Month: June 2016

(credit: Aurich Lawson)

Despite a final verdict, the recent Oracle v. Google trial leaves plenty of questions about the future of APIs, fair use, copyright, development, and more. While their views do not necessarily represent those of Ars Technica as a whole, our staffers wanted to take a look at the outcome and potential ramifications from both sides. Below, Joe Mullin says Google's win sends a powerful message against a familiar legal tactic. Elsewhere, Peter Bright argues that software is about to suffer. You can also find guest op-eds from professor Pamela Samuelson (pro-Google) and attorney Annette Hurst (pro-Oracle).

We may never know with certainty why the jury in Oracle v. Google decided in Google's favor, but I can make a pretty good guess.

Like the jury, I'm no expert. I've been reporting on technology law for years, but becoming an experienced journalist is really just mastering the fine art of non-expertise. I have a pretty good conceptual idea of what an API is, derived entirely from listening to more knowledgeable people talk about this case. But if you showed me a block of code, I couldn’t pick out the APIs or "declaring code" at issue.

(credit: Ron Amadeo)

Pamela Samuelson is a longtime professor of IP and cyberlaw at the University of California-Berkeley, and she also chairs the board of the Authors Alliance. Her views do not necessarily represent those of Ars Technica, and they've been republished here with her permission.

Oracle and Google have been fighting for six years about whether Google infringed copyright by its use of 37 of the 166 packages that constitute the Java API in the Android software platform for smart phones. Last week, Google won a jury trial verdict that its reuse of the Java API elements was fair use.

Let me first explain the main facts and claims in the lawsuit, and then why Google's fair use victory is a good thing not only for Google but also for open source developers, for software developers more generally, and for the public.

Such DNA. Paleogenetic. Wow. Very archaeological evidence. (credit: Doge)

Dogs were some of the first animals that humans domesticated. These furry pals were living with people for thousands of years before we invented agriculture and started keeping other animals like goats and pigs. Though we have archaeological evidence of dog bones within human communities dating back 15,000 years, scientists still aren't sure where humans began the process of converting wild wolves into snuggly companions. Now, a new study suggests that dogs were domesticated twice—once in Europe and once in Asia, probably around the same time.

A large group of researchers with expertise in everything from archaeology to paleogenetics has collaborated on a paper in Science explaining how it reached this conclusion. The group began by sequencing DNA from ancient and modern dogs to measure genetic drift. The linchpin of the study was a well-preserved bone from a dog that lived 4,800 years ago in Ireland, roughly around the time that Stonehenge was being constructed. By comparing this dog's DNA with that of more than 600 modern dogs and snippets of DNA from other ancient dogs, the team could determine that this Western dog belonged to a genetic group that diverged from Asian dogs between 14,000 and 6,400 years ago.

Evolutionary biologist Greger Larson told Science's David Grimm, "I was like, ‘Holy shit!’ We never saw this split before because we didn’t have enough samples."

(credit: Scott Beale)

It's easy to joke about the average shelf life of a major social media platform, especially one that hinges its reputation on young users. After all, this era has seen its share of MySpaces and Friendsters. In both cases, platform downfalls came after a change in the popularity guard, and new numbers unearthed on Thursday may point to another virtual torch-passing—this time between Twitter and Snapchat.

Citing "people familiar with the matter," Bloomberg reported that the Snapchat smartphone messaging service officially surpassed 150 million daily active users. That figure soundly beats Bloomberg's estimate of Twitter's 136 million daily users (derived from the service's publicly announced 310 monthly active users and Twitter's announced estimates of how many of those use the service on a daily basis).

In recent years, Snapchat's basic functionality—of auto-deleting messages and posts while connecting friends to photo and video feeds—has expanded. The service now boasts hugely popular auto-filter functions, which attach silly face-matched images to users' faces and eyes in much better fashion than what the Nintendo DSi introduced in its simple camera app back in 2009. These days even many professional publishing houses connect to the service to post frequent phone-video updates (if you're asking: ars_technica).

The top of the Alienware Steam Machine is a bit reminiscent of an armored turtle.

It's been about seven months now since Valve officially got into the hardware business with its Steam Machines, a line of Linux-powered gaming console/PC hybrids paired with a unique dual touchpad Steam Controller. Today, we're getting our first concrete glimpse of the impact that hardware has had on the wider market for gaming machines—and the numbers don't look too good for Valve.

As part of an update on new Steam Controller functions, Valve announced that it has sold over 500,000 Steam Controllers since the early November launch. A Valve representative confirmed to Ars that this number includes the controllers that are packaged with every branded Steam Machine sold through Valve's hardware partners.

Put it together, and you find that there have been less than half a million Steam Machines sold over a span of more than half a year. The real number could potentially be much lower when you consider curious Windows gamers who bought a Steam Controller and SteamOS players who bought additional controllers. While the 500,000 number doesn't necessarily include people who decided to download and install SteamOS on their own PCs (or all sales of Valve's $50 Steam Link streaming box), it probably serves as a good ceiling for the wider SteamOS market at this point.