T-Mobile's "data strong network." T-Mobile

T-Mobile US’ latest “Un-carrier” move is just about the most amazing thing ever, CEO John Legere said last week.

“This is like adding millions of towers to our network in a single day,” Legere boasted in a press release. “The difference between us and the traditional carriers is that they’ll do everything they can to make more money off you. We’ll do everything we can to solve your problems.”

The innovation is actually something that T-Mobile has had since 2007: Wi-Fi calling. It makes sense for T-Mobile to promote Wi-Fi calling now, given that Apple is adding the capability to iPhones in iOS 8. The initiative has some nice benefits for customers—T-Mobile offered to upgrade all customers to phones that can make Wi-Fi calls and is giving out a free “Personal CellSpot,” a Wi-Fi router that prioritizes voice calls.

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Apple has put fixes in place to its iCloud cloud storage service that now prevent an attacker from mining data from an iOS device backup stored in the cloud by gaining access to the user’s password—at least if that user has turned on Apple’s new two-factor authentication.

As we reported last week, iCloud previously did not use two-factor authentication to help protect backup data or the Find My iPhone service. This meant that the accounts of victims of social engineering attacks or those who used passwords based on personal data could be harvested of their backup data—allowing the attacker to gain access to photos, call records, SMS records, e-mail, and other personal data. Apple had said that it was moving to provide additional protection through two-factor authentication in advance of the release of iOS 8.

We tried accessing one of the accounts attacked during our testing just prior to the Apple event last week using Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker, a forensic tool that uses a reverse-engineered version of Apple’s iOS backup protocols to extract backup data from an iCloud account. The account now has two-factor authentication turned on, and the attempt failed—it yielded an unspecified HTTP error.

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A member of the House of Representatives is offering legislation that would make it illegal for businesses to take action against consumers who write "honest" negative reviews online about products and services.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) told the National Journal that the forthcoming measure would make it illegal for companies to have non-disparagement clauses in their consumer contracts.

"It's un-American that any consumer would be penalized for writing an honest review," Swalwell said. "I'm introducing this legislation to put a stop to this egregious behavior so people can share honest reviews without fear of litigation."

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Apple

A top appeals court has thrown out a jury ruling that ordered Apple to pay $368 million to VirnetX, a patent-holding company that many consider a “patent troll” because it exists exclusively to enforce patents. On Tuesday, the United States Federal Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the decision back to the lower federal court in East Texas.

The four patents (1, 2, 3, and 4), which relate to FaceTime and VPN On Demand functions in Apple's iPhones, iPads, and Macs, were developed by a company called Science Applications International Corporation. Apple reportedly spent tens of millions of dollars to design FaceTime around the VirnetX patents, but it ultimately found itself embroiled in litigation anyway. The company also tweaked its VPN On Demand product to avoid infringement in 2013 after the lawsuit was well underway.

In its ruling (PDF), the appeals court did not rule that any of VirnetX's patents were invalid, and it only reversed the finding of infringement on one claim pertaining to a VPN On Demand patent. The court also said that the Texas District Court had not correctly defined a term that appeared in two of the patents, and it sent the decision back to Tyler, Texas so the court there can reassess the patent claims based on the appeals court's new term construction.

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Just grab a rating from that pile and slap it on.

On September 16, 1994, the newly formed Entertainment Software Rating Board handed out its first ratings certificates, including its first M rating for the 32X version of Doom. Since then, the organization has taken on the Herculean task of assigning a content-based age rating to practically every commercial video game released in the United States.

For the most part, the organization has done an admirable job of accurately evaluating the content of thousands of games based on brief video montages provided by publishers. The ESRB should also be commended for educating the public about the meaning of its ratings—73 percent of parents say they check ratings before buying games, according to the ESRB—and of getting retailers to comply with voluntary age-based sales restrictions—87 percent of stores refused to sell M-rated games to minors in a 2011 FTC investigation. Despite some concerns surrounding transparency and rating methodology, the industry-wide self-regulation of the ESRB has been a boon to those trying to hold off continual efforts at government restrictions on game content and sales.

Still, among the thousands of ESRB ratings issued over the years, there are quite a few that have us wondering what the group was thinking. Here’s a chronological collection of some of the most baffling ESRB ratings decisions we’ve come across over the years, ranging from too lenient to too harsh to just plain hilarious.

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National Institutes of Health

The Federal Bureau of Investigation says its facial recognition project that stores millions of mug shots and other photos is out of the pilot stage and is at "full operational capability."

The Next Generation Identification system, combined with criminal fingerprints, "will provide the nation's law enforcement community with an investigative tool that provides an image-searching capability of photographs associated with criminal identities," the FBI said in a statement Monday.

The full deployment of the program comes three months after James Comey, the bureau's director, announced that the agency was "piloting the use of mug shots, along with our fingerprint database, to see if we can find bad guys by matching pictures with mug shots."

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SpaceX's Dragon V2. Megan Geuss

Today, NASA administrator Charles Bolden announced that there were two winners in the campaign to become the first company to launch astronauts to low-Earth orbit: Boeing and SpaceX. The two will receive contracts that total $6.8 billion dollars to have hardware ready for a 2017 certification—a process that will include one crewed flight to the International Space Station (ISS).

In announcing the plan, Bolden quoted President Obama in saying, "The greatest nation on earth should not be dependent on any other nation to get to space." And he promoted the commercial crew program as a clear way of ending a reliance on Russian launch vehicles to get to the ISS. But Bolden and others at the press conference were also looking beyond that; several speakers, including Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana and astronaut Mike Fincke, mentioned that the ultimate goal is Mars.

To that end, Bolden emphasized that NASA is still doing its own vehicle and rocket development. The Orion crew capsule, intended to be suitable for missions deeper into the Solar System, recently underwent a splashdown test in the Pacific. Its first test flight aboard a Delta IV rocket is scheduled for this December. Work on the Space Launch System, a heavy lift vehicle that can transport the additional hardware needed for deep space missions, was also mentioned.

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Audi

On Tuesday, permits for self-driving cars issued by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) took effect for the first time.

Applications for the permits began in May 2014. Only the Volkswagen Group (which includes Volkswagen and Audi cars among others), Mercedes Benz, and Google have been issued permits for their 29 total vehicles. Overall, that represents a miniscule fraction of all 32 million registered cars in the Golden State.

Bernard Soriano, a DMV spokesman, told Ars that Tuesday also marked the first time those numbers had been disclosed outside of the agency. "There are a handful of different companies that are completing their application," he added, noting that the DMV expected to issue more permits soon. "They’re all large automakers."

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Greetings, Arsians! Our partners from LogicBuy are back with a ton of deals. We have a just-released Lenovo Erazer X315 gaming computer as this week's top deal, available for just $649.99. At that price, you get a 3.1GHz AMD A8 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a Radeon R9 255 graphics card.

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Desktops and All-in-one PCs

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Steven Michael

Massachusetts’ highest court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Massachusetts State Automobile Dealers’ Association against Tesla Motors. The ruling paves the way for direct-to-consumer Tesla sales in the Bay State.

The Supreme Judicial Court decision, which was handed down on Monday and upheld a lower court’s ruling, found that existing car dealers lacked standing. The plaintiffs had claimed that Tesla was in violation of state law that prevents a car manufacturer from also owning a car dealership—so because Tesla could sell directly, it had an unfair advantage. But that law was intended to protect dealerships from abuse by their own brand manufacturers and distributors, not unrelated manufacturers.

"Contrary to the plaintiff’s assertion, however, the type of competitive injury they describe between unaffiliated entities is not within the statute’s area of concern," Justice Margot Botsford wrote in the unanimous decision.

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Update: NASA has announced that both the Boeing team and SpaceX will move forward on the commercial crew program. See John Timmer's report for details.

NASA is scheduled to make an announcement today about the competition for the Commercial Crew program, the space vehicle that will handle the delivery and return of crew members to the International Space Station and other orbital destinations. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Boeing and partner Blue Origin LLC have the inside track on a contract win. The Washington Post, however, reports that both the Boeing team and SpaceX will be awarded contracts for a demonstration launch.

Blue Origin had been a relatively low-profile space startup. Founded and funded by Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, the company has been focused on developing spacecraft with a vertical takeoff-vertical landing first stage—similar to the technology that SpaceX has been working on with its Grasshopper and Falcon 9 launchers. But Blue Origin hasn’t published any information on further developments of its “New Shepard” suborbital vehicle for nearly two years while the company focused on development of its BE-3—a low-cost, reusable liquid hydrogen rocket engine.

It is the engine technology that attracted the attention of Boeing. In July, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announcement said that Blue Origin was part of a Boeing team that entered a competition for an unmanned “space plane” launch system. Its low-cost engine addresses the competition's focus of dropping the cost of putting large satellites into orbit to under $5 million per launch. SpaceX was not included in the teams selected for the first phase of the program, called XS-1, by DARPA.

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The view of Salyut 7 from Soyuz T-13 after undocking and beginning the journey home. spacefacts.de

The following story happened in 1985 but subsequently vanished into obscurity. Over the years, many details have been twisted, others created. Even the original storytellers got some things just plain wrong. After extensive research, writer Nickolai Belakovski is able to present, for the first time to an English-speaking audience, the complete story of Soyuz T-13’s mission to save Salyut 7, a fascinating piece of in-space repair history.

It’s getting dark, and Vladimir Dzhanibekov is cold. He has a flashlight, but no gloves. Gloves make it difficult to work, and he needs to work quickly. His hands are freezing, but it doesn’t matter. His crew’s water supplies are limited, and if they don’t fix the station in time to thaw out its water supply, they’ll have to abandon it and go home, but the station is too important to let that happen. Quickly, the sun sets. Working with the flashlight by himself is cumbersome, so Dzhanibekov returns to the ship that brought them to the station to warm up and wait for the station to complete its pass around the night side of the Earth. [1]

He’s trying to rescue Salyut 7, the latest in a series of troubled yet increasingly successful Soviet space stations. Its predecessor, Salyut 6, finally returned the title of longest manned space mission to the Soviets, breaking the 84-day record set by Americans on Skylab in 1974 by 10 days. A later mission extended that record to 185 days. After Salyut 7’s launch into orbit in April 1982, the first mission to the new station further extended that record to 211 days. The station was enjoying a relatively trouble-free start to life. [4]

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Megan Geuss

Apple is planning on using its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus to dominate mobile payments in North America—something that no company has really managed yet despite the popularity of phone-based payments in other markets. This is being made possible by the inclusion of NFC chips in the upcoming iPhone models, which gives newer iPhones a capability that has been a regular feature in other device ecosystems for some time now.

However, developers excited to take advantage of NFC on iOS devices are going to be disappointed. In an e-mail exchange with Cult of Mac, Apple confirmed that usage of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus NFC chip will be restricted to Apple Pay only.

As explained by Cult of Mac, this restriction (or omission, depending on how you want to look at it) is similar to Apple’s rollout of its fingerprint-sensing TouchID technology with the iPhone 5S—a year after the device’s release, third-party developers are only now being granted access to the TouchID APIs in their apps with the imminent release of iOS8.

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thierry ehrmann

It would be too much to say that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange feels optimistic. He's been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for more than two years now, with cameras and police—"a £3 million surveillance operation," he calls it—just meters away.

"There's a sense of inevitability now," Assange said when we asked if his situation might change.

Assange: "The situation is clarifying politically and legally."

Ars: "I just want to be clear on this point—are you saying you're hopeful you'll be free soon?"

Assange: "I wouldn't say hopeful. I would say it's inevitable. It's inevitable that we will win the diplomatic standoff we're in now."

It's getting late in London, where Assange is doing a barrage of press interviews on the eve of his new book, When Google Met Wikileaks (it goes on sale in the US later this week). We called at the agreed upon time, and a man who didn't identify himself answered the number, which was for a London cell phone. He said call back in five minutes, and only then was the phone finally handed to Assange.

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The popular show NCIS is one of several shows that CBS was sued over. CBS

A jury in Marshall, Texas, found the infamous "podcasting patent" was infringed by CBS's website today and said that the TV network should pay $1.3 million to patent holder Personal Audio LLC.

The verdict form shows the jury found all four claims of the patent infringed, rejecting CBS' defense that the patent was invalid. The document was submitted today at 1:45pm Central Time.

That's substantially less than Personal Audio was asking for, which was reportedly $7.8 million. That figure was given to Ars by a source that observed the relevant parts of the court proceedings.

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On Monday, trade group Authors United opened a new salvo against Amazon, hoping that the giant book retailer will drop its months-long fight with publisher Hachette over e-book prices. In a letter posted to its website, Authors United asked its 1,100 members to send a letter beseeching intervention from Amazon's 10 board members. The letter demanded that the board stop Amazon from “sanctioning” books from Hachette, and it asked “Do you as an Amazon director approve of this policy of sanctioning books?”

The fight started in May 2014, when Amazon first began refusing orders and delaying delivery times of books published by Hachette as a way of putting pressure on the publisher after failed contract negotiations. According to The New York Times, Amazon was asking for a higher margin on e-books as it faced pressure from Wall Street to turn more of a profit.

"We have been unable to reach mutually acceptable agreement on terms," the Amazon Books Team wrote of its negotiations with Hachette back in May. "We are not optimistic that this will be resolved soon."

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American Commitment

A Republican advocacy group called "American Commitment" said today that 772,000 Americans have signed its petition asking the Federal Communications Commission to avoid "regulating the Internet"—a reference to the agency's current net neutrality proceeding.

"Regulating the Internet has always been a solution in search of a problem," says the petition, which is addressed to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. "By trying for a third time to regulate the Internet, the FCC is demonstrating that it is no longer acting in the interests of the American people. Instead of doing its real job—providing more spectrum for wireless users or deregulating wireline telephone service—it is trying to move backward in time to 1930s-era phone regulation. If the FCC drags 2014 technology back into 1930s regulations, the Internet will suffer, and so will the American people. Do not regulate the Internet."

The petition's website rotates through several pitches to make its case. One accuses the FCC of "usurping the legislative powers of the Congress by attempting to rewrite the laws passed by Congress." Signing the petition submits it as a comment to the FCC's net neutrality proceeding.

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Flickr user: Wesley Fryer

The Texas School Board has managed to receive lots of attention here because of its regular attempts to undermine science education, either through approving standards that promote phony controversies in science or by attempting to get publishers to modify the contents of reasonable science textbooks. Once again, science content is the source of Texas controversy—but this time it's in the social studies books. And for once, the school board isn't at fault.

The social studies books were submitted to the Texas School Board in April, and they will be the subject of public hearings tomorrow. In advance of those hearings, the National Center for Science Education arranged for an analysis of their content, finding that the content covering climate science is severely lacking.

In three cases, the textbooks seem to confuse climate change and ozone depletion. One implies that it's the loss of the ozone layer that's leading to the planet's warming by letting more sunlight in. Two others confuse carbon dioxide emissions with those of ozone destroying chemicals. One states that “Fossil fuel emissions have also caused a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica,” while another argues "Scientists believe the Earth is absorbing more of the sun's harmful rays" as part of its coverage of science issues.

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A model of the Solara 50, Titan Aerospace's commercial "atmospheric satellite," hangs above the company's booth at the AUVSI Unmanned Systems conference in 2013. Sean Gallagher

Google has asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to conduct tests on drones that could eventually be used to deliver Internet access to remote areas.

"Google recently acquired Titan Aerospace, a firm that specializes in developing solar and electric unmanned aerial systems ('UAS') for high altitude, long endurance flights," Google wrote Friday in a request that the FCC keep most testing details confidential. "These systems may eventually be used to provide Internet connections in remote areas or help monitor environmental damage, such as oil spills or deforestation. The STA [Special Temporary Authority] is needed for demonstration and testing of [REDACTED] in a carefully controlled environment."

Google bought Titan in April, with plans to integrate the company into Project Loon, Google's initiative to deliver Internet access from balloons to parts of the world with limited connectivity. Google is also reportedly planning to deploy low-orbit satellites to provide Internet access. Titan's drones are powered by solar energy and can stay aloft for up to five years, as we reported in a profile on the company last year.

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MIT researchers have released a video of a robot they're calling "cheetah" making its way across campus. An earlier robot that was also called cheetah was part of a DARPA/Boston Dynamics (now owned by Google) collaboration that was notable for its speed. The MIT version is notable for ditching the tethers that supplied power to it—it goes for runs using on-board battery power and control logic.

Cheetah is only able to move at up to 10 mph, but its developers expect that they'll be able to get it to eventually travel at up to 30 miles an hour. For now, cheetah's biggest accomplishment is being able to move without any wires, which are normally used to supply power, and in some cases command-and-control, to more sophisticated robots.

The MIT group has also been working on the mechanics of the robot's stride, trying to have it exert more force each time it strikes the ground. The result is that it's been able to move across less rigid surfaces, like grass, which is why it's able to be taken out onto the MIT campus. Additionally, they've developed a routine that allows the robot to take a hop, which will let it bound over obstacles.

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