Month: April 2020

Enlarge / The 12.9-inch 2020 iPad Pro with the Smart Keyboard and Magic Trackpad peripherals. (credit: Samuel Axon)

In a surprise push today, Apple has released a software update for iPhones, iPads, and iPods that are supported by iOS 13. Today's iOS and iPadOS 13.4.1 releases are focused on bug fixes.

Most notably, they address a problem caused by iOS/iPadOS 13.4 wherein users running that version could not join FaceTime calls with users running older versions of iOS or macOS—iOS 9.3.6 or OS X 10.11.6 or earlier, to be specific. Users began reporting the issue shortly after iOS 13.4 launched, and the timing was unfortunate given that users have been seeking digital ways to connect with family and friends amidst shelter-in-place orders across the world. Apple claims this issue is now fixed.

iOS 13.4.1 additionally fixed a bug that prevented the Bluetooth option in the quick-actions menu on the homescreen from working. The iPad version of the update also fixes an issue with the flashlight on recent iPad Pro models.

Enlarge / Sure, the locker's locked for now. The companion app and the user's personal data, on the other hand... (credit: Tapplock)

A padlock—whether it uses a combination, a key, or "smart" tech—has exactly one job: to keep your stuff safe so other people can't get it. Tapplock, Inc., based in Canada, produces such a product. The company's locks unlock with a fingerprint or an app connected by Bluetooth to your phone. Unfortunately, the Federal Trade Commission said, the locks are full of both digital and physical vulnerabilities that leave users' stuff, and data, at risk.

The FTC's complaint (PDF) against Tapplock, released Monday, basically alleges that the company misrepresented itself, because it marketed its products as secure and tested when they were neither. A product—any product—simply being kind of crappy doesn't necessarily fall under the FTC's purview. Saying untrue things about your product in your advertisement or privacy policy, however, will make the commission very unhappy with you indeed.

"We allege that Tapplock promised that its Internet-connected locks were secure, but in fact the company failed to even test if that claim was true," Andrew Smith, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a written statement. "Tech companies should remember the basics—when you promise security, you need to deliver security."

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  The new address and search bar in Firefox 75. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

Today, Mozilla rolled out Firefox 75, its latest update for the open source Web browser. The big change is a redesign of the address bar, which comes with some tweaks to how searches work when you're using it.

When you begin using the new search field, you'll notice that it looks a little different; it's larger, and it has a larger font to match.

The drop-down that appears when you click in the search bar will show you multiple options for where to search, like Google or Amazon. That same view will show additional keyword suggestions as you type, with the goal being exposing "additional popular keywords that you might not have thought of to narrow your search even further," according to the blog post announcing the redesign.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by a number of discounts on Nintendo Switch games, with dedicated sales happening at both GameStop and Nintendo's digital eShop.

The big highlight here is likely The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which is down to $40 at GameStop in either physical or digital form. That might not sound like a huge price drop for a (borderline essential) game that came out three years ago, but as with most major first-party Nintendo Switch games, major discounts on BotW have been rare. The game has typically retailed around $50 online, with only one drop to $30 on Black Friday last year. GameStop says its current spring sale will last through April 11.

Beyond that, other quality Switch games like Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze and Octopath Traveler are also down to $40, while notables like Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle and Diablo III are available for less than their usual street price as well. Smaller-scale gems like the golfing RPG Golf Story and the puzzler Puyo Puyo Tetris are also discounted over on the eShop, so there's a good variety out there for anyone who wants something new to play on the cheap while they're temporarily stuck indoors.

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  Fig. 1: A large proportion of Steam's growth in raw titles in recent years has come from games that aren't making even $5,000 in their first two weeks.

It has been roughly two years now since Valve shut off the source of Steam Spy's huge, randomly sampled sales estimates and promised a "more accurate and more useful" replacement to come. We got our first glimpse of what that replacement might entail today, as Valve gave a rare glimpse into its treasure trove of aggregate sales data across thousands of PC games.

The blog post sharing that data correctly points out that the raw number of games finding some minimum level of sales success on Steam has increased vastly since 2012 (when Valve launched Steam Greenlight and loosened its tight control of what games could appear on the storefront). But Valve's selective view of the data leaves out a huge mass of games that make less than $5,000 in their first two weeks on Steam's virtual shelves. An Ars analysis finds those titles have made up the vast majority of Steam releases for the last five years.

Filling in the holes

To get at that data for the charts above, we started with the graphs Valve itself provided in its blog post today. These lay out the number of games making over $5,000, $10,000, $50,000, $100,000, and $250,000 in their first two weeks, respectively, by release year. I used photo editing software to measure and convert the bars in those graphs into raw numbers, but the actual numbers may be off by a fraction of a percentage point from Valve's internal benchmarks (we didn't decipher the graphs for 2005 and 2006, when the total number of Steam releases was too small to draw much meaningful data).

Enlarge (credit: Sethanan Saengsawang / EyeEm / Getty)

The coronavirus crisis has forced the closure of libraries around the world, depriving the public of access to millions of printed books. Books old enough to be in the public domain may be available for free download online. Many recent books are available to borrow in e-book form. But there are many other books—especially those published in the mid-to-late 20th Century—that are hard to access without going to a physical library.

A consortium of university libraries called HathiTrust recently announced a solution to this problem, called the Emergency Temporary Access Service. It allows participating HathiTrust member libraries to offer their patrons digital scans of books that they can "check out" and read online.

Hathitrust has a history of pushing the boundaries of copyright. It was the defendant in a landmark 2014 ruling that established the legality of library book scanning. At the time, HathiTrust was only allowing people with print disabilities to access the full text of scanned books. Now HathiTrust is expanding access to more people—though still with significant limits.