Category: Uncategorised

Duke University Prof. Owen Astrachan in his office. Astrachan testified at the Oracle v. Google trial that Android's used of Java APIs is "fair use." (credit: Owen Astrachan / Duke University)

SAN FRANCISCO—Today was the sixth day of the Oracle v. Google trial, and Google has finished making its argument that it's not a copyright scofflaw for using 37 Java APIs in the Android operating system.

Oracle, which acquired Java when it purchased Sun Microsystems, sued Google over the APIs in 2010. In 2012, a judge ruled that APIs can't be copyrighted at all, but an appeals court disagreed. Now Oracle may seek up to $9 billion in damages, while Google is arguing that its use of the 37 APIs constitutes "fair use."

Today's court action began with a kind of mini opening statement, with lead lawyers from each side presenting the jury with a seven-minute update of where their case stands. After opening statements, Android programmer Dan Bornstein offered about 30 minutes of testimony, responding to issues that Oracle raised on Friday about licensing and "scrubbing" source code. Following a succession of Oracle employees that testified by video and deposition, Google's case drew to a close with the presentation of an expert witness.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL)

Last week, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) sent a stern letter to EMVCo—an organization equally owned by six global payment networks that's responsible for providing standards for chip-based credit and debit cards in the US. Durbin took issue with EMVCo's handling of the chip card roll out, accusing the standards organization of stalling retailers' efforts to get certified and putting off a requirement for PIN authorization in order to line card networks' pockets.

Durbin also sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), asking it to “examine how flaws and delays in the certification process can be addressed.”

Card networks agreed to transition the US from using magnetic stripe credit and debit cards to using chip-based cards years ago. With the backing of the US government, the card networks decided that by October 2015, all retailers in the US would have to have new terminal hardware to accept chip cards, or face liability when fraud occurred on outdated machines. Many other countries in the world have been using chip-based cards for a decade or more.

(credit: Flickr user Rachel.)

Most modern conflicts are civil wars—wars that tear countries apart, sometimes even pitting friends and family against each other. After the fighting dies down, nations are left with a divided populace and are faced with the difficult task of reconciliation. A study published in Science magazine found that post-war reconciliation efforts can lead to an increase in national social capital, but this benefit comes at the expense of individual citizens’ psychological well being.

The researchers examined the consequences of a truth and reconciliation effort in Sierra Leone using a randomized controlled trial approach. The recent civil conflict in Sierra Leone resulted in more than fifty thousand deaths, and more than half of the population was displaced. Violence occurred between neighbors within the same village, and the rebel group frequently recruited and deployed child soldiers.

After the war, the new government set up a national truth and reconciliation program, but this program only covered a small fraction of the war-related trauma. To study the effects of these types of programs, the researchers implemented their own truth and reconciliation effort. It was built around forums where victims of the civil war could describe the violence that they had experienced, and the perpetrators of these crimes could seek forgiveness for their actions.

(credit: Shawn Campbell)

Reports and rumors about changes to Twitter's famous character-count limit became more concrete on Monday thanks to a new report, and the alleged change appears to split the difference between the current model and an unlimited post size.

Bloomberg's report credits "a person familiar with the matter" in claiming that Twitter posts will soon begin serving links and images that do not eat into a post's 140-character limit. The report's source indicated that the change could happen "in the next two weeks" but was unable to offer any firmer timeline. Currently, Twitter automatically shortens any URL or uploaded image into a link that takes up approximately 21 characters.

Many users, including Ars Technica's official Twitter feed, have begun relying on attached, text-filled images to show longer text passages, pull quotes, and the like. We imagine the tiny boost of 21 characters for image posts will simply encourage more users to follow suit, though it remains to be seen how such links will be served, particularly to any users who rely solely on character-limited SMS access. In January, Ars' Peter Bright argued that such image-posting capabilities, combined with a 140-character limit, would preserve Twitter's best attributes better than a previously rumored plan to open posts up to a much larger 10,000-character limit.

(credit: Xbox)

Are you the type to dash madly toward any new online service’s sign-up page even if you think you’ll never touch it again, just to lock down your username of choice? As any good geek knows, handles are a precious commodity, especially for free services that don’t have explicitly advertised nickname-recycling policies.

One online ecosystem, Xbox Live, may have a respite in store for users who want to remove extraneous numbers or characters from their Gamertag of choice. A Monday announcement from Xbox Live PR chief Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb confirmed that a slew of “nearly one million” dormant Gamertags will be made available for qualified Xbox Live Gold members starting on Wednesday, May 18, at 2pm EDT.

Microsoft has apparently been careful about what “dormant” means. This pile of names has been freed from a pool of Gamertags that were created on the original Xbox console and remained unused since that console’s servers went offline in 2010, meaning they were never used to log onto either newer console or through Microsoft’s Web-browser interface. Gamertags have always been free to create, even before Microsoft introduced separate “silver” and “gold” tiers of Xbox Live service on the 360 console, so certain juicy-sounding handles may very well have been created by original Xbox owners who had no intention of remaining longtime Xbox Live gamers. (Microsoft released dormant Xbox Live handles from the original-Xbox era in 2011 as well, but not as many.)

Enlarge / iTunes 12.4. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Apple today released OS X 10.11.5, the fifth major update to OS X El Capitan since it was released last September. The company also released iTunes 12.4, a minor update that tweaks the user interface in an effort to simplify it.

The El Capitan update doesn't change much. There are quite a few security fixes and a few tweaks related to enterprise usage, but little in the way of user-visible changes. iTunes 12.4 is more noticeable change. It doesn't fix the core problem with iTunes—that having one program to handle local music, streamed music from Apple Music, TV and movie purchases, podcasts, and iOS device backups and administration makes for lots of clutter and confusion—but it does present a marginally more streamlined version of the app everyone loves to hate.

The top navigation bar has had several buttons removed, and the app uses a persistent sidebar instead of multiple drop-down menus to let you view your media. iTunes versions of yore also made heavier use of sidebars for navigation—sometimes the old ways really are best. Finally, the back and forward buttons now let you "navigate between your Library, Apple Music, iTunes Store, and more."

NCTA CEO Michael Powell at the cable lobby's annual INTX (Internet & Television Expo) conference. (credit: NCTA )

The cable industry's chief lobbyist today criticized what he called the Federal Communications Commission's "relentless regulatory assault" on the industry, claiming it has been unprovoked by the cable companies themselves.

"What has been so distressing is that much of this regulatory ordinance has been launched without provocation," said Michael Powell, CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA). "We increasingly are saddled with heavy rules without any compelling evidence of harm to consumers or competitors." The FCC's recent actions have not been "modest regulatory corrections," he said. Instead, "they have been thundering, tectonic shifts that have crumbled decades of settled law and policy."

Powell, who was FCC chairman himself from 2001 to 2005, made his comments today in a keynote speech at the NCTA's annual conference in Boston. Four FCC commissioners are scheduled to speak at the conference tomorrow, and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will do so on Wednesday. Wheeler—who was CEO of the NCTA from 1979 to 1984—has been critical of the industry in speeches at the conference in each of the last two years, and he would likely disagree with Powell's assertion that cable companies haven't harmed consumers or competitors.

(credit: squirrel83)

Several years ago, nobody would have believed you if you said that a secret US court was ordering the nation's telecoms to forward the metadata for all telephone calls coming to and from the United States to the National Security Agency. It would have sounded like fiction from some deranged person wearing a tinfoil hat. But it was true. Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the NSA, turned over internal government documents in 2013 that illustrated just that reality. Future document releases would underscore that the United States had been spying on its populace and the world at large to a breathtaking extent.

Snowden, now living in Russia, handed over the documents to reporter Glenn Greenwald, who published many of the juiciest disclosures at the Guardian. Greenwald left the Guardian and took the documents with him to The Intercept, which announced Monday that it is beginning a public document dump of the goods provided by Snowden. Today, The Intercept is releasing its first batch of many classified documents—166 articles of the NSA's internal newsletter called SIDtoday. The site explained:

The Intercept’s first SIDtoday release comprises 166 articles, including all articles published between March 31, 2003, when SIDtoday began, and June 30, 2003, plus installments of all article series begun during this period through the end of the year. Major topics include the National Security Agency’s role in interrogations, the Iraq War, the war on terror, new leadership in the Signals Intelligence Directorate, and new, popular uses of the internet and of mobile computing devices.

Greenwald encouraged "journalists, researchers, and interested parties" to sift through these and forthcoming document dumps "to find additional material of interest. Others may well find stories, or clues that lead to stories, that we did not. (To contact us about such finds, see the instructions here.) A primary objective of these batch releases is to make that kind of exploration possible."