Month: May 2016

This story was written by Jennifer Baker.

FitnessKeeper—the US-based outfit behind fitness app Runkeeper—will be hit with a complaint from the Norwegian Consumer Council on Friday morning, after it was found to have breached European data protection law.

The council argues that the Android version of the app tracks users and transmits personal location data to a third party in the United States, even when not in use. The move comes following an investigation into 20 apps’ terms and conditions conducted by Norway's consumer watchdog earlier this year.

"We checked the apps technically, to see the data flows and to see if the apps actually do what they say they do," the council’s digital policy director Finn Myrstad told Ars.

"Everyone understands that Runkeeper tracks users while they exercise, but to continue after the training has ended is not okay. Not only is it a breach of privacy laws, we are also convinced that users do not want to be tracked in this way, or for information to be shared with third party advertisers."

Myrstad added: "It is clear that Runkeeper needs to have a good think about how it treats users data and privacy."

As a result of its investigation, the consumer rights' watchdog has already reported dating app Tinder to Norway's data protection authority, accusing it of privacy breaches. Elsewhere, dating app Happn has been reported to France's data regulator.

Now, Norway's consumer council wants the DPA to take action over what it claims are multiple breaches of privacy. The council said that its investigation had uncovered numerous unfair practices including a lack of clarity in what Runkeeper defines as "personal data," failure to delete personal information when an account is closed, and the right to update privacy policy at any time without prior notice.

"Runkeeper, also requests unreasonably wide-ranging permissions compared with the access actually needed to deliver the service. We have also noted that many apps, Runkeeper included, demand the perpetual right to the user’s content, which includes a licence to share the user’s content to unspecified third parties," said Myrstad.

FitnessKeeper—an American company based in Massachusetts—had not been registered under the now defunct Safe Harbour programme. It was found to be transferring location data to Kiip.me, a major advertiser in the US, even when the mobile phone was idle for a period of 48 hours, according to Norway's consumer council.

Sanctions the Norwegian data protection authority may be able to impose on FitnessKeeper—if it does uphold the complaint—are limited, however, because the Runkeeper app maker has no European subsidiaries. Nonetheless, Myrstad told Ars that it was worth pursuing the principle.

With a successful open beta that attracted over 9.7 million players now out of the way, Blizzard is gearing up for the community management challenge of officially launching Overwatch later this month. As far as limiting the role of cheaters in the online shooter goes, Blizzard is setting up a simple rule: one strike and you're out!

"If a player is found to be cheating—or using hacks, bots, or third-party software that provides any sort of unfair advantage—that player will be permanently banned from the game. Full stop." Blizzard Community Stephanie Johnson writes on the game's forums. "Not only does cheating undermine the spirit of fair play that all of our products are based on, but it works to diminish the fun and enjoyment of others.

"While we are unlikely to publicly acknowledge when accounts are closed as a result of cheating or using unauthorized programs, we have and will continue to monitor Overwatch for exploitative behavior, as well as take action as needed to preserve the integrity of game," the forum post continues.

This isn't exactly a new policy for Blizzard. The publisher started coming down hard on cheaters in Diablo III a few months after its 2012 launch, just before rolling out the game's real-money auction house. And for years, World of Warcraft has routinely rolled out massive banhammer waves encompassing tens of thousands of accounts suspected of cheating and bot use (though Blizzard also gives out temporary suspensions for some WoW offenses, lasting anywhere from 72 hours to six months).

Still, instant permabans are a stronger position than many publishers take for their popular online shooters these days. Destiny often gives first-time offenders temporary "restrictions" that can last a few weeks. Call of Duty gives players temporary bans for their first two offenses. And Rockstar famously put those found cheating at Max Payne 3 into a "Cheaters Pool" where they could only play against others using unfair exploits.

Ubisoft's The Division and Rainbow Six: Siege also issue temporary suspensions for a first offense, a bit of laxity some players say is being exploited. "The message is out," a player writes on the Division forums. "Cheat all you want, it will take forever to catch you apparently, and you get to keep all the exp/money/items you gained and then after a three-day suspension you get to laugh, come back in, and reap your reward. Then just don't cheat anymore."

Blizzard's instant permaban policy does of course come with the possibility of players being harshly punished for "false positives" when they didn't actually cheat. Many Linux Diablo III players complained that the game's anti-cheat system was unfairly banning them for using WINE to simply play the game (Blizzard denied those accusations). In any case, Blizzard does have an appeal process for banned players to protest their innocence.

And Blizzard stresses that it will always manually verify reported instances of cheating that are based solely on "video evidence from killcams, Plays of the Game, Highlights, and other community captured footage." While the company urges Overwatch players to report suspected cheaters to hacks@blizzard.com, it reminds players that not everything that looks like cheating necessarily is. "Some players are just really good at first-person shooters," Johnson writes. "Through practice and years of experience, these players’ movements and reaction times can occasionally appear unnatural (if not physically impossible) to those who may not have been exposed to that particular level of play before."

Trotz Bekenntnissen zum Netzausbau von Vodafone Kabel, Unitymedia, Tele Columbus und Primacom gingen die Ausgaben zurück. Die Telekom gab erheblich mehr aus, bei den anderen Telekombetreibern stagnierten die Ausgaben. (Tele Columbus, Instant Messenger)

The mid-size truck was a dying breed in the US two years ago. Its epitaph—90 percent complete—would have read, "Here lies the small truck, killed by its bigger brothers, cheap fuel, and the SUV. Rest in peace. Born 1972-ish. Died 2011."

A slew of factors converged for the near-death experience, including a solid sales decline starting with the 1990-91 recession, the pending omnipresence of the mid-sized SUV, and most importantly, small and mid-sized trucks growing stale. Why bother to develop mid-size trucks when full-size truck sales grew from 1991 to a peak of 1.5 million in 2005? And while SUV sales exploded? Granted, the lifecycle of pickups has never been in the same universe as consumer electronics, but chew on this: By the time the new Nissan Frontier debuts sometime next year, it will have been 13 years since it hit the market. You could have created yourself a lovely Scotch Whiskey in that time. [Or a pretty decent bourbon—Ed.]

But why does this matter? To put the relative significance of truck volumes into perspective, of the top five vehicle models sold in 2015, Americans bought 1,832,014 pickups. Among those same top five models sold, only 792,687 were cars. Compare those numbers to some popular cars with enthusiasts, techies, and the media—like Porsche's 911 (9,898), Tesla's Model S (25,202), and Chevrolet's Corvette (33,329)—and you rapidly realize the industry's winds blow largely into truck sails.

And that story has turned. Significantly. With GM's Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon fanning sales flames, growth in light-duty (non-commercial) trucks is huge, and it's clearly focused on the mid-size sector. In 2014, small and mid-sized pickup sales amounted to just 254,000. In 2015, that number reached 357,000, and it's growing even more rapidly in 2016. Toyota's new Tacoma launched in Q4 of 2015, while Honda just launched the redesigned Ridgeline, but the GM twins did the heavy lifting. Neither Ford nor Ram have anything in the short-term pipeline to compete. And now GM is effectively piling on, offering the only diesel engine in the class, making the mid-size pickup a legitimate alternative to a full-size rig for some people. There may not be much intrigue or sexiness about mid-size trucks, but if you consider the aggregate dollars and volume involved, it paints a highly relevant picture.

So what? Pickups are as technically interesting as Conestoga wagons, you say? A wheeled brick and just as comfortable. But check this out: The Canyon's 2.8L four-cylinder diesel engine belts out 369 ft-lb (500Nm) of torque, which is scads more than the optional 3.6L V6's 269 ft-lb (365Nm)—as a comparison simply for kicks—more torque than the 3.0L twin-turbo flat sixes in the latest Porsche 911 Carrera and Carrera S. It's a whisker behind the bigger Silverado 1500's 383 lb-ft (519Nm) from its 5.3L V8. And if you think GM might be gun-shy about launching a diesel in the wake of Volkswagen's cheating affair with emissions, think again. "We have no hesitation on diesel," says GMC's Canyon Marketing Manager, Ken Bakowski. "We didn't hear anything [negative] from buyers or dealers. Perhaps the truck diesel market has different perceptions."

The GM 2.8L Duramax diesel (assembled in Thailand, actually) is no songbird, though no one should expect that of a truck's engine. However, once above a trotting pace, you neither hear nor feel the engine whatsoever. As a highly developed variation on another 2.5L diesel used globally, the 2.8L uses a variable-geometry turbo impeller, very high fuel rail pressure of 29,000psi (2000bar), and 16 valves actuated by double overhead cams, but the elephant in the engine room is displacement.

Large-displacement four-cylinder engines have contradictory traits. A larger swept volume—especially with a long stroke—yields a high and steady torque curve of the type which engineers want for heavy equipment. Inline fours make the most compact layout in physical dimension aside from a rotary, which itself has too many other compromises to justify development. An inline four is also optimal for ancillary packaging of intake, exhaust, and potential turbo- or supercharging.

But large fours can also shake like paint mixers. The second-order harmonics of a four makes the whole engine oscillate up and down at a frequency that's double the cranks' rotating speed. Mitsubishi designed balance shafts in the 1970s to minimize this shake using a concept borrowed from Frederick Lanchester 60 years prior. The shafts use weights that oppose each other and rotate at twice engine speed. In the Duramax 2.8L engine, the two shafts are buried deep within the engine block.

The 2.8L Duramax is happiest below 3,000rpm, and there's just about no need to waft above that range unless climbing grades at altitude and when towing. It delivers power and torque quietly, so aside from the modestly numbered tachometer, your passengers would hardly know they're in a diesel.

We logged an overall average of 22.3 real-world mpg, somewhat corroborating the EPA combined figure of 23mpg. But we never saw the claimed 29mpg highway figure, even over one 120+ mile (193km) steady highway stretch. Consider, however, that the Canyon and Colorado diesel twins can also tow 7,700lb (3,492kg) of dead weight behind them (7,600lbs/3,447kg in four-wheel-drive form). That's more towing capacity than few full-size pickup iterations, remarkable for a mid-size truck.

Just like real commercial big rigs and the heavier-duty full-size diesel pickups, the GM twins offer an integrated exhaust brake ("Jake brake"). It uses engine exhaust pressure to mitigate downhill acceleration—commonly used when towing—without overcooking the brakes.

Since diesel exhaust is the focal point of so much auto and tech news since Volkswagen's emissions cheating scandal broke, we took a look at this engine's exhaust path. Exhaust travels from the manifold into a close-mounted diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC) and then into a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) catalyst. It then passes through a diesel particulate filter (DPF), and finally out through a cooled tailpipe akin to those on heavier-duty trucks. You'll notice we didn't mention a muffler. It actually meets GM's internal noise restrictions without one, and the system yields lower back pressure.

We've also driven a V6-powered Colorado and can say that engine's power and torque curve favor high revs to the point that meaningful passing power and acceleration are regularly met with a loud and jarring downshift of one or more gears. No such apoplexy with the diesel. The diesel and its equipment adds 440lbs (200kg) to the truck's curb weight over the standard 2.5L gasoline four-cylinder where the gas V6 adds 170lbs (77kg). But you wouldn't know it unless you try driving in a manner more befitting a Corvette.

GM uses a raft of sound-absorbing bits to minimize diesel clatter like a thick metal cover over the timing belt, hydraulic engine mounts, a steel plate on the aluminum oil pan, and extra insulation atop the engine. The composite intake manifold minimizes noise, too. Because the injectors fitted to high-pressure fuel systems are loud, the injection's programming is altered to quiet it down as much as possible. GM also adds thicker interior pads and extra sound-deadening behind the dashboard area.

A "centrifugal vibration dampener" using a set of springs and dampers is also attached to the transmission's torque converter. While interesting, it also sounds like a dual-mass flywheel as used with manual transmissions, which rarely works well or as intended.

The Canyon also offers Apple CarPlay and Android Auto smartphone integration with hands-free phone book and dialing capability and "natural language" voice recognition so that music, communication, and directions appear on the (optional) 8-inch touch screen color display. CarPlay mirrors the iPhone's display and functions on the infotainment system. Apple Siri Eyes Free integrates the iPhone's voice controls with the vehicle and also supports text messages. The mid-size pickup twins also use GM's IntelliLink app suite and built-in 4G LTE Wi-Fi connectivity through the OnStar telematics system. Finally, Canyon and Colorado mid-sized trucks also offer forward collision and lane departure alert systems, though only on SLE trim levels and as an option.

It's unfair to compare the Canyon to larger trucks. It's also unavoidable. Though the Canyon diesel starts at just $27,555, a commonly optioned Canyon diesel costs within a couple thousand dollars of a similarly equipped Ram 1500 EcoDiesel or a variety of gas-powered full-sizers. Add the much larger incentives regularly found on bigger trucks (they vary by region) and it brings the price even lower and makes the decision even harder.

Of course, economy, size, and handling cannot compare—and those are huge reasons people have started buying mid-sized trucks. Also, they fit in garages, and some full-size pickups don't.

Sometimes, it comes down to factors just that simple. The Canyon and Colorado diesels are very pleasing, promising, capable trucks that don't glower over the Minis, Priuses, and Golfs that share the road. The fact that they deliver nearly all the versatility of their bigger brothers is their achieved stretch goal.

The Raspberry Pi line of tiny, inexpensive computers can run a wide range of software. But one of the easiest ways to get started is with Raspbian, an operating system that’s based on Debian Linux and which is optimized for Raspberry Pi hardware.

When the Raspberry Pi Foundation launched the Raspberry Pi 3 in February though, the latest Raspbian image didn’t support all of the new computer’s hardware: there was limited support for Bluetooth.

Continue reading Raspbian update brings Bluetooth support for Raspberry Pi 3 at Liliputing.

New rules that affect open source firmware on Wi-Fi routers will be implemented on June 2, but not all network hardware will prevent the loading of third-party software.

Linksys has been collaborating with chipmaker Marvell and the makers of OpenWrt to make sure its latest WRT routers can comply with the new rules without blocking open source firmware, company officials told Ars.

Linksys’s effort stands in contrast with TP-Link, which said it would entirely prevent loading of open source firmware on its routers to satisfy the new Federal Communications Commission requirements.

Blocking third-party firmware is the easiest way to comply with the FCC rules, which aim to limit interference with other devices by preventing user modifications that cause radios to operate outside their licensed RF (radio frequency) parameters.

The FCC wrote its rules in response to interference with FAA Doppler weather radar systems. Routers using certain portions of the 5GHz band were already required to use dynamic frequency selection (DFS) in order to detect nearby radar systems and avoid operating on the same channel. But it’s possible for users to disable dynamic frequency selection—the FCC has called this a “major cause of harmful interference.” Most cases of interference have been caused either by disabling DFS or “devices that have been modified to operate in frequency bands in which they are not certified to operate,” the FCC says.

“Our responsibility to the open source community”

Any 5GHz routers sold on or after June 2 must include security measures that prevent these types of changes. But router makers can still allow loading of open source firmware as long as they also deploy controls that prevent devices from operating outside their allowed frequencies, types of modulation, power levels, and so on.

This takes more work than simply locking out third-party firmware entirely, but Linksys, a division of Belkin, made the extra effort. On and after June 2, newly sold Linksys WRT routers will store RF parameter data in a separate memory location in order to secure it from the firmware, the company says. That will allow users to keep loading open source firmware the same way they do now.

Other Linksys routers, such as Max-Stream devices, will block open source firmware. But continuing support on the WRT line is a natural move for Linksys, given that the OpenWrt and DD-WRT third-party firmware was originally built for the company’s WRT54G routers more than a decade ago.

“They're named WRT… it's almost our responsibility to the open source community,” Linksys router product manager Vince La Duca told Ars.

WRT stands for “Wireless RouTer,” and Linksys has stuck with its naming conventions and support for open source for many years. The “WRT54GL” released in 2005 offered speeds of up to 54Mbps. The “L” stood for Linux.

Linksys resurrected the classic blue and black design of the WRT in 2014 with the new WRT1900AC. The numbers and letters indicated support for up to 1900Mbps and the 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard. That router as well as the newer WRT1900ACS and WRT1200AC will continue to support open source firmware after the new rules take effect, La Duca said.

"The hardware design of the WRT platform allows us to isolate the RF parameter data and secure it outside of the host firmware separately," Linksys said in a written statement given to Ars.

La Duca declined to get more specific about Linksys's exact method. Even though this is about enabling open source, Linksys’s method is proprietary and provides a competitive advantage over other router makers that aren’t supporting open source, La Duca said.

Using open source isn't about breaking the rules

While Linksys’s support of open source is partly a marketing strategy, La Duca understands why customers want to use OpenWrt and similar software.

“The real benefit of open source is not breaking the rules and doing something with malicious intent, the value of open source is being able to customize your router, to be able to do privacy browsing through Tor, being able to build an OpenVPN client, being able to strip down the firmware to do super lean, low-latency gaming,” La Duca said. “It's not about ‘I'm going to go get OpenWrt to go and piss off the FCC.' It's about what you can do in expanding the capabilities of what we ship with.”

But that doesn’t extend across all Linksys routers. For Max-Stream devices and other routers that lack WRT branding, “open source is not a value proposition that we are promoting,” La Duca said. For those non-WRT platforms, Linksys is not working with chip providers to enable open source support.

"All Linksys legacy and Max-Stream routers will have the full host firmware locked down," the Linksys statement said. The company noted that these routers were never marketed to open source users as the WRT routers are.

Whether open or closed, Linksys said all of its dual- and tri-band routers will comply with the new FCC rules "that require our routers and software to be secured to prevent changing the power output or unauthorized channel selection of the router on the 5Ghz band." (There are also similar new requirements implemented by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, Linksys said.)

“No one else was prepared for this”

Imre Kaloz, a key OpenWrt developer, told Ars that he isn't aware of any other vendors making a similar effort to support open source. Kaloz has tried to get other hardware makers interested, but he said his attempts have so far only earned him some marketing e-mails.

Still, Kaloz holds out hope that other vendors will see the work Linksys has done and try to copy it. “It's not that complicated, it's simply that no one else was prepared for this,” Kaloz said.

Most of the necessary changes happened on the hardware side, Kaloz said. But OpenWrt developers also worked closely with Marvell to update the open source wireless driver so that OpenWrt can continue to work, he said.

Default OpenWrt functionality will remain unchanged on Linksys WRT routers, Kaloz said. It’s open source and can thus be modified, but by default OpenWrt doesn’t let users do anything that would violate FCC rules, he said.

DD-WRT, which is based on OpenWrt, is capable of disabling DFS.

Although Linksys has proven that open source firmware can still be used under the new FCC rules, it’s clear that options for open source users will be more limited than they are today. Kaloz wishes the FCC had taken a different approach, one focused on punishing people who cause interference without preventing legitimate uses of network hardware.

The decisions, he said, "have been made by lawyers who had not too much technical knowledge."

Der Dokumentarfilm Traceroute, der heute in Deutschland anläuft, ist mehr als eine Geek-Pilgerreise durch die USA. Regisseur Johannes Grenzfurthner zeichnet ein Nerd-Selbstporträt ohne Scheu, die Hosen herunterzulassen. (Filmkritik, Internet)

Eine Anlaufstelle für Patente unter einer freien Lizenz hat die US-Raumfahrtbehörde Nasa eingerichtet. Dort sind alle Patente, die von jedermann genutzt werden können, abrufbar - inklusive knapp 60 frisch befreiter. (Nasa, Technologie)

Alle Siemens-Beschäftigten mit Firmenhandy werden von dem Konzern gefragt, ob sie auf den Festnetzzugang verzichten wollen. Sie können über eine Maske im Intranet von Siemens auswählen, ob sie noch einen Festnetzanschluss benötigen. (Siemens, Smartphone)

In The Lobster, a bleak comedy set in a future Ireland, the world is being run by what can only be described as an authoritarian dating service. Anyone who is single for more than 45 days is turned into an animal. To help the good citizens of the world remain human, there are terrifying “hotels” where singles go to be reeducated, their arms bound and movements restricted, as they learn why it’s wrong to be alone—and are given the opportunity to meet eligible mates. Despite its fantastical premise, The Lobster nails the often dark emotional reality of dating life in our world.

Colin Farrell plays David, a sad, awkward man whose wife has just left him. Radiating discomfort and kind of blank desperation, he arrives at the hotel with a fluffy dog who turns out to be his brother. The hotel owner recites the rules to him—masturbation is forbidden, and residents can earn extra days of singlehood if they manage to shoot runaways who have fled into the forest. She also requires him to choose which animal he’ll become. Looking uneasily at his brother/dog, David says he’d like to be a lobster “because they have blue blood” and live for a very long time. Somehow, this sums up everything about David—weird and bug-eyed, but with skin made of armor and very sharp claws.

As he undergoes anti-singles conditioning and endures terrible dance parties, David forms shaky friendships with two of his fellow inmates/romance-seekers, the confused and angry John C. Reilly and tragic widower Ben Whishaw. The acting here is superbly understated, with everyone walking a razor’s edge between pathos and comedy.

Released last year in the UK, The Lobster became a critical hit and is finally making its way to the States this weekend. It's the first English-language offering from Greek writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos, who is known for his reality-bending movies Dogtooth and Alps, about troubled human relationships.

One of the clever tropes of The Lobster is that everyone seems to believe that people are “suited” for each other if they have the same ailments. David is near-sighted, so he has to find someone with glasses or contacts. Whishaw falls for a girl who gets nosebleeds. so he smashes his face until he gets nosebleeds too. This arbitrary notion of what makes two people a good fit is uncomfortably familiar for anyone who has ticked boxes on an online dating profile, hoping to find the perfect match in a database populated by random attributes like “body type” and “favorite music.”

David’s efforts to hook up are bumbling and funny at first, but eventually land him in a situation that is so horrific he has no choice but to risk death to flee the hotel. In the forest, surrounded by an odd range of animals we presume are all former singles, he meets a group of subversives called the Loners. Led by an angry pro-singles activist (a seriously scary Léa Seydoux), the group swears off all forms of physical affection and plans sneak attacks on couples. In one memorable scene, they go on a mission to break up couples, holding them at gunpoint in their homes and forcing them to question their love for one another.

Among the Loners is Rachel Weisz, who is terrific as the unnamed woman whose social awkwardness and prickly savagery match David’s own. The two are immediately drawn to each other, sneaking away from the Loners to make out—and make plans for a shaky, seemingly impossible future. Can they really have a genuine romance in a world where the government mandates love and subversives try to smash it? Is it even possible for people to form an authentic emotional connection when they’re under such tremendous social pressure? Like all the questions raised by this flick, these are things we should be asking ourselves, about our own lives. Though it starts out as satire, The Lobster eventually punches you in the gut so hard that you’ll be freaked out for a long time afterwards.