Ars Technica - Cached 0 minutes ago.

AP: Yeah, we'd better cite pajama-wearing bloggers, too
The Associated Press didn't need any help from a bunch of unshowered bloggers pecking away at their keyboards from the basement offices in which they play "reporter," thank you very much. Now it knows better. At the AP's 2009 annual meeting, Chairman Dean Singleton reminded his audience (read the speech) that the AP and its members "are the source of most of the news content being created in t...

Netgear offers 500Mbps powerline networking via next-gen standard
Even as the IEEE P1901 working group was set to meet this week to recommend its draft standard for broadband over powerline networks for official status, Netgear announced its line of Powerline AV 500 adapters that incorporate the HomePlug-compatible flavor of the standard. The new devices theoretically promise up to gigabit Ethernet speeds over home electrical wiring, and are the first to inco...

Ubuntu 10.10 beta arrives with new netbook UI
Canonical has announced the availability of the Ubuntu 10.10 beta release. The new version of the popular Linux distribution, codenamed Maverick Meerkat, is scheduled for final release in October. It brings some noteworthy user interface improvements and updated software. The beta ships with GNOME 2.31, which introduces support for the new dconf configuration storage system. Ubuntu's standard ...

Oil sands release pollutants, contrary to government study
The extraction of heavy crude oil from oil sands in Canada is releasing as many as 13 kinds of pollutants into the surrounding air and water, according to a study published in PNAS this week. The independent report directly contradicts the results of the government-administered Regional Aquatic Monitoring Program (RAMP) that claimed neither humans nor the environment were at risk from the oil e...

Duke Nukem Forever is back: coming to both consoles and PC
The news of an upcoming announcement at PAX, followed by a tweet that showed the image of a flying pig. These were the hints pointed at a momentous occasion in gaming history: Duke Nukem Forever will see release late this year, or maybe next year, on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. Gearbox Software will be taking over development from the now-defunct 3D Realms. After the studio's closing,...

Google sticks Wave in a box, puts a bow on top
Contrary to popular belief, Google Wave is not quite dead. Google plans to expand upon the open source code it has already released to form a more complete, standalone application known as "Wave in a Box." Wave will work (or not work, depending on how you look at it) as it always has, but with the new app, developers can run their own wave servers and host waves from their own machines. "Since...

Forgetful Facebook fanatics can remotely kill their other sessions
Forgetful Facebook users and wannabe-burglars can now rest a little easier at night knowing that they can remotely log themselves out if they accidentally left logged-in sessions in other locations. Facebook users will soon be able to see where else they might be logged on, adding another layer of security to the social networking service. Some of you may know the scenario all too well: you lo...

Frustrated Nexus One owner sues Google over "sporadic" 3G speed
Imagine that your name is Nathan Nabors and that you live in the sunny climes of Orlando, Florida. Imagine further that, back when Google announced its own Android phone and called it the Nexus One, you realized that your Orlando-based life would only be complete with the purchase of this shiny new gadget. So you bought one, paying the full unlocked price of $563.38 from Google's online store....

ITunes 10 hands-on: snappier performance, questionable UI choices
By now, most iTunes users have already downloaded and installed iTunes 10. We've already given you the low-down on the biggest addition to the new version of iTunes?the Ping social network?but we also wanted to give our impressions on two "improvements" promised in the release notes: look-and-feel and performance. While we agree that iTunes is "faster and more responsive," we're not sold on the...

Ivy the Kiwi on the Wii, DS is a wonderful, addictive surprise
Ivy the Kiwi was created by Yuji Naka, the co-creator of Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic is a character that continues to enjoy a strong following, and the series gives any follow-up work a huge shadow to live under. Don't worry, this game is up to the challenge. Read the comments on this post

We're trudging down the long road to universal 4Mbps broadband
Judging by the Federal Communications Commission's latest survey, we're still pretty far away from the FCC's National Broadband Plan goal of 4Mbps Internet download speeds for everyone. The agency's newest statistics indicate that out of 71 million wireline household connections, less than half (44 percent) matched or exceeded that benchmark, with its upload goal of 1Mbps. Meanwhile, the numbe...

The virtual play-by-play: talking StarCraft 2 with Mike Husky
StarCraft 2 has been doing some serious business: Blizzard has recently announced that the game has sold 3 million copies in the first month of availability. Mike Husky is certainly doing his part to keep the game popular; his YouTube channel has just under 200,000 subscribers, and his videos have over 64 million lifetime views. The demand is there for high-quality commentary on StarCraft 2 ma...

Chrome reaches second birthday, version 6 goes stable
When Google launched its Chrome Web browser in 2008, it was clear that the product had considerable potential. Its emphasis on performance and its intriguing minimalistic user interface attracted a lot of well-deserved attention. Today, exactly two years later, Chrome has over 80 million users, a 7.52 percent global market share (21.87 at Ars, making it the second most popular browser here behi...

New malware detects browser, shows fake malware warning page
Microsoft is warning about a new piece of malware, Rogue:MSIL/Zeven, that auto-detects a user's browser and then imitates the relevant malware warning pages from Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome. The fake warning pages are very similar to the real thing; you have to look closely to realize they aren't the real thing. The ploy is a basic social engineering scheme, but in this case the malwa...

Drumroll, please: the top Web scams of the decade
"Men," said he, "must have corrupted nature a little, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves." —Voltaire, Candide One of the less pleasant aspects of our online Age of Anxiety is that most of us now get anonymous e-mails on a daily basis from people who, given their druthers, would rob us silly as fast as technologically possible. Of late, I've been getting a frenzy ...

Hands-on: Twitter officially comes to the iPad
When we interviewed Tweetie developer Loren Brichter in June, he made two things clear: 1) Tweetie (now branded simply as "Twitter" after the company was acquired by the microblogging service) would definitely be coming to the iPad, and 2) Loren was really looking forward to exploring the larger screen touch interface. Now, the official Twitter client for iPad is finally out in the form of a ...

White space broadband to be finalized (at last) this month
"White spaces" broadband has been in hibernation?the rules governing unlicensed use in empty TV channels have never been finalized, and therefore no devices have yet appeared. This despite the fact that the idea was approved under previous FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in 2008. That's about to change at last. At its next open meeting on September 23, the FCC will vote on the "TV White Spaces Secon...

Apple's trouble with TV
Apple TV has been a persistent loser from a company that usually only tolerates winners. It's clear that Apple wants to do something "in the living room," but damned if it can figure out exactly what that is. Yesterday, Apple took another run at this thing, announcing an "all-new" Apple TV. As with any new electronic gadget, I must be of two minds about the new Apple TV. The first, most dif...

Hands-on with iTunes Ping, sans Facebook Connect
Because we all need another social network in our lives, Apple introduced "Ping" as part of iTunes 10 during its big media event this week. Described by Steve Jobs as "Twitter and Facebook meet iTunes," Ping aims to let the already-existing (and quite massive) audience of iTunes users friend each other, stay up-to-date on their friends' musical tastes, and like/comment on things found around iT...

PSP Go straightens tie, knocks on death's door
Playing games on the PSP Go was one of the most annoying experiences possible in a job that can be full of annoying experiences; if it takes you hours to play a game on a portable system out of the box there is something tragically wrong with your product. After only a year on the market, it looks like Sony's experiment in digital distribution is on its last legs. Finding any sort of sales inf...

Samsung fires first Android-powered salvo at iPad with Galaxy Tab
Apple became the biggest fish in the very small touchscreen tablet pond when it launched the iPad this past spring. But more fish will arrive starting mid-month when Samsung launches its Galaxy Tab mobile device in Europe (US and Asia will get it "in the coming months"). After being rumored and teased for weeks, Samsung officially unveiled its entry into the burgeoning market at the IFA show in...

Scammers using fake copyright infringement notices for profit
HADOPI, meet the internautes. The French "high authority" that oversees the country's three strikes anti-P2P file-sharing campaign is now being used by spammers and scammers who attempt to trick people out of their cash by accusing them of copyright violations. The e-mails have appeared in recent days, purporting to come from France's Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des ?uvres et la protectio...

Feature: Compromising Twitter's OAuth security system
Twitter officially disabled Basic authentication this week, the final step in the company's transition to mandatory OAuth authentication. Sadly, Twitter's extremely poor implementation of the OAuth standard offers a textbook example of how to do it wrong. This article will explore some of the problems with Twitter's OAuth implementation and some potential pitfalls inherent to the standard. I wi...

Wagering on warfare: Black Ops multiplayer revealed
Even though it's set to hit PCs and consoles in a little over a month, there has been little in the way of multiplayer details for the Treyarch-developed Call of Duty: Black Ops. This all changed yesterday when Activision held a press event in Los Angeles to reveal the multiplayer gameplay: COD fans can expect bots, enhanced customization, and a new currency that can be used both to upgrade equ...

An ISP that knows nothing of "data hogs"
Pop quiz?which US Internet service provider made the following statement about a network upgrade? During the construction of this network we have given a lot of thought... to the business model in the US, and how we could do things in a different and more interesting way. The natural model when you have a simple duopoly capturing the majority of the market is segmentation: maximize ARPU [aver...