Month: January 2017

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We are excited to announce that Ars Technica has made the jump to greater security: we now have HTTPS browsing by default. The switch to encryption will help secure your connection to Ars from eavesdropping by unauthorized parties (emphasis on the "help," since browsing with HTTPS is only one part of a sane defense-in-depth strategy, and lots of browsing metadata is exposed regardless of whether or not you use HTTPS). For most readers, the change will be a transparent one. Browser address bars will show a green SSL/TLS notification, but everything else should remain the same. We hope we've anticipated potential problems, but if you run into any issues, please let us know via this Google form.

It has been a long and winding road to get here, primarily because external assets and services we depend on weren't all ready for HTTPS when we were. Changing the default schema on a complex site like Ars—which is really a mix of static assets and dynamic Web apps, serving over 60 million pages per month to 15 million readers on a distributed bunch of physical and virtual servers—isn’t a trivial endeavor (a big shout out to Scott Helme, who has put together some amazing informational resources and a free reporting service to help sites ease their transition to HTTPS).

Where we go from here

Now that this step is complete, there are other things we’d like to do to push forward our role in advancing the encrypted-by-default Web and to take our SSL/TLS setup from acceptable to exceptional.

Enlarge / You thought you deleted it. But it came back—and it wouldn't die. (credit: Gage Skidmore)

Bug-fixing is often a thankless task in the software world. But when a bug is fixed in a way that users don’t expect, it can cause confusion—or even a user revolt. That’s what Dropbox faced over the past few days when the company killed a bug that had been affecting its service for more than five years.

Some users of Dropbox’s cloud file storage service were alarmed late last week when long-ago deleted files and folders mysteriously re-appeared in their synchronized file stores. The re-appearance of files long past Dropbox’s advertised retention period alarmed some users who were concerned that Dropbox was retaining their data or that the service had somehow been hacked. But the actual cause was a bug in the service causing files to be placed in quarantine rather than being purged.

Dropbox retains files in case of accidental deletion for 30 days for basic users and “pro” accounts as well—even longer (up to a year) for pro accounts that have signed up for Dropbox’s Extended Version History. Dropbox Business never deletes files from its backups unless they’re permanently deleted by the user. But the files re-appearing this week were much older, several years old in many cases. One user reported files deleted five years ago re-appearing.

Boeing

On Wednesday, Boeing publicly released images of the spacesuit that astronauts will wear aboard its Starliner spacecraft. According to the company, the new "Boeing Blue" suit will be more flexible than previous ascent and entry suits and about 40 percent lighter, but will retain the ability to become pressurized during an emergency.

Among the suit's features? There are touchscreen-friendly gloves for the modern interior of the Starliner spacecraft and zippers in the torso area that will make it easier for astronauts to comfortably stand, sit, and stand again. Boeing also says the hood-like soft helmet features a wide polycarbonate visor to give Starliner passengers better peripheral vision throughout their ride to and from space. The suit was designed by David Clark.

Enlarge / Virginia State Capitol in Richmond. (credit: Getty Images | Joe Daniel Price)

Google and Netflix joined a handful of advocacy groups and other companies lobbying against a proposed Virginia state law that would make it far more difficult for municipalities to offer Internet service.

As we previously reported, the "Virginia Broadband Deployment Act" would prohibit municipal broadband deployments except in very limited circumstances. For example, localities wouldn't be allowed to offer Internet service to residents if an existing network already provides 10Mbps download and 1Mbps upload speeds to 90 percent of potential customers. Even if that condition is met, municipalities would have to jump through several legal hoops before being allowed to build a network.

"This bill would effectively ban new public broadband networks and public-private partnerships and cripple existing ones, harming both the public and private sectors, retarding economic growth, preventing the creation or retention of jobs around the Commonwealth, particularly in rural areas, hampering work force development, and diminishing the quality of life in Virginia," bill opponents including Google and Netflix wrote in a letter last week to State House Commerce Committee Chairman Terry Kilgore, a Republican.

Enlarge (credit: Eadweard Muybridge/Library of Congress)

Earlier this month, Microsoft confirmed that the Windows 10 Creators Update coming later this year would include a new feature called "Game Mode."

Redmond is still being a bit coy about precisely what Game Mode will and won't do, but the picture has become a little clearer. We spoke to Kevin Gammill, partner group program manager for the Xbox platform, about what Game Mode was for and what to expect. The overarching goal is to make Windows 10 "the best operating system for games"—and critically, to make it more consistent, so that frame rates and performance are more predictable and uniform. Gamill said that when Game Mode is active, the operating system will tend to be biased toward allocating CPU and GPU resources to the game.

Gammill didn't say this (and probably for good reason; there are segments of the PC gaming community that would regard the following as dirty words), but it sounds to us like the aim is to make PC gaming a little more, well, console-like. Console hardware is much more predictable than PC hardware, with developers knowing exactly how many processor cores and GPU shaders, and how much system memory, they'll have access to at any moment. Game Mode won't be turning the PC into a console any time soon, but it could start to provide a little more predictability.

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Apple is working on a deal to manufacture some of its products in India, according to a senior government official speaking to The Wall Street Journal. Apple is asking for tax and tariff incentives in exchange for bringing its business into the country; in particular it wants a 15-year tax holiday on all of its imports into the country. The official said that most of Apple's requests were "workable" and that it is "almost a done deal."

Much of Apple's growth in 2014 and 2015 was driven by the company's expansion into China, a relatively untapped market that was eager to buy its products. After a slow 2016, Apple could use the growth that expanding into another new market could provide. In Q3 of 2016, IDC estimates that the Indian smartphone market grew about 11 percent year-over-year, while the worldwide smartphone market grew only one percent year-over-year.

Part of the reason Apple has had trouble cracking the Indian smartphone market is that many low-cost competitors are already entrenched; the government's "Make in India" program also favors smartphone companies that manufacture their products locally. It was reported last year that Apple had been denied permission to sell refurbished iPhones in the country, but Apple is still working to open retail stores in India, and manufacturing products locally could make the Indian government more receptive to its requests.

A long rumored video game version of 1979's Apocalypse Now, previously thought to be canceled, is now in active development again. None other than original film director Francis Ford Coppola has confirmed that the game is in the works through his production company, American Zoetrope.

"I've been watching video games grow into a meaningful way to tell stories, and I'm excited to explore the possibilities for Apocalypse Now for a new platform and a new generation," Coppola said in a statement. He also referred to the game's development team as "new daredevils" and confirmed that the game will closely follow the film's plot. Players will control Captain Willard, and your starting mission is to find AWOL star officer Colonel Kurtz, reportedly whiling away in Cambodia, and terminate him (with extreme prejudice, of course).