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Glitch preserves game memories via encyclopedia
It's slightly unusual to get a "post-game update" from a closed MMO, but then again, Glitch always was unusual. Tiny Speck wrote a post to thank players for the support and encouragement received following last month's sunset and also to let everyone know that the team is preserving Glitch's art assets and memories through the website's encyclopedia under a Creative Commons license. "When we shut off the servers on December 9th, players left thousands of notes scattered throughout the world. They were wonderful -- sometimes sad, sometimes funny, occasionally weird, and always heartfelt," the team wrote. To honor the players, the staff has included these notes in Glitch's encyclopedia on the location pages. Tiny Speck says that the encyclopedia and other assets will remain up and running even as the rest of the website spins down in upcoming months.
SanDisk releases Ultra Plus and X110 SSDs with speed on a budget
SanDisk is coming to CES with the aim of democratizing solid-state drives, and its new Ultra Plus (X110 for companies building PCs) just might do the trick. The 2.5-inch drive musters 530MB/s peak read speeds and 445MB/s writes, like many higher-end SSDs, but promises to ditch some of the premium we commonly associate with that breakneck pace. The 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities on offer will cost just $75, $110 and $220 -- low enough that we could see them easily slotting in as a fast boot drive or a full-fledged replacement in a laptop. Anyone looking for a quick storage pick-me-up should already find the Ultra Plus waiting at Amazon, Microcenter and Newegg. Follow all the latest CES 2013 news at our event hub.
One Shots: Worlds within worlds
When it comes to winter holidays, I'm always disappointed that they come so darn early in the season. We could really use all that cheer, celebrating, and lighting come, say, February after we've been wallowing in the cold and dark for months. No matter; what's done is done, and we have a giant snow globe as proof. Reader Trevor sent in the following picture from Guild Wars 2's Wintersday, as he took a photo of a world within the larger world and wrote, "Happened upon this giant snow globe amongst the flurry of gifts, giant flying colorful snowflakes, and Wintersday cheer. If you listen closely, you can hear my computer screaming in pain." Oh, we'll make more than your computer scream in pain before this column is done!
One Shots: Laser light shows
Ancient civilizations always seem to have the flair for the dramatic, especially if they were sitting on suspiciously advanced technology. We begin our trip through One Shots today with a look at Star Wars: The Old Republic's newest PvP warzone and its so-called "ancient" artifacts. Reader John was captivated by the look of this machine: "It would be fair to say that much of SWTOR looks like either the traditional fantasy MMOs we've all played before or a series of corridors. With Ancient Hypergates, however, BioWare has delivered an incredible-looking area that feels perhaps like a cross between Mass Effect and Halo, though of course the lightsaber battles that take place across this arena add the necessary 'Star Wars' touch." Carry on, my wayward sons and daughters, and join us as we dive further into the visuals of MMOs than any who have come before.
One Shots: The hills have eyes
Do you ever get the feeling you're being watched? It's because you are, fool. Everything has its eyes on you, even the mountains themselves. Case in point: this screenshot from reader Chris, who found himself amazed at the artistry of Guild Wars 2 and the slight creepiness of mountains with facial features. "In a quest during Guild Wars 2 around level 60," Chris writes, "you are asked to go up a big hill into the face of the mountain (literally) and shutdown the machine. I took the screenshot at the start of the quest because the world is so beautiful." If our games are going to look at us, we might as well return the favor! Hit the jump for more excellent screenshot submissions.
Macronix plans to heat up flash memory to keep it from burning out
Despite the looming threat of being replaced by phase-change memory, contemporary memory modules aren't quite ready to be shown the door -- engineers at Macronix have found a way to revive spent NAND flash cells. Most flash modules fail after being written to and erased about 10,000 times, but Macronix found that the tired memory could be restored by baking it for extended periods of time. The team funneled the time consuming and cumbersome solution into a more practical package: a redesigned memory chip that packs onboard heaters. The new modules are designed to periodically heat focused groups of memory cells to 800 °C (1,472 °F) for a few milliseconds, effectively "healing" worn cells. Researchers found that heated chips could tolerate more than 100 million write/erase cycles and erased faster at higher temperatures. The team said the power drain of the heaters shouldn't effect battery life, either -- chips don't have to be heated often, and when they do, it can be done while prospective devices are recharging. Macronix will be presenting the technology at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting next week, but project deputy director Hans-Ting Lue wouldn't say when the company plans on taking the technology to market. Lue was willing to speculate on what might become of it, however. "This may evolve into a 'thermally assisted' mode of operation that gives both better performance -- such as the faster erasing -- and better endurance flash memory." Faster, more reliable, super-heated memory. Sounds fine by us. [Image credit: Emily Cooper, IEEE]
One Shots: Dearly departed
Today's One Shots will be a more somber one, as we strive to honor two MMOs that are passing into history. First up is the dearly departed City of Heroes, which Reader Michelle apparently loved quite a bit. She sent us in several screenshots, including one of her supergroup, Part Time Heroes. "Here's a group of my friends during the Mortimer Kal Strike Force," Michelle writes. "My character is Astral Black, a Warshade who should be my last level 50. She's the one in the purple and black crop top." Head onward for more personal dedications, but be warned: You may be misty-eyed by the end.
Securing Your Mac: A Guide for Reasonable People, Version 1.0
"How do I protect my Mac online? Should I run any 'security' applications on my Mac?" That question arrived several weeks ago via the contact form here at TUAW, and I have been trying to come up with a reasonable answer to it ever since. That question, or a variation of it, comes fairly regularly. Usually the person asking it has switched from Windows to Mac, and has brought with them an expectation that they should run some sort of anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-malware programs. It's easy to be glib and say that the only really safe computer is one that is turned off and locked away. Conventional wisdom would have you believe that Mac users don't care about security, or think they are immune to security problems. That is a myth for everyone except Artie MacStrawman. On the other side, you have tech pundits who have been predicting the "downfall" of Mac security since 2004, and every time there is even the slightest bit of security news, there are plenty who want to jump and point and say "See! We told you Macs were no better than Windows!" Many of those articles and much of the hype about protecting your Mac comes from companies which also happen to sell you protection against these potential harms. The argument generally goes like this: "It is inevitable that Mac OS X will eventually have problems like Windows has, so you should buy one of our programs to protect yourself for when that inevitable day arrives." Ironically, one of the biggest security problems that Mac OS X has faced was the Flashback Trojan in April 2012, and none of the Mac anti-virus companies made much of a big deal about it at the time because none of them caught it before it was already identified as a problem. So What Is a Reasonable Person Supposed to Do? I have spent some time gathering information on what I believe are reasonable steps which will allow you to continue to use your Mac on a regular basis, and which will also protect you in case something does happen of any sort of "malware" whether that is a trojan horse, a virus, spyware, or any such thing. This advice comes to you from a neutral party. I do not have any financial stake in selling you software or services, nor do I believe the myth of the impenetrable computer, no matter what operating system you use. You will notice that many of the suggestions that I make are not specifically about protecting yourself from malware, in fact, a lot of it would apply if all you were worried about was what might happen if your computer was ever lost, stolen, or destroyed in a fire or other disaster. (Oh, and one last bit of prologue: while I did decide to number these so they could be easily referred to, I did not try to come up with a certain number of steps that you should take.) Step 1) Make Backups: Use Time Machine. Telling people to make backups is like telling people to eat better and get more exercise. Almost everyone knows that they should do it, almost everyone believes that they should do it, but far too many people still don't do it. But if you ignore everything else I say, please listen to this: Make backups. There's really no excuse not to make backups on your Mac. Every Mac comes with Time Machine, a built-in backup solution which is as easy as buying a second hard drive and plugging it into your Mac. Time Machine will prompt you to start using it, and will automatically keep things backed up. Using Time Machine is like wearing your seat belt in a car. Just do it, no excuses. Step 2) Make Backups: A Bootable Clone. Time Machine is great, but don't stop there. If you really want to be safe, you should have a clone if your hard drive. A clone is an exact copy of your drive which you can use to boot your computer in case the hard drive dies. You can make one of these using Disk Utility, but I suggest SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. Using Time Machine and bootable clone is like wearing your seat belt and having insurance. It's just a good idea. Extra Credit: If your house or apartment burned down tomorrow while you were away, would it take out your computer and your backup? What if someone broke it and stole your computer and backup drive? For these reasons, people often suggest having an off-site backup. There are several ways you can do this. The simplest path to offsite backup is making two clones of your drive, and bringing one somewhere like your office or a friend's house. OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion also makes it easier to alternate drives for Time Machine, allowing you to rotate drives in and out at will. Either way, you'd have a copy of your data locally and one someplace else. But both of those approaches require you to update those backups periodically and physically move the drives around. A more hands-off solution would be something like BackBlaze or CrashPlan or Mozy or Carbonite or JungleDisk or another app that does real-time, off-site backups. CrashPlan actually allows you to "buddy up" with a friend or family member who has a high-speed Internet connection; you back up to a spare drive at their house, and they can do the same at your place. Step 3) Use Dropbox for your most important files. Dropbox isn't a backup system per se, but it does have a few things to offer that can be quite helpful when dealing with computer security. The first is that as soon as you save a document to your Dropbox folder (or any of its sub-folders) it is immediately copied to the Dropbox website. That means that in a matter of seconds, there is an off-site backup copy. If you are working on a file at 10:15 a.m. and spill your coffee on your laptop at 10:20 a.m. Dropbox is the best chance you have of getting an up-to-date copy of that file. Likewise, if some sort of a security breach affected your computer and corrupted or deleted your files, Dropbox can help here too. First of all, Dropbox keeps all revisions of a file going back 30 days. Using the Dropbox web interface, you can go back and compare versions, and find the last safe, clean copy of an infected file. Dropbox will also let you restore files which have been deleted in the past 30 days as well. (There's an add-on service called pack-rat which will let you recover files beyond 30 days -- indefinitely, in fact.) File corruption can be a much more difficult problem to solve than file deletion. Being able to easily compare versions is a significant feature. Apple's Time Machine can do that as well, but by default it only runs once per hour, and a file you are actively working on may have been changed many times during that hour. Dropbox and Security: Some people might object to recommending Dropbox as a security feature because what you are doing is copying a file to a 3rd party where it could (theoretically) be compromised by a security leak at Dropbox. To me, it comes down to a matter of trade-offs. First of all, I don't have anything that would quality as "state secrets" in my Dropbox. My most important confidential information is stored in 1Password, which is encrypted on disk before being sent to Dropbox and is protected by what I consider to be a very secure master password (based on the information I learned by reading Toward Better Master Passwords and Better Master Passwords: The geek edition). Secondly, I consider accidental deletion or data corruption (or a hard drive crash) as much more likely than someone breaking into Dropbox to get at my files. Dropbox works for me because I don't have to think about it, it just runs, automatically, all of the time, on all of my computers. A reasonable person might decide to encrypt sensitive files locally before saving them to Dropbox. (You can do this for free with Disk Utility and an encrypted disk image, or use something like Knox.) You can also achieve similar sync-to-the-cloud results with Google Drive, SkyDrive, SugarSync or Dolly Drive. Step 4) Be Careful Where You Get Your Software. Now we are moving beyond the realm of backups and multiple copies of files and getting into computer security from malware. The most likely way that some sort of malware will get installed on your computer is by someone (or you) installing it, thinking that they are installing something else. If I can write a program and convince you to run it and enter your password when prompted, I can do pretty much anything to your computer. If you find a program through BitTorrent which claims to be some high-end software for OS X that you want but don't want to buy (or can't afford), you might be tempted to download and install it. You might tell yourself that you aren't going to use it often enough to justify buying it, or maybe you want to try it out before you decide to buy it. Whatever the reason, the problem is that you don't really know what you're installing. It might be a "safe" version of a cracked program, or it might be a program that will also install some other kind of malware on your computer alongside of the program that you think you are getting. Once you start installing software from an untrustworthy source, you're setting yourself up for trouble. So what is a reasonable person to do? Use the Mac App Store Apple promotes the Mac App Store as a safe place to buy and install software. Many applications are available for free, and overall the price of software these days is incredibly low for what you get. While no system is 100% foolproof, the odds of downloading some sort of malware from the Mac App Store are extremely remote. Use trusted third-party software. The downside to the Mac App Store is that Apple has placed so many restrictions on what apps can do, that many excellent, useful, trustworthy applications just are not available on the Mac App Store. I download and install third-party software all of the time, and I do so with confidence because I take what I consider to be reasonable precautions. Starting in OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion), Apple introduced Gatekeeper which is designed to be another layer of protection against malware. By default, Gatekeeper will only allow you to run applications from the Mac App Store or from "identified developers" who have paid US$100 for a developer license and cryptographically signed their software to make sure that it hasn't been tampered with. Macworld has a good article explaining what Gatekeeper is and isn't. It is possible for a malicious developer to develop a malicious program, sign up for Apple's developer program and distribute that program on their website. However, the chances of that seem relatively slim. What is much more likely is that you might find a piece of software that you want to run, and see a warning that it is from an unknown developer. You might choose to open it anyway. This is where things start to get more difficult because there are legitimate apps out there which are made by legitimate developers who have not cryptographically signed their software. It may be that the software is a few years old and was developed before Gatekeeper was introduced. It may be that the developer made the app in his/her spare time and didn't feel like paying Apple for a developer certificate. A reasonable person has to weigh the potential consequences and likelihood of this application being some sort of malware. Has the app been reviewed by a reputable Mac-related website? Is it a well-known app? Be careful of any software which arrives via email or on some random tucked-away page on a web forum, etc. Step 5) Read first, install last. Perhaps the most important thing you can do to protect yourself is to stay up-to-date on Mac news. A story about an actual Mac malware problem is going to be very widely-reported. This does not mean that you need to refresh your browser or RSS feeds every 15 minutes, or that you need to read every Mac-related site out there. But take a quick glance through the headlines each day to stay informed. This goes along with checking for reviews of software that you are considering installing. Or try a simple search for the application and look for reviews from sites you've heard of before, like TUAW. As a corollary to that point: don't be the first one to try every new app that comes out. Let tech writers risk their computers. If you find something brand new, bookmark it and make yourself some reminder to check it out in a day or two. 999,999 times out of 1,000,000 it's going to be just fine, but Not Being First might be your best chance of not being that unlucky "one in the million." Do You Need Anti-Malware Software for Mac today? My answer is no. Is it possible that at some point in the future, Mac OS X users will need to run real-time anti-virus and/or anti-spyware software? Yes. It is likely? No. Mac security software has not shown itself capable of catching new attacks in real-time, and there are not many attacks to be protected against. If you insist on running anti-malware software for Mac, try either ClamXav or Sophos. Pick one but not both. Running two of these kinds of programs will cause far more problems than either one will solve. Just remember, whenever you read a claim that Mac malware is either an unavoidable inevitability (or a current reality), check to see if the person who wrote the article sells Mac security software. Use the tools Apple provides. Apple gained a reputation for not being overly concerned with security, but that seems to be slowly changing. They have published a page of security features in Mac OS X 10.8 called Safety. Built right in. There are several built-in features that you can control as well: Mac OS X has a firewall built-in. Go to System Preferences » Security & Privacy and see if it is enabled. (Your router may also have a firewall built-in.) While you are in System Preferences, look under "Sharing" and turn off anything that doesn't need to be on. Safer Safari There are several changes that you can make to Safari to make it safer. First, go to Preferences » General and uncheck the box next to "Open 'Safe' files after downloading." You may remember that browser security has most often been compromised through Adobe Flash, such that a security contest winner gave this advice: "The main thing is not to install Flash!". Java was also a recent security hole on OS X. It is possible to disable both Plugins and Java by going into the Safari Security Preferences, and unchecking the boxes shown here: I don't find myself needing Java in Safari all that often, so I find it simple to disable that altogether. I also regularly disable plugins, but I'm not sure I would go so far as to say that is a reasonable step for most people. Many would probably find it frustrating and annoying. Instead, I would encourage you to consider using the ClickToPlugin & ClickToFlash Safari extensions which will prevent plugins from running automatically but which let you run them when you want. That seems to be a much more reasonable and balanced approach. A Reasonable Protection If you made it to the end, I have a bonus suggestion which I think offers the best balance between practicality and security in protecting yourself from future malware threats. To understand how this tool works, you have to understand the system that Apple uses to launch programs (either visible apps or background daemons) whenever you reboot your computer and/or log into your computer. For example, when I log in, several applications start right away. I can see some of these by going to System Preferences » Users & Groups and then selecting my user account and 'Login Items' as shown here: But those are only some of the applications and daemons that run automatically. OS X has several different folders which can be used to auto-launch programs via the launchd system: ~/Library/LaunchAgents /Library/StartupItems /Library/LaunchAgents /Library/LaunchDaemons /System/Library/LaunchAgents /System/Library/LaunchDaemons /System/Library/StartupItems I checked those folders on my computer and found there were over 400 entries. That does not concern me at all, because not all of those programs are running, and the ones that are running provide some kind of service or benefit. However, this is also the most likely place that a piece of malware would try to hide. What do most people do if their computer starts acting strangely? Chances are good that they will reboot it. So if you were trying to get some kind of malicious software on someone's computer, the first thing you would try to do is make sure that if someone reboots their computer, your software will start up again. In fact, to avoid detection you might not want your program to do anything at first except make sure that it will start up when the computer is rebooted. Therefore, a good way to protect yourself is to keep an eye on these various auto-launch tools, and be notified whenever something is added to them. The tricky part is making sure that you don't overreact just because something happens in one of those folders. Chances are good that you had no idea those 400+ things existed, and none of them were malicious. Computers do a lot of good things in the background that we don't want to be constantly bothered with knowing about. Think about this sort of like you think about your basement or storage area in your house: you might have a lot of stuff in there, and you might not even need to care about most of it, but you would want to know if someone put something in your basement without your knowledge. The folks at CIRCL (Computer Incident Response Center Luxembourg) created a free tool to detect when something has been added to the automatic launch settings for OS X. You can download it at http://www.circl.lu/pub/tr-08/ and it will give you an alert whenever something is added to one of those folders. More detailed information about using that tool is available at MacFixIt. As long as you remember that this system is detecting all activity not just malicious activity then this could be a very powerful "early warning" tool. Because it is only checking a few, very specific places, it should not add any noticeable performance drain on your computer, unlike many other anti-malware tools. It is not a 100% guarantee of protection, but it is a very good reasonable precaution to make. Don't Panic, Do Plan Despite warnings of the "inevitability" of malware on the Mac, the reality has been a very limited sphere of trouble. That doesn't mean that you should ignore the possibility of there ever being problems, but right now there just is not much that I can recommend for proactive protection beyond backups, caution, and common sense. I have labeled this guide "Version 1.0" because it may need to be updated in the future, but this represent the most reasonable balance, in my opinion, for the reality of today's Mac user. Version history: 2012/12/01 -- Minor typographical edits. Amended backup section to note multi-volume Time Machine, CrashPlan buddy backup. Amended sync section (Dropbox) to cite other sync vendors.
Glitch's creator on the game's failure: 'Too foreign of a concept'
If you're looking for just one reason why Glitch is sunsetting, you're out of luck. If you're looking for many, many reasons why Glitch failed, then all you have to do is pull up a chair in front of Tiny Speck's Stewart Butterfield and listen to him talk. Butterfield spoke with Gamasutra about the myriad of reasons why Glitch didn't take and ultimately had to be shuttered. "Ultimately if I have to identify one thing as the problem -- I don't think there is just one -- but if I had to choose just one," Butterfield said, "I think the game was too foreign of a concept for most people." He pointed out that while there was a devoted fan base who "got it," marketing the title presented severe problems throughout most of the game's lifespan: "There haven't ever been other non-combat MMOs that are based on absurdity, humor, and whimsy. I'm not sure anyone has the specific expertise in making this thing work." Other failures that Butterfield identified was a lack of fun gameplay until recently, the decision to do the game in Flash instead of for mobile platforms, large expenditures of money, and Tiny Speck's big team drawing salaries.
Free for All: Justifying the subscriptions I maintain
Subscriptions are a funny thing. For as long as I can remember, they've represented a level of quality to many gamers. To those players, only those funny Eastern MMOs didn't have a sub. Granted, I loved a lot of those funny Eastern games and didn't care how a game monetized itself. Watching Western players spin on a dime about subscriptions has been a pretty weird experience. The Western developers have changed as well, providing tiered services and other models that would have been seen as suspicious only years ago. I've been known as a free-to-play guy for a while. Heck, I was originally hired here at Massively to cover free-to-play games. Now that there are more free games than not, this column has spread out a bit, covering multiple topics. Payment models do still come up, as they did this week. I thought it'd be cool to examine the subs I do maintain and why -- not press accounts or accounts from long before I began working at Massively, but accounts that I choose to pay for with my own money.
One Shots: This is the end, my friend
What do you imagine the end of the world looking like? I'm willing to bet it's nothing like the following technicolor nightmare ripped straight from the finale of the first version of Final Fantasy XIV. Reader Focant delivers this haunting image with a description of the videopocalypse: "The Garlean forces held nothing back in their battle against us, and attacked with their most destructive weaponry. The most powerful enemy we saw on the battlefield that night was the level 100 (the player cap is 50) Imperial Juggernaut, an enemy that is only seen one other time in game. I made sure to include a player character in the shot as well for size comparison. These things are massive!" And with that we're off to another wild and wooly edition of One Shots! Please put your tray tables in their full upright and locked position.
MMObility: Why the closing of Glitch matters
When it was announced that Glitch was closing, I felt a blend of shock and sadness. Glitch is one of my favorite MMOs, but it's special for a number of reasons. The game achieved a lot in a crowded market that is filled with the same gameplay, same lore, and same stock characters that we have seen for years, and it achieved all of this within a Flash-based browser environment. The official announcement gave us a lot of clues as to what happened, but it looks like the money was just not enough to keep the game afloat. It's also very possible that the money was enough, but just barely. Running a business is hard, and running an MMO that is so unique and unusual can be the same as living paycheck to paycheck. It's stressful and scary when the future is never certain... sometimes it's easier to call it quits.
The Daily Grind: Do sunsetted games owe us refunds?
When Tiny Speck announced last week that Glitch would be shutting down come December 9th, the studio simultaneously did something that few closed MMOs do: It offered complete refunds for past subs. Sure, some companies have offered free game time or bonus cash-shop currency for their other games, but that's usually small consolation. NCsoft grudgingly provided refunds for unused timecards and long-term recurring subs when it set City of Heroes' closure date, but virtually no one provides a complete refund of all the subscription money you ever paid for the game. On Black Friday, it seems as if half the world is out shopping, looking for a good deal and with money on the brain, so today's an appropriate day to ask: Do sunsetted games owe us refunds? And if you were offered one, would you take it? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Puffin browser gets faster Flash support, virtual gamepad
Third-party browsers for iOS have carved a niche in the App Store, and there are dozens of options claiming to be the best. The Puffin Web Browser is one of the more popular choices, and a new update adds even more features. Among them are a faster, smoother Flash engine and a nifty onscreen game pad for playing web games. Flash on an iOS web browser is always a big deal, and Puffin's newly revamped functionality works extremely well for pre-recorded video content and streaming. The ability to map the arrow keys to the virtual gamepad is also a really slick new addition, and if your favorite web game doesn't have an iOS app counterpart, playing via the browser is a suitable substitute. The app is $2.99, but there's also a free version that you can try before you throw down the cash.
One Shots: Out in the cold
Closing down a game like Glitch is like beating up the big-eyed orphan from down the street for his last two cents; it just feels wrong to anyone with a soul. Massively's One Shots department did its best to counter the situation by taking an angry protest nap, but nothing doing. The next best solution is to ask all of you with great Glitch screenshots to send them our way. Reader Jeremy submitted this haunting picture that works on a couple of different levels in light of the recent announcement. "Kids," he warns, "this is a warning of the harmful effects of No-No Powder. One day, you're sitting in your pleasant home street, admiring the view. Next, you're waking up naked in a tundra with nothing but your quickly diminishing dignity." Let's go on a cold, naked adventure together through the rest of this week's player-submitted pictures!
Vudu brings HDX 1080p streaming and downloadable movies to PCs
While HDX video has been a trademark for the Vudu service for years, when it launched streaming and Vudu-to-go downloads for PCs last year, they were limited to standard definition. That's been corrected recently, as the service is now offering 1080p or 720p HDX video via the web. What you still won't get on the PC unfortunately is higher quality sound as it's still limited to stereo audio for now, and in our tests we weren't able to access the Flash streams on a phone or tablet. Just log into the website and you should be able to try it out for yourself, however you will need adequate internet speed and an HDCP-compliant display -- check out the details at the link below.
Flash finally sandboxed in Google Chrome for OS X
The fastest web browser on the Mac just got a little safer. With Chrome 23, Google has introduced a "sandboxed" version of the Adobe Flash plug-in, which helps prevent its use in exploits that could allow harmful code to be run without the user's knowledge. Computerworld reports that Google engineers rewrote the Flash plug-in to comply with its own PPAPI (Pepper Plugin Application Programming Interface) standard. It had previously used the older NPAPI (Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface) standard. The OS X version of Chrome is actually the last to receive the PPAPI version of the Flash plug-in. It hit Windows platforms in Chrome 19 and Linux in Chrome 20. Chrome OS has had sandboxed Flash for more than a year. Chrome is the only mainstream Mac browser that ships with its own independent instance of the Flash plugin. Firefox, Opera and Safari all use Adobe's installable Flash Player, which can be updated and managed via System Preferences. Apple ceased bundling Flash Player on OS X back in 10.7 Lion, and starting with Safari 5.1.7 (released with OS X 10.7.4) the homegrown Apple browser will automatically disable Flash Player builds that are out-of-date or insecure.
Samsung's new 10nm-process 64GB mobile flash memory chips are smaller, faster, better
Even though Samsung only announced volume production of ultra-fast eMMC memory chips back in August, it's already upgrading to a newer generation of hardware. Moving from the previous 20nm process to 10nm, the new 64GB eMMC Pro Class 2000 has a 20 percent smaller physical footprint, and claims 30 percent advantages in both performance and manufacturing productivity. While its previous chips only starting taking advantage of JEDEC's eMMC 4.5 interface standard a few months ago, Samsung plans to approach the group next year to create a new standard that can handle this design. It has a write speed of 2,000 IOPS (input/output per second) and a read speed of 5,000 IOPS, besting the 1,500/3,500 numbers reported on the older hardware, and kicks up the bandwidth to 260 MB/s read and 50MB/s write. These chips went into production late last month and are destined for slim phones and tablets near you, even if they don't say Samsung on the outside.
Glitch closing down, cites limited audience
The word is out and it is sad: "Glitch is over." Tiny Speck delivered the shocking news today, saying that the 2-D browser title will be closing forever on December 9th. The team said that it is "heartbroken" to have to announce this, and apologized for letting its fans down. Apparently, the game simply could not find a critical mass large enough to be financially viable. The developers explained it simply: "Unfortunately, Glitch has not attracted an audience large enough to sustain itself and based on a long period of experimentation and our best estimates, it seems unlikely that it ever would." While Tiny Speck will continue with a smaller team working on other projects, many of Glitch's developers are now looking for work elsewhere. The studio posted a closure FAQ that included reasoning behind the shutdown and information on how to obtain refunds for money spent on the game. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
Google touts improved Flash Player security in Chrome for Mac, says it's safer than ever
Needless to say, Adobe hasn't had the best of times when it comes to the overall reliability of its Flash Player on Apple-made devices -- so much so that Steve Jobs took it upon himself to write some thoughts about it a couple of years ago. Thanks to Google, though, Adobe can proudly say it's famed Flash Player is now more secure than it's ever been -- well, at least on Chrome. According to Google, both companies have been working closely since 2010 to find ways to improve the security aspects of the famed plug-in, noting that some of the most recent enhancements can now be found in the latest Stable release of the browser -- in which a novel plug-in architecture is used, allowing Flash to run "inside a sandbox that's as strong as Chrome's native sandbox." The Flash plug-in improvements within Chrome aren't just for Mac users, however, as Google has said Adobe's Player is now fully sandboxed on Windows, Linux and, of course, its own Chrome OS as well.
