Month: April 2016

Just one day after Ars and other outlets published comments by the CEO of AMC Entertainment saying he's interested in allowing some texting in theaters, the movie chain is backing away from the idea.

"We have heard loud and clear that this is a concept our audience does not want," the company said in a statement published on Twitter. "In this age of social media, we get feedback from you almost instantaneously and as such, we are constantly listening. Accordingly, just as instantaneously, this is an idea that we have relegated to the cutting room floor. With your advice in hand, there will be NO TEXTING ALLOWED in any of the auditoriums at AMC Theatres. Not today, not tomorrow and not in the foreseeable future."

AMC CEO Adam Aron mentioned that he was considering allowing phone use during an interview with Hollywood trade magazine Variety, published Wednesday. In Aron's view, changes are needed to ensure that millennials attend theaters "with the same degree of intensity" as baby boomers.

The FileFront logo, as it existed before the 2010 renaming to GameFront.

One of the Web's oldest and largest repositories for classic and current PC gaming mods will be shutting down for good later this month. GameFront announced today that its servers will be going offline on April 30 and that "any files not downloaded by that time will no longer be accessible."

"Since our founding as FileLeech almost 20 years ago, we have always strived to offer the best file hosting alongside quality gaming content," former GameFront staffer Ron Whitaker wrote. "To all of our fans who have supported us throughout the years, we thank you for making us your destination for gaming files. Despite name changes, ownership changes, and staff changes, you have always made our jobs rewarding and fun."

The shutdown is a blow to those who rely on GameFront for access to tens of thousands of mods, demos, patches, tools, maps, skins, and add-ons for PC games dating back to the mid-'90s. It's especially significant to those looking for mods and patches for older games with smaller communities or defunct publishers, which can be hard or impossible to find elsewhere.

(credit: US Air Force)

It has been six months since the US Air Force awarded the contract for its next-generation long-range bomber to Northrop Grumman. The exact terms of Northrop's winning bid to build what the Air Force has designated as the B-21 has been kept secret, but it was based on cost estimates that came in substantially below what the Defense Department's analysis had predicted.

That, along with the classified nature of the budget and the way the Air Force is packaging the project, has raised concerns in Congress that Northrop may have underbid the cost of its proposal to get a foot in the door, with hopes of getting more money later once the project is underway. A report released this week by the Congressional Research Service suggests that legislators may want to take a hard look at that possibility.

The Air Force made cost per plane a key factor in the award of the initial development contract, setting a fly-away cost of $550 million per aircraft (for a fleet of 100 bombers) as the benchmark for bids on the Long Range Strike Bomber program. When Northrop's bid was revealed as the winner, it was also revealed that Northrop had said it could deliver the aircraft at $511 million. But it's not clear what that price tag encompasses. Some features of the aircraft—such as sensors, nuclear weapons capability, and uncrewed flight—could be packaged under separate, classified contracts and raise the cost per plane significantly.

The fortress in Arad.

Around 2,600 years ago, in a military fortress in Southern Judah, a man called Eliashib sent and received messages written in ink on fragments of pottery. The contents were mundane, mainly concerning food supplies, but they provide evidence of literacy that could inform the debate about when major Biblical texts were written.

Eliashib’s correspondence happened on the cusp of the fall of the Kingdom of Judah, which took place during 588-87 BCE. The date plays an important role in an ongoing debate among Biblical scholars: were the first Biblical texts produced before the fall of Jerusalem—as events were unfolding—or afterwards? One part of the debate hinges on the literacy levels at the time: if the pre-demolition population wasn’t generally literate, it wouldn't have been likely that important historical texts were created in this era.

But Eliashib and his colleagues in the Arad military fortress provide some evidence that literacy in this era may have been more widespread than previously thought. A multidisciplinary group of researchers from Tel Aviv University have combined their expertise in applied math, Jewish history, and archaeology to assess communications from the fortress, trying to establish how many people, and of what rank, were writing messages.

(credit: Tom Dymond / EE)

Yesterday evening, April 13, a swarm of drones descended upon Wembley Stadium in London. The pilots, who controlled their drones using first-person-view (FPV) headsets, were challenged with slaloms through the players’ tunnel, bank turns around the corner flags, and barrel rolls above the royal box.

Organised by EE, chip maker Qualcomm, and the European Rotor Sports Association (ERSA), the event was "a chance to celebrate the recent success of Europe’s leading pilots," EE wrote in a press release. Luke Bannister, the UK teen who recently won the $250K grand prize at the Dubai World Drone Prix, was at the event to show everyone how it's done.

The event, however, must have looked a bit strange, since the stadium was completely empty except for a bunch of journalists protected from drones flying at 75mph (120km/h) by a net. Presumably the safety measures could've been extended to squeeze more spectators in—but they wouldn't have been able to see much, anyway.

Matthew Keys spoke to reporters on April 13, 2016 after his sentencing hearing in federal court in Sacramento, California. (credit: Cyrus Farivar)

On Wednesday morning, less than two hours before journalist Matthew Keys’ sentencing hearing in federal court, Ars received an e-mail with an attached nine-page letter making a shocking claim, which for now is impossible to confirm: "Matthew Keys is innocent." Absent further information, it's impossible to say with certainty that this letter is not a hoax.

The message, which was authored by someone under the pseudonym "Sam Snow," was also sent earlier in the year to Keys' defense team, government prosecutors, and the judge. It will likely have no material impact on the forthcoming appeal in Keys' conviction. Keys' lawyer, Jay Leiderman, told Ars that the letter was essentially too little, too late.

When Ars asked Keys if he was Snow, he answered flatly: "No." Keys declined further comment. He also declined to explain why he is protecting Snow, who may or may not be a real person. In the letter, Snow also claims that Keys promised him off-the-record protections as a source in his earlier reporting into Anonymous, adding, "I also know Matthew well enough to know that he will go to jail if it means protecting a source, because that's what good journalists do." (Snow claims he taught Keys how to use IRC and how to communicate with Anonymous.)