Chocolate in My Peanut Butter

Programming always has been that "thing" people did that I never understood. more>>

Back in April, Vic Gundotra, a senior executive at Google and the leader of Google+, left the company. Shortly afterward, reports surfaced claiming that Gundotra's departure was part of a plan to back away from the original Google+ strategy of forcing users into the service and to drastically cut the division resources.

A report from Bloomberg claims that the first big service on the chopping block is Google+ Photos, one of the social network's best features. Bloomberg says the service will be given "more autonomy" from Google+ and "may be rebranded" in order to pull in more people who otherwise wouldn't use the services thanks to its association with Google+. Separating Google+ Photo from Google+ would seemingly turn it into a Flickr-style service—a standalone photo hosting site that would compete on features and storage options rather than the social network a person chooses to use.

Google+ Photos has a number of features that could help it stand out in the photo hosting space. It has a ton of cloud smarts, which Google calls "Auto-Awesome," that can automatically tweak photos to look better and can combine several pictures into an animated gif. The one area that would seriously need improvement is the free storage amount, which sits at a paltry 15GB shared across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos. The Yahoo-owned Flickr offers 1TB of storage for free.

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Replacing the home screen on a Droid Razr Maxx HD. Andrew Cunningham

When KitKat was released on the Nexus 5 last year, it included a new application launcher that we spent quite a bit of time on in our review. That launcher wasn't actually a part of KitKat, though—it was exclusive to the Nexus 5 for several months and was only made available to other Nexus and Google Play edition phones well after they had been updated to KitKat. Now, Google is casting an even wider net. The company just announced that the Google Now Launcher can be installed on any phone running Android 4.1 or newer, regardless of manufacturer.

As we've covered previously, the Google Now Launcher isn't really a launcher in and of itself—it just ties in to code that's been shipping with the Google Search app for around a year now. If you try to install the Google Now Launcher on a phone with an older version of the Search app, you'll be prompted to update it before you can actually switch home screens. Previous versions of the launcher could often be sideloaded onto newer phones and tablets with no issue, since the launcher is just part of the Search app, and the Search app is installed on all Google-approved Android devices.

If you haven't experimented with it before, the Google Now Launcher replaces your phone's home screen with the same one Google first released on the Nexus 5 late last year. It offers its own wallpapers, and it has voice controls that can be activated by saying "OK Google" when sitting at the home screen. If you've opted into Google Now, you can see all of your cards by swiping right from your primary home screen.

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Two American aid workers infected with the deadly Ebola virus in Liberia will stand a better chance of recovery once back in the US, a doctor has said.

Internet Archive book images

Prenda Law sued thousands of people over allegations of illegally distributing adult movies before its business was brought to a crashing halt by a series of judicial sanctions. The lawyers behind Prenda—Paul Duffy, John Steele, and Paul Hansmeier—steadfastly maintained that those sanctions were unwarranted, and they appealed.

On Thursday, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit became the first appeals court to weigh in on their arguments. It didn't think much of them. The first sentence of the 24-page opinion suggested where things were going to go. "The first rule of holes, according to an old saying, is to stop digging," wrote Chief Judge Diane Wood on behalf of the three-judge panel.

Duffy, Steele, and Hansmeier chose to appeal a lower court order that they should pay attorneys' fees to Anthony Smith, one of their erstwhile defendants in a porn-downloading lawsuit, as well as SBC Internet and Comcast, two giant Internet providers they unwisely prodded with a lawsuit. "They did not, however, file a motion either to clarify the nature of the sanctions or to stay the order," noted Wood. "Instead, they simply did not pay."

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Matt's Homes

There's a trivial way for drive-by exploit developers to bypass the security sandbox in almost all versions of Internet Explorer, and Microsoft says it has no immediate plans to fix it, according to researchers from Hewlett-Packard.

The exploit technique, laid out in a blog post published Thursday, significantly lowers the bar for attacks that surreptitiously install malware on end-user computers. Sandboxes like those included in IE and Google Chrome effectively require attackers to devise two exploits, one that pierces the sandbox and the other that targets a flaw in some other part of the browser. Having a reliable way to clear the first hurdle drastically lessens the burden of developing sophisticated attacks.

The bypass technique "does give the attacker a significant advantage by giving them higher-level access than a typical exploit might in Internet Explorer, by allowing them to escape the sandbox," Robert "Rsnake" Hansen, a vice president at security firm WhiteHat Labs, wrote in an e-mail to Ars. "In practical terms this is a very important finding, because it can be tied into existing exploits that might otherwise not be able to escape the IE sandbox."

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Some microwave resonators left over from early accelerators at CERN. John Timmer

Yesterday, Wired UK had geeks everywhere salivating at the prospect of a purely electrical space thruster system—one that should be impossible based on what we know about classical physics. The article notes that NASA engineers have now tested one of these devices and found that it appears to produce thrust without using any fuel. Although there are ways that non-classical physics can make things work, there are enough red flags raised by material in the initial report that the news should be greeted very skeptically.

The limit that space thrusters face is purely classical: to push something along at a higher velocity, you need to push against something else. So typical thrusters push against the mass of the burning fuel that they're explosively expelling behind them. Even the most sophisticated, efficient thrusters—ion drives—act as particle accelerators that shoot ions out in the opposite direction of the way they're accelerating. As a result, any form of thrust that we've used requires that the spacecraft carry some mass that then gets shot out from the spacecraft. This adds weight to the launch vehicle and sets a finite limit on how much propulsion can be generated during the spacecraft's lifetime. Which is a bit frustrating, given that the high-efficiency solar panels on many spacecraft can give them a surplus of energy. It's just not energy we can convert into thrust—or at least we think we can't convert it into thrust.

The Wired UK article details how a variety of groups have suggested that it might be possible to use electricity to generate some thrust via a decidedly non-classical mechanism. The device involves a radio frequency resonant cavity, which takes microwaves as an input and uses them to create an oscillating electrical field. These cavities are used in particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider, where the electric field helps boost the energy of the circulating ions. At the LHC, however, they actually provide some ions for the resonant cavity to push around, which would be equivalent to supplying this thruster with fuel. Yet the backers of this device suggest it's pushing against the swarm of virtual particles that quantum mechanics indicates are constantly popping in and out of existence in empty space.

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French police seize 50kg of cocaine which was then securely stored at the headquarters of their judicial police, but it has disappeared.

Jon Donnison reports from Gaza, where a woman gave birth to quadruplets on the eve of an ill-fated truce, which broke down with reports of attacks on both sides.

New online speech restrictions are taking effect Friday in Russia, making it more difficult for bloggers to remain anonymous and requiring social-networking sites like Facebook to retain user data for at least six months.

Under a measure approved by Russia's parliament in April, the law also demands that the social media data be stored within the country's boundaries so it can be available for government inspection.

Human Rights Watch called the development "another milestone in Russia's relentless crackdown on free expression," in a statement given to the BBC. The Internet, the group added, "is the last island of free expression in Russia and these draconian regulations are clearly aimed at putting it under government control."

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Uganda's Constitutional Court has annulled tough anti-gay legislation signed into law in February. Andrew Harding reports.

Convincing patients to receive treatment is the biggest task facing medical professionals trying to contain the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, a doctor in Sierra Leone says.

A NOAA tide gauge. NOAA

A new study examines sea level changes in the tropical Pacific Ocean with the aim of determining how much of its rise is due to anthropogenic causes.

Part of the challenge of this work is that the Pacific experiences a natural oscillation in sea level that is caused by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), a decade-long cycle in ocean currents and temperatures. The length of the PDO makes it difficult to distinguish an overall long-term pattern (if such a pattern exists) from the short-term variability.

Added to this is the fact that accurate sea level measurements, taken using satellite altimetry, only go back as long as we’ve been using satellites—a few decades.

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FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler speaking to the cable industry in April 2014. NCTA

The Federal Communications Commission investigation of how network interconnection problems affect the quality of Internet service began when the FCC obtained the paid peering deals Netflix signed with Comcast and Verizon.

The FCC has asked another six Internet service providers and content providers for copies of similar agreements, a commission official told Ars this week. The FCC will likely announce more details of its probe in the fall, but the public probably won't see any specific details of the contracts. Ars sent the commission a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to obtain Netflix's contracts with Comcast and Verizon, but it was denied due to their confidential nature.

That's no surprise, but it may be tricky for FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to fulfill his stated goal of explaining to the public how interconnection disagreements affect the quality of streaming video and other Web services.

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Recorded Furture Security researchers announced Friday that they have found new evidence to bolster claims from the National Security Agency that terrorists have altered their countermeasures in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations.

"Al-Fajr, one of Al-Qaeda’s media arms, released a new Android encryption application [in] early June 2014 on their website, referring to how it follows the “latest technological advancements” and provides '4096 bit public key' encryption," intelligence firm Recorded Future said in a Friday report.

The report added that Global Islamic Media Front, another arm of Al Qaeda, just released a "new version" of Android crypto software.

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EIA

Less than a decade ago, renewable energy in the US meant hydropower; everything else was just a rounding error. Times have definitely changed. Yesterday, the US Energy Information Agency announced that non-hydro renewable had gone eight months where it outproduced hydroelectric dams. And that's without counting residential or distributed solar power.

The EIA defines non-hydro renewables as a mix of solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, landfill gas, and municipal solid waste; currently, the largest contributors there are solar and wind. But the EIA doesn't track projects below one megawatt of capacity, which would include all residential solar installations, as well as distributed projects like the ones New Jersey is placing on utility poles. As a result, the numbers for non-hydro renewables should be considered a lower bound on the true output. (The EIA estimates distributed solar's 2013 output as 10 billion kilowatt hours.)

Despite that caveat, the growth has been impressive. The non-hydro output had never been more than half the renewable total before late 2012, but it had already started its eight-month run just a year later. The high variability of hydro output (which has seasonal and other water availability limitations) caused it to bounce back above half in May, but the EIA expects that, on the whole, it will be below half of the annual generation for the year. And given current trends, it's unlikely to ever dominate renewable generation again.

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With yesterday's launch of AMD's 65W Kaveri APUs, it seemed a good time to give some recommendations for new system builds. We're starting out at the budget end of the spectrum, however, and pricing/availability on Kaveri generally rules it out. We'll keep things short and look at two builds, one AMD and one Intel. Outside of the CPU/APU and motherboard, parts are generally interchangeable.

Budget AMD System Component Description Price CPU AMD A6-6400K (2x3.9GHz, 1MB, 65W, 32nm) $65 Motherboard MSI A88X-G41 $73 RAM Team Vulcan 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-2133 CL10 $71 Storage Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB $55 SSD SanDisk Ultra Plus SDSSDHP-128G-G25 128GB  $60 Case NZXT Source 210 S210-001 $40 Power Supply Seasonic SS-300ET 300W 80 Plus Bronze $38 Total (without OS)   $402

The Kaveri APUs provide a decent blend of general and gaming performance, but finding one priced reasonably for a budget system is still a bit difficult (depending on your definition of budget, of course). While the idea of an inexpensive system capable of running games is fine, the cost to go from the A6-6400K we've selected to one of the Kaveri A10 models is more than the cost of a moderate dedicated graphics card like the R7 250, and the A6-7400K and A8-7600 are hard to find – and when you can find them, they're priced $15 higher than the MSRP. If you can wait a bit, the A6-7400K and A8-7600 should become more readily available. In the meantime, the A6-6400K will provide similar performance with a slightly slower graphics configuration.

For the rest of the system, the MSI motherboard can support both existing Richland APUs like the A6-6400K we've selected as well as Kaveri APUs. Similarly, the DDR3-2133 RAM can provide better bandwidth than DDR3-1600 RAM that would only save you a buck. For storage, you've got three options: go pure SSD and have fast storage performance but without a lot of capacity, buy the 1TB HDD and sacrifice performance for capacity, or get both. Personally, I'd go with a pure SSD or the SSD+HDD configuration.

Wrapping things up, the case is a decent looking and not too expensive NZXT Source 210. Cases can be a very subjective topic, and there are plenty of reasonable options, but the NZXT is a good choice for a budget build. You could also drop down to a micro-ATX case and motherboard, and if that's what you're after the MSI A78M-E45 would be a good alternative. For the power supply, the small increase in efficiency offered by 80 Plus Gold isn't really worth the added cost at this price, and Seasonic makes a good 300W unit that will provide good efficiency for a low-power system like this while still allowing for the use of a moderate discrete GPU down the road should you choose to upgrade.

Budget Intel System Component Description Price CPU Celeron G1850 (2x2.9GHz, 2MB, 53W, 22nm) $50 Motherboard Gigabyte GA-H97M-D3H $80 RAM Team Vulcan 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1600 CL9 $70 Storage Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB $55 SSD SanDisk Ultra Plus SDSSDHP-128G-G25 128GB  $60 Case Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-01 $50 Power Supply Seasonic SS-300ET 300W 80 Plus Bronze $38 Total (without OS)   $403

The Intel budget build is going to provide a pretty similar experience to the AMD build overall; single-threaded performance will be a bit higher, but graphics performance will be lower. The price for these two builds is equivalent at around $400 – which includes both a 128GB SSD and a 1TB HDD, so you can shave off $50 by dropping one or the other storage option. The Celeron G1850 is Intel's least expensive Haswell option right now, and while budget CPUs aren't going to win in any performance contests, for normal tasks they're still plenty fast. Paired with a 128GB SSD they can make for a decent home/office system and the price is certainly appealing. Overclocking isn't really a goal of either of these builds, and Gigabyte's GA-H97M-D3H should do fine for stock clocks.

The one other noteworthy change is that we've included a slightly more expensive (and perhaps a bit too gaudy for some) Corsair Carbide SPEC-01 case. It has lots of angles and vents, and while Corsair has made some very good cases opinions on aesthetics are still up for debate. It ships with two 120mm fans for cooling, which is going to be overkill for a budget build like this but will give you room to grow. It also has a case window and red LED lighting for those that want to show off a bit.

Of course we're still missing the OS, keyboard, mouse, and display; these are all commodity items and most people have existing accessories they can carry over from an old PC. Unless you're running a free OS like Ubuntu or some other flavor of Linux, the cost of Windows is going to represent a significant increase in price of nearly $100, putting us at the $500 mark referenced in the title. Adding a 20" to 22" LCD will tack on another $100-$140, and a keyboard and mouse will be $25 combined for a basic set. So all told if you want a complete new PC the price will be closer to $650, but $500 for the core system and software is a good starting point. You can also find some mail-in rebates on quite a few parts that might drop the price a bit, but as those change regularly I haven't included any in the above tables.

The new Typo 2 keyboard case. It now looks kind of like a BlackBerry instead of exactly like a BlackBerry. Typo

Remember Typo, the company co-founded by entertainer and tech luminary Ryan Seacrest that began selling a suspiciously BlackBerry-like keyboard case for the iPhone earlier this year? Typo is back with a new iteration called the Typo 2, which takes the same idea and implements it in a way that hopefully won't make a certain Canadian smartphone manufacturer feel litigious.

The original Typo keyboard looked so much like BlackBerry's that BlackBerry sued in January, and by March it had won a preliminary injunction banning Typo from selling the accessory. Looking at the original Typo keyboard, it's not hard to see why:

The first Typo keyboard accessory. Typo

And here's the keyboard BlackBerry is using on its Q10 smartphone.

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Taiwan gas blasts in Kaohsiung kill at least 24

Dennis Redfield

One of Google's mysterious party/showroom barges has reportedly been sold and will be shipping out of its location in Portland, according to a report from the Portland Press Herald. The barge was transferred to a new terminal Wednesday, and the terminal's owner states that it's preparing to ship out to a new owner shortly.

When the four Google barges first turned up on both the East and West coasts, reports indicated that Google intended them to be a show floor for projects in work, such as Google Glass and the company's self-driving car technology. Onboard two of the barges were structures made of 40-foot shipping containers that could be put together, rearranged, and transported as needed. The structures also reportedly included a "party deck" and various amenities for receiving clients, business partners, and VIPs.

As of fall 2013, little work had been done on the two barges parked in Portland and San Francisco Bay, and the two others in San Francisco's Treasure Island and New London, CT didn't even have superstructures to support future development. Portland collected property taxes on the barge parked there to the tune of $400,000. In February, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission told Google it needed to move its barge out.

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