Month: December 2015

10-year-old Aron Anderson might just be the UK's loneliest schoolboy. He lives on Out Skerries, an archipelago in the eastern Shetland Isles, two hundred miles north of mainland Scotland and in the middle of absolutely bloody nowhere. Skerries has a primary school, but Aron is the only student that attends. A few years ago there was a secondary school as well, and so Aron had some friends—but that has since been shut down due to lack of funding, and the kids have moved away to another secondary school that's two-and-a-half hours away by boat. Aron says his best friends on the island are his dog, some ducks, and a few flocks of sheep.

The Telegraph reports that Aron's education—a dedicated schoolhouse and teacher—costs the local council £75,357 per year, or more than twice the cost of boarding at Eton. Since the '70s, the tiny island community had been fighting to save the secondary school from closure, but in 2013 they finally lost the battle. It seems inevitable that Aron's primary school follows suit. Aron's mother, who is amusingly also the head of the island's parent-teacher council, told The Telegraph that "this is going to be his first winter as the only pupil so it’s hard to tell how it will be for him."

Out Skerries is marked with an orange circle. As you can see, it's almost closer to the Faroe Islands or Norway than mainland Scotland.

There is a happy twist to this tale, though. Last week, Reddit's Scotland forum was so moved by Aron's story that they decided to organise a Christmas card drive. "We have 20,000 subscribers on here and if even 1% of you send a card that's 200 cards to a lonely boy to cheer his Christmas right up," says BesottedScot, a forum moderator and the organiser of the event. For anyone outside the UK, BesottedScot suggests sending a postcard instead of a Christmas card, "so that he knows where you've messaged from."

(credit: Bengt Oberger)

The European Union has drawn up a set of rules governing the security of the region's digital infrastructure. Under the framework provisionally agreed last night by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and the Luxembourg Presidency of the EU Council of Ministers, transport, energy and other key companies will have to ensure that the digital infrastructure that they use to deliver essential services, such as traffic control or electricity grid management, is resilient enough to withstand online attacks. Similarly, major digital marketplaces like eBay or Amazon, search engines, and cloud services will be required to ensure that their infrastructure is secure, and to report major incidents. Smaller digital companies will be exempt from these requirements.

As a press release from the European Parliament explains: "MEPs put an end to current fragmentation of 28 cybersecurity systems by listing sectors—energy, transport, banking, financial market, health and water supply—in which critical service companies will have to ensure that they are robust enough to resist cyber-attacks. These companies must also be ready to report serious security breaches to public authorities."

Member states will be required to identify "operators of essential services" from these key sectors, using various criteria such as whether the service is critical for society and the economy, whether it depends on network and information systems, and whether an incident could have significant disruptive effects on its provision, or public safety.

(credit: Apple)

If you need to invest in a battery pack to help your iPhone survive the whole day, now you'll have an Apple-made option to choose from. Apple unveiled its first official battery pack for the iPhone 6 and 6S, dubbed the Smart Battery Case, by putting it up for sale on its website.

The $99 Smart Battery Case comes in white and charcoal gray and Apple claims it will add up to 25 hours of talk time to the iPhones, up to 18 hours of Internet use on LTE, and up to 20 hours of video playback. Photos on Apple's website show the iPhone slipping into the case rather than the case separating into multiple pieces. Apple describes it as a "soft elastomer hinge design," which just means the case is made of silicone so it's flexible enough for you to pull down an edge and slip your smartphone inside. The interior has a microfiber lining.

(credit: Apple)

Clearly noticeable is the case's battery bump, sitting in the middle of the pack on back of the iPhone. Other than the bump, the Smart Battery Case looks quite similar to Apple's regular iPhone cases. Many competing cases from companies like Mophie extend the length and width of the entire case in order to hide the battery, which looks more symmetrical but also adds thickness and bulk to the phone. Apple clearly wanted to let as much of the iPhone's thin design shine through even with the necessary bump on the back.

Night Dive Studios—the group behind the recent System Shock Enhanced Edition and new owner of the System Shock IP—recently teased that it was in talks about a possible sequel to the legendary System Shock 2. Thanks to some enterprising members of the public, that sequel has now been outed: System Shock 3 is in the works and being developed by Otherside Entertainment, the small studio currently developing Underworld Ascendant.

As discovered by a member of the RPG Codex forum, System Shock 3 was supposed to be the big reveal at the end of a countdown timer started on Otherside Entertainment's website yesterday. The countdown timer, which is still live, sits on a cryptic teaser page with a flickering letter "S" and a countdown clock with just over five days remaining. While it's possible that the countdown could be for another project, the discovered page, as well as the link to sign up to the System Shock 3 mailing list appear conclusive.

Notably, Otherside Entertainment was founded by Paul Neurath, who also co-founded original System Shock creator Looking Glass Studios. Other members of the team include developers who worked on System Shock 2, Thief, Dishonored, and Bioshock Infinite, the latter being the last game from System Shock 2's director Ken Levine.