Apple has set another quarterly record for iPhone sales, despite the fact that the iPhone 5S is due for replacement relatively soon. Jacqui Cheng

It's been another quiet, by-the-books quarter for Apple, which has yet to release any major updates to any of its products so far in this calendar year. For the third quarter of 2014, the company projected it would maintain profit margins between 37 and 38 percent on revenues between $36 and $38 billion, and it met the revenue estimates with profits of $7.7 billion on revenue of $37.4 billion. Revenue is about six percent higher and profit is 11.6 percent higher than Q3 of 2013, in which the company earned $6.9 billion of profit on $35.3 billion of revenue.

The company's gross margin was considerably higher than the estimate, at 39.4 percent compared to 36.9 percent a year ago, an increase of 6.8 percent.

iPhone and Mac sales were both up over the year-ago quarter—Apple sold 35.2 million iPhones (compared to 31.24 million) and 4.41 million Macs (compared to 3.75 million) this quarter, despite the fact that most of its products are either mid-cycle or nearing the end of their refresh cycles. The delay of Intel's next-generation Broadwell CPUs has kept Apple from making more than minor tweaks to its Mac lineup this year.

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EA

The busy holiday gaming season, set to get its start in earnest during a packed October this year, is looking a little less packed today. That's because EA has announced that two of its biggest titles have slipped from planned October release dates to give the developers more time to finish up their work.

The bigger of the two delays is the spin-off shooter franchise Battlefield: Hardline, which has been pushed from October 21 to an unspecified date in "early 2015." According to a blog post announcing the move, that delay comes after a post-E3 beta for the game seemingly failed to live up to player expectations.

"We’ve been pouring over the data and feedback [from the beta], and have already been putting a lot of it right into the game and sharing it directly with you," DICE VP and Group GM Karl Magnus Troedsson wrote in the blog post. "This feedback also spurred us to start thinking about other possibilities and ways we could push Hardline innovation further and make the game even better. The more we thought about these ideas, the more we knew we had to get them into the game you will all be playing. However, there was only one problem. We would need more time. Time that we didn’t have if we decided to move forward with launching in just a couple of months."

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Apple's newly split stock price has been on the rise lately. Let's see if this quarter's earnings make it move one way or the other. Andrew Cunningham View Liveblog2014-07-22T16:00:00-05:00

Apple will be announcing its Q3 2014 financial results on Tuesday, July 22 at 5pm Eastern time (2pm Pacific), and the standard earnings call with press and analysts will follow shortly afterward. As we usually do, we'll be following along with the call to liveblog and provide charts and other contextual information—Apple rarely makes major announcements on these calls, but it does give more information on how particular Apple products are doing both in the US and other markets.

Apple's third fiscal quarter runs from the beginning of April to the end of June, and while WWDC was full of new software announcements, those updates (and the new hardware that will accompany them) won't actually be available until the fall, late in Q4 2014 or early in Q1 2015. Beyond a new, slightly cheaper iMac and a security lock for the Mac Pro, we just haven't gotten many new gadgets lately, and the majority of Apple's money is made by selling hardware. That said, Apple's products tend to sell well even when they're in the middle of a refresh cycle. One stat in particular to keep an eye on: will iPad sales continue to be down as they were last quarter, or will they bounce back up? Analysts believe that tablet sales are beginning to level off, and the iPad's sales numbers will be a major data point in that discussion.

Apple's guidance for the quarter predicted revenue between $36 billion and $38 billion with profit margins between 37 and 38 percent. Other predictions for this quarter can be found in the Q2 2014 announcement.

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Sarah Braun

A YouTube video featuring a controversial San Francisco lawyer who has been representing landlords in eviction procedures appears to have been newly restored on Tuesday after being made unavailable for a week.

The lawyer, Daniel Bornstein, filed a seemingly spurious copyright infringement claim under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Many have noted (including Ars founder Ken Fisher a decade ago) that the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown provision practically encourages an overzealous response from those who claim copyright ownership.

The two-minute video depicts Bornstein at a January 2014 seminar in which he is speaking to local landlords but is interrupted by protesters angry at the rise in San Francisco evictions. Many such evictions have been blamed on rising rents, which have in turn been blamed on the huge influx of cash from high-paid tech jobs. (Just last week, the median home sales price in San Francisco topped $1 million for the first time.)

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Today the latest Humble Bundle has gone on sale and it offers a good selection of games from the Square Enix library including all the entries in the Deus Ex franchise, titles in the Hitman series, and a variety of other titles that they have published over the years. At the usual "pay what you want" tier ($1 pledged or more is required for Steam keys) there's the following selection of games.

• Thief Gold (92% PC, 10/1999): An expanded version of Thief: The Dark Project which is a stealth game where the player takes control of a master thief who must complete objectives without being detected.
• Daikatana (N/A PC, 04/2000): A first person shooter game which takes place across different time periods and locations.
• Mini Ninjas (74% PC, 09/2009): A third person action adventure game where players control one of six playable characters, each with different items and abilities.
• Anachronox (77% PC, 06/2001): A third person role playing game where the player assumes the role of a private investigator who stumbles upon a mystery that threatens the fate of the universe.
• Hitman: Codename 47 (73% PC, 11/2000): A stealth game where players take the role of a trained hitman tasked with assassinating criminal masterminds involved in experiments that had been performed on the character.
• Hitman 2: Silent Assassin (87% PC, 09/2002): A sequel to Hitman: Codename 47 where the player again takes the role of Agent 47 and must complete missions involving the assassination of various targets.

By beating the average price which at the time of writing is at $6.63 and trending upward, a selection of more recent titles is unlocked. It's worth noting that this pricing bracket includes two games in the Deus Ex series, albeit the lesser praised of the four Deus Ex titles. More titles are expected to be added to the list below in the coming days.

• Deus Ex: Invisible War (80% PC, 12/2003): A first person shooter which is a direct sequel to the original Deus Ex which combines elements of RPG and FPS games and puts the player in a technologically advanced world filled with conspiracy .
• Deus Ex: The Fall (46% PC, 69% iOS, 07/2013): A title which originally launched on iOS and was later brought to Android and PC. It continues the story of the Deus Ex: Icarus Effect novel and features similar gameplay elements to Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Hitman Absolution (79% PC, 11/2012): The most recent entry in the Hitman franchise. Features similar gameplay to the previous games while continuing the main character's story.
• Nosgoth Veteran Pack (N/A PC, 2014): A booster pack for an upcoming free-to-play action game that is currently in Early Acess status on steam.
• Battlestations: Midway (76% PC, 01/2007): An action game that lets the player control various air, sea, and underwater vehicles as part of naval battles during World War II.

Finally, paying more than $14.99 unlocks the whole selection of titles including some very recent ones like Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut and Just Cause 2. The original Deus Ex: Game of the Year edition is also included which rounds off the Deus Ex games for anyone who wishes to pick up the entire series in this bundle. The full list of games in the $14.99 tier is laid out below.

• Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut (91% PC, 08/2011): A prequel to the original Deus Ex. Combines elements of FPS and RPG games allowing the player to modify themselves with various mechanical augmentations and to perform various side quests in addition to the main story. The director's cut includes the Deus Ex: Missing Link DLC which was originally released after the original game.
• Just Cause 2 (84% PC, 03/2010): An open world action-adventure game that lets the player complete objectives in various different ways with an array of weapons and vehicles along with the ability to reach great vertical heights using grappling hooks and parachutes.
• Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light (82% PC, 08/2010): A platform adventure game where the character must use various weapons and skills to solve puzzles and traverse levels.
• Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition (90% PC, 06/2000): A game which combines various elements of action, stealth, FPS, and RPG games. The player progresses through the game while upgrading their character's nano augmentations and uncovering various conspiracies involving groups like the Illuminati and Majestic 12.
• Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days (66% PC, 08/2010): A third person shooter game where the player takes control of two criminals trying to keep alive after an arms deal goes wrong.

While it's not the most incredible Humble Bundle that has ever been put out, the Square Enix bundle offers a solid collection of games. Personally I believe that just picking up the entire Deus Ex series is well worth the $14.99 and everything on top like Just Cause 2 and Hitman: Absolution is just an added bonus. The Humble Square Enix Bundle will run for the next two weeks and payments can be split between Square Enix, the GamesAid and Make-A-Wish charities, and Humble Bundle, Inc. to help them continue to run these game bundles.

Greetings, Arsians! Our partners at LogicBuy are back with even more deals. Have you upgraded to 4k yet? The top deal this week is a 28-inch 4K Dell monitor for just $399.99. That's $300 off the MSRP! There are a few options this week from Dell, and the company just started taking Bitcoin. So if you've got some lying around, make the most of them by hitting up these deals.

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• Dell U2414H UltraSharp 24" 1080p IPS Monitor w/3 year warranty for $269.99 with free shipping (list price $349.99)
• Dell UP3214Q UltraSharp 32" 3840x2160 IPS Monitor for $2,249.99 with free shipping (list price $2,999.99)
• Dell UZ2315H UltraSharp 23" 1080p Anti-glare IPS Monitor w/ 2MP Webcam, USB 3.0 Hub for $224.99 with free shipping (list price $299.99)

HDTV and home theater

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Back at CES earlier this year, I had visited Quantenna and covered the announcement of their QSR1000 4x4 802.11ac MIMO chipset. It was announced that the Asus RT-AC87U would be the first QSR1000 enabled router to hit retail. Despite the announcement at CES, no availability date or price was announced.

Things are getting together now, and Asus and Quantenna have announced that the RT-AC87U is all set to ship (Best Buy actually has it for purchase right now). The router will retail for $270, an admittedly steep price, but one that should be seen in context with the Broadcom-XStream enabled Netgear R8000 that is shipping for $300. The router also seems to be a bit lacking in the I/O front, with only one USB 2.0 port apparently. [ Update: Some readers have mentioned that a USB 3.0 port is hidden beneath a flap in the front. ] That said, it is like that most of the power users who are going to purchase this already have a dedicated NAS device (and don't need USB 3.0 or eSATA ports in their routers).

Gallery: Asus RT-AC87 AC2400 802.11ac Wave 2 Router

The RT-AC87U is a bit more future-proof with respect to Wi-Fi standards, thanks to it being the first shipping 802.11ac Wave 2 router. As part of the Wave 2 features, we get four spatial streams and support for MU-MIMO (we do need clients supporting it to get the full benefits). One of the most obvious benefits of going to Wave 2 is the 160 MHz-wide channel support, but, that is not part of the Quantenna QSR1000 chipset that is being used in the Asus RT-AC87U.

Obviously, technology moves at a rapid pace, and one can always wait for the next big thing. There is also talk online of Netgear releasing a Wave 2 router (Nighthawk X4) soon (the FCC details are already out), but official details are scarce. In effect, if readers are interested in hopping on to the Wave 2 bandwagon, the Asus RT-AC87U will be the first opportunity.

Developers of the Tor privacy service say they're close to fixing a weakness that researchers for an abruptly canceled conference presentation said provides a low-cost way for adversaries to deanonymize hundreds of thousands of users.

The talk previously scheduled for next month's Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas was titled "You Don't Have to be the NSA to Break Tor: Deanonymizing Users on a Budget." The abstract said that the hack cost less than $3,000 and could uncloak hundreds of thousands of users. On Monday, Black Hat organizers said the presentation was canceled at the request of attorneys from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), where the researchers were employed, as well as the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). The attorneys said only that the materials to be presented "have not yet been approved by CMU/SEI for public release." Researchers Alexander Volynkin and Michael McCord have yet to explain why their talk was pulled.

Tor officials responded by saying that they're working on an update for individual Tor relay nodes that will close the unspecified security hole.

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As part of its last-ditch effort to be classified as a cable company, Aereo has filed documents with the US Copyright Office that has made public previously unknown details about the company.

At the end of 2013, Aereo had 77,596 subscribers in 10 cities, according to Peter Kafka of Re/code, who published the information earlier today. About 27,000 of them lived in New York City, Aereo's first market. Boston, its second market, had 12,000 subscribers, while Atlanta had 10,000.

By way of comparison, Kafka notes that Netflix has more than 50 million subscribers worldwide, while Hulu has 6 million subscribers for its premium service.

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This screenshot reminds us that Video Games: The Movie is better than the Bob Hoskins Super Mario Bros. film, but that's not saying much. Variance Films

The announcement of Video Games: The Movie was exciting and promising enough to help most fans stomach its amateur status (and its awkward title). Not that gaming documentaries are a rarity anymore; other recent, popular flicks have poked their noses into gaming culture, but they’ve typically chosen and focused on a niche, like competitive retro play or small-fry development.

VGTM, on the other hand, cast its documentary net wide by way of a giant interview cast. With luminaries like Nolan Bushnell, Warren Spector, Rob Pardo, David Crane (Pitfall), and other important games-history figures, the film’s comprehensive reputation preceded it.

Unfortunately, the film's scope, in fact, is its greatest stumble. This feature-length debut from director Jeremy Snead boasts an impressive cast and noticeable polish, but it has “overreach” written all over it, proven by a lack of focus, wildly varying levels of authority, and crippling indecision about whether gaming culture should still adopt the defensive pose of old.

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Johns Hopkins Health System is agreeing to pay more than 8,000 women as much as $190 million to settle a lawsuit charging a gynecologist with deploying a secret pencam to shoot photos and videos of patients' sex organs.

The Monday settlement is believed to be the largest involving sexual misconduct involving a physician.

The male doctor, Nikita Levy, committed suicide last year, days after a fellow doctor became suspicious and alerted administrators at the Baltimore-based hospital—one of the country's most prestigious medical centers. Levy died after wrapping his head in plastic and overdosing on helium.

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A team at Chester Zoo has given a check-up, including heart ultrasound scan to its giant reticulated python, named JF.

No company has lobbied more fiercely against network neutrality than Verizon, which filed the lawsuit that overturned the FCC's rules prohibiting ISPs from blocking and discriminating against Web content. But the absence of net neutrality rules isn't just good for Verizon—it's also good for the blind, deaf, and disabled, Verizon claims.

That's what Verizon lobbyists said in talks with congressional staffers, according to a Mother Jones report last month. "Three Hill sources tell Mother Jones that Verizon lobbyists have cited the needs of blind, deaf, and disabled people to try to convince congressional staffers and their bosses to get on board with the fast lane idea," the report said. With "fast lanes," Web services—including those designed for the blind, deaf, and disabled—could be prioritized in exchange for payment.

Now, advocacy groups for deaf people have filed comments with the FCC saying they don't agree with Verizon's position.

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Robert Scoble

Just how profitable is fully acquiring America’s largest mobile phone company? Very.

In February of this year, Verizon purchased the remaining minority stake in Verizon Wireless previously held by Vodafone. Verizon has since raked in $4.2 billion in profits during the second quarter of 2014, compared to $2.2 billion over the same time period in 2013. Still, investors remained unmoved: Verizon’s stock price was essentially flat on the news.

One data point that likely contributed to the new, bigger company’s bottom line is Verizon Wireless’ ever-rising average revenue per account (ARPA); this rose 4.7 percent quarter-over-quarter, hitting just shy of $160 per month. As recently as January 2014, Verizon customers on average paid the most of any major carrier in the United States, at $148 per month.

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Xiaomi is one of the biggest phone makers in China and is often called the "Apple of China" by the western press. The moniker is well-deserved, as the CEO has a penchant for doing product announcements wearing jeans and a black shirt and using Apple's trademark "One More Thing" surprise at the end of a show.

Today, the company announced the Xiaomi Mi 4, a new version of its flagship smartphone. The spec rundown is a 5-inch 1080p IPS LCD, 2.5Ghz Snapdragon 801 chipset, 3GB RAM, 13MP rear camera, 8MP front camera, and a 3080mAh battery. The real kicker is the price, 1,999 Yuan (about $320) for 16GB of storage, or 2,499 Yuan (about $400) for the 64GB version. The specs are similar to the OnePlus One—a 5.5-inch device for $300—and while the Mi 4 is slightly more expensive, the difference is that you can actually buy the Xiaomi device if you live in China.

And sure enough, Xiaomi is still taking inspiration from its western role model, as the Mi 4 looks like a big iPhone. A segmented metal band with chamfered edges surrounds the phone, and it even uses a similar earpiece design. The rest of the outside is plastic, but for the new version Xiaomi says it has incorporated a stainless steel frame into the device.

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Just give Riot an excuse to use the banhammer...

League of Legends developer Riot Games is ready to take a tougher stance with the toxic players that are ruining the gameplay experience for many of the game's more than 27 million players. Riot Lead Designer of Social Systems Jeffrey Lin announced via Twitter yesterday that, starting immediately, "players that show extreme toxicity (intentional feeding or racism, etc) will be instantly 14-day or permabanned."

In a a follow-up post on Reddit, Lin notes that things like "death threats [and] homophobia" will also draw the ire of the new stricter player moderation. Further, players that publicly complain about these bans will now be "named and shamed" through sharing the chat logs that led to the ban.

The new banning system will be largely automated, and players caught up in the dragnet will be told they are being banned "until Year 2500," though such permanent bans will have to be reviewed by a human before going into effect. After testing the new moderation system one server at a time, Riot plans to roll the program out across the entire game.

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As part of its normal life cycle, HIV inserts a copy of itself into the genome of every cell it infects. Most of these copies go on to cause an active infection, pumping out new copies of the virus. A few of them, however, go quiet and can persist even during aggressive antiviral treatments. These infected cells act as a reservoir for the virus, reestablishing an active infection if antiviral therapies are ever stopped. Eliminating this viral reservoir has proven extremely difficult.

Now, researchers are reporting on some of the first tests of a technique that targets the copies of the virus that are lurking in cells with a quiescent infection. Using a system that bacteria utilize to disable viruses, they've shown that it's possible to precisely edit out key HIV DNA sequences, essentially inactivating any copies of the virus. And if placed in cells prior to exposure to HIV, the same system effectively blocks infection.

Bacteria don't have an immune system, but that doesn't mean they have no defenses against viruses. When infected, the bacteria can make special RNAs that match the DNA sequences of the virus. These RNAs then guide a protein called Cas9 to the viral DNA, which the protein then cuts. The cut inactivates the virus, protecting the bacteria. The whole system (called CRISPR/Cas) is incredibly flexible; given the right RNA, it can be turned loose on pretty much any DNA sequence. Researchers have shown that it can be used to cut the DNA of living human cells, effectively editing their contents.

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Chris

When a call to cancel Comcast service descended into "a stunning display of hysteria and desperation," pretty much everyone who listened to a recording of the phone call agreed: it was painful to listen to.

Comcast Chief Operating Officer Dave Watson found it painful too. In an internal memo published by The Consumerist, Watson wrote:

[I]t was painful to listen to this call, and I am not surprised that we have been criticized for it. Respecting our customers is fundamental, and we fell short in this instance. I know these Retention calls are tough, and I have tremendous admiration for our Retention professionals, who make it easy for customers to choose to stay with Comcast. We have a Retention queue because we believe in our products, and because we offer a great value when customers have the right facts to choose the package that works best for them. If a customer is not fully aware of what the product offers, we ask the Retention agent to educate the customer and work with them to find the right solution.

A Comcast spokesperson confirmed to Ars that the Watson memo published by The Consumerist is authentic. The unfortunate customer Watson referred to was Gdgt founder and AOL Vice President of Product Ryan Block, who posted a recording of the latter parts of a nearly 20-minute call in which a Comcast employee repeatedly refused to cancel Block's service.

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A 27-year-old Illinois woman was arrested Monday after posting a selfie to Facebook showing off a dress that she allegedly stole from a local boutique.

Morties Boutique in West Frankfort took to Facebook to describe the hijacked goods. Somebody then sent the shop a link to a Facebook post in which a woman is seen wearing the colorful leopard-pattern dress, with the caption: "Love my dress." Surveillance photos allegedly captured Danielle Saxton stealing the dress earlier this month.

"I called the police department and said, 'It just hit Facebook,' and they were on it in two seconds," shop owner Gay Morton Williams told Reuters.

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Delicate Arch at Arches National Park in Utah. Howard Ignatius

There’s no need to ask what the appeal of Arches National Park is—it’s in the name. The gorgeous sandstone arches there seem almost impossible. How and why should the relentlessly erosive wind carve such a fantastic structure? The arches seem too vulnerable, too artificial.

And arches aren’t the only trick that sandstone has up its sleeve. Bizarre, mushroom-shaped pillars seem even more absurd, as if they were carefully placed by an incredibly patient and even more incredibly strong Zen garden enthusiast. In some places, networks of sandstone pillars even hold up ledges like a miniature Moria.

We know plenty about how this erosion takes place, and some details about why some sections of the rock erode faster than others, but the primary cause of these shapes has eluded geologists. A new study led by Jiri Bruthans of Charles University in Prague has revealed a surprisingly simple explanation.

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