Enlarge / iCorrect's attempts to draw a straight line on an iPad Pro with a third-party replacement screen led them to look at the screen's embedded chips for parts-pairing problems. (credit: iCorrect UK)

The latest part of an Apple device to demand a repair by its maker appears to be the screens on newer iPads. Reports from repair shops and customers suggest that Apple Pencils no longer work properly on non-genuine Apple screens, as they draw squiggly lines on a diagonal instead of straight.

Ricky Panesar, CEO of UK repair firm iCorrect, told Forbes that screens replaced on newer iPad Pros (fifth and sixth-generation 12.9-inch and third and fourth-generation 11-inch models) do not deliver straight lines when an Apple Pencil is used to draw at an angle. "They have a memory chip that sits on the screen that's programmed to only allow the Pencil functionality to work if the screen is connected to the original logic board," Panesar told Forbes.

A Reddit post from May 23 from a user reporting "jittery" diagonal lines from an Apple Pencil on a newly replaced iPad mini screen suggests the issue may affect more than just the Pro line of iPads.

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge / When I originally played TIE Fighter, I could not have imagined such a thing as lens flare. (credit: LucasArts/TFTC)

It had been a long, long while since I last suited up for the Empire and shot up some X-wings. At least 25 years, really, and probably a few more. Star Wars: TIE Fighter was a high point for LucasArts, but also for the amount of time and energy a certain teenage Ars Technica writer could devote to learning the attack patterns of Rebel squadrons.

When I saw recently that a rather massively scaled "Total Conversion" of TIE Fighter had released a new update, it felt like as good a time as any to jump back in the cockpit. TIE Fighter: Total Conversion (TFTC) is a nearly total remake of TIE Fighter, inside the more-advanced engine of its sequel, X-Wing Alliance, piggybacking off that game's own big fan-made modernization.

What Total Conversion promises is still TIE Fighter, but with:

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge (credit: Google)

When Google announced that trackers would be able to tie in to its 3 billion-device Bluetooth tracking network at its Google I/O 2023 conference, it also said that it would make it easier for people to avoid being tracked by trackers they don't know about, like Apple AirTags.

Now Android users will soon get these "Unknown Tracker Alerts." Based on the joint specification developed by Google and Apple, and incorporating feedback from tracker-makers like Tile and Chipolo, the alerts currently work only with AirTags, but Google says it will work with tag manufacturers to expand its coverage.

For now, if an AirTag you don't own "is separated from its owner and determined to be traveling with you," a notification will tell you this and that "the owner of the tracker can see its location." Tapping the notification brings up a map tracing back to where it was first seen traveling with you. Google notes that this location data "is always encrypted and never shared with Google."

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge / AlmaLinux lets you build applications that work with Red Hat Enterprise Linux but can't promise the exact same bug environment. That's different from how they started, but it's also a chance to pick a new path forward. (credit: AlmaLinux OS)

I asked benny Vasquez, chair of the AlmaLinux OS Foundation, how she would explain the recent Red Hat Enterprise Linux source code controversy to somebody at a family barbecue—somebody who, in other words, might not have followed the latest tech news quite so closely.

"Most of my family barbecues are going to be explaining that Linux is an operating system," Vasquez said. "Then explaining what an operating system is."

It is indeed tricky to explain all the pieces—Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, CentOS Stream, Fedora, RHEL, Alma, Rocky, upstreams, downstreams, source code, and the GPL—to anyone who isn't familiar with Red Hat's quirky history, and how it progressed to the wide but disparate ecosystem it has today. And, yes, Linux in general. But Vasquez was game to play out my thought experiment.

Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

Russian gamers were not introduced to piracy by the backlash to their country's invasion of Ukraine—far from it. But piracy is ramping up, and it likely won't back down any time soon.

That's the takeaway from a survey by Russian game development training platform School XYZ, covering the whole country and all game formats. Sixty-nine percent of gamers surveyed said they'd played at least one pirated game copy in 2022, while 51 percent said they're pirating more games now than they did in 2021.

Piracy as a whole may be up, but enthusiasm and motivations differ somewhat. Roughly 20 percent of those surveyed said they had pirated more than 10 games, and 27 percent had grabbed at least three in 2022. But 31 percent said they had pirated nothing, and nearly the same responded that they were opposed to piracy. And only 7 percent said they had not purchased anything through official channels, suggesting that 93 percent of surveyed Russian gamers, even admitted pirates, had bought at least something last year.

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge (credit: THQ Nordic)

The first Jagged Alliance game was published nine months after X-COM: UFO Defense, despite being developed at nearly the same time, in the same genre, with neither knowing about the other. X-COM took the throne as the progenitor of turn-based tactics games. Jagged Alliance sold okay and became a minor cult classic but is not mentioned in even a fraction of as many histories or ranked lists.

Jagged Alliance 2 was a richer, cruder, funnier, far better game. The sequel more fully meshed '80s action movie tropes and stereotypes with the peculiar fun of micromanaging a jungle gunfight, while also managing a cast of real characters. Like Soldier of Fortune magazine, or dozens of VHS box covers from the "Action" section, it's only realistic at a glance. As Darius Kazemi puts it in his wonderful book on the game: "No matter what a war-themed video game claims to do, it inevitably simulates the cultural fantasy of war and never war itself."

Like its predecessor, Jagged Alliance 2 had exponentially more developer cred than sales. It racked up editors' awards and high review scores, but its most notable nod was a nomination for "Best Game Nobody Played" in 1999. Nobody expected a true sequel 24 years later. But here we are, with a Jagged Alliance 3 that feels very direct in its sequel-dom.

Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge / The U.S. Cyber Trust Mark logos, which may or may not have an assigned order at the moment. Which one most says "secure" to you? (credit: Federal Communications Commission)

The goal of the new US Cyber Trust Mark, coming voluntarily to Internet of Things (IoT) devices by the end of 2024, is to keep people from having to do deep research before buying a thermostat, sprinkler controller, or baby monitor.

If you see a shield with a microchip in it that's a certain color, you'll know something by comparing it to other shields. What exactly that shield will mean is not yet decided. The related National Institute of Standards and Technology report suggests it will involve encrypted transmission and storage, software updates, and how much control a buyer has over passwords and data retention. But the only thing really new since the initiative's October 2022 announcement is the look of the label, a slightly more firm timeline, and more input and discussion meetings to follow.

At the moment, the Mark exists as a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) at the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC wants to hear from stakeholders about the scope of devices that can be labeled and which entity should oversee the program, verify the standards, and handle consumer education.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge / VanMoof's X3 bike in 2020. In our review, we noted that its looks garnered "universal drool," while everything else ranged "from serviceable to questionable." (credit: Sam Machkovech)

[Update 12pm 7/18: VanMoof's Dutch legal entities have entered into bankruptcy. VanMoof's "About VanMoof's current situation" FAQ states that VanMoof intends to keep bikes "functional and rideable" as the company aims to keep its servers online. But the company also advises customers to create a backup unlock code for manual handlebar unlocking. Outgoing deliveries have been stopped, no repair appointments are available, spare parts are currently unavailable, and those who have sent prepayments for bikes or are awaiting refunds will be provided information on filing their claims in bankruptcy "after the sales process is completed." A public report on the proceedings is expected in about one month.

Original post follows.]

VanMoof e-bikes have a look, and price tag, from the near future. They're also a bit endangered these days, as their Netherlands-based maker has run out of money and asked for temporary protection from creditors. Sensing this, a Belgian e-bike company jumped in to provide an app that should help VanMoof owners keep riding, even if the parent company stalls out.

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Between work, sleep, errands, and other demands, the average gamer doesn't have as many hours as they'd like for their hobby. When you finally get the time, there's a nearly endless bounty available: ambitious narratives, professional voice acting, character customization, adaptive simulations, deep lore, and more.

This is great, but please, I beg you: Let me skip ahead. Starting a game I've already played once before, or would otherwise be familiar with, only to hit cutscenes, tutorials, and low-risk levels meant to train you—just stop. I've halted a number of games, games I would otherwise enjoy, because of their outsize preambles. It's not an entirely new problem, but I can't believe it hasn't been worked through yet.

Most cutscenes offer a way to skip them. I'm looking for similar graciousness for everything else a game mandates that is not directly related to its actual gameplay or core loop. When I have the time to play a game that won't be new to me, I don't want to play the "Hold B to crouch" tutorial level or slowly unlock powers or areas. I've got one, maybe one and a half hours between dinner clean-up and a proper bedtime and a few spare hours on the weekends. Let's get on with it.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge / "I can't believe the quality of this 8K video tutorial! It's like you're really… Ted, could you, yeah, just shift over a little there? You're blocking… thanks." (credit: LiFi.Co)

Light is almost certainly the fastest thing around. So it makes sense that "light-based wireless communications," or LiFi, could blow the theoretical doors off existing radio-wave wireless standards, to the tune of a maximum 224GB per second. [Edit, 2:40 p.m.: It does not make sense, and those doors would remain on each rhetorical vehicle. As pointed out by commenters, radio waves, in a vacuum, would reasonably be expected to travel at the same speed as light. Ars, but moreso the author personally, regrets the error. Original post continues.]

So long as there's nothing blocking the space between your receiver and the lightbulb you've fashioned into a LiFi access point. Or you don't need to turn the bulb off entirely to sleep. And you're willing to add a dongle and keep it pointed the right way, at least for the moment.

But LiFi, or 802.11bb, isn't really meant to replace Wi-Fi, but complement it—a good thing for a technology theoretically nullified by a sheet of printer paper. In an announcement of the standard's certification by IEEE (spotted on PC Gamer) and on LiFiCO's FAQ page, the LED-based wireless standard is pitched as an alternative for certain use cases. LiFi could be useful when radio frequencies are inhibited or banned, when the security of the connection is paramount, or just whenever you want speed-of-light transfer at the cost of line-of-sight alignment.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

How can you argue against these numbers? (credit: 20th Century Fox / Aurich Lawson)

According to one measurement by one firm, Linux reached 3.07 percent market share of global desktop operating systems in June 2023. It's a notable first for the more than 30-year-old operating system, though other numbers in Statcounter's chart open it up to many more interpretations. It's either the year of the Linux desktop or a notable asterisk—your call.

As Statcounter explains, its numbers come from tracking code installed on more than 1.5 million websites across the globe, capturing roughly 5 billion page views per month. Statcounter says it does not collate, weigh, or otherwise adjust its data aside from correcting for bots and Google Chrome's prerendering. Laptops are included in "desktop" because there is no easy way to separate them. And they're subject to revision for up to 45 days after publication.

Five years ago, Linux made up 1.69 percent of Statcounter's June numbers. In the year between June 2022 and 2023, Linux unsteadily crept up from 2.42 to 3.07 percent, jumping past 3 percent for the first time between May and June. If you regard Chrome OS as a Linux system, you could add that 4.13 percent and get to 7.2 percent.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge / For those with a mini-split, a TV, a desire to know the temperature, and a real thing for light-grain wood, the Hub 2 is mighty appealing. (credit: SwitchBot)

There are some people who are eager to automate every aspect of their home with the latest smart home gadgets. Then there are some—many of them regular readers and commenters on this site—who could not only care less about the latest white plastic IoT thingy, but actively avoid such things.

I get it: If it connects to Wi-Fi, it requires signing up for an account, and there's a chance the company selling it could go bust at any time. It's also a no-go for anyone who cares about security or who just wants simplicity. The Matter standard is supposed to solve exactly this problem, but its real implementation and impact have been slow and underwhelming.

This is why I'm writing about just one set of gear while it's on sale for Prime Day (even if you're not a Prime subscriber): SwitchBot. I didn't use SwitchBot stuff until recently, but now that I have, it's what I'd recommend to anybody who just wants to make a few things in their home easier to turn on, turn off, or automate. There are no voice controls, no AI, just buttons and switches that do what you tell them.

Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge / Attorneys carrying boxes arrive to court in San Francisco, California, US, on Tuesday, June 27, 2023. A judge has ruled that the FTC's reliance on the PlayStation chief's testimony was unpersuasive, while Microsoft and Activision's efforts will help avoid market concentration. (credit: Getty Images)

A federal judge in San Francisco today denied the Federal Trade Commission's motion to halt Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, ruling that the FTC was unlikely to prove that the merger would "substantially lessen competition."

Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley's decision (PDF) is heavily redacted in sections covering the company's assets and performance in "AAA Content," "Exclusive Content," and "Cloud Gaming Subscription Services," among others. Segments of those redactions were likely seen in earlier filings, which were poorly redacted with a marker and revealed key financial figures.

The FTC's motion for a temporary restraining order and injunction was filed in an attempt to disrupt the deal before its purported July 18 deadline. The FTC had already initiated an administrative action to investigate the deal's effect on gaming markets, but it petitioned the US District Court for Northern California that Microsoft and Activision "may consummate the Proposed Acquisition at any time."

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge / Evernote's self-conception of its brain-decluttering powers. It lacks only for a step where many more users pay for premium accounts than currently do. (credit: Evernote)

Evernote, the app that has sought for two decades to find a large paying audience for its "external brain," is moving its operations to Italy, home of its parent company Bending Spoons. It's yet another big shift for a company that's been useful, but not quite profitable, since at least 2004.

Bending Spoons, which acquired Evernote in November 2022, had laid off 129 workers in February 2023, stating that Evernote had been "unprofitable for years" and "unsustainable in the long term." Whatever unspecified number of remaining employees remain in the US (and Chile) received notice of the move on June 23, then the layoff on July 5, according to a company blog post. Staffers typically received 16 weeks of salary, one year of health insurance, and a pro-rated performance bonus, along with assistance for those working on visas.

"Our plans for Evernote are as ambitious as ever: Going forward, a dedicated (and growing) team based in Europe will continue to assume ownership of the Evernote product," wrote Francesco Patarnello, Evernote's CEO. "This team will be in an ideal position to leverage the extensive expertise and strength of the 400-plus workforce at Bending Spoons, many of whom have been working on Evernote full-time since the acquisition."

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge / There are so many incomplete and esoteric thoughts on this note attached to a "Brand Strategy" folder in the Sega leaked docs that I will be thinking about it for days, if not months. What were fiscal year 1996 software sampling limitations? (credit: Sega Retro)

Most of the changes on the Sega Retro wiki every day are tiny things, like single-line tweaks to game details or image swaps. Early Monday morning, the site got something else: A 47MB, 272-page PDF full of confidential emails, notes, and other documents from inside a company with a rich history, a strong new competitor, and deep questions about what to do next.

The document offers glimpses, windows, and sometimes pure numbers that explain how Sega went from a company that broke Nintendo's near-monopoly in the early 1990s to giving up on consoles entirely after the Dreamcast. Enthusiasts and historians can see the costs, margins, and sales of every Sega system sold in America by 1997 in detailed business plan spreadsheets. Sega's Wikipedia page will likely be overhauled with the information contained in inter-departmental emails, like the one where CEO Tom Kalinske assures staff (and perhaps himself) that "we are killing Sony" in Japan in March 1996.

"Wish I could get our staff, sales people, retailers, analysts, media, etc. to see and understand what's happening in Japan. They would then understand why we will win here in the US eventually," Kalinske wrote. By September 1996, this would not be the case, and Kalinske would tender his resignation.

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge / A myriad of ways one might react to Gfycat's closure, trending on Gfycat itself at the moment. (credit: Gfycat)

The Internet continues to get a bit more fragmented and less accessible every week. Within the past seven days, Reddit finished its purge of third-party clients, Twitter required accounts to view tweets (temporarily or not), and Google News started pulling news articles from its Canadian results.

Now there's one more to add: Gfycat, a place where users uploaded, created, and distributed GIFs of all sorts, is shutting down as of September 1, according to a message on its homepage.

Users of the Snap-owned service are asked to "Please save or delete your Gfycat content." "After September 1, 2023, all Gfycat content and data will be deleted from gfycat.com."

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge / A be-hatted person, tipping his brim to the endless amount of text generated by the conflict of corporate versus enthusiast understandings of the GPL. (credit: Getty Images)

When CentOS announced in 2020 that it was shutting down its traditional "rebuild" of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to focus on its development build, Stream, CentOS suggested the strategy "removes confusion." Red Hat, which largely controlled CentOS by then, considered it "a natural, inevitable next step."

Last week, the IBM-owned Red Hat continued "furthering the evolution of CentOS Stream" by announcing that CentOS Stream would be "the sole repository for public RHEL-related source code releases," with RHEL's core code otherwise restricted to a customer portal. (RHEL access is free for individual developers and up to 16 servers, but that's largely not the issue here).

Red Hat's post was a rich example of burying the lede and a decisive moment for many who follow the tricky balance of Red Hat's open source commitments and service contract business. Here's what followed.

Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge / Rock, stone, bugs, XP crystals, and a flying helper robot that is hopelessly outmatched: Welcome to Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. (credit: Ghost Ship Games)

Some of the most hardcore tabletop gamers I know spent a good portion of last summer escaping into Vampire Survivors. I read the raves from reviewers, saw the game and its eye-catching minimalism in YouTube channels, and knew it had the stamp of approval from the types who spent days planning out D&D 5e one-shots.

And yet I avoided it because I wasn't sure it was my type of game. I don't enjoy bullet-hell games, and Vampire Survivors looked like one of the lowest levels of Dante's Bullet Hell, painted with a kitschy SNES tile set.

Deep Rock Galactic, on the other hand, is very much my type of game. When the creator of DRG announced a few months back that it would publish a Survivors-like game from developer Funday Games, set in the same universe of mining, shooting, and goofing, it felt inevitable that I'd give it a go. Instead of "a go," though, I've given Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor hours and hours over the past week, and I don't remember them passing at all.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge / Sharpies are great for many things—labeling leftovers, writing "bedroom" on packing boxes, ruining dry erase boards. They're not the best tool for sensitive documents submitted in a federal hearing. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Most people know AAA games cost a lot to make, but they can also be cash cows if they're hits. Now, because Sharpies can fail to fully redact paper documents if you scan them, we can quantify some of Sony's PlayStation game budgets, earnings, headcounts, and other figures.

As reported by The Verge, the documents were supplied by Sony's CEO of PlayStation Jim Ryan. Ryan's submission is part of the ongoing FTC v. Microsoft hearing resulting from the Federal Trade Commission's attempt to block Microsoft's purchase of Activision Blizzard on antitrust grounds. By giving the FTC confidential numbers on AAA game performance, Sony aimed to show how Microsoft having Call of Duty as an exclusive franchise could hurt Sony (despite emails to the contrary).

But because of the interplay of paper, printer ink, Sharpie ink, and optical scanners, a lot more people, including journalists, can see those numbers. Some of the big ones are:

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Enlarge / Abandon all hope, ye who choose a password here. (credit: Neal.fun/Neal Agarwal)

I once worked at a small-town newspaper, part of a micro-chain of four publications. There was one young guy who oversaw "IT" for all four sites, and he occasionally tried to impose IT-like rules, like making us change our publication software passwords every few weeks. Did "password1234" protect our ink-stained souls, whereas "password123" would have meant doom? Who can say?

I chafed at this occasional performative security. In a fit of pique, I decided my rotating password scheme would be the IT manager's license plate, followed by whatever I had for lunch that day. I thought myself quite clever, even if, a few months later, I forgot I had typed in "turkeyhoagie" instead of "turkeysub" earlier that new-password day, and I had to call said IT manager for a reset. I have no idea if he saw my password before he provided the replacement. I still felt clever, even in defeat.

"Clever, yet defeated" came rushing back to me as I marched through The Password Game, a web-based text box of tears from Neal Agarwal. The game has been trending its way through social media since its official release yesterday, and understandably so. We only get so many of these "Pure enjoyment on the web" moments each year, so I recommend you avail yourself of it as soon as you can.

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments