Join us to get a first look at the new versions of OS X, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS.
Enlarge/ Developers wandering the halls of the Moscone Center during WWDC 2015. (credit: Megan Geuss)
Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference is nearly upon us, and you know what that means: a two-hour keynote extravaganza in which Apple unveils and describes its major software and platform updates. We'll be liveblogging the whole thing as usual, and you can join us on Monday June 13 at 10:00am Pacific (1:00pm Eastern, 6pm UK) to find out more about the replacements for El Capitan, iOS 9, and more.
Current rumors indicate that Siri will be a focus for both iOS and OS X—developers will finally be given access to an API for Apple's assistant, and it will supposedly be available on the Mac for the first time. Apple may also be adding some more Continuity features, which may let you unlock your Mac with your iPhone or add support for Apple Pay on the Mac. And "OS X" may be rebranded as "macOS" to bring it in line with the naming convention Apple established with watchOS and tvOS last year.
Speaking of Apple's watch and set-top box, we know even less about the new versions of watchOS and tvOS than we do about the iOS and OS X updates. Developers may be given more access to the Apple Watch's hardware, building on work started in watchOS 2, and the new version of tvOS will hopefully allow developers to make different and more versatile apps than those currently available on the platform.
Support will differ among OEMs, but it doesn’t look good for first-gen watches.
Enlarge/ Android Wear 2.0 will be limited mostly to newer watches, if initial reports are any indication. (credit: Google)
Google hasn't officially made any announcements about what watch hardware will receive the Android Wear 2.0 update when it's released later this year, but it looks like at least a few of the first-generation watches will be missing out. LG says it has no plans to update the original LG G Watch, and now Motorola says it plans to drop support for the original Moto 360. Given Samsung's disinterest in continuing on with new Android Wear hardware, the future doesn't look rosy for the Samsung Gear Live, either. This news comes just two years after Android Wear and many of these watches were originally introduced.
The Moto 360's hardware was always underpowered even when it was brand-new, but the LG G Watch uses the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 SoC that many newer Wear watches have included. As is usually the case with Android phones, your OEM's willingness to provide updates for hardware it has already sold you has more to do with whether you get updates than your actual hardware does.
Many Android Wear updates, version 2.0 included, have added features that require new hardware components—support for Wi-Fi, internal speakers, LTE, and more has all been added since these first watches launched, and only more recent watches have included the necessary hardware in the first place. Those watches will continue to work for the foreseeable future, in all likelihood. But all of the other software improvements, including the redesigned interface, security updates, and other tweaks, will be skipping your wrist unless you pay for something new. If that's what you decide to do, make sure the watch's manufacturer has committed to updating its software first.
Noch ist Amazon Prime Music ein vergleichsweise kleiner Musikstreaming-Dienst, doch das soll sich einem Bericht nach ändern. Als eigenständiges Abonnement könnte ein neues, hochwertigeres Angebot entstehen. Schlüsselelement soll der vernetzte Lautsprecher Amazon Echo sein. (Echo, Amazon)
Noch ist Amazon Prime Music ein vergleichsweise kleiner Musikstreaming-Dienst, doch das soll sich einem Bericht nach ändern. Als eigenständiges Abonnement könnte ein neues, hochwertigeres Angebot entstehen. Schlüsselelement soll der vernetzte Lautsprecher Amazon Echo sein. (Echo, Amazon)
EA may not officially be part of E3 this year, but the mega-publisher is still doing its own press conference as part of its EA Play show-aside-the-show. The presentation is at the Novo at L.A. Live at 1pm PDT (4pm EDT, 9pm UK time) on Sunday, June 12.
Expect a lot of the usual discussion of EA's annual sports franchise updates, as well as already announced sequels for Battlefield and Titanfall coming later this year. We also expect EA will announce at least one new game exploiting the Star Wars license, after last year's Star Wars: Battlefront sold so well. We're hoping for more concrete news about Mass Effect Andromeda, which only got a brief mention and teaser at last year's press conference and was recently delayed into early 2017.
Who knew? Banking giant Citigroup has trademarked "THANKYOU" and is now suing technology giant AT&T for how it says thanks to its own loyal customers. This is "unlawful conduct" amounting to wanton trademark infringement, Citigroup claims in its federal lawsuit.
Here is a copy (PDF) of the trademark certificates and trademark applications connected to what Citigroup is calling its "THANKYOU Marks."
According to Citibank's lawsuit (PDF) lodged Friday in New York federal court:
The rarely flown heavy-lift vehicle delivered a secret spy satellite into space.
United Launch Alliance
In an image that looks like a van Gogh painting, the Delta IV Heavy rocket launches on Saturday afternoon.
14 more images in gallery
After the space shuttle retired in 2011, the Delta IV Heavy became, by default, the world's most powerful rocket. Standing 71.6 meters tall, fully 15 meters taller than the full space shuttle stack, the rocket built by United Launch Alliance can deliver up to 28.4 tons of mass to low-Earth orbit.
On Saturday, under splendid blue-and-white Florida skies, the rocket made one of its rare launches by delivering a spy satellite payload, NROL-37, for the National Reconnaissance Office into orbit. The agency has released no information about the satellite, but from the Delta IV Heavy's use we can conclude that it likely was one of the spy office's Advanced Orion satellites, which measure radio signals from the vantage point of geostationary orbit.
The Delta IV Heavy rocket has not flown since December, 2014, when it launched NASA's Orion spacecraft into a two-orbit test flight around Earth, reaching a peak altitude of 5,800km. In its entire history since 2004, the rocket, which uses three common booster cores to power its ascent, has flown only nine times. One of the reasons the Delta IV flies so infrequently is its cost—up to about $400 million per flight.
So you want to kill a drone. Maybe your neighbors are flying their machines over your backyard or zooming past your windows. Maybe you're on stage giving a talk about implementing SSL and you're being dive-bombed by drone cam. Heck, maybe you want to destroy your own drone just to watch it die. We understand, and that's why Ars' intrepid video editor Jennifer Hahn has made this helpful guide to drone destruction.
In Utah, state representatives are already considering a bill that would allow cops to shoot down drones. In most states, it's unclear whether it's lawful to shoot down a drone that doesn't belong to you. Just to be on the safe side, we advise putting the shotguns away for now. There are far better anti-drone weapons out there, like drone jammers that use directed RF signals to cut off communication between the drone and its controller. Or you can use another drone, equipped with a net, to yank the offending drone out of the sky. Of course, you can also go low tech. One person killed a drone with medieval weapons, while another used a simple t-shirt whip.
After uploading an analysis of Stanley Kubrick movies to YouTube, UK-based Lewis Criswell is now being sued by the company behind the main theme to the 1971 classic, A Clockwork Orange. The sad thing here is that while the piece is incredible, it too is a copy, having being written by composer Henry Purcell, 321 years ago.
Like many who first heard the news last weekend, I don’t admitting that I was moved by a video uploaded by YouTuber Lewis Bond. Seeing someone scared – terrified even – isn’t fun.
An aspiring young filmmaker, Bond runs Channel Criswell on YouTube and his work shows excellent promise for a fruitful career. Sadly, his immediate future looks decidedly more gloomy.
The details can be found here, but essentially a 20 minute video analysis of Stanley Kubrick movies created by UK-based Bond has provoked a lawsuit from a company holding the copyrights to some of the music tracks featured in the background.
In a nutshell, Bond appears to have a firm belief that he has a strong fair-use case. Serendip LLC, which owns the copyrights to the music featured in the 1971 movie ‘A Clockwork Orange’, beg to differ. Take a moment or two to listen to the track in question at the start of the video below, it’s important.
The end result is a lawsuit which could see Bond on the receiving end of $150,000 in statutory damages for each infringement. From everything seen to date, it seems unlikely the 23-year-old can come up with that kind of cash. It’s possible he’ll struggle to finance a defense.
Seeing Bond visibly choked was a sad sight and it got me thinking. While undoubtedly a wonderful and timeless piece of music, is a track from 1971 really bringing in the money for Clockwork Orange composer Wendy Carlos today? Has Bond’s fleeting reproduction of a part of this track in his documentary caused real financial damage?
I don’t have the answer to those questions but while researching this case I came across something that surprised even me, a huge ClockWork Orange fan. Although arranged and performed by Carlos, the main theme from A Clockwork Orange isn’t her work at all. In fact, the entire piece – virtually note for note – has been lifted from a piece penned by composer Henry Purcell.
Born in England in September 1659, Purcell developed into what many consider to be one of the country’s greatest composers. His 1695 piece ‘Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary’ was played at the funeral of Queen Mary II, who had died in December of the previous year.
It is an abridged version of this music that forms the entire basis of Carlos’ 1971 work. Arrangement and beautiful synthesizer work aside, it’s virtually identical.
Purcell died in 1695 and quite rightfully his work is now in the public domain. As a result Wendy Carlos was absolutely within her right to take this piece and run with it and as a supporter of remix culture, I salute her efforts entirely.
Sadly, however, I can’t help but note the sad hypocrisy here. Just for a moment, let’s cast aside the legalities of copyright law and instead focus on the notion of artists using the work of others to create new art.
In the 1970s, Carlos took Purcell’s work and modernized it beautifully and there are now millions of people out there who only know her version of the work. By taking his work, she has touched audiences in a way Purcell could not. It’s probably worth noting that Carlos undoubtedly made more money from Purcell’s work than Purcell ever did too, and good for her.
Like Carlos before him, Lewis Bond is also somewhat of a remixer. His Kubrick analysis by Serendip’s own description is a “mélange of brief snippets” and he too is bringing the work of the filmmaker and indeed Wendy Carlos to a brand new audience that Purcell himself could only dream of. I’d like to think Purcell would be pleased for their success.
Importantly, in the same manner that Carlos paid homage to Purcell with her work, by opening his video with Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary the main theme from Clockwork Orange, in turn Bond paid homage to Carlos. It strikes me that rather than having disrespect for each other, all involved in this downward chain deeply appreciate each other’s talents.
Of course, since Bond’s channel is monetized, Carlos believes she should be paid for her work. Bond, on the other hand, is stuck in a fair use dilemma, and will have to fight an expensive court battle to find out who is in the right. Let’s face it, that is not going to happen.
Bond is unlikely to put up any kind of fight and whatever happens – win or lose – Serendip/Carlos aren’t going to get a penny from Bond in the UK. What I’m saying today is that among business people – among artists – in today’s climate there must be a better way to sort this out.
Getting the parties to talk might not be easy, but there are plenty of options if they just take the opportunity. Bond won’t have made much from his video, but paying a small sum to Carlos might be an option, if he doesn’t have the stomach for a fair use war.
The option I like best, however, is a collaboration. Carlos has talents. Bond has talents too. So, as artists, why not do something together? When it comes down to it they have a lot in common. Both have made new creative works on the backs of other people’s efforts without paying them a dime. That alone provides the basis for discussion – they’re already on the same page.
But most of all, why are people wasting each other’s lives with these pointless lawsuits? On YouTube there are plenty of instances where people have uploaded the whole of Carlos’ work, literally a full-fledged pirate copy of everything notable she’s ever done. They’re freely available on the platform today yet Bond – someone who brings something creative to the party – faces financial ruination? That makes no sense.
Although Wendy Carlos and her representatives failed to respond to our requests for comment, there may be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. A TorrentFreak reader managed to make contact with someone on Wendy Carlos’ site who fired back quite an email. It ends as follows:
“There is much bad advice on the internet about copyright and the use of music on YouTube, but some very good advice that should be followed is not to post other people’s copyrighted music on the internet ‘because you like it and want others to hear it’,” the email reads.
“This YouTube user would also be well advised to follow the old saw that ‘when you find yourself in a hole, you should stop digging.’ His problems might go away if he would just ‘undo’ his previous bad choices.”
That sounds like an olive branch. Someone might like to grab it.
A deep history argues that the scientific revolution was real and important.
For untold centuries, humans tracked the regularities of the natural world and developed systems that let us make predictions about the future. But, with a few rare exceptions, we did little more than that. The few stabs made at understanding things were anything but systematic, and they didn't produce unified theories about the underlying properties of the physical world. But then, roughly 500 years ago, everything changed.
To hear David Wootton tell it in his new book The Invention of Science, 16th-century Europe was the last place you'd expect an intellectual revolution. It was a region where witchcraft and unicorns were accepted as real, even by the intellectual classes. They also felt that the Greeks and Romans had already discovered everything worth knowing. An extended hangover from a night out with Aristotle and Christian theology stifled anything that looked like a sense of inquiry. Knowledge, if anything, was on the decline.
Yet, as Wootton explains, the intellectual ferment started by Copernicus and Galileo brought about a change that led to the breakthroughs of Boyle, Pascal, and Newton. Some of their findings are still in use today, and the scientific approaches they pioneered have expanded in scope to revolutionize the modern world.
Digital quantum network cleans up analog noise, allows quantum computation.
Making a qubit is easy. Controlling how they communicate, however... (credit: NSF)
There are many different schemes for making quantum computers work (most of them evil). But they pretty much all fall into two categories. In most labs, researchers work on what could be called a digital quantum computer, which has the quantum equivalent of logic gates, and qubits are based on well-defined and well-understood quantum states. The other camp works on analog devices called adiabatic quantum computers. In these devices, qubits do not perform discrete operations, but continuously evolve from some easily understood initial state to a final state that provides the answer to some problem. In general, the analog and digital camps don't really mix. Until now, that is.
The adiabatic computer is simpler than a quantum computer in many ways, and it is easier to scale. But an adiabatic computer can only be generalized to any type of problem if every qubit is connected to every other qubit. This kind of connectivity is usually impractical, so most people build quantum annealers with reduced connectivity. These are not universal and cannot, even in principle, compute solutions to all problems that might be thrown at it.
The issues with adiabatic quantum computers don't end there. Adiabatic quantum computers are inherently analog devices: each qubit is driven by how strongly it is coupled to every other qubit. Computation is performed by continuously adjusting these couplings between some starting and final value. Tiny errors in the coupling—due to environmental effects, for instance—tend to build up and throw off the final value.
Noch ist Amazon Prime Music ein vergleichsweise kleiner Musikstreaming-Dienst, doch das soll sich einem Bericht nach ändern. Als eigenständiges Abonnement könnte ein neues, hochwertigeres Angebot entstehen. Schlüsselelement soll der vernetzte Lautsprecher Amazon Echo sein. (
