Putting hard drive reliablity to the test shows not all disks are equal
Failure rates vary from 2 percent to 24 percent per year, depending on make, model.
Top Post: Putting hard drive reliablity to the test shows not all disks are equal
In-Depth Reports
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Scientists detect “spoiled onions” trying to sabotage Tor privacy network
Rogue Tor volunteers perform attacks that try to degrade encrypted connections.
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Water, water everywhere—in our Solar System
Solar wind and space dust combine to create water; process works on the Moon, too.
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Stealth marketing: Microsoft paying YouTubers for Xbox One mentions [updated]
Machinima campaign offered undisclosed money to videos promoting new console.
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Open source smart thermostats rise to compete with Nest after Google acquisition
Spark, Adafruit, and homebrew solutions dip their toes in smart home territory.
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What’s in a common dictionary name: King’s tenuous “Candy” trademark
Candy Crush Saga maker has an uphill battle to defend its published mark.
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Think your Internet blows? Try $300 for 3Mbps DSL and a data cap
Rural ISP's financial problems lead to high prices and data overage fees.
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DWave’s updated quantum optimizer gets beaten by a classical computer
Some individual problems show a possible speedup, but they're the exceptions.
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Chemical process turns any plant matter—even trees—into biofuels
Nearly any plant material can be broken down into simple sugars.
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New documents: NSA provided 2-3 daily “tips” to FBI for at least 3 years
Secret 2007 court order mentions "approximately three telephone identifiers."
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DayZ Early Access impressions: Surviving in the land of glitches
There's a compelling PvP experience hiding somewhere underneath all those bugs.
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Dotcom’s Baboom service launches in NZ: “Only pay for music if you like it”
UPDATE: Dotcom's call to action helps new album, Good Times, hit No. 8 on NZ iTunes.
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Silicon Valley fights to keep its Dutch Sandwich and Double Irish loopholes
Taxes on tech firms are "going to go up and they are squealing like stuck pigs."
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Intel’s mini PC gets less mini, but will hold more storage
New version of the NUC will fit a 2.5-inch HDD or SSD alongside everything else.
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Relief as Rosetta wakes, but we continue to hold our breath
The goal: Landing on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
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Nest CEO makes more promises about keeping Nest away from Google databases
Nest's transparency and opt-ins may not help future customers.
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Quasar illuminates a cosmic filament—and a mystery
Filament is just like we'd predicted, except for a bad case of gas.
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Did life start with a replicating molecule or a metabolism?
Despite lots of progress on the origins of biomolecules, we're still not sure.
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Kim Dotcom’s answer to Spotify and iTunes—Baboom—will soft launch on Monday
The first artist to be featured on the music service? Kim Dotcom himself.
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Western Digital My Cloud Review: The $150 personal cloud
WD's small single-disk network storage system is surprisingly cheap and good.
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How do you know if you’re overthinking development?
What to do when a senior dev says, "F*ck the future, build for now."
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Ars readers donated over $23,000 in the 2013 Ars Charity Drive
Since 2007, Ars readers have given over $140,000.
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When it comes to video games, difficulty is the point—not the problem
The journey of discovery and mastery balanced between frustration and simplicity.
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Giant laser could arrange particles into enormous space telescope
All we need is 200 square kilometers of solar panels to power it.
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Op-ed: Star Trek’s expanded universe is a glorious mess
Is it that much better than the Star Wars EU, or is it all about what we read growing up?
Feature Story
Can former “pirates” fix a broken movie market?
Government didn't provide adequate IP structure, so Ecuador movie fans did it themselves.
Latest Story
On The Radar
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free money
Feds: Thieves with Bluetooth data skimmers stole over $2 million
13 men were charged with identity theft in a Manhattan District Court.
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the comeback of live
Amazon may start live Web TV service to compete with cable [updated]
Although the retail giant has denied that it will license TV content.
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Back in black
AMD's quarterly profit shows it's the real winner of the game console wars
Selling chips to all three console makers is apparently good for the bottom line.
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Get out of my dreams
Developer screenshots may show off Apple’s “iOS in the Car” progress
Apple's in-car integration is rumored to be coming in iOS 7.1.
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tiny screen, big trouble
Homeland Security special agents hold up a Google Glass moviegoer
The possibility of piracy was enough to shake a man down for illegal footage.
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Yup. Still warm.
Last year ranks among warmest on record (again)
NASA and NOAA have released global average temperatures for 2013.
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Trustworthy Conferencing
“TrustyCon” security counter-convention planned for RSA refusniks
Security experts boycotting RSA’s conference can hit TrustyCon—same day, one block away.
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Let's keep this FRAND-ly
Cable companies open new front in “Rockstar” patent war
New lawsuit claims company hides patents, demands massive fees.
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magnum simulacrum
Tuesday Dealmaster has monitors, tablets, and droids
If a 24" U2414H monitor for $269 doesn't grab you, how about your very own R2D2?
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*click*
Verizon to purchase Intel’s Media division
FiOS subscribers may be the first outside of Intel to experience the IPTV service.
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BSD isn't dying
OpenBSD rescued from unpowered oblivion by $20K bitcoin donation
Electricity bill will be paid after intervention from the MPEx Bitcoin stock exchange.
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You can go your own way
China builds own phone OS, aims to be more secure than Android or iPhone
US surveillance and the end of support for Windows XP played into its creation.
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I saw what you blogged last summer
Vietnamese hackers target EFF staffers, journalist in phishing attack
Malware part of a campaign to spy on, silence bloggers and other critics.
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Better than President Skroob
Internet users ditch “password” as password, upgrade to “123456”
Contest for most commonly used terrible password has a new champion.
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Windows 8.1? Never heard of it.
HP offers Windows 7 on some new PCs “by popular demand”
Old software (and a $150 discount) is a new feature for 3 desktops, 2 laptops.
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marginal margins
Dell in talks with IBM to buy Big Blue’s x86 server business
After talks with Lenovo broke down last spring, IBM tries again.
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Update for your last update
Surface Pro 2 update, mark two
Release follows December firmware update pulled over battery life problems.
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Rock and roll
Donut-sized rock suddenly appears in front of Mars rover
Where did that come from?
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From on high
Supreme Court will hear case on police search of cell phones
Whether cops can search an arrested suspect's phone without a warrant is TBD.
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Gaming & Entertainment
Anchorman 2 was Paramount’s final release on 35mm film
The studio is the first major one to go all-digital, and all the others will follow.
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today in bad ideas
Fetuses and other things that should never be 3D-printed
It's all fun and games until someone starts making creepy keepsakes.
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Staff Blog
Stop trying to innovate keyboards. You’re just making them worse
The less standard a keyboard is, the worse it is.
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ouch, right in the graphics
Report: Some 2011 MacBook Pros with AMD GPUs experiencing hardware failures
Apple initiated a repair program for 2011 iMacs with similar GPUs.
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Twice the bits, twice the fun
64-bit Bay Trail-powered Android tablets to arrive this spring
But desktop PCs, not tablets, were the surprising success story last quarter.
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cue "I'm free" by The Who
Rdio introduces unlimited free streaming alongside subscriptions
There are still some restrictions, but it's the most free Rdio has ever been.
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Hard times
Nintendo slashes Wii U sales projections, predicts loss
Nintendo now hopes to ship just one-third of its original console target.
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Godwin's lesson plan
Texas’ possibly unconstitutional biology lessons now happen in charter schools
With biology textbook battles behind the state, its charter schools may be next.
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going hands-off for heads-up
Report: Valve has “no current plans” to release its own VR headset
Instead, company plans to "continue to work with Oculus" on the Rift.
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sold!
Feds ready to auction off $25 million in Silk Road Bitcoin
Funds seized from alleged Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht are still in contention.
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WHAT YEAR IS IT?
Google introduces smart contact lens project to measure glucose levels
Google[x] has a contact lens that can measure glucose levels in the wearer's tears.
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high-impact science
CERN contest to give students access to accelerator’s proton beam
Got an idea for a bunch of 25GeV protons? Now's your chance to use them.
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Samsung tablet #348562
Samsung’s Galaxy Tab3 Lite should be its cheapest tablet ever
Samsung takes on the cheapest Android tablets with a device expected to be <$100.
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Feature Story (3 pages)
Rewinding to Betamax: The path to consumers’ “right to record”
30 years ago today, a landmark ruling set technology free.
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Feature Story (3 pages)
Bitrot and atomic COWs: Inside “next-gen” filesystems
We look at the amazing features in ZFS and btrfs—and why you need them.
Ars SmartStream
Exploring the smarter Internet
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IBM | 12/23/13
Too Much IT Operations Data? Try Analyzing It with Cognitive Insights
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GCN | 12/23/13
Massachusetts launches open cloud to spur big data R&D
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Midsize Insider | 12/17/13
Cloud, Core and Competition
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Ars Technica | 12/14/13
British Library sticks 1 million pics on Flickr, asks for help making them useful
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Midsize Insider | 12/13/13
Democratization of Big Data for Marketing in Any Size Organization
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Stay in the know with
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Feature Story (2 pages)
How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing
In the early '90s, Quark boasted 95% market share. In '99, InDesign arrived...
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Feature Story (2 pages)
CES 2014: What we saw, what we loved, and what we’ll remember
Wearables, cars, Linux, Android, games, and the people behind the craziness.
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Ars Feature Story Archive →