Category Archives: Technology

DARPA Wants to Turn Existing Planes into Drone Motherships

A DARPA artist’s concept of how a flying drone carrier’s takeoff and landing pattern might look.
DARPA

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) kicked off a program seeking ways to convert existing large aircraft into drone carriers that could launch waves of unmanned aircraft a safe distance from a target to carry out a mission and then recover them—all while in flight. DARPA issued a request for information (RFI) kicking off the program November 7.

“We want to find ways to make smaller aircraft more effective, and one promising idea is enabling existing large aircraft, with minimal modification, to become ‘aircraft carriers in the sky’,” Dan Patt, program manager for DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, said in an official statement issued by the agency.

The RFI document says that DARPA is seeking to prove “the feasibility and potential value of the ability to launch and recover volleys of small UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] from one or more existing large platforms (e.g., B-52, B-1, C-130, etc.).” The drones would carry payloads of less than 100 points and would need to be low-cost to be produced in large quantities for the sort of capability DARPA envisions.

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In Detroit and Other Cities, Nearly 40 Percent Go Without Internet

It may be hard to believe, but there are big cities in the US where 30 to 40 percent of residents have no Internet service at all. And among those who are online in America’s worst-connected cities, a sizable percentage get by with only cellular Internet.

That’s according to 2013 census data compiled by Bill Callahan, director of Connect Your Community 2.0, a group promoting Internet access for residents of Cleveland, OH, and Detroit, MI.

Callahan published charts on his blog yesterday showing how many households lack Internet access in the 25 worst connected cities in the US (out of 176 that have at least 50,000 households). In Laredo, TX, 40.2 percent of the 65,685 households have no Internet access, not even mobile broadband on a phone. Detroit was second in this list with 39.9 percent of households lacking Internet. In all 25 cities, at least 29.8 percent lacked Internet access. The 25 cities varied in size from 52,588 households (Kansas City, KS) to 255,322 households (Detroit).

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14 Years After Bush v. Gore, We Still Can’t Get Voting Tech Right

A handful of jurisdictions nationwide reported various computer-related problems that hampered some voters as Americans went to the polls on Tuesday.

As Ars has noted over the last two years, electronic voting (much less Internet voting) is on the decline in the United States as voters and voting officials have placed less and less confidence in machines that were designed to replace confusing paper ballots in the controversial 2000 presidential election and the resulting Help America Vote Act.

On Tuesday, the problems included 11 voting machines in Virginia Beach and Newport News, Virginia that were “knocked out of calibration.” In a statement, the Virginia Department of Elections said that some AccuVote TSX Touch Screen voting machines changed votes to something other than what the voter intended.

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Verizon: ISPs Will Sue Unless Government Adopts Weaker Net Neutrality Rules

Did somebody say “lawsuit”?

Verizon is gearing up for a fight over the government’s latest net neutrality plan, which could impose stricter rules on Internet service providers than a previous net neutrality order that Verizon also sued over.

Verizon sued to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s 2010 Open Internet Order, forcing the FCC to try again. The commission tentatively approved rules in May that would prevent Internet service providers from blocking or degrading traffic from third-party Web services while allowing “fast lane” deals in which companies could pay for faster access to consumers.

But after protest from consumer advocates, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is reportedly close to proposing rules in which ISPs would be treated as utilities. This wouldn’t outlaw fast lane or “paid prioritization” deals but would make it easier for the government to block arrangements deemed harmful to consumers. In a blog post today, Verizon General Counsel Randal Milch said the plan “fairly guarantees litigation.”

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EFF Asks for the Right to Revive “Abandoned” Online Games

Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock

While playing the original versions of classic games on aging original hardware can sometimes be difficult, it’s at least typically possible. That’s not the case for many online games, which are functionally inoperable once the developer or publisher decides to shut down the official servers that provide the only way for players to communicate with each other. Unofficial hobbyist projects that try to create new servers for these abandoned games could run afoul of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and its ban on “the circumvention of access control technologies.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation wants to change that. In an official exemption request (PDF) filed with the Library of Congress this week, the nonprofit advocacy group asks that users be allowed to modify access controls and online authentication checks in legally obtained games “when the [game] servers authorized by the developer are permanently shut down.” In this way, those users can access third-party servers in order to regain “core functionality” that is no longer available through the defunct official servers.

The EFF gives the specific example of Nintendo’s Mario Kart games, which used a proprietary protocol to communicate with Nintendo’s servers before Nintendo shut those servers down for the Wii and DS. Reverse-engineering that protocol could be considered “circumvention” in the DMCA’s current broad prohibitions, as could modifying the game’s code to allow for connection to new, non-Nintendo servers.

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RemoteIE gives free access to Internet Explorer VMs without the VM

For some time now, Microsoft has offered free Windows virtual machine images to make it easier for Web developers to test their work in a bunch of different Internet Explorer versions. A new beta scheme launched today takes that one step further: with RemoteIE, devs don’t even need to download and run the virtual machine. Microsoft will run the VMs instead, using its Azure RemoteApp service to provide remote access.

Access to the remote Internet Explorer is provided through the RemoteApp client. This is a close relative of the regular Windows Remote Desktop app, and like the Remote Desktop app, it’s available on a number of platforms; not just Windows and OS X, but also iOS, and Android.

With RemoteIE, developers have full access to Internet Explorer and all its features, albeit only with software-mode WebGL. F12 developer tools are available, though there’s no ability to install add-ons or extensions to the remote browser. Sessions are limited to 60 minutes presently and will disconnect after 10 minutes of inactivity.

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