While I'm still unsure on what wearables should actually do, I managed to get some photos of the Apple Watch. Unfortunately I wasn't really able to find any units available for a hands-on, and as far as I can tell it wasn't possible to actually try any of the software yet. However, based upon what I've seen Apple brings at least a few great ideas to the table. The digital dial/crown is definitely one of them, as it opens up the door to all kinds of new possibilities for navigation that are currently either impractical or impossible for wearables that don't have this hardware feature. In addition, Apple's strong emphasis on personalization with two sizes, three editions, and six watch bands is something that all OEMs should pay attention to. Finally, the dedicated SoC for the Apple Watch is something that is absolutely necessary to enable a good user experience as space is so critical on these wearables. There's also no question that Apple has done a great job of focusing on industrial and material design, as it looks like all three versions of the watch have premium materials and excellent fit and finish. While it isn't clear what display is used, it seems likely that it's an OLED display judging by the amount of black in some of the watchfaces, although ambient lighting in the demo area made it hard to tell whether this was the case.

However, my reservations are largely similar to concerns that I have with all wearables. Ultimately, the Apple Watch must provide utility that's strong enough to make me turn around and get it if I forget it. As-is, I don't really think that even the Apple Watch has that level of utility, even if it is excellently executed. Of course, this is also based upon a demo unit that I wasn't able to touch or use.

Of course, a few concerns remain, mostly in the area of battery life as it seems that only the Pebble line of wearables can really deliver enough battery life to not worry about charging a wearable on any sort of regular schedule. At any rate, I've attached a gallery of photos below for those interested in seeing all the various combinations of watches that Apple will make.

Gallery: Apple Watch

The Apple Watch Sport and its blue Sport Band. Megan Geuss

CN.dart.call("xrailTop", {sz:"300x250", kws:["top"], collapse: true});CUPERTINO, CA—It would be exaggerating to say we got “hands-on” time with the Apple Watch that the company announced this morning. Apple had several tables sprinkled throughout its hands-on booth (the large white building you may have seen in pictures), and you could try on some watches at those tables. But those watches were in a non-interactive demo mode, and the only opportunity we got to see the watches actually working were in carefully guided mini-presentations given by the people at the tables.

Those little song-and-dance routines ran us through the same kinds of things that Tim Cook talked about on stage when he introduced the Apple Watch earlier today—using the “digital crown” to scroll and zoom, drawing and tapping out small messages to people in your contacts list, and a surface-level glance at some of the fitness information. We saw what it looks like to change watch faces and to customize them. We experienced the "taptic" vibration the watch uses to let you know it wants something, and it was indeed as subtle as Cook said it was. We just didn’t get to actually take the watch's software for a spin, something that’s kind of integral for an accessory that you’re meant to have with you all the time.

Megan Geuss

Apple Watches come in many different colors and sizes.

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The one thing we did manage to get a better sense for was the sheer variety of different Apple Watches. The watch itself comes in the standard stainless steel Apple Watch body, the aluminum body of the Apple Watch Sport, and the 18 karat gold body of the Apple Watch Edition (three options). Each of those types of watches comes in either 38mm high or 42mm high models (six options). Each watch also comes with two different color options (12 options). Each can be paired with one of six different band styles (72 options). Each band comes in a variety of different colors.

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As part of today’s IDF 2014 keynote, Intel has announced that their Edison development platform is now shipping.

First announced back at CES, Edison is a development platform for Intel’s burgeoning Internet of Things development initiative. At just over a postage stamp in size and containing a dual-core Atom CPU and a Quark CPU, Intel is hoping to jump-start development of tiny internet-connected x86 devices by providing a complete platform for developers to use in their devices. Edison in this sense is closer to a platform on a chip than a system on a chip; it not only contains the processors and RAM, but also the wireless components, right on down to the antennas.

  Intel Edison Development Platform CPU Dual-Core Silvermont Atom @ 500MHz +
Quark @ 100MHz RAM 1GB LPDDR3 (2x32bit) WiFi 2.4/5GHz 802.11a/b/g/n, BT 4.0 Storage 4GB eMMC I/O SD + UART + SPI + GPIO + USB 2.0 OTG OS Yocto Linux v1.6 Dimensions 35.5 x 25 x 3.9 mm

Fabbed on Intel’s 22nm process, the Edison platform contains an interesting setup that pairs a dual-core Silvermont Atom that runs at 500MHz with a Quark that runs at 100MHz. The Atom in this sense is the primary processor for the SoC, while the Quark serves as an embedded microcontroller responsible for running other functions on the platform. Intel pairs these processors up with 1GB of LPDDR3 in a 2x32bit configuration and a 4GB of eMMC NAND for storage. Wireless meanwhile is provided by a Broadcom 43340, which offers dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0.

The Edison platform itself can be further attached to additional development boards to expand its functionality and access its I/O. Intel is demonstrating both a simple USB board and a more complex development board. But as Edison offers Arduino compatibility, it can take advantage of the current Arduino development ecosystem.

Finally, Intel tells us that the Edison module itself is expected to retail for around $50. Meanwhile the breakout board kit and the Arduino kits will sell for $60 and $85 respectively.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft is in talks to buy Swedish game developer Mojang, best known for its block-based zombie survival building game Minecraft. Citing a "person with knowledge of the matter," the purchase would value the developer at more than $2 billion.

The purchase would be a surprising one. Mojang founder Markus "Notch" Persson has been critical of Microsoft, claiming that Windows 8 could be "very very bad" for indie developers. When Facebook bought VR goggle company Oculus earlier this year, Persson cancelled development of a virtual reality version of Minecraft, saying that "Facebook is not a company of grass-roots tech enthusiasts."

The price is also remarkable. Minecraft is the only Mojang game that's reasonably complete. Card strategy game Scrolls is currently in beta, and planned space-based sandbox game 0x10c was cancelled in 2013.

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Taking place this week alongside the consumer electronics clamor is the annual Intel Developer Forum (IDF) at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Though it has and continues to be first and foremost a developers conference, IDF also offers Intel a chance to unveil new products, and in more recent editions discuss and promote their plans for further breaking into the mobile market.

Diving right into the subject of Intel’s Core microarchitecture, with the Broadwell based Core M already in the process of launching, Intel is giving developers and the public a look at what comes after Broadwell. Already on Intel’s roadmaps for some time, Intel took to the stage at IDF14 to formally announce their next-generation Skylake architecture and to demonstrate its status.

Intel's Tick-Tock Cadence Microarchitecture Process Node Tick or Tock Release Year Conroe/Merom 65nm Tock 2006 Penryn 45nm Tick 2007 Nehalem 45nm Tock 2008 Westmere 32nm Tick 2010 Sandy Bridge 32nm Tock 2011 Ivy Bridge 22nm Tick 2012 Haswell 22nm Tock 2013 Broadwell 14nm Tick 2014 Skylake 14nm Tock 2015

In Intel terminology Skylake is the Tock to Broadwell’s Tick, offering a new microarchitecture atop the 14nm process first introduced with Broadwell. As is the case with every Core update, for Skylake Intel is shooting for significant increases in performance, power efficiency, and battery life. Since Skylake is built on the same 14nm process as Broadwell, Skylake is primarily an exercise in Intel’s architecture development capabilities, with its gains needing to come from optimizations in design rather than significant manufacturing improvements.             

At roughly a year out from launch Intel is not saying anything about the architecture or design at this time, but they are using IDF to showcase that Skylake is up and running. Demonstrating this, Intel showcased a pair of Skylake development systems. The first of which was a traditional open laboratory testbed that was running 3DMark, which was being used to showcase that the GPU and CPU portions of Skylake were running and performing well. The second demonstration was a completed laptop that was playing back 4K video, and is an early version of the hardware Intel will be shipping as the software development vehicle for developers next year.

Alongside their demonstration, Intel also announced a rough timeline for the volume production and availability of Skylake. Volume production will take place in H2’2015, with product availability slated for later in the year. With Broadwell being behind schedule due to a slower than planned bring-up of their 14nm process, there has been some question over what would happen with Skylake and Intel clearly wanted to address this head-on.

Consequently a big part of Intel’s message on Skylake is that the next generation CPU is already up and running and is in a healthy state, apparently unfazed by the earlier 14nm delays that dogged Broadwell. At the same time the H2’2015 launch date for Skylake means that it’s going to be out roughly a year after the first Broadwell parts, which means Intel still intends to adhere to their roughly 1 year product replacement cadence.

A man harasses a woman while another man kind of stands around doing nothing. A beautiful microcosm of recent events. Feminist Frequency

A set of IRC logs released Saturday appear to show that a handful of 4chan users were ultimately behind #GamerGate, the supposedly grass-roots movement aimed at exposing ethical lapses in gaming journalism. The logs show a small group of users orchestrating a "hashtag campaign" to perpetuate misogynistic attacks by wrapping them in a debate about ethics in gaming journalism.

The saga grew from a single blog post written by an ex-boyfriend of Zoe Quinn, a game developer who designed Depression Quest. The post was a lengthy diatribe filled with details about Quinn's alleged relationships with men, including a tryst with a gaming journalist who works for Kotaku. Anonymous users on reddit and 4chan spun this material into a story about how Quinn allegedly slept with multiple gaming journalists in return for coverage, though the allegations did not support such a claim. The journalist in question had quoted Quinn, once, months before they dated; he never wrote about her or her development efforts again.

Nevertheless, Quinn soon had her accounts hacked and her personal information stolen (experiences she was accused of fabricating). Quinn's opponents tried to turn the entire situation into an ethical debate about the relationship between gaming press and game developers.

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In the launch announcement, Apple announced that their new display had dual domain pixels, which improved viewing angles. Unfortunately they dropped the subject at this, which make for a lot of room for confusion. Anyone that does a cursory analysis through Google will only find references to this type of display in monitors for medical use or similarly technology used by IBM monitors.

However, dual domain pixels are actually not as complicated as they seem. In fact, this is a display technology I remember seeing with the announcement of LG’s AH-IPS technology back in 2011. For those interested in the technical definition, dual domain pixels refers to the fact that the electrodes in the pixels aren’t all aligned. Instead, they’re skewed when viewed from the perspective of the lines defined by the rectangular edges of the display. Because these subpixels are skewed, it’s possible to compensate for uneven lighting that occurs because each individual subpixel is viewed at a different angle, which causes a change in color and a faster fall-off of contrast.

At any rate, this is easiest to explain with a photos. Above, we see the pixel layout of the iPhone 5. This is the standard rows/columns of pixels, and not really news to anyone that knows how displays work. Let's look at a dual domain arrangement next.

Anyone that has tried the HTC One (M7) or One X will probably understand the effect of this change as these phones have had this type of skewed subpixel format to get better viewing angles and less color shifting with changes in viewing angles. This can carry some risk though as black backgrounds may have some color shifting towards purple instead of yellow/blue, which can look strange but is quite subtle in my experience. There's really not too much in the way of disadvantages, so I look forward to seeing how Apple's new displays do in our tests.

When it comes to the iPhone 6, one of the most immediate impressions will definitely be the industrial and material design. Going back to the launch of the original iPhone 5 one of the immediate impressions that we had was that the iPhone 5 felt incredibly light and thin. If nothing else, the same is true of the iPhone 6.

While the new iPhone 6 isn’t lighter than the iPhone 5, it feels incredibly thin compared to the iPhone 5s I had on hand for comparisons. In fact, the iPhone 6 feels a lot like the HTC 8X in terms of the thickness of the edge, but without the strongly sloped back to increase the size of the phone in the hand.

The size itself is also a key feature, and as I suspected the iPhone 6 feels very much like the One (M7) in size, which I still find to be a great fit and easily used with one hand. While it’s definitely possible for the iPhone 6 to be a bit bigger without being impossible to reasonably use with one hand, it manages to hit a good balance between ease of use with one hand and display size for media consumption.

Of course, the iPhone 6 Plus isn’t really easy to use with one hand, as just the 77.8mm width makes it difficult to reach across the display horizontally, much less from diagonally. It is definitely easy to hold with one hand though, and the rounded display feels great.

In terms of the design of the device, it’s clear that Apple had to break some trends that seemed to be present in previous iPhones. For one, the noticeable camera bump came from a need to maintain and/or improve camera quality while simultaneously driving down z-height overall, so there seems to have been an industrial design trade-off here for the sake of functionality. There’s also the relatively thick plastic lines which are a departure from previous designs but seem to be necessary for NFC capabilities. I’m personally unsure how I feel on these two design elements, but they may be an issue for some.

Looking past the size of the iPhone 6, there are a lot of noticeable subtle changes to the device compared to the iPhone 5s. In terms of low-hanging fruit, the side-mounted power button definitely helps with keeping a firm grip while turning on the phone, and I didn’t find any real issues when trying to turn the phone on or off. The slightly curved glass that helps to make for a smooth transition when swiping off the edge of the display is also a nice touch, although I’m concerned about the implications that this has for drop resilience and screen protectors. This is mostly based upon my past experience with such 2.5D displays, as traditional PET screen protectors generally don’t adhere properly to curved surfaces and Android phones with this type of cover glass tended to suffer from shattered displays more readily.

There are some changes that are subtle enough that I’m not sure if this is a product of production variance. In the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus that I tried, I noticed that the home button seemed to be closer to the display when compared to the iPhone 5s, and that the feel of the button was a bit more positive, although the click is still relatively subdued compared to the volume and power buttons.

One of the highlight features of the iPhone 6 Plus is optical image stabilization, but it appears that it doesn’t run during preview so it was hard to see just how much accommodation the system has and how it works. Although the announcement seemed to suggest that the module moves vertically and horizontally, it seems more likely that we’re looking at a VCM that shifts the lenses around to compensate for horizontal and vertical motion.

Overall, it was rather hard to really notice any difference in responsiveness as the iPhone 5s almost never stuttered or hesitated in my experience. The iPhone 6 similarly had no such issues when casually trying various features but a full review may show that this changes when used in real world situations.

Unfortunately, many of the features that Apple has implemented in this latest iteration seem to follow the same pattern as they aren’t easily demonstrated. For example, seeing exactly what Apple means by dual domain pixels effectively requires a microscope to clearly see what Apple is talking about, and really seeing a difference in color shifting, along with improved maximum contrast requires a dark room with little stray light.

Gallery: iPhone 6 and 6 Plus Hands On

For a brief period 15 years ago, this was console gaming's state of the art. Wikipedia

While seemingly the entirety of the Internet was off paying attention to Apple announcing new phones and watch, something weird was happening to my Twitter feed. Apparently, someone had messed with my settings so that my feed displayed tweets on a 15 year delay for a couple of hours. That means that, instead of Apple tweets, my followers got to go back in time and experience a portion of my liveblogging from Sega's Dreamcast launch-day keynote address from September 9, 1999.

We figure this technical snafu is as good an excuse as any to look back on the Dreamcast as it existed 15 years ago today, when it hoped to be the savior of a once-proud Sega still recovering from the failure of the Sega CD, 32X, Saturn, et al. Below are my live tweets as they were written 15 years ago, along with some accompanying commentary that has the benefit of a decade and a half of hindsight.

[Editor's Note: For those with defective sarcasm genes (or just those feeling a little bit slow today), I will state up front that these are not actually tweets from over six years before Twitter even existed. Sega didn't even have a keynote-style launch event on 9/9/99. I just thought these somewhat jokey "livetweets" would be a fun way to reminisce on the launch of Sega's last console, and reflect on how much technology and the gaming market has changed in the intervening period.]

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The United States puts 230 species of birds on a watch list because of their rapidly declining numbers.

A medical charity says it cannot cope with the volume of Ebola patients in Liberia.

The iPhone 5S, 6, and 6 Plus. Megan Geuss

CN.dart.call("xrailTop", {sz:"300x250", kws:["top"], collapse: true});CUPERTINO, CA—Big phones, long the domain of the Android and Windows Phone OEMs, are finally a reality on Apple’s side of the fence. The iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus catapult the iPhone into the large-screen era after two years at the 4-inch screen size introduced by the iPhone 5, and the larger sizes drastically change what the phones are like to hold and to use.

Meet the new iPhones

Let’s start with some general observations that apply to both the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus. The iPhone 5 and 5S both had flat fronts, sides, and backs with well-defined edges, but those are gone in the iPhone 6. The glass on the front now curves down slightly all the way around the edge to meet the newly-curved sides and back of the phone. It sort of recalls the iPhone 3G or 3GS, which had similar curves but used plastic all the way around instead of aluminum and glass. I’ve long since gotten used to the harder edges of my iPhone 4S and 5S, but the iPhone 6 is softer all the way around.

Megan Geuss

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The back of the phones are made out of aluminum with some clearly visible cutouts made to allow wireless signals in and out. The design as a whole is more reminiscent of the 2012 iPod Touch than current iPhones, an observation that extends to the slightly protruding camera lens. You won’t notice this bulge if you keep your phone in a case or sit it on a soft surface, but if you set the phone on a hard table it definitely will wobble a bit in place. Both phones feel lighter than you’d expect them to—4.55 ounces for the 6 and 6.07 ounces for the 6 Plus, compared to 5.64 ounces for the 5-inch HTC One M8 or 5.08 ounces for the new Moto X—but they still feel as sturdy as you’d expect from an Apple product.

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Microsoft has reached a deal with the US government in which it will agree to be held in contempt of court in order to move an e-mail privacy case on to appeal.

The case is over a government demand for e-mails stored on a Microsoft server in Dublin, Ireland, that are related to an investigation into narcotics trafficking.

The Obama administration has said that the company must comply with valid warrants for data, even when the data is held overseas. Microsoft say that's wrong and that the ability to enforce US law stops at the nation's borders.

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Good day to you, Arsians! How's your computer storage situation? If you're fiending for a reasonably priced SSD upgrade or a massive multi-TB drive to back your SSD up, today's Dealmaster has you covered with options from Intel, Seagate, and Western Digital. Elsewhere in today's listings, find a variety of Dell monitor and laptop options, a few 4K TV sets, and markdowns on Microsoft Office, both in standard and 365 flavors.

Featured deal:

• Intel 520 Series 240GB SATA 6Gb/s 2.5-Inch SSD for $109.99 with free shipping (list price $299.99)

Hard drives and SSDs:

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Artist's conception of a watery Mars. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

It’s become clear in recent years that Mars had lots of water in its distant past. But that raises the question—when did Mars stop being so Earth-like? And what happened to cause the change?

One way to address such questions is by analyzing rocks from different times in the planet's history. While no samples from the red planet have ever been brought back, meteorites have landed on Earth that scientists identified as originating on Mars.

One such meteorite is called Northwest Africa (NWA) 7533. This dark, glossy meteorite originally formed some 4.43 billion years ago, not long after Mars itself finished accreting. And, crucially, it contains zircon grains, which provide clues to the planet’s past.

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Intel Free Press

Motorists popped for texting-while-driving violations in Long Island could be mandated to temporarily disable their mobile phones the next time they take to the road.

That's according to Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, who says she is moving to mandate that either hardware be installed or apps be activated that disable the mobile phone while behind the wheel. The district attorney likened the texter's punishment to drunk drivers who sometimes are required to breathe into a device before turning on the ignition.

"Like ignition interlock devices, transdermal alcohol monitoring ankle bracelets, and personal breath testing instruments, DA Rice believes that available technologies must be employed in criminal sentences to change behavior and save lives. The cost of each of these devices would be borne by the offender," the prosecutor said in a press release.

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This is the story of a click wheel. Jacqui Cheng

When apple.com returned after the event announcing Apple's new iPhone 6, 6 Plus, and Apple Watch, one of its longest-standing members was gone: the iPod classic. Along with it goes the 30-pin dock connector, marking a complete transition to the Lightning connector for Apple's entire mobile device fleet in exactly two years.

The iPod classic was part of Apple's lineup starting in October 23, 2001. The product hadn't been updated since the 6th generation version was released in 2009; over the last five years, it has existed as a single solitary $249 160GB model.

Now that Apple is able to offer iPhones in 128GB solid-state storage options, the iPod classic would have felt particularly redundant as a product. It was also the last existing product not to use the Lightning connector that Apple introduced with the iPhone 5 in 2012.

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Taramisu

Thirty-three companies that make equipment used by Internet service providers today called on the US to avoid regulating Internet service as a utility. IBM, Cisco, and Intel signed the letter to US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, along with Alcatel-Lucent, Arris, Broadcom, D-Link, Ericsson, Panasonic, Sandvine, and others.

“The Administration must act to protect against calls for utility-like common carrier regulation that would threaten demand for Internet infrastructure, reduce incentives for investment, hinder innovation and jeopardize [the Internet’s] success,” the companies wrote.

Consumer advocates have called upon the Federal Communications Commission to reclassify broadband as a utility and ban “fast lanes” in which Web services pay ISPs for faster and more reliable access to consumers. The FCC has proposed rules that would require ISPs to provide a minimum level of service to all legal applications, but without banning fast lanes or classifying broadband as a utility under Title II of the Communications Act. The FCC's plan instead relies upon its weaker “Section 706” authority.

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It's been more than two-and-a-half years since he was charged, so it's easy to forget that the US still sees Kim Dotcom as an Internet fugitive.

The US Department of Justice still hopes to extradite him from New Zealand and bring him to trial on criminal copyright charges for inducing piracy through actions he undertook at his former company, Megaupload. Dotcom is still fighting to stay out of the US, and an extradition trial is now scheduled for February 2015.

Now, Dotcom has won an interim victory—thanks to a ruling from the New Zealand Court of Appeal, he's finally going to get some of the data that was seized from his computers and other devices when his house was raided in January 2012.

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The 40-year-old federal rules that support the National Football League's TV blackout policy could finally be eliminated this month. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler today scheduled a vote for September 30 on "a proposal to get rid of the FCC’s blackout rule once and for all," he wrote today.

"There is no better example of an FCC rule that has outlived its usefulness and deserves to be eliminated than our sports blackout rule," Wheeler wrote. "In 1975, the Commission enacted rules barring cable from airing a game that has been blacked out on the local television station because it was not sold out—strengthening the NFL’s blackout policy. Today, the rules make no sense at all."

Pro football doesn't need the government's help to boost ticket sales, "and we at the FCC shouldn’t be complicit in preventing sports fans from watching their favorite teams on TV," he continued.

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