Author: Zach Walton

It seemed that CISPA couldn’t get any worse, but its sponsors proved that it could during a rules hearing yesterday. All the of the pro-privacy amendments being proposed were unceremoniously blocked without much of a debate. Now the bill’s sponsors have backtracked by finally supporting a good amendment.

The Hill reports that Rep. Mike McCaul offered up an amendment to CISPA today that has the full backing of CISPA sponsors Reps. Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger. The amendment would ensure that all cyberthreat information being submitted to the government would first go through an entity created by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, both of which are civilian agencies. The amendment was approved in a 227-192 vote.

In the words of Ruppersberger, “This is a huge concession.” Why? The original text of CISPA allowed companies to share cyberthreat information with any governmental agency, including military agencies like the NSA. Privacy advocates demanded that all identifiable information go through a civilian agency first to reduce the chance of abuse.

So, why did Rogers and Ruppersberger back this amendment when they were adamant about not backing any pro-privacy amendments yesterday? It seems that the veto threat from the White House spooked them into backing more pro-privacy amendments in a bid to get Obama’s signature.

“Rogers and I are just trying to deal with the issue of the White House concerns, realizing that if we pass a bill here and it doesn’t pass the Senate and the president doesn’t sign it, we have no bill,” Ruppersberger said. “This threat is so severe, the cyber threat, that we have to do something.”

The amendment is a great first step, but it doesn’t address all the issues that the White House and privacy advocates have with the bill. CISPA in its current state, even with this new amendment, does not address the issue of private information being removed only after it’s already in the government’s hands. The bill also doesn’t remove the provision that grants total immunity to companies that break the law when handing your information over to the government.

CISPA is on track for a full vote on the House floor tomorrow. We’ll be sure to bring you the final vote at that time.

As has become tradition lately, the latest Nintendo Direct included a few huge announcements that made Nintendo fans go absolutely wild.

Of course, you may have missed all the big announcements, like a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, or that Bravely Default is finally being localized. If you missed out on any of it, you can relive it now thanks to the power of YouTube.

The only depressing thing is that this Nintendo Direct focused almost exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS. There are plenty of great Wii U games on the horizon, but it would have been nice some assurance that the Wii U was getting great content sooner rather than later. In the meantime, Wii U owners will just have to settle for the Virtual Console finally launching on the system.

During it’s Nintendo 3DS Direct today, Nintendo announced a number of new games for its handheld device. The most exciting was obviously the announcement of a sequel to A Link to the Past. Beyond that, however, the company also announced a new Yoshi’s Island, Bravely Default and the next Professor Layton title.

The above games are all newly announced for the North American market. What about the already announced games though? Nintendo had more details to share on those as well, including new trailers.

The first trailer is for Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. The latest title in the successful, and very funny, Mario & Luigi RPGs follows the exploits of Mario and Luigi as they attempt to rescue Princess Peach from a dream world. The only way to enter said dream world, however, is through Luigi’s dreams. Inside his dreams, Mario will be battling enemies with Luigi who gains almost god-like powers thanks to his newfound dream abilities.

Up next is Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D. This particular title is a remake of Retro Studio’s wonderful Donkey Kong Country Returns that debuted on the Wii in 2010. Most of the title is a straight up port, but it does have a few new features. For one, the original game was incredibly difficult in later areas so Nintendo is upping the life bar of Donkey and Diddy Kong for players that aren’t ready for the challenge of the normal mode. There’s also a new world with eight new levels to be unlocked for those who beat the main game.

The third is for Animal Crossing: New Leaf. The latest entry in Nintendo’s popular life sim looks to bring more of the Animal Crossing experience that fans have come to expect with the added gameplay feature of the player now being the mayor of their town.

Finally, Nintendo released a new trailer for LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begins. The prequel to Wii U’s LEGO City Undercover, this new title brings the open world gameplay of the console title to the 3DS. Expect more of the zany LEGO humor that you’ve come to expect from the series.

AT&T was the first to announce pre-order details for the Galaxy S4 so it was assumed that it would also be the first carrier to get Samsung’s new flagship device. That’s actually not the case as T-Mobile will be getting it next Wednesday – almost a week before AT&T gets the device.

T-Mobile announced today that the Galaxy S4 will be available on its network starting April 24. The phone will cost $150 upfront, and the rest will be paid off in monthly installments of $20 over the next two years. The $20 installments will be added onto your monthly bill, and will be removed once the phone is paid off.

“Samsung has a proven track record of delivering the ‘Next Big Thing’ in smartphone innovation,” said John Legere, president and CEO, T-Mobile USA. “By combining our bold, Un-carrier moves — no restrictions, no limits and an unbeatable value — with Samsung’s leading-edge technology, you’re going to get the most from your Samsung Galaxy S 4 at T-Mobile —hands down.”

The main advantage of going with T-Mobile over other carriers is its unlimited 4G data plan. For $70 a month, subscribers will get unlimited talk, text and 4G data. T-Mobile’s Galaxy S4 will have an LTE chip in it so it will be able to jump onto T-Mobile’s LTE network once the carrier brings it to more markets.

Unfortunately, unlike every other carrier, T-Mobile will not be offering pre-orders on the Galaxy S4. If you want one, you’re going to have to order it online as soon as it becomes available on April 24. If you prefer to buy your phones at physical retail locations, the S4 won’t be available until May 1.

Remember the HAPIfork? It’s a smart fork of sorts that can track how much and how fast you eat. The thinking behind it is that most of our weight gain comes from eating too much and too quickly. This smart fork would help you control both leading to a better diet and weight loss.

It’s been four months since the fork’s introduction at CES, and now the developers at HAPILABS are ready to bring its smart fork to market. They’re going to need your help though. That’s why the team has taken the idea to Kickstarter asking for $100,000 to turn their smart fork into a reality.

The HAPIfork will retail for $99, but HAPILABS is offering 2,500 smart forks at $10 off via Kickstarter. After the first $2,500 are sold out, then you will have to get the $99 version. These forks will ship in September. If you want to get your smart fork earlier, you’ll have to fork down $300 to become a beta tester. Those forks will be arriving in July.

Nintendo held a Nintendo 3DS Direct this morning. It was assumed that it would focus primarily on already announced titles, but the developer did announce some new games that are sure to excite casual and core 3DS players.

As part of the Year of Luigi announcements, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata announced that the 3DS will be getting a new entry in the classic Mario Party franchise. The game will feature all new mini-games and each game board will have its own unique rules. Mario Party will launch this winter.

Another new title announced is a new entry in the Yoshi’s Island series. The game looks to be similar to the past titles on the SNES and DS, but this new version will include new abilities for Yoshi. One ability shown is a large egg that can be destroy large structures.

As for third party titles, Nintendo announced that Square Enix’ Bravely Default will finally be launching in North America. The RPG is widely celebrated as one of the best that Square Enix has made in recent years.

Level 5 and NIntendo are partnering up again as well to release the latest entry in the Professor Layton series, as well as three new titles that were part of the Guild-02 release in Japan.

Finally, Reggie Fils-Aime announced a new Zelda game for the 3DS. The game is said to be set in the world of A Link to the Past, but it remains to be seen if it will be a sequel or prequel. The game will be utilizing the early 90s design of Link in a top-down world that captures the look and feel of the SNES classic.

In iOS 6, Facebook became more closely integrated with the mobile OS. Part of that integration made it easier to implement Facebook Single Sign-On in iOS apps. Of course, some developers may not like Facebook, or maybe they prefer Google+. For those developers, Google has just the thing.

Join +Silvano Luciani and +Xiangtian Dai from the Google+ iOS team as they show off how easy it is to implement Google+ Sign-In on iOS, using our own iOS quick-start as a guide! Check it out for yourself at developers.google.com/quickstart/ios and leave your questions here!

You’re building a Google Drive app, and now you want to implement a file picker. You can either build your own or use an existing service. Google argues against the former in its latest Google Drive SDK hangout:

Writing your own file picker with the Drive API is easy, right? Not so fast! Watch to find out about the hidden complexity that can turn an otherwise easy task into a pain for users. We’ll show you ways to do it right when you have no choice as well as some alternative approaches that are quick and easy to implement.

Check out more Google Drive news and tutorials here.

Last week, the White House said that CISPA still had some problems that weren’t addressed by the amendments added during its markup period. Unfortunately, the administration didn’t issue a veto threat at that time, but now it has.

In a statement released by the White House today, the Obama administration laid out its beef with CISPA. The first issue it has with the legislation is that it still doesn’t do enough to protect private information:

The Administration, however, remains concerned that the bill does not require private entities to take reasonable steps to remove irrelevant personal information when sending cybersecurity data to the government or other private sector entities. Citizens have a right to know that corporations will be held accountable – and not granted immunity – for failing to safeguard personal information adequately. The Administration is committed to working with all stakeholders to find a workable solution to this challenge. Moreover, the Administration is confident that such measures can be crafted in a way that is not overly onerous or cost prohibitive on the businesses sending the information.

Now this is huge. The administration is saying that companies should not be granted immunity if it uses your private information in an inappropriate fashion. Corporate immunity is one of the cornerstones of CISPA and one of the main reasons the tech industry is so in love with it. If the immunity provision is removed, the backing of the tech industry will vanish along with it.

The other issue is that it doesn’t like how CISPA allows companies to share private information with any agency of its choosing, including the NSA. The White Houses says that all private information should enter government through a civilian agency:

The Administration supports the longstanding tradition to treat the Internet and cyberspace as civilian spheres, while recognizing that the Nation’s cybersecurity requires shared responsibility from individual users, private sector network owners and operators, and the appropriate collaboration of civilian, law enforcement, and national security entities in government. H.R. 624 appropriately seeks to make clear that existing public-private relationships – whether 2 voluntary, contractual, or regulatory – should be preserved and uninterrupted by this newly authorized information sharing. However, newly authorized information sharing for cybersecurity purposes from the private sector to the government should enter the government through a civilian agency, the Department of Homeland Security.

So, what does the White House want to see out of CISPA or any other cybersecurity bill? Pretty much what CISPA is now, but with better privacy protections:

The Administration believes that carefully updating laws to facilitate cybersecurity information sharing is one of several legislative changes essential to protect individuals’ privacy and improve the Nation’s cybersecurity. While there is bipartisan consensus on the need for such legislation, it should adhere to the following priorities: (1) carefully safeguard privacy and civil liberties; (2) preserve the long-standing, respective roles and missions of civilian and intelligence agencies; and (3) provide for appropriate sharing with targeted liability protections.

If Congress can’t agree on a cybersecurity bill that meets the above criteria, the White House says that “senior advisors would recommend that [the president] veto the bill” if it were presented as it is now.

The threat of a veto might help certain amendments to be added onto CISPA before it goes to the floor for a vote this week, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. The bill’s authors seem pretty adamant on passing CISPA as is, and it will most likely die another ignoble death in the Senate as its members push for their own cybersecurity bill.

[h/t: TechDirt]

The Internet infrastructure in the U.S. is pathetic. It’s slow, expensive and run by companies that care more about their bottom line than what their customers actually want. There is one bright spot though – Google Fiber and its record-breaking 1Gbps Internet service. Now a Japanese ISP is aiming to steal some of its thunder.

PCWorld reports that Sony-backed ISP So-net has launched a domestic 2Gbps Internet service in Tokyo and six surrounding prefectures. The download speeds are twice as fast as Google Fiber, whereas the upload speeds are the same 1Gbps.

Surely this super fast Internet must cost an arm and a leg, right? Not at all. So-net is only charging 4,980 yen, or $51, a month on a two-year contact. That’s even cheaper than Google Fiber’s already ridiculously cheap $70 a month just for Internet.

Of course, there are a few reasons why Japan is able to rollout this super fast Internet and ISPs in the U.S. can’t. For one, Tokyo is closely packed in comparison to even our tightest cities making fiber rollout easy. The other, and more crucial, cause is that the Japanese government has been pushing for increased fiber proliferation in the country. Our own FCC has only just started to push for gigabit networks after years of saying 5Mbps down was good enough.

The moral of this story is not to say that Japan has better Internet than us, even if they do. The moral here is that the U.S. still has a long ways to go with its infrastructure before it can start to compete on a global scale. Google Fiber and other gigabit initiatives are doing their best, but we won’t see true results until we start seeing true competition that scares the incumbents into actually upgrading its infrastructure.

Just yesterday, Bethesda Game Studios announced that it’s officially done with Skyrim. The studio is moving all of its team to full time development on its next title, and a recent teaser may point to what that game is.

Bethesda posted the following Vine teaser on its Twitter account today:

vine.co/v/bFPjjheVnau

— Bethesda Softworks (@Bethblog) April 16, 2013

As you can see, there’s no explanation. Many are assuming it’s a teaser for Bethesda’s next game which many first assumed was an impending announcement for Fallout 4 or whatever Bethesda Game Studios is working on next. For Fallout fans, that’s unfortunately not the case as Bethesda’s Pete Hines put that assumption to rest:

@aegies You talking about the Vine thing? Guess again

— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) April 16, 2013

Of course, it’s easy to forget that Bethesda is also a publisher, and the publisher has two games on the horizon. One is codenamed Zwei, a new survival horror game from Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami. The other is an unnamed project from MachineGames, a developer made up of ex-Starbreeze staff. Some are saying that their title is a new entry in id’s celebrated Wolfenstein series.

The funny thing is that the Vine teaser could fit both scenarios. The record is playing Bach’s music, and Bach was German. Zwei is a German term and the creepy mood of the Vine teaser fits a horror-themed game quite well. On the other hand, Wolfenstein traditionally takes place during World War II and has the player fighting nazis in Germany.

Bestheda hasn’t said anything else since the Vine teaser, but we’ll probably learn what the mystery game is soon enough. Besthesda generally doesn’t keep fans guessing for long so we should be seeing a proper announcement before the end of the month.

Late last week, the ACLU reported that the IRS probably obtained emails without a warrant. The group came to this conclusion after an agency handbook from 2009 said that Internet users “do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.” Now the agency is firing back saying it does no such thing.

The Hill reports that IRS Commissioner Steven Miller was present at a congressional hearing today where Sen. Chuck Grassley grilled the commissioner on the agency’s email policy. Miller said that his agency obtains a search warrant before requesting emails, and even went further by saying that the agency never requests emails during civil investigations.

Miller also said that his agency follows the ruling set in United States v. Warshak, a Sixth Circuit Court decision that said the government must obtain a warrant before requesting emails from a service provider. The decision is only binding in the Sixth Circuit, but the IRS says it applies the ruling to operations nationwide.

What’s interesting here is that the documents obtained by the ACLU suggests the IRS does the exact opposite. The documents never explicitly state that the IRS snooped through emails without a warrant, but everything points to this conclusion. Even when taking United States v. Warshak into account, the IRS reportedly said that it only needed to worry about a warrant in the Sixth Circuit.

Of course, senators brought up this disparity during the hearing. Miller said that his agency will work on clarifying its procedures, but still insisted that it obtained a warrant when snooping through emails. Unfortunately, Miller said that he couldn’t say the same thing for other online communications like Facebook messages, but that’s only because he didn’t know the agency’s specific warrant requirements for these new types of communications.

Today’s hearing precedes the Senate Judiciary Committee’s planned markup of the decades old ECPA law on Thursday. Currently, the ECPA lets law enforcement obtain emails with only a subpoena if the email in question is over 180 days old. The bill going before Committee on Thursday will require law enforcement to obtain a warrant when obtaining emails and other online communications regardless of its age.

After a closed door markup, CISPA emerged from the House Intelligence Committee with some new amendments. Rep. Mike Rogers, the author of the bill, said the amendments would address concerns from civil liberty groups. Those same groups could not be in more disagreement as they are still saying that CISPA needs to be changed, or just ditched altogether.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation alongside 33 other civil liberty groups, including the ACLU and Fight for the Future, have sent an open letter Congress urging members of the House to reject CISPA during its vote this week.

Earlier this year, many of our organizations wrote to state our opposition to H.R. 624, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2013 (CISPA). We write today to express our continued opposition to this bill following its markup by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Although some amendments were adopted in markup to improve the bill’s privacy safeguards, these amendments were woefully inadequate to cure the civil liberties threats posed by this bill. In particular, we remain gravely concerned that despite the amendments, this bill will allow companies that hold very sensitive and personal information to liberally share it with the government, including with military agencies.

It’s the idea of sharing information with military agencies that has these groups so concerned. They feel that CISPA would be much more effective if any information sharing was narrowly defined as between companies and civilian agencies:

CISPA creates an exception to all privacy laws to permit companies to share our information with each other and with the government in the name of cybersecurity. Although a carefully-crafted information sharing program that strictly limits the information to be shared and includes robust privacy safeguards could be an effective approach to cybersecurity, CISPA lacks such protections for individual rights. CISPA’s information sharing regime allows the transfer of vast amounts of data, including sensitive information like Internet records or the content of emails to any agency in the government including military and intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency or the Department of Defense Cyber Command.

Finally, the letter questions the need for CISPA at all after President Obama’s cybersecurity executive order, and other laws already on the books, do what CISPA does minus the massive privacy infringement:

Developments over the last year make CISPA’s approach even more questionable than before. First, the President recently signed Executive Order 13636, which will increase information sharing from the government to the private sector. Information sharing in this direction is often cited as a substantial justification for CISPA and will proceed without legislation. Second, the cybersecurity legislation the Senate considered last year, S. 3414, included privacy protections for information sharing that are entirely absent from CISPA, and the Obama administration, including the intelligence community, has confirmed that those protections would not inhibit cybersecurity programs. These included provisions to ensure that private companies send cyber threat information only to civilian agencies, and a requirement that companies make “reasonable efforts” to remove personal information that is unrelated to the cyber threat when sharing data with the government. Finally, witnesses at a hearing before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence confirmed earlier this year that companies can strip out personally identifiably information that is not necessary to address cyber threats, and CISPA omits any requirement that reasonable efforts be undertaken to do so.

These groups represent a pretty formidable opposition, but they have their work cut out for them. TechDirt reported on Monday that IBM will be sending 200 executives to Washington as part of a lobbying effort to see CISPA passed. Why does IBM want to see CISPA passed so badly? The official line is that it wants information sharing between corporations and government to be easier, but the company’s president has also flat out admitted that he wants to be able to send personal information to the NSA because the agency “know[s] the most” about cyber threats.

IBM and other companies that are pushing for CISPA could have nothing but admirable intentions, but it’s hard to believe that when they’re all pushing for a law that would give them complete immunity when sharing your private information with the government.

We’ll continue to follow CISPA as it heads to the House floor for a vote later this week. Don’t get your hopes up though – it passed the House with flying colors last year. We can only assume that the House will do so again this year.

One of the more controversial decisions in Windows 8 was how the OS forced users to boot into the new Start menu metro interface. You could get into the desktop from that, but then you would be without the iconic Start button. There are unofficial workarounds, but nothing official just yet.

That all may be changing if reports from WinBeta over the weekend are to be believed as people are finding an option in the leaked version of Windows Blue that adds a boot to desktop option. ZDNet spoke to a source who said this was the plan while saying that Microsoft will be bringing back the sorely missed Start button as well.

Unfortunately, none of this is set in stone. ZDNet’s source says “Until it ships, anything can change.” Windows Blue, or Windows 8.1 as some are now calling it, will reportedly ship to manufacturers in August. That means we have a few months time in which Microsoft could go back on its currently rumored plans.

Of course, doing so would benefit nobody. IDC recently reported that PC shipments are at an all-time low and much of the blame was placed upon Windows 8. Why are consumers avoiding Windows 8? The report specifically called out “radical changes to the UI” and “removal of the familiar Start button.” If these two issues are affecting Windows 8 adoption then Microsoft needs to address them.

Besides the rumored return of the Start button, Windows Blue will also reportedly feature a number of enhancements to the Metro interface. Users will now be able to resize Live Tiles so more important apps are afforded screen real estate. Multitasking has also been improved with two apps being able to share the equal width on the screen.

Netflix made Samsung Chromebook owners happy last month when it brought instant streaming to Chrome OS through the power of HTML5. It was finally able to do so thanks to a few recent developments made to the Web standard. Now it’s ready to start moving all browsers to HTML5.

In a post on its tech blog, Netflix says that its starting the move to HTML5 because Microsoft is putting Silverlight out to pasture in 2021. That’s not the only problem though. Some browsers, especially on mobile devices, don’t support plugins. This makes it hard for Netflix to deliver streaming video content to every browser on every platform. The move to HTML5 should readily fix that.

Of course, moving to HTML5 does present its own unique obstacles. For one, HTML5 is an open platform, and Neflix, as per its agreements with studios, must implement DRM on its streaming content to prevent people from pilfering the content from its site. Silverlight makes streaming DRM easy, but it’s a bit more complicated with HTML5.

Still, Netflix is moving forward with what it calls “HTML5 Premium Video Extensions.” In short, it’s DRM for HTML5 that comes in three extensions – Media Source Extensions, Encrypted Media Extensions and Web Cryptography API. The first two are already in effect, but the third is still being developed. In the meantime, Netflix is using its own Pepper Plugin API to take the place of the Web Cryptography API until it’s implemented in Chrome.

So, when will we start seeing HTML5 in broad use on Netflix? The company says that it will start testing HTML5 in Chrome once the Web Cryptography API is complete. Unfortunately, the test will only be available for Windows and Mac OSX computers. Those on Linux are left out, and those users are already voicing their displeasure in the blog comments.

The first wave of Google Glass hardware is complete and shipping off to developers soon. Google has also released the API so those developers can start making apps for it right away. The last piece of the puzze then is the hardware specs.

Google released the tech specs for Glass today, and there are few surprises. We knew that Glass was a pretty sophisticated piece of hardware, but the only real surprises are the generous amount of onboard storage (12GB of usable Flash memory) and the battery life. Here’s the full tech spec sheet:

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