Jason Koebler writes: Gumball, a game released in 1983 for the Apple II and other early PCs, was never all that popular. For 33 years, it held a secret that was discovered this week by anonymous crackers who not only hacked their way through advanced copyright protection, but also became the first people to discover an Easter Egg hidden by the game's creator, Robert A. Cook. Best of all? Cook congratulated them Friday for their work.
The article attributes the discovery to a game-cracker named 4am, who's spent years cracking the DRM on old Apple II games to upload them to the Internet Archive. "Because almost all of the games are completely out of print, all-but-impossible to find, and run only on old computers, 4am is looked at as more of a game preservation hero than a pirate."

The FBI did turn to NSA when it was trying to hack into the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, according to an NSA official. But to many's surprise, one of the world's most powerful intelligence agencies couldn't hack into that particular iPhone 5c model. "We don't do every phone, every variation of phone," said Richard Ledgett, the NSA's deputy director. "If we don't have a bad guy who's using it, we don't do that." According to Ledgett, apparently the agency has to prioritize its resources and thus it doesn't know how to get into every popular gadget. According to the report, the agency is now looking to exploit Internet of Things, including biomedical devices. The Intercept reports: Biomedical devices could be a new source of information for the NSA's data hoards -- "maybe a niche kind of thing ... a tool in the toolbox," he said, though he added that there are easier ways to keep track of overseas terrorists and foreign intelligence agents. When asked if the entire scope of the Internet of Things -- billions of interconnected devices -- would be "a security nightmare or a signals intelligence bonanza," he replied, "Both."

Slashdot reader Qbertino describes himself as a "happy tablet user," moving from an old HTC Flyer to his Yoga 2. But he notes that most other tablets "have laughable battery times," and "I've yet to find a tablet that does not give me storage or memory problems in some way or other, lasts for a day or two in power and doesn't feel chintzy and like it won't stand a month of regular everyday use and carrying around..." He asks why none of the manufacturers seem willing to offer more than one gigabyte of RAM -- and why they're so stingy with storage. "Where is the rugged 16GB RAM / 1TB Storage / 20-hour battery tablet?"

So leave your educated opinions in the comments. What are your thoughts on the current tablet market? And are they the ultimate all-purpose "convergence" device that Apple and Ubuntu seem to think they are?

It's no secret that Apple makes a ton of money by charging 'astronomical' fee for replacing and fixing display and other components of iPhone and iPad (as well as Mac line). For instance, the company charges $599 for replacing the display on the iPad Pro tablet. Which sounds insane when you realize that you can almost certainly purchase a new iPad Pro under $700. And this is what most people do. A Huffington Post article notes that this behavior has contributed significantly in "generating heaps of e-waste." Citing many advocates, the publication claims that Apple has "opposed legislation that could help curb it." From the report: The Huffington Post spoke with politicians in two states who support such legislation, and confirmed through government filings that Apple has lobbied on the issue. Four states -- Minnesota, Nebraska, Massachusetts and New York -- have considered adopting "right to repair" amendments, which would update existing laws regarding the sale of electronic equipment. Amending these laws would make it easier to fix your devices and would help reduce "e-waste," a catch-all term for any electronic detritus. The New York State Senate and Assembly could approve one of these amendments next week. This would help unofficial repair shops get the information they need to fix your iPad, ideally driving down repair costs and encouraging you to squeeze more life out of your old devices -- thus cutting down on the e-waste generated by our voracious appetites for new gadgets. Apple asserts that it helps recycle millions of pounds of electronics equipment every year. But it won't support right to repair amendments.One would ask what is preventing a user from getting their device repaired by unofficial service person? In addition to the security implication, you also run a risk of getting your device bricked by Apple. To recall, the iPhone maker was found bricking the handsets that had been repaired by third-party vendors earlier this year.

Dave Knott writes from a report via Popular Science: Popular Science has an article detailing Campus 2, Apple's upcoming headquarters, including a video with a tour of the complex which is still under construction. The Spaceship, as many have nicknamed it, is over one mile in circumference and when it is completed later this year it will house 13,000 employees. Its exterior will largely be composed of thousands of huge curved glass planes; the floors and ceilings will be constructed from hollow concrete slabs that allow the building to "breathe," bolstering its eco-friendly qualities. Campus 2 will run entirely on renewable energy, with rooftop solar panels providing an output of 16 megawatts of power and acting as the campus's primary energy supplier. Upon completion, the main building will have four stories above ground and three below, with numerous other facilities including seven cafes, a fitness center and a 120,000 square-foot theater where Apple will hold its famous product announcements. Construction on the building is expected to be finished by the end of 2016. Interesting facts: Apple used 4,300 concrete slabs, weighing a total of 212 tons, to create the structure. The Spaceship also features 330-ton, 92-foot-tall steel reinforced doors for its restaurant -- the dining-hall doors alone span 60,000 square feet and collectively weigh 330 tons. The campus boasts 900 panels of vertical glass, 1,600 panes of canopy glass, 510 panes of clerestory glass, and 126 panes for skylight glass (3,000 total). The total cost of the project is approximately $5 billion.

An anonymous reader writes: Google has announced in a blog post Friday their support for the controversial Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership (TPP). Recode reports: "The trade agreement includes key provisions about the global passage of digital data, intellectual property and copyright -- measures that have drawn criticism from both the political right and left, including several outspoken tech groups. Google's endorsement isn't exactly full-throated, but its stake clearly demonstrates another key area of support with the Obama administration, to which Google is close." Google's SVP and general counsel Kent Walker wrote: "The TPP is not perfect, and the trade negotiation process would certainly benefit from greater transparency. We will continue to advocate for process reforms, including the opportunity for all stakeholders to have a meaningful opportunity for input into trade negotiations." The company has already shown support of the TPP behind the Internet Association, which endorsed the trade agreement in March. Google joins a list of other tech titans, like Apple and Microsoft, who have shown their support as well. The Electronic Frontier Foundation calls the TPP a "secretive, multinational trade agreement" that will restrict IP laws and enforce digital policies that "benefit big corporations at the expense of the public." The TPP is still awaiting congressional approval after being signed in February.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Networkworld: When Apple released the iPhone 6s, it included a great new Siri feature which enables users to activate the intelligent assistant via voice. Dubbed 'Hey Siri,' the feature is particularly convenient because the iPhone 6s' M9 motion co-processor is 'always listening' and thereby lets users use 'Hey Siri' even when the device isn't connected to a power source. Recently, Stacey Gleeson of Australia used the 'Hey Siri' feature to successfully call an ambulance while she was tending to her daughter Giana who had stopped breathing. "I picked her up and sat down with her on the floor," Gleeson said in an interview. "And as I checked her airways, I looked over and remembered my phone." Thinking quick on her feet, Gleeson said, "Hey Siri, call the ambulance." Fortunately, Gleeson managed to resuscitate her daughter while the ambulance was in route. And while it's impossible to know for sure, it's entirely possible that the time Gleeson saved by not having to call an ambulance manually helped save her daughter's life. "Saving me the trouble of having to physically dial emergency services was a godsend," Gleeson said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Mac: Apple has quietly created an energy subsidiary, 'Apple Energy' LLC, registered in Delaware but run from its Cupertino headquarters. The company has seemingly formed to allow it to sell excess electricity generated by its solar farms in Cupertino and Nevada, with plans to sell electricity across the whole of the U.S. But a set of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission filings suggests that Apple could have bigger ambitions in the power field. Currently, when private companies sell their excess power, they can only do so to energy companies -- and they often (varies by state) have to sell at wholesale rates. What Apple seemingly could to do, however, is sell directly to end-users at market rates. In other words, get paid retail prices for its excess power. Currently companies like Green Mountain Power can sell green renewable energy to homeowners all over the U.S. It wouldn't be a stretch to see Apple do this as a product in the future. Apple has told the FERC that it meets the legal criteria for selling electricity at market rates because it is not a major player in the energy business and thus has no power to influence electricity prices. It has requested permission begin within 60 days of its filing on 6th June.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Recode: Apple announced a new revenue sharing model on Wednesday that would give developers more money when users subscribe to a service via their apps. Instead of keeping 70 percent of all revenue generated from subscriptions, publishers will be able to keep 85 percent of revenue, once a subscriber has been paying for a year. Google has decided to match Apple's latest offering. It too will move from a 70/30 split to a 85/15 split for subscriptions. However, instead of requiring developers to hook a subscriber for 12 months before offering the better split, it will make it available right away. Sources have said Google has been testing the new model over a year ago with video services in a way to get Play subscriptions to work with its TV streaming offerings like the Chromecast. Google has yet to announce when their new pricing plan will roll out. In other Google and Apple related news, Google's AI 'TensorFlow' software is coming to iOS to allow the iPhone to be able to run more sophisticated apps.

An anonymous reader writes: Google published an early version of TensorFlow that adds support for iOS. TensorFlow is "neural network" software that lets computers process data in a way similar to our own brain cells. Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently said it advances machine learning capability by a factor of three generations. With the software running on your iPhone, its capabilities will allow for more sophisticated apps to run on iOS. We can expect the apps to be released later this year and into next year from Google and others who use TensorFlow. Some of the tasks TensorFlow can allow for include being able to recognize subjects in photographs or being able to teach your phone what a particular object looks like, which is what another neural network software project called MemKite aims to do. Google has released its TensorFlow software as open source, where anyone can use or modify it for free.

Quartz did a story in 2014 in which, citing comScore's data, it noted that most smartphones users download zero apps per month. Two years later, the data from Nomura reveals that the top 15 app publishers saw downloads drop an average of 20% in the United States. While there are exceptions -- Uber and Snapchat continue to attract new users worldwide -- it appears that developers are finding it increasingly difficult to get new people to download and try their apps. Recode reports: But now even the very biggest app publishers are seeing their growth slow down or stop altogether. Most people have all the apps they want and/or need. They're not looking for new ones.What's your take on this?

Apple says it will now take a smaller cut of commission from app developers provided they have customers who stick with their subscription model for longer than a year. Phil Schiller, Apple's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, told The Verge in an interview that the company will revise the 70-30 split for such developers to 85-15. In addition, the company will also begin showing search ads for apps in its iOS App Store search results. Also, the company says it is speeding up app review times "to the point where 50 percent of submitted apps are now reviewed in 24 hours, and 90 percent are reviewed within 48 hours." From the report: If the new subscription model becomes widely adopted, it will represent a fundamental shift in the economics of the App Store. Developers will be incentivized to sell their apps for a recurring fee instead of a one-time cost. It could change the way consumers pay for certain apps, but it also presents a massive opportunity for developers, many of whom feel the app economy has been become moribund in recent years. And as iPhone sales growth slows, a move to app subscriptions is another way for Apple wring more profits from its existing user base.Apple columnist John Gruber has more details.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Mozilla today launched Firefox 47 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The browser has gained a sidebar for synced tabs from other devices, improvements to YouTube playback and HTML5 support, and is seeing the end of support for Android Gingerbread. [If you're logged in with your Firefox Account, the sidebar will show all your open tabs from your smartphone and other computers. The sidebar even lets you search for specific tabs. Next, Firefox 47 supports the open source VP9 video codec on machines with powerful multiprocessors. VP9 is the successor to VP8, both of which fall under Google's WebM project of freeing web codecs from royalty constraints.] Firefox 47 is available for download on Firefox.com, and will be slowly released on Google Play. You can view the full Firefox 47 changelog here. If you're a developer, Firefox 47 for developers offers more details for you.

An anonymous reader writes: A team of researchers want to replace transistors with vacuum tubes. Vacuum tubes are nothing new, however the ones in development at Caltech's Nanofabrication Group are a million times smaller than the ones in use 100 years ago. "Computer technologies seem to work in cycles," Alan Huang, a former electrical engineer for Bell Laboratories, told the New York Times. "Some of the same algorithms that were developed for the last generation can sometimes be used for the next generation." Dr. Axel Scherer, head of the Nanofabrication Group, said to the New York Times on Sunday, "Ten years ago, silicon transistors could meet all our demands. In the next decade, that will no longer be true." He argues silicon transistors can only take us so far. Vacuum tubes, for comparison, use tiny metal tubes that can control the flow of electricity. They're especially intriguing to researchers as they can provide a better solution to silicon transistors as they can consume less power and take-up a much smaller footprint. The report mentions they have the potential to bring an end to Moore's Law, even if silicon transistors show no signs of disappearing. For example, Lockheed Martin published new cooling methods in March that could help cool chips with tiny drops of water. With that said, Boeing has invested in researching vacuum tube chips. They may appear in the aviation industry before 2020, but it's unlikely we'll see Caltech's research appear in smartphones anytime soon.

Traditional companies continue to score a huge number of patents, reports Quartz. The publication deep dived into the patent filings to find which company has been awarded the most number of patents this year. According to its finding, IBM has been awarded 3,617 patents so far this year, whereas Samsung comes close with 3,032 patents during the same period. Behind these giants sit Google with 1,530 patents, Intel with 1,293, Qualcomm with 1,262, Microsoft with 1,232, and Apple with 1,060 patents. From the report: Although IBM's patent-producing power slowed somewhat in 2015, the number of patents it's received so far this year is up more than 13% compared to a year earlier. The company is in the middle of a painful reinvention, that sees the company shifting further away from hardware sales into cloud computing, analytics, and AI services. It's also plugging away on a myriad of fundamental scientific research projects -- many of which could revolutionize the world if they can come to fruition -- which is where many of its patent applications originate. IBM accounted for about 1% of all US patents awarded in 2015.

Apple services went offline for up to 7 hours Thursday -- and the company has yet to offer an explanation. An anonymous reader writes: The outage affected the App Store, iTunes in the Cloud, Apple TV, Mail Drop, Find my iPhone, and Photos. During the outage, Apple responded to complaints on Twitter, "Thank you for the information. We're aware of this issue and are investigating," Tech Times reports that the iCloud Music Library had also experienced an outage on Wednesday, and that just weeks ago Apple released an operating system update which bricked several iPad Pros. And yesterday Amazon also experienced a service outage.

You will be hearing a lot about AI and machine learning in the coming years. At Recode's iconic conference this week, a number of top executives revealed -- and reiterated -- their increasingly growing efforts to capture the nascent technology category. From a Reuters report (condensed): Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet's Google, said he sees a "huge opportunity" in AI. Google first started applying the technology through "deep neural networks" to voice recognition software about three to four years ago and is ahead of rivals such as Amazon.com, Apple, and Microsoft in machine learning, Pichai said.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos predicted a profound impact on society over the next 20 years. "It's really early but I think we're on the edge of a golden era. It's going to be so exciting to see what happens," he said.
IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said the company has been working on artificial technology, which she calls a cognitive system, since 2005 when it started developing its Watson supercomputer.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant "neural laces" in their brains to keep up, Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told a crowd of tech leaders this week.Microsoft, which was absent from the event, is also working on bots and AI technologies. One company that is seemingly off the picture is Apple.

MojoKid quotes a report from HotHardware: If you head over to Apple's website, the Cupertino outfit will happily sell you a 27-inch Thunderbolt display for $999, at least until its inventory runs out. Word on the web is that it's nearly out of stock and Apple doesn't plan to replenish them. Instead, Apple will launch a new version of its Thunderbolt monitor, one that's been upgraded to a 5K resolution and has a discrete GPU stuffed inside. It's an interesting product actually, if you think about it. Depending on the task, it can take some serious graphics muscle to drive a 5K resolution display. It amounts to over 14.7 million pixels (5120x2880), compared to Apple's current generation Thunderbolt display which runs at 2560x1440, or less than 3.7 million pixels. Apple's thinking is likely that if it integrates a GPU capable of driving a 5K resolution into the display itself, it won't have to worry about trying to balance graphics performance with thin and light designs for its future Mac systems.

An anonymous reader writes: Mojang has announced today that its game 'Minecraft' has passed 100 million sales across all platforms, including PC, Mac, consoles and mobile. Nearly 53,000 copies of the game have been sold every single day around the world since the beginning of the year. What may be even more impressive is the fact that more than 40 million people actively open up a Minecraft world each month and play around with a blocky axe, shovel and sword. According to Wikipedia, Minecraft is the second-bestselling video game of all-time next to Tetris. Tetris has sold a whopping 495 million copies, so don't expect Minecraft to earn the number one spot anytime soon. Microsoft did acquire Mojang almost two years ago, and there has been no word on a sequel as the company continues to release Minecraft for new platforms like HoloLens and Samsung's Gear VR. Soon, there will even be a version made just for China too.

Brittany A. Roston, writing for Slashgear: In 2014, smartphone shipments grew a massive 27.8-percent, and the next year, 2015, smartphone shipments grew by 10.5-percent. The International Data Corporation (IDC) expects that we'll see a substantial slowdown in shipments this year, with 2016 (possibly) ending up at around only 3.1-percent. According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, this year will probably see about 1.48 billion smartphone shipments, a number that is estimated to climb to 1.84 billion by 2020.According to IDC, Android will see a YoY (year-on-year) growth of 6.2%, whereas Apple's iOS will drop by 2% this year. Also this year, the average selling price of an Android handset will be $218, which IDC expects to fall below $200 in 2019.