Actor Billy Crystal has paid tribute to his friend and co-star Robin Williams at the 66th Emmy Awards in Los Angeles.

The IFA trade show is scheduled to take place a couple of weeks from now, but LG is already giving details about their upcoming LG G3 Stylus ahead of the event. The G3 Stylus joins the original G3, the G3 Beat, and the G Vista in LG's lineup of similarly named devices for 2014. LG is only releasing limited information but we've put together all the specifications that they have detailed in a chart below. LG will be displaying the device at IFA with more detailed information about its specifications and details about pricing.

LG G3 Stylus SoC Unknown 1.3GHz Quad Core Memory and Storage 8GB NAND + MicroSD, 1GB RAM Display 5.5” 960x540 IPS LCD Dimensions 149.3 x 75.9 x 10.2mm, 163g Camera 13 MP Rear Facing, 1.2MP Front Facing Battery Removable 3000 mAh (11.4Whr) Network 3G Operating System Android 4.4.2 KitKat

As you can see, it's not the most comprehensive specification sheet. Based on the display resolution and amount of RAM and NAND, this looks to be a fairly mid-range device. The display resolution may be problematic at that screen size, as 960x540 at 5.5" amounts to a pixel density of only 200ppi. A smaller display may have been preferable for sharpness, but LG is likely trying to find a balance to maintain stylus usability, 

The size and mass of the device are both slightly greater than the LG G3. Despite being the same display size and battery capacity, the price point and the addition of the stylus necessitates changes to the device's chassis.

The G3 Stylus will be launched in Brazil in September, with other countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to follow afterward. Pricing is currently unknown, and LG gave no details about a possible US launch, but there will definitely be more information about the G3 Stylus at IFA.

A Liberian doctor has died despite taking an experimental anti-Ebola drug, Liberia's information minister says.

On Monday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a piece of legislation mandating that all smartphones come with kill-switch software automatically installed so that a user can remotely wipe his or her device if it gets stolen. The bill will affect all smartphones manufactured after July 1, 2015 to be sold in California.

After that date, new smartphones will prompt users to set up a wiping feature, but users will be able to opt out as well. As part of the legislation, anyone caught selling stolen phones will be fined a civil penalty of between $500 and $2,500.

As Ars noted two weeks ago when the bill passed the state senate, the legislation's supporters included the cities of Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego, and San Francisco, as well as several consumer unions, police groups, and the Utility Reform Network. Its opponents included a couple of municipal Chambers of Commerce, the wireless industry lobby CTIA, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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Malaysian teenagers are being encouraged to attend sex education classes in a bid to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies in the country.

Rumors about the next major version of Windows continue to trickle out in the run up to an anticipated public preview in September.

Neowin reports that internal builds of the operating system currently sport a one-click upgrade feature to update from one build to the next. While there's no guarantee that such a feature will necessarily ship, it would be consistent with Microsoft's move to more rapid releases and continuous improvement rather than infrequent major updates.

Currently, upgrading Windows is a major undertaking. During betas and previews, there's often no good ability to move from one build to the next without performing a full reinstall. Even when moving between stable versions, upgrading can be failure-prone and time-consuming. While it's possible that the upgrade capability will be limited to previews, it looks like a strong indication that Microsoft wants to make this process easier.

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Version:3.17-rc2 (mainline) Released:2014-08-25 Source:linux-3.17-rc2.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-3.17-rc2.tar.sign Patch:patch-3.17-rc2.xz

Hundreds of people have attended the funeral for the black teenager killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri.

Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq say they are regaining ground against the forces of Islamic State in the area.

A timeline comparison between a simple streaming game server setup (left) and the DeLorean system with predictive modeling (right) Microsoft Research

No matter how fast your Internet connection is, streaming game services like OnLive and PlayStation Now always bump up against a hard latency limit based on the total round-trip time (RTT) it takes to send user input to a remote server and receive a frame of game data from that server. The hope for these systems is that broadband speeds and server connections will eventually improve enough so that trip is quick, to the point of being nearly unnoticeable for end users. Until then, a team at Microsoft research seems to have done an end run around the RTT latency limit, using predictive modeling to improve apparent performance even when the server trip takes a full quarter of a second.

Late last week, Microsoft released a paper detailing the development and testing of DeLorean, a system that uses a number of techniques to mask the inherent latency between the server running a streaming game and the user giving inputs at home. The main technique involves future input prediction: by analyzing previous inputs in a Markov chain, DeLorean tries to predict the most likely choices for the user's next input (or series of inputs) and then generates speculative frames that fit those inputs and sends them back to the user.

By the time those predicted frames get back to the user, the system can see which input was actually entered, then immediately show the appropriate predicted frame for that situation rather than waiting for another round-trip to the server. The DeLorean system also improves performance by "supersampling" inputs at a faster rate than the game normally does, and it applies a Kalman filter to reduce the shakiness of the predicted frames.

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Trevor Paglen

According to newly published documents, the National Security Agency has built a “Google-like” search interface for its vast database of metadata, and the agency shares it with dozens of other American intelligence agencies. The new documents are part of the Snowden leaks and were first published on Monday by The Intercept.

The new search tool, called ICREACH, is described in an internal NSA presentation as a “large scale expansion of communications metadata shared with [intelligence community] partners.” That same presentation shows that ICREACH has been operational since the pilot launched in May 2007. Not only is data being shared to more agencies, but there are more types of such data being shared—ICREACH searches over 850 billion records.

New data types being shared include IMEI numbers (a unique identifier on each mobile handset), IMSI (another unique identifier for SIM cards), GPS coordinates, e-mail address, and chat handles, among others. Previously, such metadata was only limited to date, time, duration, called number, and calling number.

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Syria's foreign minister offers to help the US fight the Islamic State militant group, which has seized swathes of land in Iraq and Syria.

Microsoft has cut $100 off the price of its Surface 2 Windows RT tablets. This puts the cheapest 32GB unit at $349, the 64GB unit at $449, and the 64GB model with LTE version at $579. With the price cut, the 32GB 1920×1080 Microsoft tablet is priced below all but the 16GB non-Retina iPad mini.

The discounts are available through Microsoft's physical and online stores, as well as through some other retailers such as Amazon. The price cuts are described as being for a limited time only, expiring on September 27 or "while stocks last." Microsoft is also limiting buyers, rather optimistically, to a maximum of five discounted units per purchase.

While Surface 2's x86 sibling, the Surface Pro 2, was replaced unexpectedly by the Surface Pro 3, the Surface 2 has been largely unaltered since its introduction last October. The only change Microsoft has made was to add a third model with integrated LTE.

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Ron Amadeo

Can you guess which one is a Verizon exclusive?

6 more images in gallery

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A key goal with Microsoft's massive Windows Phone 8.1 update was to make Windows Phone easier for OEMs to put onto hardware by ditching the requirements for special hardware buttons.

Specs at a glance: HTC One (M8) for Windows Screen 1920×1080 5" (440 PPI) IPS LCD Gorilla Glass 3 touchscreen OS Windows Phone 8.1 Update CPU 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 RAM 2GB GPU Adreno 330 Storage 32GB Networking 2.4GHz/5GHz 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, GPS, GLONASS Cellular GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900MHz), HSPA+ (850/900/1900/2100MHz), CDMA (800/1900MHz), LTE (Bands 3,4,7,13) Ports Micro-USB, headphones, microSD Camera Rear: 4MP "UltraPixel", 1/3" sensor, f/2.0 aperture, 28 mm lens, 1080p video, depth sensorFront: 5MP, wide angle, 1080p video Sensors Accelerometer, gyroscope, digital compass, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, NFC Size 146.4 mm × 70.6 mm × 9.4 mm Weight 160 g Battery 2600 mAh

By moving to on-screen buttons, the same basic hardware can be used for both Android and Windows Phone. Combine that with the new zero-dollar licensing for Windows Phone, and creating Windows Phone hardware should be a no-brainer for phone OEMs: design one piece of hardware and sell it with two different operating systems.

The first phone we saw to take advantage of this wasn't, in fact, an Android handset. It was Nokia's low-end Lumia 630. While this was Android-spec hardware, with on-screen buttons and without the characteristic Windows Phone camera button, it was a phone that was designed from the outset for Windows Phone.

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Update: Amazon has officially purchased Twitch.tv for $970 million. In Twitch's announcement of the deal, CEO Emmett Shear repeatedly thanked the Twitch community for helping build the company, and that "with Amazon’s support we’ll have the resources to bring you an even better Twitch." The letter states that Twitch will be "keeping most everything the same," and that Twitch will remain independent from Amazon. Any big deal like this takes time, and according to Amazon's press release, the acquisition is expected to close in the second half of this year.

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon gave a quote about the deal, saying “Like Twitch, we obsess over customers and like to think differently, and we look forward to learning from them and helping them move even faster to build new services for the gaming community.”

So what happened to the Google deal? A report from Forbes, Google was concerned about possible anti-trust problems that would arise from the deal, and Google and Twitch couldn't come to an agreement on the size of a breakup fee if the deal was killed.

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Lawyers trying to get the Supreme Court to reverse a four-year prison term handed to a Pennsylvania man who published violent rap-style Facebook rants told the high court that his client was charged, in part, for referencing an Eminem song.

In the high court's upcoming term, the justices will hear arguments on the legal parameters of online speech, when a threat becomes deemed a "true threat" and not protected by the First Amendment. Defendant Anthony Elonis' 2010 Facebook rants concerned attacks on an elementary school, his estranged wife, and even the FBI.

His attorneys and other scholars who have weighed in suggest that the defendant, who was going through a divorce, was taking out his anger in a manner similar to the lyrics in rap music. He never intended to carry out any threats he posted on Facebook, they argue.

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The two Galileo FOC satellites 'Doresa' and 'Milena' being installed on the payload dispenser system earlier this month. These two satellites were launched into incorrect orbits, and their fate is being decided by officials in Europe and French Guiana. ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique Vidéo du CSG - P Baudon

Two fully operational satellites, which were intended to become a part of Europe's Galileo global positioning system, were launched into incorrect orbits this weekend. The Galileo project was conceived as a way for Europe to cut its dependence on the US' GPS and Russia's GLONASS.

Officials from Arianespace, the company charged with launching the satellites, initially thought everything was done correctly. But according to the Wall Street Journal, two hours after launch it became clear that the two new additions to the Galileo network were in an elliptical, rather than a circular, orbit.

Galileo has been many years in the making, and it will cost the European Commission more than €10 billion ($13.3 billion).

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T-Mobile US CEO John Legere. T-Mobile

Now that Sprint and T-Mobile US are no longer planning to merge and may also be prevented from teaming up to purchase spectrum, the companies are focusing on a new tactic: competing against each other.

Sprint announced new 20GB family plans last Monday and then on Thursday unveiled a $60-per-month unlimited data plan, calling it "a $20 savings compared to T-Mobile's $80 per month unlimited plan." While that's true, the Sprint plans do not include personal hotspot service and thus could end up costing more than T-Mobile for customers who intend to share their phones' Internet connections with other devices.

The $60 unlimited plan is for new or existing Sprint customers who bring their own device, buy one at full retail price, or pay on Sprint's Easy Pay two-year installment plan.

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NeoGAF

The next entries in the Super Smash Bros. fighting franchise, a 3DS/Wii U duo with separate (and partly unknown) release dates, has seen its roster of fan-favorite characters expand in drips of one or two character announcements at a time for years now. That promotional slow-drip may have finally run out, however, thanks to a mix of questionable screenshots and convincing video footage that surfaced on enthusiast forum NeoGAF in recent days.

The videos, which were uploaded [and promptly deleted by way of Nintendo copyright claim] on Monday and focused on the 3DS edition of the next Smash Bros., contained appearances from previously unannounced characters Bowser Jr.—piloting the flying clown-face pod that first appeared in Super Mario World—and Shulk, the spiky-haired, JRPG-cliche protagonist from the Nintendo-published Xenoblade Chronicles. These videos appeared to confirm leaked information that surfaced as early as last Wednesday, including a full roster screenshot that contained, among other characters, the dog from NES classic Duck Hunt. If true, this would be the first time the annoying, laughing pooch would be directly controllable in a Nintendo game, though you could actually shoot the mongrel in his grinning face if you tracked down a Vs. Duck Hunt arcade machine.

That supposed full-character roster screenshot also included returning Smash faves like Earthbound protagonist Ness, classic Nintendo mascot R.O.B., and Star Fox sidekick Falco. While we're hesitant to confirm that screenshot as fully authentic without more information, the gameplay videos compare very closely to the gameplay we tried out at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo. If they're fakes, they're good ones.

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Mike Mozart / JeepersMedia

More than 1,000 US businesses have been infected with a malicious program that targets point-of-sale systems and steals credit- and debit-card data, the US government warned over the weekend.

The malware, dubbed "Backoff" after a term used in its code, began spreading as early as October 2013 and has typically escaped notice by antivirus defenses. The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), the Secret Service, and the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) initially published an analysis of the malware in late July, but the groups updated their advisory on Friday with the estimated business impacted.

"Over the past year, the Secret Service has responded to network intrusions at numerous businesses throughout the United States that have been impacted by the 'Backoff' malware," the advisory stated. "Seven PoS system providers/vendors have confirmed that they have had multiple clients affected. Reporting continues on additional compromised locations, involving private sector entities of all sizes."

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