The "Shield Portable" (left) is now joined by the more conventional 8-inch Shield tablet. Nvidia

After it was spotted in FCC documents earlier this month and then leaked late last week, Nvidia has officially announced the latest member of its Shield family of Android gaming tablets. Where the first Shield was a 5-inch screen bolted onto the top of an Xbox 360-esque game controller, the new Shield is a standard 8-inch tablet that pairs with a standalone Shield controller via Wi-Fi Direct. Nvidia claims that using Wi-Fi rather than Bluetooth for the controller connection will reduce the latency that often affects Bluetooth controllers.

In our hands-on time with the tablet last week, Nvidia told us that its goal with the new Shield tablet (the previous Shield has been renamed the "Shield Portable" and is still available for sale) was to make it a good standard tablet as well as a good gaming tablet. To that end, the device is pretty unassuming when not connected to a controller or to your TV—the 8-inch 1920×1200 display is flanked by two front-facing speakers, and the tablet is narrow enough that holding it in one hand to read or browse isn't difficult. The tablet's body is a hard matte plastic that looks nice in person and feels fairly sturdy.

The Shield runs a near-stock version of Android 4.4 with a handful of Nvidia apps pre-installed, including a copy of Trine 2 and Nvidia's "Shield Hub" (also known as Tegra Zone), which lists Shield-compatible games available from the Google Play store. The tablet is among the first to use the 32-bit version of Nvidia's next-generation Tegra K1 SoC, which it announced at CES earlier this year. This chip's claim to fame is the "Kepler" GPU architecture, which supports the full range of desktop OpenGL, OpenCL, DirectX, and CUDA APIs where most mobile GPUs still support just a subset of those features. Nvidia claims that this API support makes it easier for developers to port their games from the desktop and was showing off enhanced versions of the Half-Life 2 and Portal Shield ports as well as a port of the upcoming War Thunder multiplayer game that will be compatible with the standard PC version.

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Today, NVIDIA is announcing the Shield tablet. While normally such launch announcements don’t require much in the way of exposition, NVIDIA is in an odd place. Last year, the Shield portable and Tegra Note 7 were the primary mobile devices shipping with Tegra 4.  In hindsight, the Shield portable was a bit too niche to ever reach mass adoption. It was first and foremost a gaming device, with a display attached to a controller as opposed to a controller attached to a display. The result was that while it was surprisingly good for gaming, it wasn’t the best tablet. It really only worked in landscape mode, the display size was relatively small (5 inches diagonal), and using the touchscreen was an awkward experience.

The Tegra Note 7 was NVIDIA’s attempt at competing in the mainstream tablet market. While the dual front facing speakers and stylus were good advantages over the Nexus 7, it wasn’t clearly better than the Nexus 7. The display was lower resolution, lower contrast, and not as well calibrated. The WiFi module only supported 2.4 GHz, and there was only a gigabyte of RAM. While it was possible to emulate a Shield-esque experience with the Note 7, there was no game streaming from PC to tablet due to the lack of 5 GHz WiFi, and the controllers on the market simply weren’t as good as the controller in Shield. In addition, because the Tegra Note 7 wasn’t directly controlled by NVIDIA the experience in software update speed could vary.

From the lens of past experience, the Shield tablet makes a lot of sense. The specs are right for a good tablet, but it’s also a proper Shield device. As a tablet, it has all the right pieces. A high resolution display, Tegra K1 (Cortex A15 variant), dual front facing speakers and bass reflex ports, a new stylus, 5 GHz WiFi, and a 5MP front facing camera. I’ve put a table of the specs below for easier reading.

  NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet SoC Tegra K1 (2.2 GHz 4x Cortex A15s) RAM/NAND 2 GB DDR3L-1866, 16/32GB NAND + microSD Display 8” 1920x1200 IPS LCD Network 2G / 3G / 4G LTE (NVIDIA Icera i500 UE Category 3/4 LTE) Dimensions 221 x 126 x 9.2mm, 390 grams Camera 5MP rear camera, 1.4 µm pixels, 1/4" CMOS size. 5MP FFC Battery 5197 mAh, 3.8V chemistry (19.75 Whr) OS Android 4.4.2 Connectivity 2x2 802.11a/b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GLONASS, mini HDMI 1.4a SIM Size None or MicroSIM

In the stylus side, DirectStylus 2 is said to reduce the inking latency to half that of the implementation we saw in Tegra Note 7. In practice it seemed that the stylus latency was low and lines tracked closely to the stylus, but I’ll avoid final judgment until the review. NVIDIA also claims that there are more levels of pressure sensitivity, but it’s not quite clear how many levels there are. NVIDIA has also added handwriting recognition software, which worked relatively well in some casual testing. The Dabbler application also seems to provide a relatively realistic simulation of various physical mediums such as oil painting and watercolor, although it’s mostly targeted towards artists.

In addition to the stylus features, NVIDIA is advertising 1080p Netflix support. Normally, due to the DRM restrictions associated with high bitrate streaming, most Android devices only support low resolution streams. NVIDIA has done all of the necessary work to satisfy these DRM requirements, so it supports the highest bitrate available to mobile devices. Of course, this feature will be disabled with an unlocked bootloader, but it’s a good feature to have for mobile streaming.

Outside of tablet features, the gaming features seem to be quite compelling. The controllers themselves were comfortable, and were very similar to the Shield portable’s ergonomics. NVIDIA is emphasizing that these controllers connect over WiFi direct, and the frequency selected depends upon the network that is used. The result is much lower latency, and NVIDIA is also able to run a headset jack and microphone through the controller due to the higher bandwidth that WiFi provides. Up to four controllers can be paired to the Shield tablet for multiplayer games.

Due to the addition of 5 GHz 2x2 WiFi, NVIDIA’s GameStream and GRID, which means that it’s possible to stream games from a PC within the same LAN to Shield tablet and play games by streaming from NVIDIA servers to the tablet. NVIDIA did note that only 720p is supported through WiFi, and an Ethernet connection is necessary to stream at 1080p due to latency reasons.

While both GameStream and GRID are largely similar in experience compared to the Shield portable, the Kepler GPU in the Tegra K1 enables a great deal of potential for gaming. Trine 2 will ship with the tablet, and is a direct port from the console game. NVIDIA also showed off the improvements in games like Half Life 2 and Portal, which run full OpenGL rather than OpenGL ES as it did on Shield portable. Outside of feature set, NVIDIA is claiming that the K1's GPU is far faster than the GPU in either the Exynos 5420 or Apple's A7 SoC.

In addition, NVIDIA showed off a full version of War Thunder running on Shield tablet, and claimed that it will be able to play on multiplayer with PCs. This included both the tank and aircraft combat aspects of the game. NVIDIA also showed that the Unreal Engine 4 demo from Google IO runs on the Shield tablet.

Finally, the Shield tablet will be the first Android tablet to support streaming to Twitch. By leveraging the built in front facing camera, it’s possible to stream both gameplay and webcam/commentary. In practice, I didn’t see any noticeable issues with this system, and it seemed to work as promised. The 1.4 micron pixel size seemed to make the quality relatively acceptable even indoors.

That was a lot to go over, but I think the key here will be the native gaming experience on Shield tablet. While it’s fully possible for Shield tablet to serve as a dedicated console with GameStream, the real use case will be whether it can provide a solid gaming experience using the SoC for rendering rather than as a video decoder for a PC somewhere else. With games like War Thunder and Trine 2, it seems that there is immense potential for a very compelling product. While NVIDIA isn’t starting from nothing this time around, this ecosystem aspect is still a bit risky.

The Shield tablet will go on sale July 29th for the US, August 14th for Europe. The 16GB/WiFi variant will cost 299 USD, the 32GB/LTE variant will be 399 USD. The controller is priced at 59 USD, and the flip cover at 39 USD.

With the introduction of the Lumia 630 and 635 models, we have our first look at the next generation of low cost Windows Phone devices, and the Lumia 630 is a phone with many firsts for this segment. It’s the first phone launched with Windows Phone 8.1 from any manufacturer. It’s also the first phone released after the acquisition of Nokia by Microsoft, though the phone was announced at BUILD prior to the final paperwork was completed on the acquisition. This is the first Windows Phone ever with an optional Dual SIM model. This is also the first Windows Phone which incorporates a SensorCore branded pedometer. It’s the first Windows Phone which replaces the hardware back, home, and search keys with on-screen equivalents, and unfortunately it’s the first Windows Phone which is lacking a hardware camera button, ambient light sensor, and proximity sensor. This is definitely a device of firsts for Windows Phone, but not all of the firsts are good news.

There has been an increase in the number of slugs in Britain's gardens due to the warm and damp weather.

Today, Xiaomi announces the next version of their flagship smartphone, the Mi 4. Much like the OnePlus One, this device is effectively a high end device at a mid-range price. For the most part, this device is very much like the OnePlus One, although there are some crucial differences. The display is smaller, at 5 inches diagonal it makes for a device that is easier to use with one hand. The front facing camera is eight megapixels rather than five, and both cameras have a wider f/1.8 aperture. As always, a full list of specs can be seen below.

  Xiaomi Mi 4 SoC MSM8974AC 2.45 GHz Snapdragon 801 RAM/NAND 3 GB LPDDR3, 16/64GB NAND Display 5" 1080p IPS LCD by JDI/Sharp Network 2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Qualcomm MDM9x25 UE Category 4 LTE) Dimensions 139.2 x 67.5 x 8.9mm, 149 grams Camera 13MP rear camera, 1.12 µm pixels, 1/3.06" CMOS size Sony IMX 214, F/1.8. 8MP F/1.8 FFC 1/4" Battery 3080 mAh (11.704 Whr) OS MIUI v5 Connectivity 802.11a/b/g/n/ac + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, MHL, DLNA, NFC SIM Size MicroSIM

While some details are lacking (namely, dimensions) it's generally clear that this phone is designed to try and be the best phone of the Snapdragon 801 generation. The use of even wider apertures will help with light collection but there is potential for increased aberration as a result, which would be important to evaluate. The display is also said to be 84% NTSC, which would correspond to about 128% of the sRGB colorspace, so it'll be important to see whether or not there's an accurate sRGB calibration in this device.

This time around, Xiaomi seems to be trying to improve the in hand feel of their devices, by using a stainless steel band around the phone for improved feel. The back cover is still plastic, but Xiaomi is introducing swappable back covers with different materials and colors to try and alleviate the issue. This definitely seems to be a move inspired by the StyleSwap covers that OnePlus is releasing for the One. The covers can be seen below.

Keeping with tradition, the Mi 4 will be priced extremely competitively. The 16GB version will sell for the equivalent price of 320 USD, and the 64GB variant for 400 USD. There's no word on availability for other coutnries, but the phone will be available for pre-order in China on July 29th.

Gallery: Xiaomi Mi 4

More and more jellyfish are being spotted on the UK's coastline during the summer months, and now scientists have decided to try and find out why.

There hasn't been a strong El Niño in over a decade, which causes problems for some climate models. NOAA

Spend any amount of time reading climate arguments on the Internet, and you'll undoubtedly hear some version of the following argument: the Earth hasn't warmed in 17 years, and none of the climate models predicted that. Although there are a lot of problems with that statement (including the fact that it has warmed a bit), it's probably safe to say that the warming hasn't been as intense as many scientists expected.

Of course, to a scientist, unmet expectations are an opportunity, so a variety of papers have looked into why this has happened. They've found that, while volcanic eruptions seem to have contributed to the relatively slow rise in temperatures, a major player has been the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which has been stuck in a cool, La Niña state for most of the last decade. And, since climate models aren't expected to accurately forecast each El Niño, there would be no reason to expect that they would match the actual atmospheric record.

At least not intentionally. But some researchers have found that, simply by chance, a few of the models do produce an accurate ENSO pattern. And when those models are examined in detail, it turns out they match the existing temperature record pretty well.

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Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. Diliff

A startup has told Los Angeles city officials that it wants to build a citywide fiber-to-the-home broadband network and that it also hopes to build nationwide Wi-Fi and cellular networks.

The proposal sounds unlikely to succeed, but it's certainly ambitious. It comes in response to a Los Angeles city government request for information (RFI) regarding a plan to build a fiber and Wi-Fi network. The Los Angeles request itself struck telecom experts as unrealistic. The city wants a vendor to build a fiber network at an estimated cost of $3 billion to $5 billion, offer free Internet to all residents (while charging for faster speeds), and make the infrastructure available to any other service provider on a wholesale basis.

The RFI deadline passed Friday, and only one company has made its full response to the city public. It's a Dutch company called Angie Communications, which claims it will build fiber and mobile networks in the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, France, and the US.

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Smartphone gamers don't have a wealth of quality first-person shooter options, but in spite of its unoriginal name, Gameloft's Modern Combat games have been solid enough to lead the mobile sales charts. Ahead of the series' fifth release, Gameloft celebrated Modern Combat 5: Blackout's upcoming launch by awarding early free downloads to fans via social network contests.

As reported by Polygon, that move backfired when one of the contest winners cracked the iOS version and uploaded its IPA file over the weekend, allowing the game to be pirated in droves ahead of its launch. The news began to spread once Touch Arcade editor Eli Hodapp—the kind of gamer who would have early access to a mobile shooter—noticed thousands of players pop up in Modern Combat 5 multiplayer sessions during the pre-release period.

In a Facebook post on the game's official community page, Gameloft representative Florian Weber confirmed that this activity was due to the game's pirated leak, and he didn't mince words. "As you can imagine I am really pissed off," Weber said.

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The Air Force's failed ECSS logistics system cost more than putting a few GPS satellites in orbit. United States Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Mike Meares

A full two years after its cancellation, Congress is still taking the Air Force to task for the failure of an eight-year logistics system project that was intended to consolidate somewhere between 175 and over 900 legacy software systems—depending on who you asked and when. In a Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs investigative report (PDF) completed on July 7 and publicly released last week, Senate investigators called the Expeditionary Combat Support System (ECSS) “a cautionary tale” of poor management practices and horrific technology choices.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects in government and business over the past decade, especially since the software the Air Force attempted to use to solve its problems was an off-the-shelf package that was supposed to be only superficially modified to meet the needs of the Air Force. But ERP systems aren’t just software projects—they often require a total restructuring of organizational processes to make them fit the software rather than just making existing processes more efficient.

“The Air Force failed in its procurement of [ECSS]… because it lacked a clear objective and the organizational will to implement changes to its internal business processes vital to integrating ECSS into the organization,” the Senate investigators wrote in the report. “In doing so, the Air Force violated many crucial guidelines and best practices for information technology acquisition.”

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Whitney

Last year, the website Extortion Letter Info (ELI) was slapped with an extraordinary "gag order" forcing it to remove more than 2,000 posts related to Linda Ellis, a writer who has a long record of sending copyright demand letters over "The Dash," a poem Ellis claims she composed in 1996.

The broad order got the attention of other activists—bloggers like the author of Fight Copyright Trolls, as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which called the Georgia order "overbroad and dangerous."

Now it looks like a Georgia appeals court has recognized that the 2,000-post takedown is actually a big deal.

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Mark Stevens

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has sued the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in an attempt to compel the government agency to hand over documents relating to a relatively new comprehensive intelligence database of people and cargo crossing the US border.

EPIC’s lawsuit, which was filed last Friday, seeks a trove of documents concerning the “Analytical Framework for Intelligence” (AFI) as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. EPIC’s April 2014 FOIA request went unanswered after the 20 days that the law requires, and the group waited an additional 49 days before filing suit.

The AFI, which was formally announced in June 2012 by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), consists of “a single platform for research, analysis, and visualization of large amounts of data from disparate sources and maintaining the final analysis or products in a single, searchable location for later use as well as appropriate dissemination.”

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"I can't breathe! I can't breathe! I can't breathe! I can't breathe!"

Those were the last words captured on amateur video of an African-American man who died after New York Police Department officers subdued him during an arrest.

The death of Eric Garner, who appeared to be wrestled to the ground with a chokehold (a move that is banned by the NYPD), is the latest example of the surveillance society turned on its head. In the Digital Age, no longer is it just the watchers watching the watched.

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Samsung's original Galaxy Gear was one of the first in an initial wave of Android smartwatches. It ran Android at a time where a smartwatch was not a form factor that Google had anticipated for their operating system. Because of issues with software support and battery life, Samsung began releasing smartwatches that ran on their own Tizen operating system. Samsung also committed to updating the original Galaxy Gear from Android to Tizen. This staged rollout began earlier in May of this year, and it is now rolling out to Galaxy Gear users in United States. Samsung is promising that the update gives users access to a greater catalog of apps, along with software improvements that bring it closer to feature parity with the Gear 2 smartwatch. 

The move to Tizen brings new features and additions to existing features. Many of these lie in the fitness and lifestyle capabilities of the Galaxy Gear. On Tizen the Galaxy Gear can keep track of a user's sleeping patterns using Sleep Mode, and it can keep track of workout routines in exercise mode which is an improvement over the original Android firmware which could only go as far as tracking footsteps. Unfortunately due to hardware limitations, features that utilize the heart rate monitor on the Gear 2 have not been brought over to the original Galaxy Gear

Samsung is also including a built in music player with the ability to store tracks right on the smartwatch. This is an interesting feature because it allows the Galaxy Gear to function on its own to some degree, which is a different smartwatch strategy than Google is taking with their Android Wear operating system which acts purely as an extension of your current smartphone. Another new app is the Controls application which acts as a settings app for changing brightness and volume as well as setting custom fonts, wallpapers, and icon sizes.

Beyond new apps and features, Samsung is promising that the move to Tizen brings significant increases in battery life which is great news for Galaxy Gear owners as battery life is one of the biggest concerns with smartwatches and the original Galaxy Gear running Android definitely struggled in this regard.

The update is rolling out in the United States starting today. Users will need to connect their phone to their computer and use Samsung's Kies software to download and install the update. While this isn't likely to be an issue for most users, Samsung makes a point of noting that there is no way to return to Android once the Galaxy Gear has been updated to Tizen.

Pre-production concept art from the film...

I really thought Hollywood was scraping the bottom of the barrel when it announced a movie based on the tabletop game Battleship a few years ago. Then that film went on to make over $300 million internationally, seemingly proving there is no gaming license dumb enough that it can't be turned into a successful big-budget blockbuster.

Thus, the recent news that Warner Bros. has apparently purchased the film rights to Space Invaders is somehow unsurprising. Never mind that the 1978 arcade classic is not exactly known for its deep plot or rich character development or that the concept of aliens invading Earth from space is not exactly a brilliant new film concept that requires a video game license. No, this business deal is obviously more about trying to hit the nostalgia-zone of the 40- and 50-somethings who remember wasting endless quarters on the game in their youth and hopefully translating those warm memories to box office sales.

The Wrap reports that heavy-hitter producers Akiva Goldsmith (Winter's Tale), Joby Harold (Edge of Tomorrow), and Tory Tunnell (Awake) are already attached to the project, which might increase its chances of actually reaching theaters at some point. Then again, films based on classic gaming franchises seem to have a habit of getting caught in development hell indefinitely; there's no hint of progress on previously announced Asteroids and Spy Hunter film adaptations, not to mention the J.J. Abrams Portal and Half-Life film project plans that seem to have been immediately pushed aside for more Star Wars.

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Zdziarski

Apple has endowed iPhones with undocumented functions that allow unauthorized people in privileged positions to wirelessly connect and harvest pictures, text messages, and other sensitive data without entering a password or PIN, a forensic scientist warned over the weekend.

Jonathan Zdziarski, an iOS jailbreaker and forensic expert, told attendees of the Hope X conference that he can't be sure Apple engineers enabled the mechanisms with the intention of accommodating surveillance by the National Security Agency and law enforcement groups. Still, he said some of the services serve little or no purpose other than to make huge amounts of data available to anyone who has access to a computer, alarm clock, or other device that has ever been paired with a targeted device.

Zdziarski said the service that raises the most concern is known as com.apple.mobile.file_relay. It dishes out a staggering amount of data—including account data for e-mail, Twitter, iCloud, and other services, a full copy of the address book including deleted entries, the user cache folder, logs of geographic positions, and a complete dump of the user photo album—all without requiring a backup password to be entered. He said two other services dubbed com.apple.pcapd and com.apple.mobile.house_arrest may have legitimate uses for app developers or support people but can also be used to spy on users by government agencies or even jilted ex-lovers. The Pcapd service, for instance, allows people to wirelessly monitor all network traffic traveling into and out of the device, even when it's not running in a special developer or support mode. House_arrest, meanwhile, allows the copying of sensitive files and documents from Twitter, Facebook, and many other applications.

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Civilian drones are being tested across Africa's game reserves in a hi-tech battle with poachers threatening the continent's wildlife tourism industry.

A comparison of the graphical differences between the PS3 and PS4 versions of the Destiny beta.

Console gamers are used to being unable to play online against others on competing platforms, thanks more to business arrangements than any underlying technical issues. But with Bungie's MMO shooter Destiny launching across two overlapping console generations, one might think that PlayStation 4 users could expect to be able to play against their friends using the PlayStation 3 through the PlayStation Network (or across the Xbox One/Xbox 360 divide using Xbox Live).

Even that kind of cross-platform play is not available in Destiny, though, a state of affairs that Bungie attributes to a sense of fair play across different gameplay resolutions.

“I’ll speak for the hypothetical player. I have a disadvantage sniping across the map because [my opponent with a next-gen console] is only two pixels on my screen and I’m four pixels on his," Bungie engineer Roger Wolfson told Digital Trends. "You see that in the world of PC gaming, where people are always racing to the best video card to give themselves the advantage."

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Verizon has boosted FiOS upload speeds to make them match download speeds, the company announced today. Both existing customers and new subscribers will get the speed upgrade. The increase is "free to current customers," Verizon said.

For example, the 15/5Mbps tier (15Mbps downstream and 5Mbps upstream) will now be 15Mbps in both directions. Other tiers before the upgrade were 50/25, 75/35, 150/65, 300/65, and 500/100. In all cases, the second number will be increased to match the first.

Additionally, a new 25/25 tier will be the entry level package for new customers, starting at $64.99 a month standalone, the "same pricing as current levels for 15/5," a Verizon spokesperson told Ars.

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Western Digital launched the first NAS-specific 6 TB drive today. In expanding their Red portfolio, they have brought 6 TB drives suitable for 24x7 operation into the hands of home consumers. Some enterprise-specific 6 TB drives have been around since late last year. Today's introduction provides us an opportunity to see how the WD Red compares against those offerings. Read on for our evaluation of the currently available 6 TB drives suitable for NAS units.