplicate, the left-handed form, could then readily copy the right-handed version. And as an added bonus, the new RNA molecule may be one of the most useful copying enzymes yet evolved.

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The next wave of virtual reality may be largely driven by the gaming industry, but the technology's impact is being explored and felt by many other fields as well. Join us at 1pm Eastern for a discussion of how the cheap availability of quality VR headsets is already changing the worlds of psychology and space exploration.

With us today are:

• Dr. Marat V. Zanov, director of training at Virtually Better Inc., which has used VR in the treatment of phobias and trauma for decades
• Dr. Albert "Skip" Rizzo, USC Institute for Creative Technology, who has been researching therapeutic uses for VR since the early '90s
• Victor Luo and Jeff Norris, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who are using VR to improve Martian mapping techniques and robotic remote controls

Please join us using the link below and participate by leaving comments and questions for our panelists either before or during the event.

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After a couple of months off due to a very busy fall product season, we’re finally back again with our monthly guide to video cards and video card industry recap. Since our last guide it has been a busy couple of months, so there’s quite a bit to cover.

The big news this fall has of course been the new video card launches from AMD and NVIDIA. While October has been a relatively quiet month, both companies kept September busy by pushing new products out the door and took others off the shelves.

AMD for their part released the first of their GCN 1.2 architecture GPUs: Tonga. Tonga serves as AMD’s replacement for the nearly 3 year old Tahiti GPU, the very first of AMD’s GPUs first launched in 2011. Tonga is an interesting – if still slightly mysterious – GPU, as we suspect we have not seen everything it and GCN 1.2 can offer. From a high level GCN 1.2 is a further refinement on the GCN architecture, bringing with it greatly improved Delta Color Compression for graphics buffers, a faster video decode block (H.264 L5.2 support), and a further optimized geometry frontend that better handles extreme tessellation factors. At the same time we suspect there are some compute/HSA improvements in the design that AMD has not disclosed and are being saved for the rumored Carrizo APU, Kaveri’s successor.

As for AMD’s desktop product stack, Tonga has been used so far in a single product, the Radeon R9 285. Like Tonga to Tahiti, R9 285 is designed to replace the R9 280 and similar second-tier Tahiti designs. Compared to R9 280, R9 285 is an unusual sidegrade that packs the GCN 1.2 features, a narrower 256-bit memory bus, and virtually identical performance to R9 280. Tahiti and R9 280 were in need of an update and R9 285 is a fine replacement, but if it has any weakness it’s that it hasn’t done much to push the overall performance envelope.

Meanwhile not to be left behind, NVIDIA released their own new wave of video cards powered by the Maxwell 2 architecture. The immediate successor to the Maxwell 1 architecture used in the GeForce GTX 750 series, Maxwell 2 brought NVIDIA’s previous power efficiency gains to the high-end with their new GM204 GPU, along with some new architectural features that make Maxwell 2 stand further apart from Maxwell 1. Among these is HDMI 2.0 support, HEVC hardware encoding, NVIDIA’s VXGI voxel rendering technology, and a suite of new graphics features that will be part of the Direct3D 11.3 specification.

GM204 in turn lies at the heart of the GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970, which had a significant impact on the PC video card market almost overnight. GTX 980 took the top spot as the fastest single-GPU video card, pushing aside AMD’s Radeon R9 290X and even NVIDIA’s own GTX 780 Ti while setting new marks for power efficiency (all the more impressive since this is still TSMC’s 28nm process). Meanwhile the more affordable GTX 970 retained much of GTX 980’s performance at a lower price, which had a significant spoiler effect on the market due to its strong performance – second only to GTX 980 and often tied with R9 290X – coupled with a low $330 price tag.

In fact it’s only now, over a month post-launch that NVIDIA and their partners have finally caught up with demand. For the last month GTX 900 cards have been hard (though not impossible) to come by, reflecting the impact they’ve had on the market. The AMD ecosystem for its part has cut prices in response in order to stay competitive, and while AMD is facing a technological gap they can’t completely close with the R9 290 series, they can still put up a good fight with competitive positioning.

Finally, on a software note, we’re seeing the launch of this fall’s major video games, including games that were designed around the current-generation game consoles. Though the era of AAA action games being cross-platform means that PC video cards don’t always get used to their full potential, the flip side of this is that once there’s a console generation jump, we see a significant increase in the GPU requirements as the PC video card advantage gets reset. Of particular note, games like Shadows of Mordor and Assassin’s Creed: Unity are hitting shelves with high performance requirements and VRAM-hungry assets that can eat into 4GB+ of VRAM, as consoles are now using GPUs and graphical effects in from the same generation as current PC GPUs. For gamers this means upgrades may be in order, something AMD and NVIDIA are itching to provide.

Anyhow, market summaries behind us, let’s look at individual recommendations. As always, we’ve laid out our ideas of price/performance bands and recommendations in our table below, with our full explanations and alternative options to follow. As always, in the case of the sub-$200 market it’s worth pointing out that there’s a video card for roughly every $10, so picking a good video card is as much about budgets as it is finding an especially strong card.

October 2014 GPU Performance Guide Performance Band Price Range Recommendation 1080p (Low) $99-$149 AMD Radeon R7 260X 1080p (Med) $149-$189 AMD Radeon R7 265 1080p (High) $189-$279 AMD Radeon R9 280 1440p (Med) $279-$349 AMD Radeon R9 290 1440p (High) $349 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 1440p (Max) $579+ NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 4K/Multi-Monitor (High) $560+ 2x AMD Radeon R9 290
AMD Radeon R9 295X2
2x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980

As a general recommendation for gaming, we suggest starting at $99. There are cards below this price, but the amount of performance you have to give up below $99 far outweighs the cost. Even then, performance gains will generally exceed the price increases up to $150 or so.

Meanwhile for gamers looking for high quality 1080p gaming or better, that will start at around $199. Going above that will find cards that are good for 1440p, 4K, and multi-monitor, while going below that will find cards that will require some quality sacrifices to stay at 1080p.

Finally, this guide is by its very nature weighted towards price/performance, based on the passionate feedback we've received from our readers. For these purposes we consider AMD and NVIDIA to be equal from a functionality and compatibility perspective, but it should be said that both parties have been building out their ecosystem in the past year, and this will only continue to grow as the two companies try to differentiate themselves. So if you need or want functionality beyond the core functionality a video card offers, it may be worthwhile to familiarize yourself with the NVIDIA and AMD ecosystems, including Gameworks, Eyefinity, G-Sync, Mantle, GeForce Experience, and more.

Budget (<$100): AMD Radeon R7 260X

Though always a bit of a mess due to the sheer number of cards around the $99 price point, for this month the market for budget cards is going to be pretty cut and dry. At under $100 AMD’s Radeon R9 260X is going to be the fastest option available. Based on a full-fledged version of AMD’s Bonaire GPU, the R7 260X offers a good balance between price and performance, delivering the best performance to be found for this price segment.

Now this still isn’t going to quite hit the overall performance sweet spot we outlined earlier, but for those gamers on a strict budget it will get the job done. For current games it will be able to run most of them at 1080p with medium-to-low settings. For newer cross-platform games however, we expect to see it get forced back to low quality. One piece of advice here is that if you can snag one, a 2GB card is going to have longer legs than a 1GB card. Unfortunately most sub-$100 cards are the 1GB variety, but there is usually a 2GB card or two also available at that price.

Runner Up: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750

Our second runner up here is NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 750. Most GTX 750 cards are over $100, but there is a decent selection at $99, enough to make purchasing one at this price an option. Against the R7 260X it’s still going to be several percent slower, but it has an ace up its sleeve in its sub-75W power consumption, making it more favorable in power or cooling constrained systems.

Mainstream Sweet Spot ($149): AMD Radeon R7 265

At this point in time the $149 price point is in an odd spot due to how this price point is bracketed by cards above and below it. The card you’re most likely to find at this price point is AMD’s Radeon R7 265, the company’s lowest-tier Pitcairn card. Essentially a 7850 with a higher GPU clockspeed and a revised memory bus allowing for higher memory clockspeeds, the R7 265 a capable card for the price.

From a performance standpoint the R7 265 not going to be able to play every game at 1080p at high settings, but it will be fast enough for medium-to-high depending on the game, which will be a couple of notches higher than what the $99 cards can do. Meanwhile the 2GB of VRAM will mean that future games shouldn’t bog down the card quite as badly; higher graphical fidelity games will slow it down like any other card, but there’s enough VRAM to keep up with the demands of higher resolution textures and heavier use of intermediate buffers.

Runner Up: AMD Radeon R9 270 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti

While R7 265 is AMD’s official $149 card, the more powerful R9 270 has been flirting with the $149 mark as well. There aren’t really enough cards available at this price to qualify R7 270 as a $149 card, but it can be found at that price by the smart shopper. All things considered the R7 270 is the better card at around 10% faster, and if it can be found at $149 you should take it over an R7 265.

Alternatively, we have NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 750 Ti, a card that offers below the R7 265 but with much lower power consumption. The GTX 750 Ti is a sub-75W card – no external PCIe power connector required – allowing it to work in cases and systems where the near-150W R7 265 cannot, while also offering the improved acoustics that come with lower power consumption. And at around $129 it’s going to be lighter on the wallet than R7 265, but performance standpoint it will trail by about 16%.

1080p Gaming ($189): AMD Radeon R9 280

Once we start approaching $200 we begin reaching some rather powerful cards, and in the process cross a pretty good fight for the $200 spot between AMD and NVIDIA. But at the end of the day AMD has the edge with their Radeon R9 280, the company’s second-tier Tahiti part. Officially this part is in clearance sale mode, but that has been the case for almost 2 months now with the supply still holding strong, so as long as that remains the case this is going to be the strongest card for those looking around the $200 price point.

The R9 280 should breeze through 1080p gaming, and with its 3GB of VRAM it should hold up to newer cross-platform games a bit better than some other cards. This card should even be able to hit 1440p in some scenarios, but I expect the next round of cross-platform games will keep it working hard just to stay at 1080p with high quality settings.

Runner Up: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760

The GeForce GTX 760 falls a bit short of R9 280’s performance, but should R9 280 supplies finally dry up or you’re just looking for a $200 NVIDIA card it’s still a solid choice. As NVIDIA’s second-tier GK104 card it still packs quite a punch.

1440p Power ($279): AMD Radeon R9 290

Past $200, the launch of the GTX 900 series has caused a major disruption of pricing and sweet spots. Between the $189 R9 280 and $279 R9 290 there are some cards such as the R9 285 and GTX 770, but none of them are very interesting nor make all that much sense right now. With the R9 290 at $279, your best bet after the $200 mark is to just keep on going until you reach the first of our high performance cards.

At $300 or less there’s really no choice here. To that end AMD essentially wins by default, but the real winner is gamers who are getting a good card at a great price. Based on the second-tier version of AMD’s flagship Hawaii GPU, the R9 290 packs enough performance to tackle 1440p at medium-to-high settings, and its 4GB of VRAM means that it should have no problem even with demanding cross-platform games. Alternatively, if you want to drive 120Hz without spending a fortune, the R9 290 should get you there.

The Performance Sweet Spot ($349): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970

Above the R9 290 and the biggest factor in reshaping the performance video card landscape in the last month is the cheaper of NVIDIA’s two GTX 900 series cards, the GeForce GTX 970. The GTX 970 is the reason AMD had to cut prices, and along with its sibling is arguably unmatched from a technological perspective. AMD can offer similar performance, but they can’t match NVIDIA’s power efficiency in this segment of the market. Making it possible to have a high performance card without also having the heat and noise that so often comes with it.

From a performance perspective the GTX 970 is a solid step up from the R9 290, and this is coupled with its very significant power advantage. It should have no trouble handling 1440p games on high settings, and between this level of performance, power consumption, and price it’s undoubtedly the sweet spot card for performance gamers. You can get faster cards, but not at this balance between performance and price.

The only downside here is that pricing is currently not holding to the card’s initial $330 MSRP. It’s not completely clear whether this is due to the previously limited availability, retailer’s taking advantage of demand, or board partners pushing their premium customized cards, but you have to be ready to shell out $350 to get a choice of GTX 970 cards. This does hurt GTX 970’s sweet spot designation a bit, though it’s still the strongest contender.

Runner Up: AMD Radeon R9 290X

As an alternative to the GTX 970 we have AMD’s Radeon R9 290X. At sub-4K resolutions it’s basically tied with the GTX 970 on performance, and consumes quite a bit more power in the process. But if you’re after AMD’s best card or just additional options at this price/performance level, it won’t disappoint.

Taking the Single-GPU Crown ($579): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980

For the fastest single-GPU card on the market for gamers, NVIDIA’s top tier GM204 part, GeForce GTX 980, stands alone. As is often the case for NVIDIA’s flagship cards, NVIDIA is clearly charging a premium for the card, but in return you get performance a step ahead of any other card on the market. And power consumption is second only to the lower performing GTX 970, making it perhaps the most power efficient card of them all.

Overall GTX 980 should be able to handle 1440p with maximum quality settings, including a good amount of anti-aliasing. It’s not quite up to the task of handling 4K on its own (at least not without a compromise in quality settings), but owners of 120Hz 1440p monitors will find that it has enough power to push past 60fps at 1440p in several games.

4K for Me ($560): 2x AMD Radeon R9 290

If anything, the hardest pick is finding the best choice for a true high performance, high quality 4K gaming setup. No one GPU can deliver this, so instead we’re presented with a number of options for multiple GPUs.

Truth be told there are a couple of different ways to do this. Right now the two best options are both AMD, and this is due to the combination of their XDMA engine and their greater scaling at 4K. In the single-GPU race NVIDIA is untouched, but they’re still facing at challenge at 4K.

The cheapest way to get to 4K is with a pair of AMD’s Radeon R9 290 cards. From a pure performance perspective R9 290 in CF delivers a solid 4K experience; most games scale well over a single card, and there’s enough performance on tap that 4K at high quality settings is a practical option. All told this combination runs for $560, which also happens to be around the price of a 4K TN monitor.

The big drawback with this setup is that all of the good 290 cards are open air coolers, which means they require more space and better chassis cooling. A pair of blowers would be easier to work with here, but that would require moving up to a pair of R9 290Xs, and if we wanted a good blower that would require an even bigger step up to the GTX 980.

Runner Up: AMD Radeon R9 295X2 & 2x GeForce GTX 980

While at $900 it’s quite a bit more than a pair of R9 290Xs, AMD’s dual-GPU R9 295X2 makes for a very tantalizing alternative. AMD’s dual-GPU flagship card offers all of the performance of the 290X in Crossfire with vastly improved acoustics and in a smaller package, which alleviates the drawback of our 4K budget option.

Finally, the GTX 980 in SLI is also going to be a viable alternative here. From a performance perspective it’s going to trade blows with the R9 295X2 much of the time, so it’s still going to offer best-in-class performance regardless. The catch is that at $1160 for the dual card setup it’s some $260 more expensive than the R9 295X2 for what’s only similar performance. But unlike either AMD option, the GTX 980 is available in a high quality blower configuration, allowing a 3rd option between the widely spaced open air cards of R9 290 and the unconventional CLLC of the R9 295X2.

Verizon Wireless has agreed to a $64.2 million settlement in a class action lawsuit that alleged it billed phone customers for calls that were supposed to be free.

The proposed settlement (PDF) was filed last week in US District Court in New Jersey and first reported by Law360.

"The motion asks US District Judge Jose L. Linares to sign off on the agreement, which would include a $36.7 million cash payment from Verizon in addition to $27.5 million in 'calling units' that will be accessible via personal identification number," Law360 wrote. The lawyers who represented consumers will get $19.26 million from the total settlement amount.

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As a rule, you don't spend $2 billion on a company like Oculus without expecting the technology to eventually reach some kind of world-changing scale. In an earnings call earlier this week, though, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it could take a little bit of time before virtual reality becomes a market force that could represent the kind of "new major computing platform" that only comes around once every ten or 15 years.

"[Oculus] needs to reach a very large scale, 50 million to 100 million units, before it'll really be a very meaningful thing as a computing platform," Zuckerberg said during the call to investors and analysts. "So I do think it's going to take a bunch of years to get there. ... That'll take a few cycles of the device to get there, and that's kind of what I'm talking about. And then when you get to that scale, that's when it starts to be interesting as a business in terms of developing out the ecosystem."

Even with 100,000 development kits already distributed worldwide, Zuckerberg sees the first few consumer iterations of the Rift, expected in the next few years, to merely be the tip of the spear for VR as a platform, so to speak. "So when I'm talking about that as a 10-year thing, it's building the first set of devices and building the audience and the ecosystem around that until it eventually becomes a business."

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If anyone was still unaware of GamerGate by this point, Stephen Colbert provided a one-night crash course through an editorial segment (below) and an interview with critic Anita Sarkeesian (above).

"You and the other feminazis in the gamer world are coming for our balls, to snip 'em off, put 'em in a little felt purse, and take them away so we have to play your non-violent games, right?"

"Not quite. There is something going on," Sarkeesian replied. "What it is, is women are being harassed, threatened, and terrorized..."

"After you first attacked male gamers for enjoying looking at big breasted women with tiny armor that barely covers their nipples?" Colbert interjected. "What's wrong with that? I'm a man, baby. Newsflash: I like that."

In typical Colbert fashion, the host boiled down a hot media controversy to its core and found spots of seeming lunacy. Sarkeesian retold the story of her lecture at Utah State University being canceled after an anonymous e-mail threatened the biggest school shooting to date. She dismissed the "threat" of women gamers, saying it may be a result of the gaming industry's resistance to becoming more inclusive. Colbert's response to all of that? "Why not just have a separate game? Have separate but equal games?"

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Spoooooooky!

Earlier today, Ars IT editor Sean Gallagher was doing some scary things with wireless when he discovered someone probing for a Wi-Fi network with a name that appeared to be something un-parseable. I theorized that it was actually something in Unicode that Wireshark wasn't parsing properly. "So someone has a Unicode SSID?" Gallagher asked, incredulous.

That's the strangest SSID I've ever seen. Sean Gallagher

I was inspired. I wanted a Unicode SSID—one that could match the season and give my network name a seasonal gothic flare. So I set out to see if I could do it with my own Wi-Fi network. While I was successful, the effect may be lost on Windows users and others on devices that can't handle Unicode characters in their wireless network name. And as Gallagher determined, it doesn't work on all Wi-Fi networking hardware.

OS X ♥ Unicode The tools

Unicode has some fun characters that can be used to generate a spooky SSID, but it can be difficult to type these characters using a traditional keyboard. After some digging around, I found the excellent Unicode Text Converter. This page allows you to enter a simple string and get back a variety of clever representations.

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