Version:next-20140730 (linux-next) Released:2014-07-30

Two women had a narrow escape when they were nearly hit by a freight train on a bridge in Monroe County, Indiana.

Last year Intel introduced the SSD Pro 1500, the company's first SSD for the business segment. The Pro 1500 brought support for hardware accelerated encryption in the form of TCG Opal 1.0 certification, but with the Pro 2500 Intel is updating the spec to 2.0 along with support for IEEE-1667 that is required for Microsoft eDrive. Can the Pro 2500 offer anything over the other drives with Opal support? Read on to find out!

Chinese Cortana in action. Joe Belfiore was in China today to officially unveil the next update to Windows Phone 8.1. While details were leaked in the last few days, Belfiore had a range of new features to discuss. Among them was the virtual personal assistant Cortana—star of the Windows Phone 8.1 ads—that will be available beyond US borders with the update.

The next two countries to get Cortana will be China and the UK. In both cases, Microsoft has customized its virtual personal assistant to be a better fit for the new markets. In the UK, this means she'll speak with an English accent, use British English spellings, and know about things such as the London Stock Exchange and Premier League football.

Her Chinese incarnation, named Xiao Na, includes more customization. Most significantly, she has an alternative appearance for China. We were told by Microsoft that the eyes have a particular importance in China for reflecting emotion and that this motivated the virtual assistant's appearance and features. Xiao Na speaks Mandarin Chinese and can provide certain China-specific pieces of information. For example, her weather reports include air quality information, and she understands the alternative day driving restrictions used when smog is particularly bad.

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A burst water main on Los Angeles' iconic Sunset Boulevard has caused flooding at the University of California, Los Angeles, local officials say.

Scott Beale

Update: Twitter's shares climbed over 30 percent in after-hours trading last night, but Wednesday morning they held that lead, maintaining a steady 20 percent increase at the time of this writing. That puts Twitter's share price at over $46. Although shares of the social media company topped $73 last winter, less-than-impressive revenue sent the company's shares on a tumble through spring.

Original story: Twitter announced the financial results for its second quarter today, showing strong growth in average monthly active users. Although by Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), Twitter posted a loss this quarter, non-GAAP numbers reflected a small profit that beat analyst expectations enough to send Twitter stock rising in after-hours trading.

Revenue for the social media company was up 124 percent year-over-year to $312 million. Twitter lost $145 million according to GAAP numbers, but made a non-GAAP net income of $15 million. (Companies are required to use the stricter GAAP rules when preparing financial statements in order to ensure consistency across an industry.)

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Netflix has agreed to pay AT&T for a direct connection to the Internet service provider's network, a move that will improve streaming video quality.

The deal is no surprise—it was widely expected after Netflix reached similar agreements with Comcast and Verizon. What is surprising is that AT&T customers might see their Netflix quality problems resolved before Verizon customers.

"We reached an interconnect agreement with AT&T in May and since then have been working together to provision additional interconnect capacity to improve the viewing experience of our mutual subscribers," a Netflix spokesperson told Ars. "We're now beginning to turn up the connections, a process that should be complete in the coming days."

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Nicholas Eckhart

Just one month after announcing a loss of $98.4 million in a single quarter, RadioShack risks falling apart. Late last year, Ars named it as one of five companies that we’re monitoring under “deathwatch” for 2014.

Bloomberg reported that RadioShack is in desperate need of cash, citing a report issued by Moody’s on Tuesday. The company's stock lost nearly 12 percent as a result of the news.

“Barring an improvement in the top line and margins, we think they will continue to burn cash and their liquidity position will continue to deteriorate,” Mickey Chadha, a Moody’s analyst in New York, said in an interview with the news outlet. In short, time is running out.

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Hoboken High School students won't be using district-issued laptops anymore. Wally Gobetz

One school district in Hoboken, New Jersey has decided to abandon its one-to-one laptop program for 7th, 8th, and 9th graders. Ultimately, the Hoboken School District decided the scheme was more trouble than it was worth—even when supported by federal grants.

“We had the money to buy them, but maybe not the best implementation,” said Mark Toback, the current superintendent of the Hoboken School District, told The Hechinger Report. “It became unsustainable.”

The district is now going through the process of identifying the remaining laptops and seeking a bid for their destruction. District officials did not immediately respond to an Ars request for comment (Ars has filed a public records request to learn more).

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Global Health Correspondent Tulip Mazumdar takes a look around a makeshift laboratory trying to battle the Ebola outbreak in Guinea.

The BBC's Dougal Shaw tests out a digital bracelet designed to help people avoid getting too much sun exposure.

wasim muklashy

Personal Audio LLC is an East Texas shell company that gleaned national attention when it claimed it had the right to demand cash from every podcaster. The company was wielding a patent on "episodic content," which it said included anyone doing a podcast, as well as many types of online video.

Now the company is trying to walk away from its highest-profile lawsuit against comedian Adam Carolla, without getting paid a penny—but Carolla won't let the case drop.

In a statement released today, Personal Audio says that Carolla, who has raised more than $450,000 from fans to fight the case, is wasting their money on an unnecessary lawsuit. The company, which is a "patent troll" with no business other than lawsuits, has said Carolla just doesn't care since his fans are paying his lawyers' bills.

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Up to half a mile of land is being lost every 50 years due to coastal erosion, as Sian Lloyd reports.

Army General Keith Alexander. DOD/NSA

In an interview Monday with former National Security Agency Director General Keith Alexander, Foreign Policy's Shane Harris learned that Alexander plans to file “at least” nine patent applications—“and possibly more"—pertaining to technology for detecting network intruders.

Alexander left his government post in early 2014 and went on to co-found a private company, IronNet Cybersecurity Inc., with unnamed business partners. Alexander said that these business partners helped him create the “unique” method for detecting hackers that he plans to patent. Of course, Alexander himself had unparalleled access to classified security operations from 2005, when he took charge of the NSA, to 2014, when he retired.

Since starting IronNet, Alexander has been peddling his consulting services to major corporations, especially those in the financial industry, and has quoted fees of up to $1 million per month. That astronomical number drew at least one federal representative to suggest that Alexander might be disclosing or misusing classified information.

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MTSOfan

After consulting focus groups of Internet customers, government researchers have come to a conclusion that should surprise no one: people don't want data caps on home Internet service.

But customers are getting caps anyway, even though ISPs admit that congestion isn't a problem. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) today released preliminary findings of research involving surveys of cellular carriers, home Internet providers, and customers.

The majority of top wireline ISPs are at least experimenting with data caps. But while cellular carriers say they impose usage-based pricing (UBP) to manage congestion on wireless networks, that's not the case with cable, fiber, and DSL. "Some wireless ISPs told us they use UBP to manage congestion," the GAO wrote. On the other hand, "wireline ISPs said that congestion is not currently a problem."

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Proof of a new Mac Mini or simple misprint? Apple's not saying. Andrew Cunningham

An interesting development today for people watching for an update to Apple's Mac Mini desktop: Apple's support document for its Boot Camp drivers and software for Windows briefly listed a heretofore unannounced "Mac Mini (Mid 2014)." 9to5Mac first spotted the entry after it was added to the page yesterday, and we were able to grab our own screenshot to confirm before it was removed earlier today. If the entry points to a real system and is not simply mistyped, we could see a new Mac Mini any day between now and the end of August—Apple reserves the "mid" label for systems released in the late spring or in the summer. Macs released in September or later normally get the "late" label instead.

The Mac Mini is the only computer in Apple's lineup, vestigial non-Retina MacBook Pro aside, that hasn't gotten an upgrade to Intel's Haswell CPUs. Any mid-2014 refresh would be a significant upgrade, since new CPUs would give the Mini better CPU and GPU performance and reduced power consumption. Adding a better GPU and a Thunderbolt 2.0 port to the Mini could even make it a capable little 4K workstation, a useful capability given that OS X Yosemite has been "optimized" for high-density displays (Apple's words, backed up by our own observations).

The 10.9.3 update improved OS X's support for 4K displays, but the 15-inch 2013 Retina MacBook Pro and Mac Pro are the only systems that benefit from it as of this writing. So far this year, the only Mac hardware updates have involved minor CPU changes and price cuts. The MacBook Air and iMac lines were both shuffled around earlier this year, and the Retina MacBook Pro lineup just got a minor bump this morning. As we discussed in each of those articles, the lack of next-generation Broadwell CPUs from Intel is probably holding up more significant makeovers for those products, which all transitioned to Haswell last year. We've contacted Apple to see whether the new Mac Mini entry was a misprint, but as of this writing we have received no response. Apple rarely comments on things like this, but we'll update the article if it does. When (and if) Apple releases a new Mac Mini, we'll give it the full review treatment.

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While Google has successfully moved its suite of productivity apps away from Google Drive and into their own Docs, Sheets, and Slides app on mobile, the separation hasn't always felt as clear on the web. The portion of the separate websites for each app that allowed users to view their files was essentially the same interface for Google Drive and they had a feel more similar to a Google Drive extension than separate applications with Google Drive integration. As of today this is no longer the case, as Google is rolling out new home screens for each web application which are similar in look and feel to Google's mobile apps for the same services. Each interface is similar apart from the different color scheme for each application, and below we have the new interface for Google Docs on the web.

As you can see, it's very similar to the interface on Google's mobile Docs application, particularly when the application is used on a tablet. The top bar features a menu that slides in from the left and gives the user links to navigate to the other productivity apps that Google offers, as well as a link to Google Drive and settings for language and offline editing. On the right side there is a button to change between a list view or a preview view, a button to change the method of file sorting, and a button to upload files to Google Drive for editing. At the bottom there is an ever-present circular button which creates a new document and brings the user to the editing interface. Google Drive receives similar design changes but with appropriate alterations due to its functionality as a storage tool rather than a productivity tool.

This is a particularly important update for Google. It allows for Docs, Sheets, and Slides to be better separated from Google Drive but it also works toward accomplishing something Google focused on at Google IO which is creating an interface that looks the same and works the same across every sort of device. It will be very interesting to see where Google goes from here with making changes to both their mobile and web based applications and trying to keep them visually and functionally the same.

The update is rolling out now, and users will be prompted to switch to the new interface when they visit any of the websites for Google's productivity applications.

Angela Merkel is now using a BlackBerry with crypto from Secusmart—acquired today by BlackBerry—so that her good friend can't listen to her phone calls. Lawrence Jackson, White House photographer

BlackBerry executives announced today that the company had entered into an agreement to acquire Secusmart GmbH, a German voice and data encryption firm that specializes in “anti-eavesdropping” services for government agencies, corporate customers, and telecommunications providers. The two companies already collaborated to produce Secusmart-equipped BlackBerry phones for German government agencies and leadership, including Chancellor Angela Merkel—who had previously been the target of NSA eavesdropping.

Secusmart’s technology meets NATO standards for “NATO restricted” communications—the equivalent of sensitive but unclassified communications or “for official use only” classification in the US government and military. The German government, however, has certified the technology for classified communications. The company has used its “Made in Germany” nature to its advantage in recent post-Snowden revelations marketing, proclaiming on its website, “If you’re looking for the right response to recent spying affairs and wire-tapping scandals, you’ve come to the right place.”

The acquisition is part of BlackBerry CEO John Chen’s effort to reposition BlackBerry as a company focused on customers with hardcore security concerns, such as the government, military, and financial services sector companies that remain its most loyal customers. And by acquiring Secusmart, BlackBerry will likely be more able to convince customers that it is taking a course independent from the influences of the US government and NSA, despite the company’s long relationship with both.

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Joining today’s launch of the SHIELD Tablet is a new GeForce driver set from NVIDIA. After last month’s release of the first R340 beta driver, 340.43, NVIDIA is back again with 340.52, which sees R340 reach WHQL status.

Not surprisingly, SHIELD Tablet support is the headlining feature for 340.52, as NVIDIA needs to update their drivers in order for GameStream to support their latest gadget. This driver is also being released as another on one of NVIDIA’s Game Ready drivers, this time for the forthcoming Metro: Redux and the China launch of Final Fantasy XIV. Other than that however this is a fairly low-key driver launch for NVIDIA; compared to the 340.43 betas there is only a handful of bug fixes (including a Chrome bug), functionally making this a WHQL version of the earlier beta driver for most users.

Update: AT Forums user code65536 has noted that these drivers unexpectedly remove all mention of Miracast support, which was first added in 340.43. We're currently chasing down NVIDIA to find out what happened.

As usual, you can grab the drivers for all current desktop and mobile NVIDIA GPUs over at NVIDIA’s driver download page.

National Security Agency headquarters. Wikimedia Commons

A prominent senator unveiled legislation Tuesday that would end the National Security Agency's bulk collection of all telephone metadata—a package that still provides the nation's spooks limited access to the data of every phone call made to and from the US. And the probable-cause standard under the Fourth Amendment is not present.

Conceding the realpolitik, civil rights groups and others are backing the proposal from Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, even though the NSA may acquire the data absent constitutional protections.

The American Civil Liberties Union supported the legislation—called the USA Freedom Act—while admitting that it's "not perfect." The ACLU said:

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