Month: February 2018

Enlarge / Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the series' latest version, is still played by millions of fans to this day. (credit: Valve Software)

Jess Cliffe, the co-creator of Valve's popular online shooter series Counter-Strike, was booked into a Seattle jail on Thursday morning over allegations of sexual exploitation of a child.

Seattle ABC affiliate KIRO-7 broke the story on Thursday after discovering Cliffe's booking record into King County jail. Seattle police detective Patrick Michaud confirmed to Ars that Cliffe was arrested at the jail itself, which public records show happened at 1:17 am Pacific Time, and that no charges had yet been filed.

No bond has yet been set, and a bail hearing is expected to take place later on Friday. Police did not immediately confirm any other details about the arrest to Ars.

Enlarge (credit: 21st Century Fox)

A recent aerial survey revealed thousands of ancient Maya structures previously hidden beneath the dense Guatemalan jungle, including houses, irrigation canals, fortifications, and even a pyramid. More importantly, though, the survey of 2000 square kilometers of northeastern Guatemala provides a bird’s-eye view of the landscape of ancient Maya cities, farms, and highways. That big picture view of the Maya is letting archaeologists ask bigger questions about this still-enigmatic civilization.

A sense of mystery still surrounds the Maya, mostly because so much of their once powerful and sophisticated society now lies hidden beneath thick tropical foliage. In recent years, archaeologists have started using lasers to peer beneath the thick canopy of leaves and map the ancient Maya landscape from above. They’re using a technology called “light detection and ranging,” or LiDAR, which maps the height of features on the ground by measuring how long it takes infrared light beamed down from a plane to bounce off those structures and return to the instrument.

Using a plane lets surveyors cover a lot of ground in a short time, and one recent survey covered the largest area so far. The results hint that Maya civilization may have been more extensive and more densely populated than archaeologists realized. The survey, funded by the nonprofit Pacunam foundation, covered 2000 square kilometers of northeastern Guatemala in 2016. Archaeologists have been poring over the data since early 2017, and they say they’ve discovered over 60,000 new structures, from irrigation canals and highways to fortresses and pyramids.

Enlarge / Amazon Go from the outside. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

The fact that Amazon made lots of money in 2017, both in the full year and its fiscal fourth quarter, may not surprise anybody who keeps tabs on the retailer/cloud services provider/video streamer/drone operator.

But the newsworthy thing about its latest quarterly financial report (.PDF), released on Thursday, comes from comparing it to a prior earnings report from October 2017: just how bad Amazon was at predicting its bonkers 4Q income.

Amazon's October guidance predicted (.PDF) an operating income not exceeding $1.65 billion for Q4 2017—a pretty sky-high estimate, considering that the company reported $1.3 billion of operating income in Q4 2016. But that was nothing. Amazon's Q4 2017 operating income was actually $2.1 billion—a cool 69 percent jump over the same period last year.

Enlarge / Lombard Street in San Francisco. (credit: Getty Images | Michael Lee)

San Francisco is trying to find network providers to build a city-wide, gigabit fiber Internet service with mandated net neutrality and consumer privacy protections. It would be an open-access network, allowing multiple ISPs to offer service over the same lines and compete for customers.

The city yesterday issued a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) to find companies that are qualified "to design, build, finance, operate, and maintain a ubiquitous broadband FTTP [fiber-to-the-premises] network that permits retail service providers to lease capacity on the network." The project would also involve a free Wi-Fi service for city parks, city buildings, major thoroughfares, and visitor areas. Low-income residents would qualify for subsidies that make home Internet service more affordable.

ISPs offering service over the network would not be allowed to block or throttle lawful Internet traffic or engage in paid prioritization. ISPs would also need customers' opt-in consent "prior to collecting, using, disclosing, or permitting access to customer personal information or information about a customer's use of the network."

Enlarge (credit: Anadolu Agency / Getty Images)

An appeals court has ruled that Twitter is not liable for the deaths of two American military contractors who were killed in Jordan in 2015.

In a Wednesday decision, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court’s ruling in 2016 for dismissal of the case, Fields v. Twitter.

As Ars reported, the plaintiffs claimed that Twitter violated the Anti-Terrorism Act by providing Twitter accounts to the terrorist group. The plaintiffs, who represent the estate of the two deceased men, did not allege that any specific tweets instigated the terrorist to kill the US contractors, and they did not allege that ISIS recruited or trained the terrorist over Twitter. However, they did claim that Twitter provided “material support” for terrorism by allowing ISIS and its sympathizers on the social media network.