The next version of iOS may not be an upgrade for fans who use their iDevices to emulate classic games. The latest beta version of iOS 8.1 removes the famous (or infamous) "Date Trick" workaround used by iOS emulator makers to bypass App Store restrictions on their work, without the need to jailbreak the device.

Apple rules have long prevented emulators for classic game consoles and computers from appearing on the App Store, though some have managed to sneak their way through briefly (or more officially through a licensing deal with rights holders). Since last year, though, the makers of emulators like GBA4iOS and SNES emulator SiOS have relied on a loophole called the "Date Trick" to allow these apps (and ROM files) to be downloaded and installed through the built-in Safari browser. The trick gets around restrictions on unsigned apps by setting the device's date back at least two months, allowing users to easily run emulators to their heart's content without jailbreaking.

iOS 8.1 beta testers are reporting those days of easy emulation seem to be coming to an end in the latest update, though. GBA4iOS tester Dario Sepulveda writes that iOS 8.1 Beta 2 blocks the Date Trick workaround, cutting off the ability to install the app.

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As part of AMD’s broader restructuring efforts, back in June the company announced a business reorganization that would see the company organized into two major groups, the Computing and Graphics Business Group, and the Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom Business Group. Furthermore at the time AMD promoted Dr. Lisa Su to the position of Chief Operating Officer (COO), a position that previously had been unfilled at AMD for some time.

Now 4 months later it turns out that Lisa’s time as COO will be a short one. Today AMD has announced that effective immediately, current CEO Rory Read will be stepping down. In his place Lisa is being promoted to President and CEO of the company, making her the 5th CEO in the company’s history.

With Lisa’s previous promotion to COO, she had essentially already been promoted to AMD’s second-in-command under Rory, so this is a straightforward promotion over at AMD. More significantly, given the resurrection of the COO post there has been good reason to suspect that Lisa was bound for a promotion to CEO sooner than later. And now that AMD has finally promoted Lisa to CEO, they are confirming that the above was exactly the plan, and that Rory has been preparing her for the CEO role for some time.

For his part, the retirement of Rory signifies that AMD’s transition is nearly complete and that his role is coming to an end. Rory was brought on in 2011 to restructure and stabilize the company after its struggles late in the last decade and at the start of this one, with an emphasis on diversifying the company beyond its traditional (and troubled) x86 and graphics products. While AMD remains significantly vested in those products, they now have a sizable business presence in other fields/technologies such as ARM processors and semi-custom IP designs, which as part of AMD and Rory’s plans ensure the company isn’t overexposed to any single business. And on the financial side AMD is unfortunately still operating at a loss, but if all goes according to plan that should be coming to an end this year.

Though AMD has never called Rory a transitional CEO, his actions overhauling AMD over the last 3 years and now stepping down as CEO after the fact serve to cement the fact that Rory was brought on board to execute the necessary restructuring rather than to lead the company in the long term. AMD is still in the process of developing some of the silicon that will be the basis of these business plans – including the x86 and ARM versions of the K12 processor – so it will be a bit longer yet until the company can fully execute on their ambidextrous plans, but on the business and development side they have completed the necessary changes to allow that. With those changes behind them AMD is now ready to move out of their transitional phase and in to their new position as a diversified IP designer, which is what has led to Rory’s retirement and Lisa’s promotion.

Internally for AMD and its product lineups, Lisa’s promotion should not result in significant changes. She has already been overseeing much of AMD throughout her career there – first as SVP of Global Business Units and then as COO – meaning that although the CEO is changing, the person overseeing much of AMD’s product lineup is not. Working alongside AMD’s CTO, Mark Papermaster, AMD’s product leadership is more or less unchanged.

Meanwhile the transition from Rory to Lisa means that AMD is also once again being led by an engineer (and a very capable one at that), which AMD leadership is treating as a great strength going forward. Lisa holds a doctorate in electrical engineering from MIT and has previously held positions at IBM and Texas Instruments, including semiconductor research and development, and is much of the reason she joined the company at the SVP level in 2012. Being the CEO is about business as much as it is about technology, but with AMD’s business situation settled by Rory, this should give Lisa a chance to settle in and focus on driving and improving AMD’s technological situation, which is ultimately what will make or break the company. AMD now has a number of very capable engineers leading the company at multiple levels, including Lisa, CTO Mark Papermaster, and K12 designer Jim Keller, so the company should be in a good position going forward.

Finally, this promotion means that AMD’s executive lineup has been slightly shuffled once more. The COO position was recreated for Lisa and now it seems just for Lisa; it will not be filled now that she is CEO, and those responsibilities will be staying with her. Meanwhile AMD is also noting that while Rory is stepping down as CEO effective immediately, he will be staying with the company in an advisory role to help see out the company through the rest of 2014.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) spoke to reporters and students after his event Wednesday at his alma mater, Palo Alto High School. Cyrus Farivar

PALO ALTO, CA—Speaking at the gym at the high school where he used to play basketball in the 1960s, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) gave a dire warning to a group of students and locals on Wednesday about the effects of government spying on Silicon Valley: "There is a clear and present danger to the Internet economy."

The Oregon senator led a roundtable discussion on the "Impact of Mass Surveillance on the Digital Economy" with representatives from major Silicon Valley firms, including Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Dropbox. Wyden, a longstanding critic of the National Security Agency (NSA) and United States government’s policy on digital surveillance, made the case that active spying hurts the American economy.

"The NSA ran an expensive and invasive bulk e-mail records collection program for years, and it turned out to be worthless," he said. "And its bulk phone records collection program is still up and running now, even though the President’s own surveillance review group has indicated that it is not necessary or effective."

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The Met Office opens a new centre dedicated to the forecast of the weather in space.

Comcast has to convince the federal government to approve its purchase of Time Warner Cable (TWC), but so far the government advancing the most aggressive opposition may be in Lexington, Kentucky.

Kentucky's second-largest city is served by Time Warner Cable, and it isn't happy with the service. The city council "voted unanimously during a council work session Tuesday to put two resolutions denying transfer of ownership on the agenda for Thursday's council meeting," reported the Lexington Herald-Leader. 

Comcast's purchase of Time Warner Cable includes a sale of certain territories to Charter. Charter would take over in Lexington after the deal.

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Master OSM 2011

Federal prosecutors are reviewing an incident in which a Drug Enforcement Agency created a counterfeit Facebook profile and posted risqué personal pictures the agency obtained from a female suspect's mobile phone without her consent.

Details surrounding the DEA creating the fake Facebook account in the woman's name—a profile complete with pictures seized from her mobile phone during a 2010 drug-related arrest—were disclosed Monday by Buzzfeed.

The Justice Department told Buzzfeed on Tuesday that the "incident at issue in this case is under review." The department did not immediately respond to Ars for comment.

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Ron Amadeo

The HTC Desire Eye. That's a big camera lens.

12 more images in gallery

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NEW YORK—We've been worried about HTC lately. The company had a stretch where it was in the news for all the wrong reasons. The HTC-built Facebook phone was a flop, its employees were constantly leaving the company and/or being arrested for leaking company secrets, and its camera supplier said it was "no longer a tier one customer.”

CN.dart.call("xrailTop", {sz:"300x250", kws:["top"], collapse: true});The company seems to be turning things around though. In the last two quarters, HTC has gotten back into profitability, and the company is making a high-profile jump back into tablets by producing the Nexus 9 for Google.

Today in New York, the company is showing off the "flagship" product of its mid-range Desire line of phones, the AT&T-exclusive "Desire Eye." If you can't already tell from the pictures, it's addressing a popular use-case for smartphones as of late—selfies.

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Today at their Double Exposure event in New York, HTC has announced the Desire EYE. The major feature on the Desire EYE is its 13MP front facing camera which should hopefully take some of the best selfies of any smartphone. The internals are also an interesting story. While devices sporting HTC's Desire branding are typically more budget oriented devices, the Desire EYE packs significantly more powerful hardware than other Desire device. It has a 5.2" 1080p IPS display, and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 801. BoomSound continues to be present with two TFA9887 speaker amps. The full list of specifications has been laid out below.

  HTC Desire EYE SoC MSM8974ABv3 2.26 GHz Snapdragon 801 RAM/NAND 2 GB LPDDR3, 16GB NAND + microSDXC Display 5.2” 1920x1080 IPS LCD Network 2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Qualcomm MDM9x25 UE Category 4 LTE) Dimensions 151.7 x 73.8 x 8.5 mm, 154 grams Camera 13MP rear camera, 1.12 µm pixels, 1/3.06" CMOS size (Sony IMX214), F/2.0, 28mm (35mm equiv) lens.
13MP front camera, 1.12 µm pixels, 1/3.06" CMOS size (Sony IMX214), F/2.2, 22mm (35mm equiv) lens.  Battery 2400 mAh (9.12 Whr) OS Android KitKat with HTC Sense 6 Connectivity 802.11a/b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, DLNA, NFC SIM Size NanoSIM

Owing to its 5.2" display, the Desire Eye has a larger height and width than HTC's M8 and E8 phones. At 8.5mm it's 1.35mm thinner than both of them, and at 154 grams its mass sits between the lighter E8 and heavier M8. Also similar to the E8 and M8 is its hardware platform which includes Qualcomm's MSM8974AB at 2.26GHz, 2GB of LPDDR3 RAM. The finish on all color variants is matte plastic throughout, and the two-tone "Doubleshot" finish really makes for an even better design than what we saw in the E8. The power button has also been moved to the side, and we see a new two-stage camera button. The latter is definitely useful, but the pressure needed to trigger the second stage is a bit too high in my experience.

The Desire EYE also sports water resistance, rated for immersion in 1 meter of water for up to 30 minutes. HTC has gone the extra mile here by implementing water resistance without annoying plastic flaps that are easily torn off. Instead, we see rubber gaskets around key areas and "short protection" on the USB port. 802.11ac isn't present, and the battery is on the small side, but overall the Desire EYE has solid specifications.

Like I mentioned in the beginning, the major marketing and selling point for the phone is definitely the front facing camera. The Desire EYE uses the same Sony IMX214 sensor for the front and rear cameras. IMX214 is formidable as a sensor for rear cameras, and this is the first time we're seeing it also implemented as a front-facing camera. By using two separate cameras instead of a rotating upper section like on the Oppo N1, HTC has been able to customize the cameras for their intended use case. The rear camera has a wider F/2.0 aperture and a longer 28mm focal length than the front-facing camera. The front-facing camera is optimised for a wider 87 degree field of view with its shorter 22mm focal length. Both cameras have a max ISO of 3200 and a max exposure time of 1/9s. In some casual testing it seems that there is a bit of color noise in low light, but it's otherwise well-suppressed. Detail is definitely good but there're noticeable sharpening kernels at the base settings which is a bit disappointing. The rear camera seems to have detail similar to the Butterfly 2, which is comparable to most 13MP cameras in flagships today.

HTC is including a number of software features that add additional camera functionality, collectively called the HTC EYE Experience. HTC's face tracking keeps the user's face in focus and crops the image to frame it. Up to four people can be tracked and framed at the same time. HTC's Split Capture feature combines simultaneously taken photos or videos with the front and back cameras into a single image or video. Voice Selfie allows the front camera to take a photo by smiling, and to take a video by saying "action" or "rolling"

HTC is also bringing over features that were introduced earlier this year with the Desire 820. Face fusion allows the user to merge their face with that of their friend or another person. Live makeup allows the user to adjust the level of skin smoothing with a live preview before capture.

Some of the HTC EYE Experience features will roll out to the following HTC devices in the coming months:

• HTC One (M7)
• HTC One (M8)
• HTC One E8
• HTC One Mini
• HTC One Mini 2
• HTC One max
• HTC Desire 816
• HTC Desire 820
• HTC Butterfly 2 

HTC plans to roll out the Desire EYE on carriers in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the United States from October onward. Pricing is said to be around that of the One (E8), and should supersede the One (E8) in those markets.

Today is HTC's camera-centric Double Exposure event in New York. In addition to announcing the new Desire EYE, HTC is announcing a new device that occupies it's own space in HTC's portfolio. It's a small camera called the RE. As far as cameras go, the RE is fairly unique. At first glance it looks like it could be something like a flashlight, but the large glass circle is really the cover for a 16MP camera housed inside. The device is shaped so it can be held and operated with a single hand. At 65.5 grams it's also very light. MicroSD is used exclusively for storage, with an 8GB card shipping by default and support for up to 128GB MicroSDXC. An 820 mAh (3.116Wh) battery provides up to 1200 captured photos or 100 minutes of continuous video recording.

The RE is the opposite of what HTC has done with their cameras in the smartphone space. HTC is also keen to emphasize that this doesn't compete with GoPros. They were one of the first companies to start putting manual controls for white balance, ISO, and shutter speed in their camera application. With the RE, HTC is trying to create a highly automatic photography experience where all that's required is the press of a button. To do this, HTC has eliminated as many buttons, toggles, and controls as possible. The RE has no on/off button. Instead, it has a sensor in the grip which detects when it is being held and turns the camera on which uses an MCU which is likely to be a Cortex M solution. The only buttons are the shutter button on the back where the user's thumb is placed, and a slow-mo video toggle on the front underneath the lens where the user's index finger is placed. There are no dials, and no viewfinder or LCD.

Composition is an essential part of photography. To allow users to take photos without any viewfinder, HTC has used a 16MP 1/2.3" CMOS sensor with an F/2.8 aperture and a very wide 146 degree field of view which is equivalent to 17mm. The camera's wide field of view means that as long as users have a rough idea of what is being captured by the camera and point in the direction of the subject, they can crop and align photos after they are taken without cutting off any essential details. In practice, the quality is passable, although hurt by the wide field of view which reduces peak resolution in addition to the half second or so of shutter lag. The gallery below has sample photos from the RE, although HTC cautioned that both the hardware and software were non-final and that there may be significant differences in the final product.

Gallery: HTC RE Sample Shots

HTC has also announced a line of accessories for the RE, which are pictures above. The extended battery has a novel design, screwing into to the 1/4" tripod mount on the bottom of the RE and using a retractable micro USB plug. While the camera has an IP57 rating for dust resistance and immersion in 1 meter of water for 30 minutes, accessories like the extended battery do not. Users who plan on going deeper underwater should invest in the protection pack which includes a cap that improves water resistance to IP58 which allows for immersion in 3 meters of water for up to 2 hours.

While the camera can function on its own, it also integrates with Android and iOS devices that support Bluetooth 4.0 LE. The RE app that will be launching with the camera will work as a photo and video manager, and a live viewfinder. Photos can be easily shared with social networks, and automatically backed up to Dropbox or Google Drive.

HTC plans to launch the RE in the United States by October, and will expand to other regions afterward. We expect pricing in the US to be around 199 USD at launch. While it remains to be seen whether the RE is the first of many new action cameras, HTC seems to be exploring new product categories instead of following prevailing industry trends.

This image from Microsoft Research's "Mano a Mano" paper shows how three projector/Kinect pairs can create believable 3D virtual objects from two different perspectives. MSR / ACM

Microsoft may be taking an official wait and see approach before following companies like Oculus and Sony down the virtual reality headset path. That isn't stopping the company's research arm from looking into interesting ways to use Kinect and projector technology to create holodeck-style augmented reality experiences in the living room, though. Microsoft Research has prepared a number of interesting demos and papers on these lines for the Association for Computing Machinery's User Interface Software and Technology Symposium, showing off just how far those efforts have come and how they could lead to interesting new forms of gaming in the future.

The first project, RoomAlive, promises to "transform any room into an immersive augmented virtual gaming experience," as the researchers put it. The system uses six paired projector/Kinect units, mounted to the ceiling so they have somewhat overlapping fields of view. These units can auto-calibrate themselves with a series of projected light patterns, transforming their individual Kinect depth maps into a unified 3D point-cloud model of the room.

From there, RoomAlive translates the point data into a series of vertical and horizontal surfaces representing the walls and furniture, then translates that into a 3D environment in the Unity game engine. Using that virtual representation of the room, the system then figures out how to project a unified image on those walls and surfaces, warping the projection so it appears correct on each surface. The effect is akin to transforming the entire room into a computer screen or monitor, complete with player-tracking through the array of Kinect cameras.

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A San Francisco federal appeals court heard arguments today in an activist lawsuit seeking to ban National Security Letters, or NSLs, as unconstitutional. NSLs are one of the more controversial tools used by the FBI to conduct investigations, as they include a gag order preventing the recipient from talking about the fact that they got an NSL.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit challenging the NSLs as unconstitutional in 2011, well before the Snowden disclosures about widespread surveillance. Their two clients are unnamed, but one is a telecom company and one is an Internet company. The two "service providers" want to speak out about the fact that they received letters, but can't. In April of last year, they won a stunning victory, when US District Judge Susan Ilston agreed with EFF that the letters are unconstitutional. The gag order stopping EFF's clients from discussing "controversial government powers" violates the First Amendment, Ilston ruled.

The government has appealed the proceeding. Today, almost 19 months after Ilston's order came out, a three-judge appeals panel heard arguments from both sides.

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Comcast executive Charlie Herrin is aiming to improve Comcast's legendarily poor customer service. Comcast

Comcast has publicly apologized to the California man, Conal O’Rourke, who accused the company of getting him fired from his former position at PriceWaterhouseCoopers in the wake of a yearlong billing dispute. The apology comes less than 24 hours after Ars published an article detailing O’Rourke’s documented allegations.

"What happened with Mr. O’Rourke's service is completely unacceptable," Charlie Herrin, a company senior vice president, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. "Despite our attempts to address Mr. O’Rourke’s issues, we simply dropped the ball and did not make things right. Mr. O’Rourke deserves another apology from us, and we’re making this one publicly. We also want to clarify that nobody at Comcast asked for him to be fired. We’re also determined to get to the bottom of exactly what happened with his service, figure out what went wrong at every point along the way, and fix any underlying issues."

Herrin is the same new Comcast executive who said late last month that improving customer service was his "number one priority."

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Some Kenyans demonstrate their support for their President Uhuru Kenyatta outside the International Criminal Court.

Video card overclocking has become a very popular topic amongst gamers and PC enthusiasts these days. With the release of next generation games around the corner and the growing popularity of resolutions beyond 1080p, overclocking is becoming increasingly important to users looking to squeeze the most performance possible out of their video cards. It’s been more than a decade since video card overclocking was first introduced, and while the core concept remains the same, the software has improved to make it easier and provide additional features and functionality. If you're looking to boost performance on your GPU, we're rounding up the most popular utilities to find out their pros and cons. Read on for the full guide of GPU overclocking software.

Earlier this year, Microsoft renamed its Windows Azure cloud computing platform to be just "Azure," reflecting support for operating systems other than Windows.

Today, the company made an equivalent announcement for Windows Intune, its cloud-based mobile device and application management tool. Since it supports iOS and Android, neither of which are actually Windows, Windows Intune is now known simply as Microsoft Intune. The software itself will pick up the new branding in a major update that's planned for later in the year.

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Standard fluorescence microscopy (left) and PALM images (right). Note that the scale bar in the far right image is roughly the diffraction limit. Nobel Prizes/originally Betzig et. al., Science

This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry honors an interesting mix of developments. It honors three researchers who overcame an apparent physical limitation in our ability to image microscopic objects, in the process building microscopes that are proving to be incredibly useful for biology. But because the breakthroughs depended in part on our understanding of the behavior of individual molecules, the prize comes in chemistry.

The limit in question is the diffraction limit, first described back in the 1800s by Ernst Abbe. This limit means that the best resolution we can obtain in imaging an object is half the wavelength of the light we're using to image it. If we're using visible wavelengths, this means we can't do much better than about 250nm—a distance that dwarfs viruses and individual proteins. Although lots of improvements in microscopy have been made since the 1800s, all of them kept running into diffraction-related problems.

At least, that was the case until recently. The Nobel Prize honors not one but two distinct ways of overcoming the limit. (Conveniently, we have coverage of both—see the sidebar.) In the case of one of the recipients, it honors an idea that came to him when he had given up on research and was working in the family business.

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AT&T

AT&T has agreed to pay $105 million to settle a case with the government over alleged bill cramming that cost consumers tens of millions of dollars. It’s the largest-ever settlement over wireless bill cramming.

$80 million of the settlement will cover customer refunds, which will be distributed by the Federal Trade Commission. Another $20 million will be paid in penalties and fees to states attorneys general, and $5 million in penalties will head to the Federal Communications Commission, according to today’s announcement.

FTC

The FTC has set up a website where consumers can seek refunds until May 1, 2015. “Current and former AT&T customers who paid for unauthorized third-party charges after January 1, 2009 may apply for refunds,” the site says. Customers can fill out an online form or request a refund by mail.

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Sometimes, when the clock hits 3:00am, and you've been in the server room since 9 o'clock the previous day, you start to get a little batty. That's the only explanation I have for programs like cowsay in Linux. Still, I'm glad they're there, because life wouldn't be nearly as fun without them. Here's a quick list of silly Linux programs off the top of my head. more>>

On Tuesday, a JetBlue passenger took to Twitter to publicly complain about an hours-long delay to her flight, and she accused JetBlue of delaying her return home even longer by not letting her reboard the flight.

Boston resident Lisa Carter-Knight used Twitter to report her flight's delay, using a #JetBlue hashtag to announce to her followers—as of press time, roughly 300—that the "pilot accuses passengers of accusing him of being intoxicated demands all passengers back." As she told Philadelphia's ABC affiliate WPVI, "We had been waiting an hour, so there was a joke by another passenger—it had been a long night and he hoped there was a fully stocked bar on the airplane. The pilot ran out and said, 'That's it, everybody out by the gate. I've been accused of being intoxicated."

The pilot reportedly ordered all passengers off the flight so he could take a sobriety test as mandated by law. At that point, Carter-Knight posted six tweets about the delay, commenting on an "unruly pilot" and "false accusations" of his sobriety being questioned. When she attempted to reboard hours later, she was not allowed to do so.

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A 14-year-old boy's videotape of an Indiana cop smashing an ax though a vehicle window, shooting the passenger with a stun gun, and ripping him from the vehicle has become the subject of an excessive force lawsuit.

Monday's lawsuit [PDF] is among the most recent in a wave of police encounters gone awry that have been captured on video and resulted in legal action. The incident was filmed two weeks ago in Hammond, Indiana, and it started with a motorist being stopped and pulled over for allegedly not wearing a seatbelt.

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