Verizon Wireless today confirmed that it will begin slowing down LTE data speeds when customers who have unlimited plans and use a lot of data connect to congested cell sites. This "Network Optimization" was implemented in 2011 but previously applied only to 3G users.

"Starting in October 2014, Verizon Wireless will extend its network optimization policy to the data users who: fall within the top 5 percent of data users on our network, have fulfilled their minimum contractual commitment, and are on unlimited plans using a 4G LTE device," the Verizon announcement said. "They may experience slower data speeds when using certain high bandwidth applications, such as streaming high-definition video or during real-time, online gaming, and only when connecting to a cell site when it is experiencing heavy demand."

People who use 4.7GB or more per month fall in the top five percent and will thus see slower connections when using their devices in congested areas, Verizon says in an FAQ. When asked to explain the reason for the "minimum contractual commitment" clause, a Verizon spokesperson told Ars the company is focusing the policy on "customers who are still on a month-to-month plan" and have grandfathered unlimited data. "We discontinued offering unlimited plans to new customers in 2011," the spokesperson said.

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SpaceX

The United States government has lost its bid to toss SpaceX's lawsuit over lucrative national security-related launch contracts.

In two orders issued on Thursday, the US Court of Federal Claims said that the two parties have been ordered to seek mediation as a way to resolve their ongoing dispute.

Three months ago, the private space firm sued after learning that the Air Force had entered into exclusive agreements with government contractors that locked out private companies from competing for the launch contracts without providing suitable justification. As of now, the only authorized contractor to send up Air Force payloads is United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

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CV Dazzle

The National Security Agency revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden have produced a cottage industry of companies providing technological innovations that seek to defeat the NSA surveillance state.

The bulk of this effort is focused on encryption services that secure all manners of online communications from the NSA's prying eyes. But what about privacy in the non-virtual world?

Brooklyn artist Adam Harvey has developed a low-tech solution to protect your privacy—fashioned even before the Snowden revelations—using makeup and hairstyles he says could defeat facial-recognition machines. Privacy enthusiasts must be willing to look like Marilyn Manson or a rocker from Kiss, but this method just might make you safe from the facial-recognition technology that is being embraced by everything from sports stadiums to the FBI.

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Contando Estrelas

Google X has launched a new moonshot called "Baseline Study," which is intended to help us better understand the human body. Google wants to collect genetic and molecular information that it will use to create a picture of a healthy human. The project will initially start with 175 people and will later expand to "thousands" more. Unlike most Google X projects, Google's hasn't come out and talked about this one; all the information we have comes from a Wall Street Journal report.

The plan is to collect a massive amount of information on healthy people and to use that data to proactively identify and address health problems. Most medicine today is reactive rather than focusing on the prevention of illness—something goes wrong and then you get treatment. Once Google has a good baseline of what a healthy human looks like, that data can be compared to data from other individuals to discover potential problems before symptoms become obvious.

Larry Page has frequently spoken about the possibility of using big data techniques to improve healthcare while lamenting that privacy laws limit searches through medical data. With the Baseline Study, it seems that Google intends to build a database of its own that can avoid these limits. With all this data, Google will use its big data prowess to search for "biomarkers," or specific molecules that indicate something is amiss. Google won't have free rein over the data, though—the Institutional Review Boards of Duke and Stanford University will review how it intends to use the information.

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Should Netflix CEO Reed Hastings insist on payments from Comcast and Verizon? JD Lasica

While the network neutrality debate has focused primarily on whether ISPs should be able to charge companies like Netflix for faster access to consumers, cable companies are now arguing that it's really Netflix who holds the market power to charge them.

This argument popped up in comments submitted to the FCC by Time Warner Cable and industry groups that represent cable companies. (National Journal writer Brendan Sasso pointed this out.)

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), which represents many companies including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Cox, and Charter wrote to the FCC:

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Romero chats with Ars' Sam Machkovech at this year's GDC. Kenneth Lucas

Id software cofounder John Carmack has probably been virtual reality's biggest booster in the wider game industry, championing the Oculus Rift long before he officially joined Oculus as chief technology officer last year (much to the chagrin of former employer ZeniMax). But fellow Id co-founder and Doom developer John Romero seems much more skeptical that the new wave of virtual reality headsets will really be as revolutionary as developers like Carmack seem to think.

Speaking at an event at the Strong Museum of Play's eGameRevolution exhibit (as reported by GamesIndustry.biz), Romero did say that he was "blown away" by the quality of the head tracking and immersion in the Oculus Rift when he got to try it out. Still, he said he thinks virtual reality is going to have trouble gaining mainstream acceptance in its current form, largely because it "encloses you and keeps you in one spot."

Romero echoed comments from Nintendo executives that have criticized VR as isolating and out of step with the trends in the wider gaming industry. "VR is going away from the way games are being developed and pushed as they go back into multiplayer and social stuff. VR is kind of a step back, it's a fad. Maybe in the future there will be a better VR that gets you out of isolation mode."

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The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) has offered a 3.9 million ruble (approximately $111,000) contract for technology that can identify the users of Tor, the encrypted anonymizing network used by Internet users seeking to hide their activities from monitoring by law enforcement, government censors, and others.

In a notice on the Russian government’s procurement portal under the title “Perform research, code ‘TOR’ (Navy),” originally posted on July 11, the MVD announced it was seeking proposals for researchers to ”study the possibility of obtaining technical information about users and users equipment on the Tor anonymous network.” The competition, which is open only to Russian citizens and companies, requires entrants to pay a 195,000 ruble (approximately $5,555) application fee. Proposals are due by August 13, and a winner of the contract will be chosen by August 20.

The MVD had previously sought to ban the use of any anonymizing software. That proposal was dropped last year. However, a new “blogger law” passed in April, which goes into effect in August, requires all bloggers with an audience of over 3,000 readers to register their identity with the government—and enforcement of the law could be made difficult if bloggers use the Tor network to retain their anonymity.

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The USS Coronado (LCS-4) underway in April 2014. The Coronado will test-launch the Norwegian-built Naval Strike Missile later this year off the coast of California. U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Keith DeVinne

This fall, the US Navy will test a new weapon system—at least, one that’s new to the US—aboard the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) USS Coronado somewhere off the California coast. In search of some way to beef up the firepower of the oft-maligned LCS class, the Navy will test-launch a missile that can fly up to 100 miles and strike targets at sea or on land. And that missile comes not from one of the big names in the US defense industry but from Norway.

The LCS was supposed to be a modular, flexible ship that could get in close to shore and support troops with missile fire. But when the US Army cancelled the Non-Line of Site (NLOS) missile program, it took the teeth out of that idea—the modular missile system was also supposed to be the LCS’s go-to weapon for longer-range land and sea attack.

Since then, the only missile that has even been fired from an LCS-class ship is the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile, an anti-air point defense missile system tested aboard the USS Freedom in 2009 and 2010. And concerns about the ship’s underpowered armament and inherent lack of flexibility without a missile capability made it an expensive sitting duck in “contested” waters—in other words, against any adversary that could put even a patrol boat armed with anti-ship missiles to sea. As a result, the Navy cut the number of LCS ships to be built in half and froze the purchase of ships not already under construction while it looks at alternatives.

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Android Police

Android Police has gotten a hold of leaked photos of an upcoming Motorola follow-up to the Moto X, the oddly named Moto X+1. The pictures show a device that looks a lot like the Moto X, complete with a presumably customizable wooden back.

According to the leak, the X+1 will be bigger than the Moto X. The sequel is reportedly joining the rest of the flagship phones and jumping from a 4.7-inch screen to 5.1 inches. For Motorola, it's good to have a flagship with a screen matching the size of the competition, but if this device replaces the Moto X, it means one of the few choices for a smaller, relatively high-end phone will be going away. Like the Moto E, the earpiece cutout is mirrored on the bottom of the device, where it is used for the microphone.

On the back, the camera module looks pretty big, which usually indicates optical image stabilization, though the article doesn't mention it. The dots to the left and right of the camera module are dual LED flashes. Like the Moto X, the back is said to be non-removable, and there's no microSD slot.

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Russian space agency Roscosmos issued a number of statements earlier today indicating that their Foton-M4 satellite is in trouble. According to Russian state-owned news agency ITAR-TASS, the scientific research satellite with its payload of experiments is still sending back telemetry, but it's unresponsive to commands sent from the ground. In a separate report, ITAR-TASS quotes a Roscosmos representative as saying that Foton-M4 is designed for "durable autonomous operation," but the lack of ground control jeopardizes the experiments slated to be carried out on board the Foton-M4—not to mention the health of its living cargo.

A day gecko. Paul Ritchie Foton-M4 was launched on July 19 carrying five geckos—small lizards that favor tropical and subtropical climates (and, apocryphally, sell insurance). The lucky lizards—one male and four females—were sent into their 575-kilometer low earth orbit in order to study the effect of microgravity on their reproductive habits, with scientists monitoring their behavior through a video downlink to the ground.

The lizards aren’t joining the 357-Mile High Club alone; the satellite is carrying an additional biological payload of flies, plant seeds, and assorted microorganisms, along with 850kg of scientific instrumentation to support 22 experiments.

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Diagram of the Foton-4M satellite. Roscosmos/RussianSpaceWeb

Contact lost with satellite containing five suddenly unlucky lizards

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Russian space agency Roscosmos issued a number of statements earlier today indicating that their Foton-M4 satellite is in trouble. According to Russian state-owned news agency ITAR-TASS, the satellite is still sending back telemetry, but is unresponsive to commands sent from the ground. In a separate report, ITAR-TASS quotes a Roscosmos representative as saying that Foton-M4 is designed for "durable autonomous operation," but the lack of ground control jeopardizes the experiments slated to be carried out on board the Foton-M4—not to mention its living payload.

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Musician Chubby Checker, best known for his 1960 smash hit cover version of The Twist, has settled the lawsuit he brought against Hewlett-Packard in 2013, according to the Hollywood Reporter. In the suit the singer claimed trademark infringement after HP included a penis size estimating application, "The Chubby Checker," in its WebOS store.

Rock and roll icon Chubby Checker, real name Ernest Evans, sued HP for half a billion dollars, claiming not only that it infringed his trademark but also that HP violated the Communications Decency Act. The Communications Decency Act claim was dismissed by the courts in August 2013, but the trademark claim was allowed to proceed and was due to go to trial this coming October.

The application worked by asking for a man's shoe size and thereby providing an estimate of his penis size, a process that likely lacks rigorous scientific validity. The app was withdrawn from the WebOS App Catalog in 2012 after HP received a cease and desist demand from Evans' lawyers. The $0.99 application was downloaded fewer than 100 times during its time on the market, leaving HP with a profit of no more than $30.

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Last week, Bungie and Activision unveiled a beta version of their upcoming online shooter game Destiny, which first launched on PS3 and PS4 consoles. Xbox 360 and Xbox One players had to wait until yesterday to join in. Beta access for users across all consoles had a catch: it required a Destiny pre-order (or luckily snagging a beta download code via social media).

That changed on Thursday when Bungie opened the game's beta doors to all console players, so long as they were subscribed to their system's paid subscription service (Xbox Live Gold or PlayStation Plus). The announcement came barely an hour ahead of the game's doors being swung wide open, telling players they merely needed to log in to their consoles' normal download stores to find their free beta download.

The launch comes on the heels of a limited alpha test in June. From our brief experience, the beta contains a more expansive world to explore, a better introductory sequence, and more stable online play—along with a chance for players to compare performance between older and newer console generations. (Our time with the PS3 version, for example, handled surprisingly well, in spite of a remarkably lower screen resolution, fewer foliage/skybox details, and smudgy anti-aliasing methods.)

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After months of speculation, a report has linked Google to a $1 billion acquisition of the video-streaming site Twitch.tv. VentureBeat's Wednesday report went so far as to call the deal "confirmed," but it didn't list an exact price, announcement date, or other key details, relying solely on "sources familiar with the matter."

The deal, originally reported by Variety in May, may seem like a small drop in the bucket for Google. YouTube racks up more than one billion monthly viewers compared to Twitch's 45 million. But the gaming-focused Twitch enjoys an edge thanks to dedicated features like internal console apps, screencasting, and live chat. The acquisition looks particularly attractive in the wake of e-sports' recent rise in Western popularity.

Though Twitch was founded by co-creators of Justin.tv, another streaming site, no report has mentioned whether the originating video-streaming site will be involved in the deal. If that amount remains around $1 billion, it'll be quite the coup for investors who have only sunk roughly $35 million into Twitch thus far.

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The Rayburn office building for the US House of Representatives. Cliff

Most members and staffers of the US House of Representatives won't be able to edit pages on Wikipedia for more than a week. Administrators of the popular Web encyclopedia have imposed a 10-day ban on the IP address connected to Congress' lower house.

The ban comes after a series of wild "disruptive" edits that appeared following the creation of @congressedits, a bot that monitors anonymous edits from congressional IP addresses and announces them to the world via Twitter. The account was created just over two weeks ago and already has more than 23,000 followers.

Wikipedia editors explained their castigation for the IP address 143.231.249.138 on the user talk page. The 10-day edit ban follows a one-day ban imposed earlier this month, which apparently didn't do the trick.

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The Kindle Fire tablet. amazon

Despite Amazon's recent launch of the Fire Phone, Kindle Unlimited, and HBO on Amazon Prime, the company struggled to turn a profit last quarter.

Amazon announced Thursday that it lost $126 million in quarterly earnings. The company’s stock price was down more than seven percent in after-hours trading.

The losses show that Amazon may be overstretched at the moment. The company made $274 million in 2013 and nearly $3 billion in total profits from 2009 through 2013.

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Rockwell Collins and Elbit Systems' joint—a helmet that can see through planes without making the pilot throw up. Lockheed Martin

This week, Lockheed Martin officially took delivery of a key part of the F-35 fighter’s combat functionality—the pilot’s helmet. The most expensive and complicated piece of headgear ever constructed, the F-35 Gen III Helmet Mounted Display System (HMDS) is one of the multipurpose fighter’s most critical systems, and it's essential to delivering a fully combat-ready version of the fighter to the Marine Corps, the Navy, and the Air Force. But it almost didn’t make the cut because of software problems and side effects akin to those affecting some 3D virtual reality headsets.

Built by Rockwell Collins ESA Vision Systems International (a joint venture between Rockwell Collins and the Israeli defense company Elbit Systems), the HMDS goes way beyond previous augmented reality displays embedded in pilots’ helmets. In addition to providing the navigational and targeting information typically shown in a combat aircraft’s heads-up display, the HMDS also includes aspects of virtual reality, allowing a pilot to look through the plane. Using a collection of six high-definition video and infrared cameras on the fighter’s exterior called the Distributed Aperture System (DAS), the display extends vision a full 360 degrees around the aircraft from within the cockpit. The helmet is also equipped with night vision capabilities via an infrared sensor that projects imagery inside the facemask.

The helmet is an essential part of the aircraft’s cockpit. Some pilots have called the helmet's austere touchscreen Panoramic Cockpit Display “the most naked cockpit in history“ because of its lack of switches and other physical instrumentation. (“Not true,” said Lockheed Martin F-35 Pilot Vehicle Interface lead Michael Skaff in a presentation he gave on the cockpit. “The Wright flyer had fewer switches.”) When combined with the cockpit’s built-in voice recognition capabilities, the helmet will allow the pilot to track everything in the aircraft’s sphere of visibility.

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Vincent Desjardins

The Supreme Court of Wisconsin has upheld the warrantless use of cell phone tracking devices, better known as "stingrays.” In a narrow decision published on Thursday, the court found that while the Milwaukee police did not specifically have a warrant to use the stingray to locate a murder suspect, it did have a related judicial order that essentially served the same purpose.

This 2009 murder case is one of the rare, high-level court decisions that directly speaks to the legality of the use of stingrays, which are often used to track suspects’ phones and, in some cases, intercept calls and text messages. However, stingrays also capture related information on all other cell phone users who happen to be in physical proximity to the target.

The court order specifically approved “the installation and use of a trap and trace device or process,” and "the installation and use of a pen register device/process," and “the release of subscriber information, incoming and outgoing call detail…and authorizing the identification of the physical location of a target cellular phone.”

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For years, Google’s Chrome browser on many platforms has relied on the Mozilla Network Security Service (NSS) to provide secure Web connections. And earlier this year, that reliance appeared to become a very good thing, with the disclosure of OpenSSL’s Heartbleed vulnerability. But Google also had used OpenSSL as the encryption engine for Chrome on some versions of Android, creating a security crisis for many of Chrome’s mobile users.

Ironically, Heartbleed played out as Google engineers had come to the conclusion that they needed to switch development of Chrome on all platforms to OpenSSL. “Switching to OpenSSL, however, has the opportunity to bring significant performance and stability advantages to iOS, Mac, Windows, and ChromeOS immediately out of the gate,” wrote Ryan Sleevi in a draft design paper in January that was heavily referenced across the Chrome and open-source Chromium developer community.

In the wake of Heartbleed, however, OpenSSL’s benefits have apparently been outweighed by its baggage. On June 20, Google Senior Staff Engineer Adam Langley announced that Google was moving to create its own clean version of OpenSSL, called BoringSSL—boring, as in a lack of exciting vulnerabilities.

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According to the world of zipper merging, just because you see this sign doesn't mean you should change lanes at that exact moment. Lexinatrix

Of all of the reasons for traffic snarls, impending lane closures bring out a particularly brutal combination of road rage and etiquette confusion. Most drivers know the pain of approaching two lanes in this situation; the left one is backed up much further because the right one will close in less than a mile thanks to, say, construction.

Which lane should a driver pick in this scenario? Steer to the left as soon as you see a closure notice and you'll almost certainly go slower; stay in the right and you'll catch stink-eye, honks, and even swerving drivers. Everyone is upset that you're about to essentially cut in line—an act that will require a tense, last-minute merge of your own.

Most driving schools and transportation departments in the United States don't instruct drivers on how to handle this situation or whether they must merge within a certain mileage, leaving this kind of merge up to the grace of your fellow, angry commuters. This week, however, Washington state joined Minnesota in sending a clear message to drivers: merge rudely. It's actually faster and safer.

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