Month: June 2016

The apparently fraudulent Twitter account associated with a scam site trying to turn the Orlando mass shooting into a Bitcoin factory.

The vultures have already begun to descend on the tragedy in Orlando, Florida. A fake Twitter account claiming to represent the nightclub where the largest mass shooting in modern US history took place in the early hours of June 12 was calling for donations to assist victims—by sending bitcoins to buy bottled water and Oreo cookies. The account was suspended on Monday afternoon.

The scammers used a common tactic—they hijacked the name of the Pulse nightclub, attached the account to the various "hashtags" associated with the shooting, and built the account's apparent profile by attaching an army of fake followers so they could draw the attention of people following conversations about the shooting. The Twitter account directed followers to a shortened Web address to make donations. That Web address linked to the six-month-old domain desifreemovies.net—a domain with a fake registration address in California and a contact e-mail account associated with the Hushmail anonymous e-mail service.

A screenshot of the highly sophisticated scam site linked to by the Twitter account.

The site itself was a fairly transparent scam—a grammatically incorrect plain HTML page with fake Amazon Prime links and a note that if the links "don't work in your area" to instead send Bitcoin to a specific anonymous address. Based on data from Blockonomics, the wallet pulled in 0.04293381 bitcoins (about $30 US)—so it wasn't exactly successful in cashing in on the tragedy. The site was shut down after Ars contacted the hosting company.

Now that the WWDC keynote is over, Apple has published the names of the developer sessions to attendees at the conference. Previously masked by placeholder names, there are a bunch of events that folks can now plan on attending—including, apparently, a session discussing Apple's new file system for macOS.

Dubbed APFS, for "Apple File System," the session description implies that the new file system is a replacement for the aged HFS+ file system, which has been used in one form or another by OS X since its launch back in 2001. We're pretty light on details at this point, but the session description says that APFS is designed from the ground up to be optimized for use on SSDs and other flash-based media, and that it was "engineered with encryption as a primary feature."

We don't know if the new file system is Apple's own creation or if it's an adaptation from an existing journaled, encrypted file system. OS X (now macOS) power users have long had hopes that ZFS will take over as Apple's primary desktop file system—and, indeed, for a while it looked like that's what was going to happen. With the introduction being made here at WWDC, it's very likely this is an Apple original.

AMD CEO Lisa Su shows off two new Polaris 14mm process video cards. Boy, the RX 460 and RX 470 sure are tiny, ain't they?

LOS ANGELES—At E3's second-annual PC Gaming Show, AMD CEO Lisa Su came to the event with a briefcase in hand, which she cracked open to reveal more video cards from the company's new Polaris line: the RX 460 and RX 470.

These new 14mm process cards looked itsy-bitsy, teeny-weenie in Su's hands, and they will be matched with lower-end specs than the $199 RX 480 card, which received a separate reveal two weeks ago. Su described the RX 470 as an ideal card for "1080p gaming," while the RX 460 promises to offer serious power for the low energy requirement of 75 watts, meant for simpler visual games like League of Legends and other MOBAs. Impressively, neither appeared to have full-shroud cooling units attached; we'll have to wait to see how these low-energy, low-heat units react to overclocking.

VR with a backpack. Doesn't look silly at all...

Specs, prices, and release dates for these two Polaris cards were not formally announced at the event. Su also brought on a representative to walk around the stage wearing a backpack complete with an Alienware PC installed inside—which could actually be light and comfortable if AMD pulls off a small form factor with the "disruptive" $199 RX 480 card packed inside.

WWDC 2016

Control all your accessories in the Home app, including cameras and door locks.

4 more images in gallery

Apple launched HomeKit two years ago during the crazy early years of home automation. At that time, it was tough to add devices to your smart home suite due to incompatibility and lack of security. Today at Apple WWDC, Craig Federighi announced that Apple has an app called Home that integrates with an enormous range of devices, including cameras and door locks. He said that Apple has partnered with "every major maker of home accessories," as well as home builders in the US and China. The home builders bit was particularly interesting, as it means Apple is working to integrate Home into the physical structure of buildings, so "you can move in and just start controlling your home." Imagine shopping for a house and having to worry about whether it's compatible with Apple or Android.

The big IOT news at WWDC this year was the Home app, though. It fully integrates HomeKit into all your iOS devices as well as AppleTV. You can see Home right on your iOS home screen, and when you launch it you'll see all your accessories, no matter who made them. Federighi showed the audience how easy it is to tap the lights accessory and turn on or dim the lights.

You can also control several accessories at once by creating a "scene." For example, your Good Night Scene might lock the door, close the shades, turn down the heat, and turn off all the lights. If you want to feel like you're waking up in a science fiction movie, use Siri to activate a scene. "Siri, good morning!" you can say as you wake up, and Home will automatically start your coffee pot and turn on your local NPR radio station for the morning news. You can also set up geofences so that movement outside or in a particular area of the house will trigger a scene. When your car rolls up your driveway, for example, it could automatically open the garage door and turn on the kitchen lights.

Enlarge / RIP iPhone 4S, we knew ye all-too-well. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

SAN FRANCISCO—Apple has just announced the hardware support list for iOS 10, the next version of its smartphone and tablet OS that will be released in beta form soon and in final form later this year. After a surprising stay of execution last year, it looks like Apple is set to stop providing updates for a fair handful of older devices: the iPhone 4S, the iPad 2, the original iPad Mini, the 3rd-generation iPad, and the fifth-generation iPod Touch.

Here's the full list of supported hardware:

• iPhone 5, 5C, 5S, 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus, and SE.
• iPad 4, iPad Air, and iPad Air 2.
• Both iPad Pros.
• iPad Mini 2 and newer.
• Sixth-generation iPod Touch.

All the dropped devices have something in common: some version of the Apple A5 SoC. The A5 has been actively supported for longer than any of Apple's other chips to date; it was originally included in the iPad 2 in March of 2011, the last hardware launched by Steve Jobs before he passed away in October of that year. It later made its way into the iPhone 4S, and it was added to the fifth-generation iPod Touch and the iPad Mini in 2012. The first Retina iPad used a faster A5X variant, and the the third-generation Apple TV used a version with a single CPU core (Apple dropped support for that Apple TV box last year).