We last looked at Icelandic startup Mailpile about a year ago, when Paypal suddenly and infamously froze the company's crowdfunding dollars and demanded that it supply Paypal with its business plan and detailed budgets to prove that it wasn’t some sort of money laundering scheme. Fortunately, Paypal relented and unfroze Mailpile’s money, and the development team got back to work. And they’ve been busy—just a few days ago, Mailpile went beta.

At first blush, Mailpile looks like a local mail application with a webmail interface, intended to put a Gmail-like face on your mail without you having to actually go to gmail.com. However, Mailpile’s goal is much deeper than that—the company is building in seamless support for PGP encryption and key management, and Mailpile wants to enable its users to have fast and easy access to encrypted, secure communication.

Mailpile isn’t a Mail Transfer Agent—an "e-mail server," like Postfix. Rather, it's an MUA, or Mail User Agent. It’s intended to be an application that you install on your local computer. Once installed, it runs its own lightweight Web server that you connect to via your Web browser. You feed the application IMAP credentials for the account or accounts you want to use (like a Gmail account, for example), and Mailpile then downloads all of your account’s messages into a local store, just as any other mail application does. Once downloaded, Mailpile also indexes the messages so that you can do fast local searches—something that’s hit or miss with other MUAs.

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When we reviewed the HTC One (M8) for Windows, one of the things that struck us about that phone's rather awkward name was the "for Windows" part. Notably, it wasn't "for Windows Phone," even though the operating system that the phone is running has that name.

Since then, there has been speculation, rumor, and leaks that suggest a rebranding effort is imminent. One part we knew about already: Microsoft is removing the Nokia name from the Lumia smartphones. Back when Microsoft's decision to buy Nokia's handset division was announced, the companies said that although Microsoft had a 10-year license for the Nokia name on dumb/featurephones, the Redmond firm's ability to use the Nokia name on smartphones was much more limited. Every model that was released (or, it seems, close to release, such as the Lumia 630/635), has retained the Nokia name, but future models will only be Lumia.

The second part of the rebranding is a little more surprising: it seems that "Windows Phone" is going to become merely "Windows." This was pointed at in some leaked documents and now appears to have been confirmed by a second leak. As reported by Neowin, a new Windows phone from UK brand My Go has been spotted, and on the back is a plain Windows badge—no Windows Phone in sight.

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New month, new beta. Andrew Cunningham

Good news for the brave OS X Yosemite beta testers out there: Apple has just released Public Beta 3, a new build that makes various tweaks and additions while fixing bugs and improving stability. Apple has declined to provide specific release notes for the update, but at first blush it doesn't seem to change as much as Public Beta 2 did last month.

Apple continues to push new Yosemite betas to its public testers at the rate of about one per month—that's one public beta build for every two developer beta builds. Today's public beta was released alongside Developer Preview 8, and both should include most of the same fixes and improvements (plus the new stuff that came with Developer Preview 7).

In addition to the new design and features in Yosemite, users of the public beta will be able to take advantage of iOS 8's new Continuity features when the operating system is released to the public this Wednesday. The biggest one of those features is Handoff, which can pass data between the mobile and desktop versions of the same application. You can also use your iPhone to make and receive calls from your Mac.

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Doom on a printer's menu screen! Personally, we can't wait until someone makes Descent playable on a toaster. Context Internet Security

On Friday, a hacker presenting at the 44CON Information Security Conference in London picked at the vulnerability of Web-accessible devices and demonstrated how to run unsigned code on a Canon printer via its default Web interface. After describing the device's encryption as "doomed," Context Information Security consultant Michael Jordon made his point by installing and running the first-person shooting classic Doom on a stock Canon Pixma MG6450.

Sure enough, the printer's tiny menu screen can render a choppy and discolored but playable version of id Software's 1993 hit, the result of Jordon discovering that Pixma printers' Web interfaces didn't require any authentication to access. "You could print out hundreds of test pages and use up all the ink and paper, so what?" Jordon wrote at Context's blog report about the discovery, but after a little more sniffing, he found that the devices could also easily be redirected to accept any code as legitimate firmware.

A vulnerable Pixma printer's Web interface allows users to change the Web proxy settings and the DNS server. From there, an enterprising hacker can crack the device's encryption in eight steps, the final of which includes unsigned, plain-text firmware files. The hacking possibilities go far beyond enabling choppy, early '90s gaming: "We can therefore create our own custom firmware and update anyone’s printer with a Trojan image which spies on the documents being printed or is used as a gateway into their network," Jordon wrote.

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The intended landing site for Philae, part of the Rosetta mission. ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

Today, the operators of the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission announced that they have chosen a site on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko for the first attempt to land human hardware on a comet. If the two-lobed shape of Churyumov–Gerasimenko is viewed as a rubber duckie (and many have made that comparison), the landing site is on the top of its head. If technical issues pop up as preparations for landing continue, an alternate site called C on the comet's body will be used.

The scientists making the decision had to balance a number of factors when picking a site. The lander, called Philae, will make an unpowered descent to the comet's surface, meaning it can't be maneuvered around any obstacles like boulders and ridges as it's approaching. The landing site also has to allow Philae's solar panels to regularly refill its batteries and for its communications gear to have ready contact with Rosetta.

Then there are the scientific issues. You want the probe to land somewhere where it will have access to pristine cometary materials and be close to sites that are likely to start venting the comet's tail as it approaches the sun. Rosetta will use radio transmissions sent through the comet by Philae to probe its interior.

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Whatever the first-gen Apple Watches do, they won't do it as well as subsequent versions. Andrew Cunningham

We've all had about a week to think about the Apple Watch, which is all we can really do with it between now and when it launches in early 2015. There have been plenty of strident pieces written about it since the announcement, and as usual it's pretty easy to find one that reinforces whatever opinion it is that you already have. It's terrible! It's perfect! It's totally irrelevant!

We're not going to be so quick to judge the Apple Watch as a product category, at least not based on our blink-and-you'll-miss-it hands-on session. That said, you probably shouldn't buy the first one. The Apple Watch has promise, and it will have even more once actual people (and developers) can sink their teeth into it. But remember, this is a 1.0 product, and nearly all tech companies have a less than perfect track record when it comes to brand new releases. A quick look into Apple's past is no different, revealing that you rarely want to own the very first generation, version 1.0 iterations of the company's products. Apple's first tries are rarely bad, but they're almost never the company's best work.

The iPad

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Many iTunes users would prefer U2 to back up out of their phones.

After angering some customers by sticking a free U2 album in their iTunes accounts, Apple has put up a support page with instructions on how to get the album out of their libraries. Removing the album requires navigating to a special itunes.com URL and confirming the removal with an Apple ID and password.

Apple gave away the new U2 album, Songs of Innocence, as a kicker to its most recent announcement event for the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and Apple Watch. But Apple didn't just make the album available; it literally placed Songs of Innocence in the iTunes library of each of its 500 million users.

The album isn't downloaded automatically unless users have automatic purchase downloads turned on, and is little more than an indicator that it's available to the user, but for many customers, any U2 is way, way too much U2. NYMag highlighted some of the negative reactions, including "My disdain for the band U2 is making me contemplate switching to a Samsung Galaxy phone #overratedband #Bonoisaturd" and "What is U2 and why is it a gift? You can keep that."

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Currently not a Microsoft-exclusive... Flickr user: Bago Games

In an alternate universe, Microsoft's $2.5 billion acquisition of Minecraft maker Mojang today looks very different. In that universe, Microsoft follows historical form and announces that, henceforth, all Mojang projects and future versions of Minecraft will be exclusive to Microsoft platforms: Xbox consoles and Windows PCs, tablets, and phones.

In that alternate universe, a lot of new people would be taking a good hard look at those Microsoft platforms today, especially the millions of parents with Minecraft-obsessed kids. It's been noted for years now, but it's worth pointing out again that for an entire generation of kids Minecraft is the new Lego; less a mere video game and more a wide-ranging platform for connected creativity and self-expression. If Microsoft controlled the only ways to access that Minecraft platform, millions of people would come along for the ride, even if they grumbled loudly about having to switch devices to do it.

That's not what happened, though. Instead, for the first time in its long history of game publishing, Microsoft is going to begin making games directly for competing hardware platforms. As the company said in its press release today: "Microsoft plans to continue to make Minecraft available across all the platforms on which it is available today: PC, iOS, Android, Xbox, and PlayStation."

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Davide Restivo

A federal appeals court said the US Navy's scanning of the public's computers for images of child pornography constituted "a profound lack of regard for the important limitations on the role of the military in our civilian society."

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) practice led the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals to suppress evidence in the form of images of child pornography that an NCIS agent in Georgia found on a Washington state civilian's computer. The agent was using a law-enforcement computer program called RoundUp to search for hashed images of child pornography on computers running the file-sharing network Gnutella.

"...RoundUp surveillance of all computers in Washington amounted to impermissible direct active involvement in civilian enforcement of the child pornography laws, not permissible indirect assistance," Judge Marsha Berzon wrote for the San Francisco-based appeals court.

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Megan Geuss

On Monday, Apple confirmed that its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus pre-order numbers broke records for the smartphone line, as they combined to rack up over four million purchases in the first 24 hours they were on sale. As we reported—and Apple's announcement confirmed—many of those pre-orders won't ship to customers until October.

The pre-orders, which started early Friday morning in nine nations, handily surpassed the first-day numbers of the iPhone 5; that model received over two million pre-orders in 2012, though its actual first-weekend sales upon retail launch reached five million.

That doesn't mean Apple's first-week in-store supply will be able to feed the sort of demand that the iPhone 6 is generating. Anybody curled up in a sleeping bag in front of an Apple Store right now, however, can take comfort in the fact that Apple will make "additional supply" of both models available to purchase at 8am local time this coming Friday. All four major American carriers' stores will also have phones available on Friday, as well as "additional carriers and select Apple Authorized Resellers."

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Tor Project

Comcast has lately found itself issuing public apologies on a somewhat regular basis as subscribers share tales of horrible customer service.

But the latest accusation leveled against Comcast—that it is threatening to disconnect customers who use the anonymity-providing Tor browser—hasn't been backed by convincing evidence that it's happening. And Comcast dismisses the rumor as “wildly inaccurate.”

It began Saturday with a site called DeepDotWeb claiming that Comcast has “declared war on Tor Browser.”

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Google

Today, Google is launching "Android One" in India, an effort to get high-quality, cheap smartphones into the hands of people in developing countries. Google provides a reference design to OEMs, which then build devices to Google's spec. The devices run stock Android, and Google provides all the updates—you can think of it as a non-flagship version of the Nexus program.

Google has high hopes for Android One, as its blog says it hopes to reach "the next 5 billion" people with the program. Google says only 1.75 billion people have a smartphone, leaving over five billion potential Android users out there.

Most of those five billion people don't have any Internet access at all. These smartphone statistics line up pretty well with stats for the world's disconnected: only one-third of the world is online. A big part of getting online is having a device that can download and render the Internet, and smartphones are the smallest, cheapest Internet browsers we have. Google isn't doing anything to ensure that its Android One phones come with Internet service, but it no doubt hopes getting devices into the hands of users will drive demand for cheap Internet access.

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Awesome Minecraft architecture by Arsian qchronod. Lee Hutchinson

As predicted last week by the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft used its Xbox blog to announce that it has acquired Mojang AB, the Swedish company behind the blocky sandbox game Minecraft. Last week the rumors were that the company’s acquisition price would be a whopping $2 billion, although Reuters and a few others suggested a higher amount.  According to Mojang AB’s blog, those guessing high had it right—the total amount was, as Mojang puts it, "a smooth 2.5 BILLION dollars."

The obvious fear when a large company swallows a small one for a valuable IP like Minecraft is that the large company is going to radically change the formula that made the IP successful in the first place. For Minecraft, radical change would mean altering the egalitarian, open-platform nature of Minecraft or undermining the vast community of livestreamers who monetize their own Minecraft experiences.

Though the deal is only just now being made public, early indications from both Microsoft and Mojang are that fundamental changes to Minecraft's formula won’t be happening—at least, not yet. "There’s no reason for the development, sales, and support of the PC/Mac, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Vita, iOS, and Android versions of Minecraft to stop," says Mojang’s blog. On streaming, Mojang notes that "stopping players making cool stuff is not in anyone’s interests."

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There have been no less than 11 federal judicial rulings striking down patents as "abstract" since the US Supreme Court's June 26 decision in Alice v. CLS Bank.

It's a high number. The case was recognized as a big decision by commentators when it came, and what's happened since suggests the ramifications may be broader than first thought. Vox Media's Tim Lee (former Ars contributor) has an article rounding up the 11 rulings.

The list only highlights patents that have lost under Section 101 of the US patent law, which governs when a patent is an "abstract idea" that can't be patented. Section 101 wins are important to repeat defendants, because they're wins without going through discovery and hiring costly experts. However, some members of the patent bar see Section 101 as an overly blunt tool for weeding out bad patents from true innovations. Many of the patents being knocked out under 101 are "do it on a computer" patents that take everyday activity and add a lot of computer jargon.

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Space Shuttle Enterprise: namesake of the Star Trek spaceship, and one of NASA's greatest, and biggest, behind-the-scenes testing tools. (video link)

NEW YORK—The space shuttle Enterprise has been ensconced aboard the USS Intrepid for just over two years. It sits in a silent warehouse, dramatically lit so it appears to be cruising in a dark vacuum. Tourists can wander around or under it at the exhibit; they can even walk up some stairs and get nose-to-nose with the Enterprise, staring down its long axis through a thick layer of glass.

While the whole thing evokes space exploration, the Enterprise has never actually made it out of Earth's atmosphere. The shuttle on display has the distinction of being one of NASA's biggest workhorses despite earning perhaps the least amount of glory among the entire space shuttle fleet. So while visitors look closely at the Enterprise, they can see what has stopped it from earning more prestige and examine the scars its body has retained from experimentation during its years in service from 1976 through 2012.

Casey Johnston

Like the USS Enterprise it's named after, the Enterprise shuttle is more or less fake. Where a shuttle's $40 million engines should be, the Enterprise has mere mockups, covered by a cone for aerodynamic purposes. A shuttle should be speckled with reaction control system thrusters to help maintain or change its orientation in space. But since the Enterprise has always been Earth-bound, it has nothing but covered holes.

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Opium poppies—soon to be a thing of the past? Stanford

The past few decades have seen enormous progress being made in synthetic biology—the idea that simple biological parts can be tweaked to do our bidding. One of the main targets has been hacking the biological machinery that nature uses to produce chemicals. The hope is that,once we understand enough, we might be able to design processes that convert cheap feedstock, such as sugar and amino acids, into drugs or fuels. These production lines can then be installed into microbes, effectively turning living cells into factories.

Taking a leap in that direction, researchers from Stanford University have created a version of baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) that contains genetic material from the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum), bringing the morphine microbial factory one step closer to reality. These results, published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, represent a significant scientific success, but eliminating the need to grow poppies may still be years away.

More than bread and booze

If dog has been man’s best friend for thousands of years, the humble yeast has long been man’s second-best friend. The single-cell organism has been exploited by human societies to produce alcoholic beverages and bread for more than 4,000 years.

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"Apple Pay beta" TheTruthAbout

A couple of months ago I was visiting New York City and had to catch an early flight out of La Guardia. At 4:30am I hailed a taxi on Houston Street, and the driver and I sped to the airport over dark, empty streets.

On the way, I found a Samsung Note 3 in my bag that Review Editor Ron Amadeo had sent me a few weeks before. The thing had a Near-Field Communications (NFC) chip in it, and I had set up my Google Wallet account on it earlier. I also noticed that the taxi I was in had a tap-to-pay terminal displayed in the backseat. I am a consummate morning person, and a rush of new-day adrenaline told me that it was time to make my first Google Wallet purchase in three years—my last one occurring in 2011 when I reviewed the service at its debut for PCWorld.

As we pulled up to the curb, the driver continued to ignore me as I got out my phone. I touched the Note 3 to the terminal. The phone vibrated, but nothing happened. At this point, the driver turned around. I gave an embarrassed laugh and he said a few polite words, but he had no idea how to help me. “Nobody ever uses their phone to pay,” he said. I tried again. Nothing. But the driver was curious now, and maybe because it was so early in the morning and he had nothing else going on, he got out of the taxi and came around to my side.

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Stack Exchange

This Q&A is part of a weekly series of posts highlighting common questions encountered by technophiles and answered by users at Stack Exchange, a free, community-powered network of 100+ Q&A sites.

durron597 asks:

I was naughty. Too much "cowboy coding," not enough committing. Now, here I am with an enormous commitment. Yes, I should have been committing all along, but it's too late now.

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Aurich Lawson

It's now been nearly 10 months since we first sized up the launch day competition between the Xbox One and PS4 (and even longer since we took a holistic look at the Wii U experience). Back then, we didn't really recommend upgrading to either system immediately. But given every head to head needs a winner, we gave a slight edge to the Xbox One for its superior game lineup and media features.

Those consoles, as they existed on their respective launch days, don't really exist anymore. In the intervening months, the system software changed through downloadable updates, and the game library grew with dozens of new releases. So naturally, our general opinions of the systems evolved as we kept using them over the weeks and months. Today we have a fuller picture of the Xbox One and PS4 instead of a quick peek based on a few hectic usage days before "comprehensive" launch reviews.

With that in mind, it's time to revisit the state of the console wars as it stands today and potentially amend our launch day thoughts with the benefit of a few hundred days of extra experience.

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US Forest Service

Chickens are not fussy eaters. Any object resembling food is worth an exploratory peck. But give a chicken the choice between sugary sweets and seeds, and they will pick the grains every time. This is odd. Many animals, including our own sugar-mad species, salivate for sugar because it is the flavor of foods rich in energy. New research suggests that many birds’ lack of interest in sugar is the result of genes inherited from their dinosaur ancestors.

Most vertebrates experience sweet taste because they possess a family of genes called T1Rs. The pairing of T1R1 and T1R3 detects amino acids and gives rise to the savory “umami” taste, while the T1R2-T1R3 pair detects sugars, giving us our sweet tooth.

Maude Baldwin, a postgraduate student at Harvard University, searched the genomes of ten species of birds, from chickens to flycatchers. She found that insectivorous and grain-eating birds possess the gene pair that detects the amino acids present in insects and seeds, but none of them had the T1R2 gene responsible for the ability to taste sugar. These modern birds evolved from carnivorous theropod dinosaurs that had diets that were rich in proteins and amino acids, but lacked sugar. So Baldwin reasoned that without a need to detect sweetness, ancient birds lost their T1R2 gene.

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