Congress hasn't done much this year in the area of tech policy, but Congressional leaders and President Obama are both ready to crow about one of the few things that did get done—the passage of a bill allowing consumers to unlock their cell phones.

Obama signed the bill today, and according to a blog post on the White House web site, thus achieved "a rare trifecta: a win for American consumers, a win for wireless competition, and an example of democracy at its best."

The celebratory blog post was written by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Jeff Zients, assistant to the President for Economic Policy. It explains the origins of the bill as an electronic petition by phone unlocker and "digital rights activist" Sina Khanifar, who ultimately garnered 114,000 signatures that got sent to the White House.

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Net Market Share

Windows 8 and Internet Explorer, especially version 11, have been growing steadily since their release. But that growth came to a halt in June, and it didn't pick up in July, with Microsoft's new operating system in fact declining ever so slightly. But one battle that's been raging for years has quietly seen a big change: Android's presence on the Web has passed iOS's.

Net Market Share Net Market Share

The big desktop mover in July was Chrome, which is now up past 20 percent usage share. It gained a substantial 1.03 points, making big gains for two months in a row. Internet Explorer and Firefox both lost out, dropping 0.37 and 0.46 points respectively. Safari and Opera were also slightly down, falling by 0.12 and 0.06 points.

Net Market Share Net Market Share

Safari has been on a downward trajectory for the better part of a year, as Android is making its presence felt on the Web. While Android has been consistently outselling iOS, this hasn't been well reflected in Web data, suggesting perhaps a different usage pattern among Android buyers. But all those sales count for something. Apple's browser is down 1.24 points. Android Browser is also down, falling 0.81 points, but Chrome is up a whopping 1.36 points, and the cross-platform Opera Mini is also up, gaining 0.8 points. Mobile Internet Explorer reached a new high, too, gaining 0.49 points in July.

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The death of a Staten Island man whose filmed arrest went viral online last month was ruled a homicide on Friday.

New York medical examiners said that the chokehold and other force applied by New York police officers were the primary cause of Eric Garner’s death.

The taping is one in a myriad to recently surface online that apparently captured police abuse. Yet the footage—and the medical examination in this case—tell a more complete story than the NYPD's initial assessment of the incident.

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Samsung was late in making a patent royalty payment to Microsoft over the Android phones it sells, and today that led to the predictable result: a lawsuit.

"Today's legal action is simply to enforce our contract with Samsung," Microsoft wrote in a blog post explaining its actions. "We don't take lightly filing a legal action, especially against a company with which we've enjoyed a long and productive partnership."

The two companies reached a patent deal in 2011, in which Samsung presumably paid Microsoft for the patents it says apply to devices running Google's Android operating system.

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Ars Culture Editor Casey Johnston fills her TV screen with Flappy Bird... and quickly fails. Casey Johnston

It's been nearly six months since Flappy Bird officially ended its meteoric rise up the mobile app store charts, taken down by Vietnamese creator Dong Nguyen out of discomfort with the game's addictiveness and unanticipated attention from fans and haters. Now, after hinting that the game might return in the future, sequel Flappy Birds Family has quietly appeared in the Amazon App Store, touting its compatibility with the Fire TV set-top box.

The Amazon page suggests compatibility with "Android 3.0," but the game doesn't seem to be installable on any device except the set-top Fire TV. The listed developer, Dotgears, has one other Fire TV game to its name, the Nguyen-developed Super Ball Juggling.

Flappy Birds Family's product description from Amazon touts "incredible new features" such as "Person vs Person mode, more obstacles, more fun and still very hard." In addition to local split-screen multiplayer and multiple colored birds, the game now has floating, cloud-shaped ghosts to avoid and standard Mario-style pipes. "Enjoy playing the game at home (not breaking your TV) with your family and friends," the description says.

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Back in April, Vic Gundotra, a senior executive at Google and the leader of Google+, left the company. Shortly afterward, reports surfaced claiming that Gundotra's departure was part of a plan to back away from the original Google+ strategy of forcing users into the service and to drastically cut the division resources.

A report from Bloomberg claims that the first big service on the chopping block is Google+ Photos, one of the social network's best features. Bloomberg says the service will be given "more autonomy" from Google+ and "may be rebranded" in order to pull in more people who otherwise wouldn't use the services thanks to its association with Google+. Separating Google+ Photo from Google+ would seemingly turn it into a Flickr-style service—a standalone photo hosting site that would compete on features and storage options rather than the social network a person chooses to use.

Google+ Photos has a number of features that could help it stand out in the photo hosting space. It has a ton of cloud smarts, which Google calls "Auto-Awesome," that can automatically tweak photos to look better and can combine several pictures into an animated gif. The one area that would seriously need improvement is the free storage amount, which sits at a paltry 15GB shared across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos. The Yahoo-owned Flickr offers 1TB of storage for free.

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Replacing the home screen on a Droid Razr Maxx HD. Andrew Cunningham

When KitKat was released on the Nexus 5 last year, it included a new application launcher that we spent quite a bit of time on in our review. That launcher wasn't actually a part of KitKat, though—it was exclusive to the Nexus 5 for several months and was only made available to other Nexus and Google Play edition phones well after they had been updated to KitKat. Now, Google is casting an even wider net. The company just announced that the Google Now Launcher can be installed on any phone running Android 4.1 or newer, regardless of manufacturer.

As we've covered previously, the Google Now Launcher isn't really a launcher in and of itself—it just ties in to code that's been shipping with the Google Search app for around a year now. If you try to install the Google Now Launcher on a phone with an older version of the Search app, you'll be prompted to update it before you can actually switch home screens. Previous versions of the launcher could often be sideloaded onto newer phones and tablets with no issue, since the launcher is just part of the Search app, and the Search app is installed on all Google-approved Android devices.

If you haven't experimented with it before, the Google Now Launcher replaces your phone's home screen with the same one Google first released on the Nexus 5 late last year. It offers its own wallpapers, and it has voice controls that can be activated by saying "OK Google" when sitting at the home screen. If you've opted into Google Now, you can see all of your cards by swiping right from your primary home screen.

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Internet Archive book images

Prenda Law sued thousands of people over allegations of illegally distributing adult movies before its business was brought to a crashing halt by a series of judicial sanctions. The lawyers behind Prenda—Paul Duffy, John Steele, and Paul Hansmeier—steadfastly maintained that those sanctions were unwarranted, and they appealed.

On Thursday, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit became the first appeals court to weigh in on their arguments. It didn't think much of them. The first sentence of the 24-page opinion suggested where things were going to go. "The first rule of holes, according to an old saying, is to stop digging," wrote Chief Judge Diane Wood on behalf of the three-judge panel.

Duffy, Steele, and Hansmeier chose to appeal a lower court order that they should pay attorneys' fees to Anthony Smith, one of their erstwhile defendants in a porn-downloading lawsuit, as well as SBC Internet and Comcast, two giant Internet providers they unwisely prodded with a lawsuit. "They did not, however, file a motion either to clarify the nature of the sanctions or to stay the order," noted Wood. "Instead, they simply did not pay."

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Matt's Homes

There's a trivial way for drive-by exploit developers to bypass the security sandbox in almost all versions of Internet Explorer, and Microsoft says it has no immediate plans to fix it, according to researchers from Hewlett-Packard.

The exploit technique, laid out in a blog post published Thursday, significantly lowers the bar for attacks that surreptitiously install malware on end-user computers. Sandboxes like those included in IE and Google Chrome effectively require attackers to devise two exploits, one that pierces the sandbox and the other that targets a flaw in some other part of the browser. Having a reliable way to clear the first hurdle drastically lessens the burden of developing sophisticated attacks.

The bypass technique "does give the attacker a significant advantage by giving them higher-level access than a typical exploit might in Internet Explorer, by allowing them to escape the sandbox," Robert "Rsnake" Hansen, a vice president at security firm WhiteHat Labs, wrote in an e-mail to Ars. "In practical terms this is a very important finding, because it can be tied into existing exploits that might otherwise not be able to escape the IE sandbox."

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Some microwave resonators left over from early accelerators at CERN. John Timmer

Yesterday, Wired UK had geeks everywhere salivating at the prospect of a purely electrical space thruster system—one that should be impossible based on what we know about classical physics. The article notes that NASA engineers have now tested one of these devices and found that it appears to produce thrust without using any fuel. Although there are ways that non-classical physics can make things work, there are enough red flags raised by material in the initial report that the news should be greeted very skeptically.

The limit that space thrusters face is purely classical: to push something along at a higher velocity, you need to push against something else. So typical thrusters push against the mass of the burning fuel that they're explosively expelling behind them. Even the most sophisticated, efficient thrusters—ion drives—act as particle accelerators that shoot ions out in the opposite direction of the way they're accelerating. As a result, any form of thrust that we've used requires that the spacecraft carry some mass that then gets shot out from the spacecraft. This adds weight to the launch vehicle and sets a finite limit on how much propulsion can be generated during the spacecraft's lifetime. Which is a bit frustrating, given that the high-efficiency solar panels on many spacecraft can give them a surplus of energy. It's just not energy we can convert into thrust—or at least we think we can't convert it into thrust.

The Wired UK article details how a variety of groups have suggested that it might be possible to use electricity to generate some thrust via a decidedly non-classical mechanism. The device involves a radio frequency resonant cavity, which takes microwaves as an input and uses them to create an oscillating electrical field. These cavities are used in particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider, where the electric field helps boost the energy of the circulating ions. At the LHC, however, they actually provide some ions for the resonant cavity to push around, which would be equivalent to supplying this thruster with fuel. Yet the backers of this device suggest it's pushing against the swarm of virtual particles that quantum mechanics indicates are constantly popping in and out of existence in empty space.

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New online speech restrictions are taking effect Friday in Russia, making it more difficult for bloggers to remain anonymous and requiring social-networking sites like Facebook to retain user data for at least six months.

Under a measure approved by Russia's parliament in April, the law also demands that the social media data be stored within the country's boundaries so it can be available for government inspection.

Human Rights Watch called the development "another milestone in Russia's relentless crackdown on free expression," in a statement given to the BBC. The Internet, the group added, "is the last island of free expression in Russia and these draconian regulations are clearly aimed at putting it under government control."

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A NOAA tide gauge. NOAA

A new study examines sea level changes in the tropical Pacific Ocean with the aim of determining how much of its rise is due to anthropogenic causes.

Part of the challenge of this work is that the Pacific experiences a natural oscillation in sea level that is caused by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), a decade-long cycle in ocean currents and temperatures. The length of the PDO makes it difficult to distinguish an overall long-term pattern (if such a pattern exists) from the short-term variability.

Added to this is the fact that accurate sea level measurements, taken using satellite altimetry, only go back as long as we’ve been using satellites—a few decades.

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FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler speaking to the cable industry in April 2014. NCTA

The Federal Communications Commission investigation of how network interconnection problems affect the quality of Internet service began when the FCC obtained the paid peering deals Netflix signed with Comcast and Verizon.

The FCC has asked another six Internet service providers and content providers for copies of similar agreements, a commission official told Ars this week. The FCC will likely announce more details of its probe in the fall, but the public probably won't see any specific details of the contracts. Ars sent the commission a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to obtain Netflix's contracts with Comcast and Verizon, but it was denied due to their confidential nature.

That's no surprise, but it may be tricky for FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to fulfill his stated goal of explaining to the public how interconnection disagreements affect the quality of streaming video and other Web services.

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Recorded Furture Security researchers announced Friday that they have found new evidence to bolster claims from the National Security Agency that terrorists have altered their countermeasures in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations.

"Al-Fajr, one of Al-Qaeda’s media arms, released a new Android encryption application [in] early June 2014 on their website, referring to how it follows the “latest technological advancements” and provides '4096 bit public key' encryption," intelligence firm Recorded Future said in a Friday report.

The report added that Global Islamic Media Front, another arm of Al Qaeda, just released a "new version" of Android crypto software.

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EIA

Less than a decade ago, renewable energy in the US meant hydropower; everything else was just a rounding error. Times have definitely changed. Yesterday, the US Energy Information Agency announced that non-hydro renewable had gone eight months where it outproduced hydroelectric dams. And that's without counting residential or distributed solar power.

The EIA defines non-hydro renewables as a mix of solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, landfill gas, and municipal solid waste; currently, the largest contributors there are solar and wind. But the EIA doesn't track projects below one megawatt of capacity, which would include all residential solar installations, as well as distributed projects like the ones New Jersey is placing on utility poles. As a result, the numbers for non-hydro renewables should be considered a lower bound on the true output. (The EIA estimates distributed solar's 2013 output as 10 billion kilowatt hours.)

Despite that caveat, the growth has been impressive. The non-hydro output had never been more than half the renewable total before late 2012, but it had already started its eight-month run just a year later. The high variability of hydro output (which has seasonal and other water availability limitations) caused it to bounce back above half in May, but the EIA expects that, on the whole, it will be below half of the annual generation for the year. And given current trends, it's unlikely to ever dominate renewable generation again.

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The new Typo 2 keyboard case. It now looks kind of like a BlackBerry instead of exactly like a BlackBerry. Typo

Remember Typo, the company co-founded by entertainer and tech luminary Ryan Seacrest that began selling a suspiciously BlackBerry-like keyboard case for the iPhone earlier this year? Typo is back with a new iteration called the Typo 2, which takes the same idea and implements it in a way that hopefully won't make a certain Canadian smartphone manufacturer feel litigious.

The original Typo keyboard looked so much like BlackBerry's that BlackBerry sued in January, and by March it had won a preliminary injunction banning Typo from selling the accessory. Looking at the original Typo keyboard, it's not hard to see why:

The first Typo keyboard accessory. Typo

And here's the keyboard BlackBerry is using on its Q10 smartphone.

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Dennis Redfield

One of Google's mysterious party/showroom barges has reportedly been sold and will be shipping out of its location in Portland, according to a report from the Portland Press Herald. The barge was transferred to a new terminal Wednesday, and the terminal's owner states that it's preparing to ship out to a new owner shortly.

When the four Google barges first turned up on both the East and West coasts, reports indicated that Google intended them to be a show floor for projects in work, such as Google Glass and the company's self-driving car technology. Onboard two of the barges were structures made of 40-foot shipping containers that could be put together, rearranged, and transported as needed. The structures also reportedly included a "party deck" and various amenities for receiving clients, business partners, and VIPs.

As of fall 2013, little work had been done on the two barges parked in Portland and San Francisco Bay, and the two others in San Francisco's Treasure Island and New London, CT didn't even have superstructures to support future development. Portland collected property taxes on the barge parked there to the tune of $400,000. In February, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission told Google it needed to move its barge out.

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Flickr user: Carlos Martinez

Chronic pain, defined as disabling pain that persists despite attempts at treatment and often without obvious cause, has become a serious challenge for health professionals. It is not surprising that someone suffering from this level of pain might become depressed, but most studies consider depression a "comorbidity"—an associated disorder—or suggest that the pain is "somatization" of the depression. That is, it may be a mental disorder’s effect on the body.

These ideas ignore both the impact of pain on people and 50 years of understanding in pain science. A new study by Neil Schwartz at Stanford University and colleagues, just published in Science, has helped clarify the relationship between pain and depression. The researchers identify the underpinnings of loss of motivation in mice with chronic pain and depression.

For the study, they induced chronic pain in mice through injury. Before the injury, the mice were tested for their motivation to search for and work to get food. After the injury, they were just as interested in food they could obtain with minimal effort. But those with pain gave up much sooner when getting food required more work per pellet. This shows that chronic pain can reduce motivation.

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While Mt. Gox owner Mark Karpeles was growing what would become the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, he should have been serving time in his home country of France. He was sentenced to a year in custody in 2010 on fraud accusations.

A newly obtained French court document shows that Karpeles has a civil and non-civil judgment pending where, in addition to custody, he also owes €45,000 ($60,000). The document is being published jointly for the first time by Ars Technica and the French publication Le Monde. (Read the French original here and an English translation here.)

The case was brought by a former employer who accused Karpeles of stealing customer user names, customer passwords, and a domain name, among other grievances. Under French law, Karpeles is not considered a criminal but rather “un délinquant,” a delinquent offender. It's a lesser label than “criminal,” because that word is reserved only for very serious crimes within the country.

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Historically, the biggest class-action lawsuits filed against video game companies have stemmed from antitrust and monopoly accusations, such as Nintendo's alleged price-fixing in 1991 or EA's football-series monopolies in the mid-'00s. But in some cases, like a filing over the 2013 shooter Aliens: Colonial Marines, the suit's terms boiled down to little more than "the game stinks."

That's what happened when two fans sued producer Sega and developer Gearbox in May 2013 over that disastrous Aliens game, alleging that the game's previews were so different from the retail release that they "misled" shoppers. On Thursday, over a year after the suit was filed, Gearbox finally responded with a motion for dismissal—and revealed more of the game's woes in the process.

One section of the motion, penned by Gearbox Marketing Director Steve Gibson, recounted the game's development timeline in order to distance itself from any financial obligation should the lawsuit turn out in the plaintiffs' favor. In particular, Gibson alleged that "Gearbox supplemented Sega’s development budget with its own money" to the tune of millions, "none of which was ever repaid."

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