Category: Uncategorised

Enlarge / the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Update: Apple's has responded to our request for comment, indicating that all current iPhones are still being sold in Beijing while the company appeals the order. The full statement:

"iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus as well as iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus and iPhone SE models are all available for sale today in China. We appealed an administrative order from a regional patent tribunal in Beijing last month and as a result the order has been stayed pending review by the Beijing IP Court."

Original story: A Chinese regulator has told Apple to stop selling the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in the city of Beijing, according to a report from Bloomberg. The Beijing Intellectual Property Office has ruled that the phones infringe on the external design patents of the Shenzhen Bali 100C, which like the vast majority of smartphones today looks like a gently rounded rectangle.

It's a confusing order, especially given the number of Chinese smartphone makers who design and sell iPhone-esque Android phones. It may be another round of pushback by the Chinese government against an American company, not unlike the decision to shut down the iBooks and iTunes Movies stores in China back in April.

(credit: Erik (HASH) Hersman)

Dave Aitel is CEO of Immunity Inc., an offensive security firm that consults for Fortune 500s and government agencies. He is a former "security scientist" for the NSA and a past contractor for DARPA's Cyber Fast Track program. His firm specializes in vulnerability research, penetration testing and network testing tools. His views don't necessarily reflect the opinions of Ars Technica.

What occurred with the recently disclosed breach of the Democratic National Committee servers, and the dumping of stolen data on a WordPress site, is more than an act of cyber espionage or harmless mischief. It meets the definition of an act of cyberwar, and the US government should respond as such.

The claims by “Guccifer 2.0”—that a lone hacker carried out this attack—are not believable. Of course, anything is possible, but the attack looks to be an operation conducted by Russian intelligence services. Had this been a “normal” operation—that is, covert intel gathering by Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service or any other foreign intelligence service (as the Chinese have done in past election seasons)—it would be business as usual. To be honest, the US government would not really be justified in denouncing it, as it does the same thing. But what makes this attack very different—and crosses the line—is the Russian team’s decision to dump the Clinton campaign’s opposition strategy on the public Web, presumably for the dual purpose of both spreading misinformation about the party responsible for the breach and interfering with the Clinton campaign.

Orbital ATK's Cygnus cargo craft is released by the International Space Station. (credit: NASA)

There are many hazards in spaceflight, but one of the greatest is a fire inside a spacecraft filled with oxygen. Therefore the experiments NASA has conducted to date with fire in microgravity have been small and very well-controlled.

But with its new Saffire experiment NASA decided to go a little bigger. Scientists at Glenn Research Center and 10 other U.S. and international government agencies and universities built a 1-meter by 1.3-meter long module, and placed a 1-meter long cotton-fiber sample inside to burn. Although this burn would be controlled, it was still too risky to conduct the experiment aboard the International Space Station. So when the Cygnus cargo spacecraft departed from the station on Tuesday, the experiment was placed inside.

Shortly after the spacecraft's departure the fire was ignited, and it burned for about eight minutes. NASA released the video on Thursday night of the fire:

Sam and Kyle butt heads over Zelda's new direction. (video link)

LOS ANGELES—30 minutes with the newest Legend of Zelda game is enough to prove out what a dumb idea it is to play a game like this for only 30 minutes—especially one as huge, ambitious, and convention-busting as Breath of the Wild. Nintendo's 2017 title, slated to launch on both the Wii U and the unreleased Nintendo NX system, pushes the boundaries of what people should expect in a "Zelda" video game—or even what it means to be a "Zelda" game.

Before Ars' closed-door session at a private Nintendo booth, we'd all gotten a chance to watch the extensive preview footage that Nintendo had published during this year's E3. Watching video of a game never has the same impact as playing a game, and after putting in some controller time we've come to realize that Breath blows up a lot of Zelda series archetypes. Our demo was split into two portions: a 15-minute "sandbox" session in the middle of the game's opening zone (which we started with more armor and weapons) and a 20-minute shot at the retail game's cold open.