Month: September 2015

Whatever disputes arch-rivals Google and Microsoft have, today they’ve agreed that patent litigation isn’t the right way to settle them.

The two companies have released a joint statement announcing that they’ve reached “an agreement on patent issues,” which includes dismissing all patent lawsuits between the two companies, including Motorola cases. Financial terms are confidential. The full statement says very little:

Microsoft and Google are pleased to announce an agreement on patent issues. As part of the agreement, the companies will dismiss all pending patent infringement litigation between them, including cases related to Motorola Mobility. Separately, Google and Microsoft have agreed to collaborate on certain patent matters and anticipate working together in other areas in the future to benefit our customers.

Microsoft sued Motorola in 2010 for patent infringement, and Motorola counter-sued later that year. Both lawsuits were inherited by Google when it bought Motorola the following year.

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Microsoft said a highly suspicious Windows update that was delivered to customers around the world was the result of a test that wasn’t correctly implemented.

“We incorrectly published a test update and are in the process of removing it,” a Microsoft spokesperson wrote in an e-mail to Ars. The message included no other information.

The explanation came more than 12 hours after people around the world began receiving the software bulletin through the official Windows Update, raising widespread speculation that Microsoft’s automatic patching mechanism was broken or, worse, had been compromised to attack end users. Fortunately, now that Microsoft has finally weighed in, that worst-case scenario can be ruled out. What follows is the remainder of this post as it appeared before the company issued its explanation.

(credit: Rachel Johnson)

The US Department of Transportation (DOT) says security researchers tinkering with vehicle software shouldn’t be allowed to go public with their findings. The agency “is concerned that there may be circumstances in which security researchers may not fully appreciate the potential safety ramifications” if their findings are released in the wild.

That’s according to a DOT letter (PDF) to federal IP regulators who are considering a proposal to allow the public to circumvent copyright protection measures attached to vehicle software. Known as “technological protection measures” (TPMs), automakers employ this type of copyright scheme in a bid to make it a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) violation to examine or tinker with the code in onboard vehicle software.

The debate over whether vehicle owners have a right to tinker with the software on their vehicles—just like they have the right to change their own oil—comes amid a growing and global in-vehicle software scandal at Volkswagen. And it comes as the US Copyright Office is considering a proposal from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others that would authorize such tinkering without chilling researchers’ speech.

Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor whose leaked documents opened a worldwide discussion about government surveillance, joined Twitter this morning. So far, he’s amassed more than 400,000 followers, but he follows only one account: @NSAGov.

Can you hear me now?

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 29, 2015

Twitter created a GIF showing how his account acquired followers around the world in just a few hours.

Today @Snowden joined Twitter, and here’s the world’s response. pic.twitter.com/d6HgVvdRsf

— Twitter (@twitter) September 29, 2015

The @Snowden account carries a blue check mark, indicating that his identity has been verified by Twitter. His only substantive conversation so far has been with Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist and all-around science-communicator-guy, who recently interviewed Snowden on his show Star Talk Radio.

(credit: Shawn Campbell)

Twitter and some of its most enterprising users have found simple ways to get around the service’s major limit of 140 characters per post, whether by enabling full-Tweet embeds, offering username tags within photos, or making it easier to read images loaded with text. But according to a Tuesday report by Re/code, the 140-character wall itself may soon crumble.

Citing “multiple people familiar with the company’s plans,” Re/code hinted at “a new product” that would allow Twitter users to exceed the default post length. However, the report didn’t clarify whether that would be in the form of a brand new app or some other option, and it was anchored with a warning that “the long-form feature may never make it to consumers.”

That may be because the company is also internally mulling ways to retain the 140-character limit while removing other text bottlenecks. According to Re/code, elements such as links and usernames might no longer count toward post lengths.