Occupy Central leader Benny Tai says pro-democracy protesters will boycott talks if violence against student protesters is not stopped.

When it comes to user-generated content on the Internet, the rules and norms regarding sponsorship are usually vague at best. Two major game-focused platforms took steps to clear up that vagueness this week, introducing policies that require users to disclose when their content or recommendations could be influenced by company payments.

Gameplay streaming site Twitch introduced its new commitment to "transparency in sponsored content and promotion" in a detailed blog post last night, noting that the state of Web video has changed dramatically in the company's three years of existence (not to mention its $970 million Amazon buyout). These days, what Twitch calls "influencer campaigns" are an increasingly common way "for an advertiser to leverage the celebrity of a content creator on various video platforms to drive awareness and purchase intent for the advertiser’s brand or product."

This can be a win-win situation for the streamer and the advertiser, Twitch argues, but only if there is "complete transparency and unwavering authenticity with all content and promotions that have a sponsor relationship." Without that kind of disclosure, Twitch says, "gamers can tend to look skeptically on the ecosystem because they don’t know what is paid-for content and what is not. It also opens influencers to potential criticism."

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Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam. Verizon

Verizon seemingly won a huge victory in January when a federal appeals court struck down network neutrality restrictions on blocking and discriminating against Internet content over fixed broadband connections.

But Verizon's lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission could backfire, with the commission now considering even stronger rules on both fixed and wireless networks. That's why fellow Internet service providers are "secretly furious" with Verizon, tech policy reporter Brendan Sasso of National Journal wrote today:

Other Internet service providers won't publicly criticize Verizon. But privately, lobbyists grumble that they wouldn't be in this mess if Verizon had just accepted the old rules.

Four broadband-industry officials said there's widespread frustration with Verizon for making what they view as a bad strategic error. Some companies had even tried to talk Verizon out of filing its lawsuit, officials said.

"They were like a dog chasing a bus," one broadband source said. "What are you going to do when you catch the bus?"

The 2010 FCC rules that Verizon successfully overturned prevented fixed broadband providers from blocking Internet content and strongly discouraged paid prioritization agreements in which online services pay ISPs for priority access to consumers. The rules for cellular carriers were weaker, though; wireless carriers were allowed to block applications that didn't compete against their telephony services and did not have to follow the anti-discrimination rule.

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At the Paris Motor Show, Theo Leggett looks at the Peugeot 208 Hybrid Air - a concept car that brings a new meaning to the term "gas guzzler".

At the Paris Motor Show, Theo Leggett looks at the Peugeot 208 hybrid air - a concept car that brings a new meaning to the term "gas guzzler".

Wikimedia Commons user Tabercil

Celebrities who had their nude photos stolen last month are now threatening Google with a $100 million lawsuit unless the search giant does a better job of removing copies of the photos found on its various services, including YouTube and Blogger.

The threat was laid out in a letter signed by Marty Singer, a well-known Hollywood attorney, and acquired yesterday by The Hollywood Reporter and other Tinseltown news sites. In the letter, Singer says that Google has allowed the "blatant violations" to continue despite the fact that it's been four weeks since he first sent a takedown notice to the company.

"We are writing concerning Google's despicable, reprehensible conduct in not only failing to act expeditiously and responsibly to remove the Images, but in knowingly accommodating, facilitating and perpetuating the unlawful conduct," writes Singer. "Google is making millions and profiting from the victimization of women. As a result of your blatantly unethical behavior, Google is exposed to significant liability and both compensatory and punitive damages that could well exceed One Hundred Million Dollars ($100,000,000)."

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We covered the news of the first shipment of 64-bit ARMv8 processors in the HP Moonshot product line earlier this week. At ARM TechCon 2014, Applied Micro (APM) had a very interesting update to their 64-bit ARM v8 product line. They launched two SoC families, HeliX 1 and HeliX 2. Both of them are based on the X-Gene ARMv8 cores developed for servers, but appropriately scaled down to fit in the 8 W - 42 W TDP scenarios for the embedded market. The HeliX 1 is fabricated in a 40 nm process, while the HeliX 2 uses a 28 nm process. The latter uses the second generation X-Gene ARMv8 core.

Applied Micro has traditionally been a PowerPC house. In fact, we have evaluated their Catalina networked storage platform in the Thecus N2310 and looked at the previous generation PowerPC SoC in the Western Digital My Book Live. However, in 2010, Applied Micro obtained an architecture license for ARMv8 (the 64-bit ARM architecture). Understanding that PowerPC was in decline, Applied Micro decided to devote all development resources to ARMv8. As part of this deal, all product lines based on the PowerPC architecture are being migrated to ARMv8 under the HeliX family.

APM is hoping to get HeliX into the embedded market, with focus on communication and networking, imaging, storage and industrial computing verticals. They believe ARMv8 is the architecture of the future and had a number of companies (including Cisco, Netgear, Konica Minolta, Wind River and Canonical) voicing support for their strategy.

The two SoC product lines launched by APM yesterday were the APM887208-H1 (based on HeliX 1) and the APM887104-H2 (based on HeliX 2). The SoC block diagrams of both of these SoCs are provided below, along with a table summarizing and comparing the various aspects.

Applied Micro Helix Block Diagram

Applied Micro HeliX Family   APM887208-H1 APM887104-H2 Cores 4 or 8 ARMv8 HeliX 1 at up to 2.4 GHz 2 or 4 ARMv8 HeliX 2 at up to 2.0 GHz L1 Cache 32 KB I / 32 KB D per core (write-through with parity protection) L2 Cache 256 KB shared per core pair (with ECC) 64 L3 Cache 4 or 8 MB shared 2 MB shared DRAM 2x DDR3 Controllers with ECC (72b each) 1x DDR3 Controller with ECC (72b) On-Chip Memory 1 MB 256 KB Memory Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit Low Power Features N/A < 250 mW standby Coprocessors 4x Cortex-A5 at 500 MHz N/A High-Speed Interfaces 2x 10G + 4x 1G + 1x 1G Management Ethernet 1x 10G + 4x 1G Ethernet 17x PCIe 3.0 (2 x8 + 1 x1 OR 1 x8 + 2 x4 + 1 x1 OR 4 x4 + 1 x1) 3x PCIe 3.0 (2 x1 OR 1 x4) 1 2x USB 3.0 Host 2x USB 3.0 Host + 1x USB 3.0 Host/Device 6x SATA III (four muxed with 4x 1G Ethernet) 1x SATA III

Applied Micro Helix 2 Block Diagram

The HeliX SoCs are sampling right now and slated to go into volume production in 2015. Applied Micro claims that design wins are already in place. From ARM's perspective, one can say that the juggernaut rolls on. With Cavium's Project Thunder and Broadcom's Vulcan targeting the high-end enterprise and datacenter segment, ARM needed an entry in the mid- to high-end embedded space currently dominated by MIPS64 and x86-64. The Applied Micro HeliX family brings ARM forward as a credible competitor for those sockets.

Today we are looking at Antec's latest PSU series, the EDGE, which the company markets as "the pinnacle of power supplies". Bold statements aside, only medium capacity units are available and silence seekers are their main target. We're reviewing the lowest capacity model of the series, with a maximum output of just 550 Watts, which means this is a PSU that could be used by a larger number of users. Let's see how it performs.

Something tells us this Xeno isn't interested in making out. (Or breath mints, for that matter. Yikes.)

CN.dart.call("xrailTop", {sz:"300x250", kws:["top"], collapse: true});

There was no way that the Xeno could have seen where I hid. I’d been looking for medical supplies in this space station’s sickbay, and after receiving directions from a fellow straggler, I found a computer terminal, bathed in sickly green light, with the information I needed. Unfortunately, booting the machine set off an alarm. Damn.

I already knew the alien bastard was coming before the motion tracker in my hands began to vibrate wildly, and sure enough, the Xeno soon descended from a hole in the roof. I ran behind a corner and poked my head out to watch its bendy limbs flex and its massive mouth water through a plume of fog. I knew my revolver would never fell this thing, so I waited for an opening and made a dash for a mechanical door. Once through, I slammed it shut with a manual override button, then I crawled into a locker down the hallway and hid.

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Alex Bellus

BRAINERD, MN—With 15 minutes to go, I put on my helmet and retreated inside it, focusing on what to do next. My heart rate had been steadily climbing all morning in anticipation of racing in anger for the first time in 2014. One of my team mates, Scott, has been out on the soaking wet track for the last two hours, but he’ll soon be visiting the pit lane for a fuel stop and to hand the car over to the next driver; the next driver being me. Way back in 2011, I wrote a piece asking (and answering) the question of whether it was possible to learn how to race cars just by playing video games. It was my first real foray on a track after nearly 20 years of wanting to get into motorsport, and I’ve not looked back since. No games this time. Rather, as someone who simply races for a hobby, I’d been curious about quantifying the physical workload involved.

Your author, focusing before he gets in the car. Elle Gitlin

Even though I’ve accumulated a respectable amount of racing hours in the intervening years, I still spend the hours between waking up on race day and getting in the car questioning why I'm actually doing all this. "So what if one time I drove here and came back to the pits on three wheels? Didn't we fix that and come in fourth the following day?" I've felt much better about my pre-race stage fright after hearing Felix Baumgartner discuss his own problem during the Red Bull Stratos jump, and I gave myself a similar pep talk. “The car will be good. You’ve done this before, you know what you need to do. Build up to speed. Concentrate. Focus on your driving, ignore the lap times.” As Scott brings the car into the pit lane, I wait atop the pit wall, seat insert in hand (I’m short and need a booster seat). Only four people are allowed over the wall if the car's gas cap is open; the fueler, someone wielding a fire extinguisher, the driver, and one other person who can help, strapping in—or pulling out—the driver.

Getting situated in the car happened smoothly. I tightened the straps as a helping hand plugged in my radio jack and the dry-break connector that joins my cool shirt to its chilled reservoir. The cool shirt is a wonderful thing. Worn underneath that heavy nomex, it's a t-shirt crisscrossed with surgical tubing. Cold water is pumped from an insulated tank through the tubes and across your torso, at a rate determined by a knob on the dash. On hot summer days it comes into its own, removing 'it's hot' from the (very long) list of things drivers want to complain about over the radio.

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A British national, Samiun Rahman, arrested in Bangladesh on charges of recruiting people for Islamic state and other jihadist groups has made a second court appearance.

Conservationists have revealed the latest weapon in their fight to preserve and restore threatened heath land in Dorset.

Version:next-20141003 (linux-next) Released:2014-10-03

Growing anti-Vietnamese sentiment is behind a five day protest that is due to start in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, this weekend.

Public health officials in Texas are tracking 100 people who are believed to have had contact with the first man to be diagnosed with Ebola in the US.

Net Market Share

Chrome's usage share surged in September, with Google's browser hitting new highs on both mobile platforms and on the PC. At the same time, Windows 8.x's share declined, with a shift in usage back to Windows 7.

Net Market Share Net Market Share

The biggest loser in September was Firefox, dropping a remarkable 1.05 points. Internet Explorer was down slightly, falling 0.09 points, and Safari declined a little more steeply, losing 0.31 points. Chrome was a massive winner, however, up 1.58 points to reach a new high usage share.

Net Market Share Net Market Share

Chrome is up sharply in the mobile space, too. Google's preferred browser added 1.82 points in September and, like the desktop browser, is now at an all-time high. While previous Chrome growth has appeared to come at the expense of Android Browser, the WebKit-based browser that was formerly built in to Android, that wasn't the case in September, with the old browser picking up a minor 0.09 points. This is a little distressing. Almost all installations of Android Browser are susceptible to major privacy flaw, and while Google has issued a patch for the browser, this patch can only be installed through a firmware update. Chrome is immune to the same flaw, and so all Android users who can use it should use it.

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A pavilion made largely of biscuits has featured at the Durga Puja festival in northern Calcutta.

Activists involved in Hong Kong's "Umbrella Revolution" have been targeted by remote access malware for Android and iOS that can eavesdrop on their communications—and do a whole lot more. Pasu Au Yeung

Malware-based espionage targeting political activists and other opposition is nothing new, especially when it comes to opponents of the Chinese government. But there have been few attempts at hacking activists more widespread and sophisticated than the current wave of spyware targeting the mobile devices of members of Hong Kong’s “Umbrella Revolution.”

Over the past few days, activists and protesters in Hong Kong have been targeted by mobile device malware that gives an attacker the ability to monitor their communications. What’s unusual about the malware, which has been spread through mobile message “phishing “ attacks, is that the attacks have targeted and successfully infected both Android and iOS devices.

The sophistication of the malware has led experts to believe that it was developed and deployed by the Chinese government. But Chinese-speaking hackers have a long history of using this sort of malware, referred to as remote access Trojans (RATs), as have other hackers around the world for a variety of criminal activities aside from espionage. It’s not clear whether this is an actual state-funded attack on Chinese citizens in Hong Kong or merely hackers taking advantage of a huge social engineering opportunity to spread their malware. But whoever is behind it is well-funded and sophisticated.

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Heavy fighting continues to go on for control of the airport in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk.

Ebola is spreading fast, the charity Save the Children has warned. It says five people are being infected every hour with the virus in Sierra Leone.