We reported last week that Microsoft's OneDrive cloud service was finally syncing files larger than 2GB. The company today confirmed the change and disclosed what the new size limit is: 10GB. Not quite enough for a Blu-Ray, but it should solve the file size problem for most users.

That's not the only improvement that Microsoft has made. The desktop client will, at long last, make it easy to share files in OneDrive with other people; right clicking the file in Explorer will have a straightforward "Share a OneDrive link" menu item to create a link that can be e-mailed, tweeted, or otherwise passed around. The lack of such a feature has long made using OneDrive much more annoying than using the competing Dropbox service.

The new menu item is rolling out to OneDrive users on Windows 7 and Windows 8 over the next few weeks. The client for Windows 8.1 and OS X will be updated at some time after that.

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Apple/Ron Amadeo

We'll start off with the biggest difference between the two devices: the home screen. The Apple Watch shows a bunch of app icons, while the 360 shows the time and last notification.

18 more images in gallery

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No one has really figured out what a smartwatch should look like yet, but one thing is for sure: Google and Apple have taken vasty different routes to getting a computer on your wrist. To show just how different, we put together this gallery of similar screens from the Apple Watch and Android Wear. They should be easy enough to tell apart: the Apple Watch is the square one, while the Android Wear screenshots are all from the Moto 360 and are therefore (mostly) round.

While we know just about everything there is to know about the Moto 360, the Apple Watch isn't actually a released product yet, so we're going off our best educated guess for some of these. We had to swipe pictures from Apple's promotional images (which sadly weren't a super-high resolution), and it was up to us to crop them into a "screenshot."

Apple hasn't released specs for the screen, and where exactly the bezel stops and starts in many of Apple's promotional shots is up to interpretation. By our calculations, though, and by using enlightening images like this, it looks like the Apple Watch has a 4:5 aspect ratio. The watch OS (we don’t know the operating system’s name yet) usually has a black background picture on a black bezel, so to maximize screen space, Apple often puts UI elements right against the edge of the screen, allowing the bezel to act as the "padding" that would traditionally be in a well-designed interface.

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Four years ago, Google teamed up with Verizon to argue that most network neutrality rules should not apply to cellular networks. The companies got much of what they wanted, with the Federal Communications Commission passing rules that let wireless operators discriminate against third-party applications as long as they disclose their traffic management practices. Wireless companies were also allowed to block applications that don't compete against their telephony services.

Verizon sued anyway and won when a federal appeals court struck down the FCC’s prohibitions against blocking and discrimination. The decision has set off months of debate, yet Google—once a strong supporter of net neutrality—has largely remained silent.

That changed today with Google sending a message to subscribers of its “Take Action” mailing list urging them to “Join Take Action to support a free and open Internet.” Within this page is evidence that Google has changed its mind on whether net neutrality rules should apply to wireless networks.

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Jailbreaking an iPhone to steal its secrets in the name of security research, we unleash Elcomsoft iOS Forensics Toolkit. Sean Gallagher

Apple executives never mentioned the words "iCloud security" during the unveiling of the iPhone 6, iPhone 6+, and Apple Watch yesterday, choosing to focus on the sexier features of the upcoming iOS 8 and its connections to Apple's iCloud service. But digital safety is certainly on everyone's mind after the massive iCloud breach that resulted in many celebrity nude photos leaking across the Internet. While the company has promised fixes to both its mobile operating system and cloud storage service in the coming weeks, the perception of Apple's current security feels iffy at best.

In light of one high profile "hack," is it fair to primarily blame Apple's current setup? Is it really that easy to penetrate these defenses?

In the name of security, we did a little testing using family members as guinea pigs. To demonstrate just how much private information on an iPhone can be currently pulled from iCloud and other sources, we enlisted the help of a pair of software tools from Elcomsoft. These tools are essentially professional-level, forensic software used by law enforcement and other organizations to collect data. But to show that an attacker wouldn’t necessarily need that to gain access to phone data, we also used a pair of simpler “hacks,” attacking a family member’s account (again, with permission) by using only an iPhone and iTunes running on a Windows machine.

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zodman

If what "weev" did could be considered hacking, the FBI just might be a hacker, too, a former federal prosecutor says.

The trial attorney for Andrew "weev" Auernheimer, Orin Kerr, says the actions the FBI took to find the servers of the online drug haven Silk Road could fall under the same hacking statute in which his high-profile client was charged.

Orin Kerr The George Washington University

Kerr, a former federal prosecutor and an expert on the hacking statute called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, said there's a lot of similarities between the Silk Road prosecution and his client's case.

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Hit it too soft, and get stuck in the valley. Too hard, and bounce and roll down the back end. That's Desert Golfing, repeated thousands of times over.
If you want a picture of the future of mobile gaming, imagine a ball rolling along a sandy landscape—forever.

Apologies to Orwell, who meant something much darker with his original quote, but this silly little mobile game I've been playing recently has gotten me feeling a little philosophical about game design, and even life in general. The sublime, minimalist simplicity of Desert Golfing has made the game my go-to mobile time-waster these days, and I can see continuing to play it in quick, stolen little intervals maybe forever.

On the surface, Desert Golfing is an almost insultingly simple game to play. You tap the screen, drag back to set your shot's aim and power via a large white arrow, then let go to send a tiny white golf ball flying over the uniformly sandy 2D landscape. Bounce into the hole, and the landscape scrolls a bit to show your next target. The physics modeling is surprisingly delicate, meaning you often have to give just the right finesse on a shot to get the precise gentle bounce off a hill or wall needed for the ball to roll into the hole.

There are other 2D golf games on mobile platforms, such as the excellent Super Stickman Golf series, but they tend to be weighed down with all sorts of complications in a misplaced effort to add "depth." Desert Golfing sets itself apart with its monastic design simplicity. Every hole is a single screen, with no music, no visible player character, and no background scenery (save for the very occasional cactus). There's no club selection, no items, and no changes in the uniformly sandy terrain.

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Western DIgital / HGST

Western Digital’s HGST unit announced on September 9 that the company has begun to ship a new version of its helium-filled disk drive, the Ultrastar He8—with 8-terabytes of data storage capacity. And the company has an even bigger capacity drive waiting in the wings. That drive, which uses a new magnetic recording technology, will have a capacity of 10 terabytes.

Seagate began shipping its own non-helium 8TB drive in August, cramming more capacity onto five disk platters (though the company has said little about the recording technology used to achieve that). HGST’s 8TB drive, however, uses pressurized helium to help it cram two more disks into the drive, while still relying on widely used perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology.

That isn’t the case for the next drive in HGST’s arsenal. The 10TB drive, now being “sampled” to select customers, is based on “shingled magnetic recording” (SMR)—a technology that partially overlaps data tracks like roof shingles.

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Reddit took down the subreddit created to trade links to stolen nude photos of celebrities, but only after the traffic had crested. reddit.

After temporarily linking to recently leaked celebrity nude photos, reddit collected enough money in subscriptions to cover its server costs for nearly a month. The revelation comes via John Menese, a mod who ran the subreddit in question (r/TheFappening) and spoke with Wired about the experience.

reddit doesn't disclose its server costs as a matter of course, and the company did not respond to a request for comment. Instead, the revenue calculation is based on an October 2013 post from CEO Yishan Wong stating that one month of a reddit gold subscription priced at $3.99 covers 4.6 hours of use for one server. Each subreddit displays how much server time is paid for by its reddit gold members, and Menese told Wired that r/TheFappening earned 27 days' worth of server time before the forum was banned. (For the back of napkin math, 27 days multiplied by 24 hours is a total of 648 hours. Dividing 648 hours by 4.6 equals 140.9. And 140.9 subscriptions at $3.99 a piece would be $562 earned per server. reddit presumably has quite a few servers, and this take doesn't include what the site would have also made from display and self-serve ads.)

The celeb photos originally surfaced on 4chan around August 31, reportedly obtained through a brute-force attack on iCloud account logins. The photos were hosted on various sites across the Internet, and r/TheFappening sprang up as a clearinghouse for links to the stolen photos. The subreddit was shut down on September 6, nearly a week after the photos originally started circulating.

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Megan Geuss

Battery life is just one of the many question marks surrounding the Apple Watch announcements yesterday, but early reports indicate that it's not going to be much better than what's already available. Re/code reports that the watch currently lasts "about a day." While Apple is reportedly working to improve that figure before the watch launches in 2015, buyers should expect to charge the watch every night along with their iPhones.

The "hands-on" sessions available to most media representatives were decidedly hands-off, but we're also hearing more details from journalists who were given individual sessions after the show. Yahoo's David Pogue reports that the watch will be "water-resistant," enough to be worn in the rain or sweated on but not enough to be thrown in a bathtub. A built-in microphone and speaker will let you make phone calls, and you'll apparently load applications on the watch through your iPhone, not the watch itself. Finally, a "ping my phone" feature on the watch will make your iPhone ring out to help you find it, and the gold Apple Watch Edition will have a jewelry box case that doubles as its charger.

None of these extra features are completely new to smartwatches; Android Wear and Samsung Gear watches have covered this ground before. Still, given the dearth of detailed information about the hardware and software of the Apple Watch, any details are welcome at this point.

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Today Apple announced a price cut for iCloud storage and a new 1TB tier for power users. Still, the price drops were not as dramatic as some might have hoped, and Apple remains undercut by rivals like Google and Dropbox.

Apple gave details about its price cuts back at its developer conference in June, but today those prices included two higher-tiered plans for people who want 500GB and 1TB of storage on the company's servers. On its website, Apple says that users of iCloud drive will continue to get 5GB for free, and pricing starts at 20GB for $0.99 per month, 200GB for $3.99 per month, 500 GB at $9.99 per month, and 1TB for $19.99 per month. (Tiers were originally priced at $20 a year for 10GB, $40 a year for 20GB, and $100 a year for 50GB). Critics of Apple's earlier, more limited cloud storage service had long pushed for an updated storage pricing scheme as Dropbox, Google, and Microsoft have been competing in a race to the bottom when it comes to cloud storage rates.

The changes come ahead of the launch of iCloud drive, which will allow users of Yosemite or iOS 8 to view and edit files uploaded to Apple's servers in a Finder window. iCloud drive will also permit the sharing of files, much like Dropbox and Google Drive. In iOS 8, photos will automatically be backed up to iCloud so that all photos are available on all devices.

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At BattleForTheNet, protest organizers make it clear that Comcast is on the opposing team. BattleForTheNet

Today is the "Internet Slowdown," a protest of the Federal Communications Commission's proposed net neutrality rules that would allow Internet service providers to charge Web services for priority access to consumers. Organized by advocacy groups such as Fight For the Future and supported by big tech companies, the SlowDown has websites altering their home pages to show users what the Web could look like if it was divided into "fast lanes" for companies who pay ISP fees and "slow lanes" for everyone else. Visitors are urged to visit the protest website and sign a letter to Congress, the FCC, and the White House.

Naturally, cable companies got in on the action, trying to convince Internet users that they're really the ones on the side of good. Let's take a look at how the Internet Slowdown has played out so far.

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A Core M CPU package based on the Broadwell architecture. Intel

Intel's Broadwell CPU architecture has only just started rolling out, and most of the processors that use it aren't even supposed to launch until early next year. The new 14nm manufacturing process is causing the delay, but yesterday at the Intel Developer Forum the company tried to demonstrate that Broadwell's lateness wouldn't affect the rest of its roadmap.

To that end, Intel highlighted a couple of working developer systems based on the new "Skylake" architecture, as summarized here by Anandtech. The company didn't go into specific performance or power consumption numbers (both because it's early and because Intel probably doesn't want to take the wind out of Broadwell's sails), but it showed working silicon rendering 3D games and playing back 4K video to prove that the chips are working. The first Skylake processors are reportedly due out late in 2015 following the beginning of volume production in the second half of the year.

Here are the basic facts we already know about Skylake: it's a "tock" on Intel's roadmap, meaning it introduces a new architecture on a manufacturing process that's already up and running. In this case, that's Intel's 14nm process, which Intel insists has recovered from its early problems. Some of the CPUs in Intel's lineup—specifically mid-to-low-end socketed desktop CPUs—will get their next refresh using Skylake instead of Broadwell. Whether this is because Intel wants to reserve 14nm manufacturing capacity for lower-power, higher-margin chips or because it just doesn't think the power-consumption-obsessed Broadwell is a good fit for regular desktops is anyone's guess.

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INFERNOS project

Maxwell's demon is one of the most famous thought experiments in physics. In its traditional formulation, a demon sits next to a small hatch that separates two chambers. It observes the velocity of any gas molecules heading toward the hatch from one room and only opens the hatch when the velocity exceeds a certain value. Over time, the demon will raise the temperature of one room while cooling the second—something we know is thermodynamically impossible.

Over time, the demon's domain has been expanded, as researchers realized the same issue applied to a variety of other problems. One reformulation came from physicist Leo Szilard, who noted you can have a demon-based engine. Now, 90 years later, researchers have built a Szilard engine that operates using a single electron. In the process, the researchers confirm that setting the digital bit of information describing the engine's state has an energetic cost.

In its original formulation, the Szilard engine was a chamber with pistons at either end and a single gas molecule in the middle. Slide a divider down in the middle, and the gas molecule will wind up on one side or the other. This will push one of the pistons out, providing the potential for doing some work for "free" without the input of energy. (This being a thought experiment, the pistons are assumed to move without friction.) You can then remove the divider, let the chamber re-equilibrate, and do it all over again.

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On Wednesday, Dutch consumer electronics maker Philips and its subsidiary Woox Innovations announced the new Fidelio M2L headphones, which plug directly into the Lightning port on Apple devices. The headphones are the first third-party audio accessory to use the Lightning port, and they may have even beaten Apple to the punch. Apple talked about Lightning-connected headphones at WWDC in June and bought headphone maker Beats earlier in the summer, leading some to speculate that such an accessory was in the works.

In June, Apple expanded its Made for iPhone (MFi) program for third-party accessory developers to include the possibility of Lighting port headphones. The specification allows those devices to receive 48kHz digital stereo output and send 48kHz digital mono input.

By avoiding the headphone jack on newer iPhones and iPads, Philips says that it can provide “high resolution audio.” UK reviews site Pocket Lint describes the headphones as delivering “24-bit Digital to Analogue Conversion (DAC) and amplification in the headphones themselves.”

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A design for a Rolls-Royce robotic ship based on the research of the EU's Project Munin. No crew required. Rolls Royce

A European Union-funded research project called MUNIN is looking to make international cargo shipping more energy and cost efficient, essentially turning "seafaring" into a desk job. Named for one of the Nordic god Odin's raven sidekicks, the goal of the MUNIN project is to create autonomous ships that can sail themselves from port to port. This would reduce energy consumption by lessening lighting, eliminating fresh water production, and getting rid of an onboard crew. The project is the subject of a workshop at the SMM maritime conference in Hamburg, Germany, today.

MUNIN is being led by researchers from the Fraunhofer Center for Maritime Logistics and Services. The goal is to prove the safety of unmanned ships and then push for changes in international maritime regulations to allow them to ply the seas. Nearly all of the technology required to operate ships autonomously is already available, as Ørnulf Rødseth, a researcher at the Norwegian Marine Technology Institute, said in a report published in advance of SMM. "The technology for electronic positioning, satellite communications, and anti-collision measures already exists," he said. “Many vessels are also equipped with advanced sensor systems." But he admits that having the technology and getting governments and international authorities to buy in are two separate issues. "This is why there is a lot of talk about the costs issue, as well as the concerns of shipowners and the general public. We mustn’t forget that current rules and legislation all assume that there are people on board.”

In order to get regulatory buy-in, researchers will need to demonstrate that autonomous systems can make the safety of robotic ships at least as good as manned ones. And hopefully, the lower speeds and automated responses of robotic ships could actually reduce collisions and other accidents at sea. As Rødseth noted, 75 percent of accidents at sea are caused by human error.

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A deserted launch-day line highlights the lack of interest in the Xbox One in Japan.

The Xbox brand has always been exceptionally weak in Japan, where consoles from local companies Sony and Nintendo traditionally perform much better than Microsoft's hardware efforts. But the recent launch of the Xbox One in the country has been underwhelming even by Microsoft standards.

Japanese game magazine Famitsu reports that the Xbox One sold 23,562 units in its first four days of local sales after launching in the country on September 4. For context, the PlayStation 4 sold 309,000 units in its first week of Japanese sales in February, and even the Wii U mustered 308,000 units at its Japanese launch. Those latter two launches were considered somewhat weak by historical standards for Japanese console launches, but they still put Microsoft's latest launch to shame.

The Xbox One's Japanese premiere is even worse than that of the Xbox 360, which sold a paltry 60,000 Japanese units in two days after launching in late 2005. The Xbox 360 went on to sell just over 1.63 million systems in Japan over its lifetime, compared to over 12.7 million Wii units and 9.3 million PS3 units in the country. The original Xbox wasn't a big success in Japan either, but it managed to limp past two million regional sales by December 2005, nearly four years after its launch.

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Video of the mobile phone version of iArm Wrestle Champs being played.

Among all the ballyhooed features that Apple talked about for its upcoming smartwatch yesterday, the Cupertino giant didn't really discuss the prospect of gaming on the tiny wrist-screen. Apple has instead left it to indie outfit Flying Tiger Entertainment to announce the first official game for the Apple Watch, a port of its iOS and Android title iArm Wrestle Champs.

Actually, calling iArm Wrestle Champs a video game might be giving it a bit too much credit. It's more of an interactive soundboard that reacts to a real life arm-wrestling match, using the phone (or watch) accelerometer to detect when one player or the other is victorious. Humanity seemed to do just fine figuring out arm wrestling's winners before iDevices existed, but with the app, you get a nice audio reward when you pin the opponent's arm.

Like it or not, this is the kind of non-traditional game that's probably going to be prevalent on devices like the Apple Watch. With a touchscreen small enough to be almost completely obscured by a tapping finger, games on the device will have to rely on other inputs, like the rotating "crown" on the side (Pong, anyone?), the accelerometer/GPS/altitude sensors, voice commands, or even the heartbeat monitor. Similarly, the "taptic" feedback motor inside may end up providing more useful gaming output than the watch face itself.

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If you like geology, you’re used to relying on an active imagination. Most geologic processes occur too slowly to see them play out for yourself. Many of the exceptions are dangerous enough that you might not want a front row seat or are rare enough that the odds of being there to witness them are disheartening. Sometimes, though, the Earth throws us a bone—or in this case, a gigantic slab of granite.

One interesting way that rocks weather and crumble apart is called “exfoliation.” Like the skin-scrubbing technique, this involves the outermost layers of exposed igneous or metamorphic bedrock sloughing off in a sheet. Over time, this tends to smooth and round the outcrop—Yosemite’s Half Dome providing a spectacular example.

We’re not entirely sure just what drives the peeling of an outcrop’s skin like this, but the classic explanation is that it’s the result of bringing rocks that formed at great pressure up to the surface. Once there, the outer layers can expand slightly, creating a physical mismatch with the layers below them.

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Operation Sports

EA Sports has often used the slogan "If it's in the game, it's in the game" (or a shortened version) to highlight its simulated fidelity to the real world. So it's perhaps not too surprising that former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice will be removed from Madden NFL 15 following his indefinite suspension from the real world NFL yesterday.

Rice had already been serving a two-game suspension for a domestic abuse incident involving his then-fiance Janay Palmer in a hotel elevator earlier this year. On Monday, Rice was dropped from the Ravens and then suspended indefinitely by the NFL after TMZ posted a video of Rice knocking Palmer out, obtained from the elevator's surveillance camera.

"With Ray Rice's indefinite suspension from the NFL, he will be removed from Madden NFL 15," EA Sports said in a short statement. "This roster change will take place by this Friday."

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CN.dart.call("xrailTop", {sz:"300x250", kws:["top"], collapse: true});CUPERTINO, CA—When Apple hosts an event, people listen up. So on September 9, the company's event at the Silicon Valley-based Flint Center for the Performing Arts attracted a rabble of journalists, corporate partners, and a small handful of protesters shouting about working conditions in Apple's factories.

You've no doubt heard about the announcement of Apple's new hardware line, which includes the iPhone 6 and the (huge) iPhone 6 Plus, as well as the Apple Watch. But these events often become a spectacle in and of themselves, without even touching on the new hardware or software. The day starts at the crack of dawn for most tech journalists, developers, and Apple employees, and ends with a well-earned drink sometime after the sun goes down.

Just as we did with WWDC 2014, Ars thought we'd bring you a little flavor of what we saw outside of the main attraction—consider it a tour of the sideshows and the good people we found milling about the perimeter after the ushers shooed us out of the concert hall.

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