Home Internet with Anonymity Built In

Many political activists, nonprofits, and businesses use an anonymity system called Tor to encrypt and obscure what they do on the Internet. Now the U.S.-based nonprofit that distributes Tor is developing a low-cost home router with the same privacy protection built in.

The Tor software masks Web traffic by encrypting network messages and passing them through a series of relays (each Tor client can also become a relay for other users' messages). But using Tor has typically meant installing the software on a computer and then tweaking its operating system to ensure that all traffic is routed correctly through the program.

"We want to make anonymity something that can happen everywhere, all the time," says Jacob Appelbaum, a Tor project developer. "When you are connected to a router with Tor inside, all your traffic goes through Tor without you changing your system at all. It makes it simple to use."

Appelbaum says volunteers are already testing a small number of modified routers with Tor installed. The prototypes were made by installing new software onto a popular low-cost wireless router made by Buffalo Technology. The software was developed by Appelbaum and colleagues at Tor and is based on the work of the OpenWrt project, which offers open source code for networking equipment. The finished routers can be configured to pass all traffic through Tor, or only some kinds of communications. "You might want to run your VOIP device through Tor but not your other traffic," Appelbaum explains. They will also be capable of simultaneously offering Tor-protected and conventional wireless networks.

"If we find that these routers are useful [in the trials]," he says, "we could partner with OpenWrt and Buffalo to offer a version for sale that helps support the Tor and OpenWrt projects." The software will also be made available for people to install on routers they have bought themselves, Appelbaum says.

Besides serving as Tor clients, the new routers will help anonymize the traffic of other Tor users. This means that they could help boost the performance the Tor network.

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Mass Effect 2 vs Dragon Age: Origins

Mass Effect 2 vs Dragon Age: Origins

Posted on 19th Dec 2010 at 11:28 by Clive Webster with 30 comments

It?s curious that two similar games from the same games studio differ so much in how enjoyable they both are. While Mass Effect 2 feels fresh and vivid, Dragon Age feels dull, clichéd and derivative. That?s quite an achievement, considering that both games are set in unique worlds and both have essentially the same plot. What?s so wrong with Dragon Age to provoke such a reaction?

To me, almost everything that could be wrong with Dragon Age is, barring catastrophic failure. The graphics look poor, with basic and blocky geometry, low-res textures and too much shininess. While ME2 shares some of these characteristics, it?s less noticeable ? sci-fi clothing is meant to be shiny and robots and machinery are meant to be blocky in shape.

The gameplay of Dragon Age falls into the tired format of slogging through lengthy dungeons. I found myself wondering what on Earth I was actually doing at numerous points in each mission, and the only answer I could come up with was ?it?s a dungeon, crawl through it till you get to the boss at the end.? This meant the game comprised of slogging across the world, fighting irritating bandits along the way, and then slogging through a dungeon full of the same kind of enemy. Thrilling...

Meanwhile, the missions of ME2 felt more fun and were more varied ? the siege of Archangel had different sections that encourage different ways of playing, while Jack?s rescue was a full-on firefight, while Tali?s loyalty mission had a great sense of dread about it. All these missions had a tight focus and felt compelling to play. It?s no coincidence that ME2 is the only game I?ve ever started replaying as soon as I?d finished it (in fact, it?s one of the games I had any interest in re-playing at all).

Even the tone of Dragon Age left me underwhelmed ? the buckets of blood that was thrown over everything in sight, and the supposedly tough moral choices. I felt no remorse at killing a demon-infested child, but felt the need to think much more about decisions I made ME2 as I actually cared whether or not I closed off missions or friendships with the characters (even if this is fairly hard, in reality).

It?s baffling that Ferelden felt so tired when the galaxy of ME2 feels so fresh and interesting, but if you?re going to use the same old stereotypes (Dwarves are miners, Elves are fey and aloof and so on) and only mix in some generic ideas of world cataclysm, that?s the inevitable result. A hodgepodge of the blandest parts of Robert Jordan and Tolkien is hardly the way to go for a brand new game world; I?d like to recommend that the next time Bioware looks to do a fantasy game it puts Steven Erikson, George R.R. Martin and Glen Cook on the required reading list before writing a word.

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Pakistan Spy Chief Will Not Appear in U.S. Court

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan ? Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan said Thursday there was no possibility that the head of the country?s powerful spy organization, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, would obey a summons requesting his appearance before a court in the United States over the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Mr. Gilani made the announcement while addressing lawmakers in the National Assembly. ?ISI being an extremely sensitive and important organization would not be asked to appear before a U.S. court,? Mr. Gilani said.

The comments were in response to a wrongful death lawsuit filed last month in a federal court in Brooklyn by relatives of victims in the Mumbai attacks, which left 175 people dead including the nine attackers.

Claiming damages, the lawsuit names Lt. Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the director general of ISI, and his predecessor, Lt. Gen Nadeem Taj and Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the banned militant group that India and the United States consider responsible for the attack on Mumbai, India?s financial capital.

The lawsuit alleges the ISI is complicit because it nurtured Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Mr. Saeed, a cleric who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980?s, formed Lashkar-e-Taiba, vowing to free the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is claimed by both India and Pakistan.

Pakistani officials vehemently deny any allegations of the involvement of the ISI in the planning or execution of the attacks in Mumbai.

Earlier in the session of the National Assembly on Thursday, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the leader of the opposition, had expressed concerns over news that that the ISI chief had been summoned by a court in the United States.

The speech by the opposition leader seemed intended to whip up the nationalist sentiment. Mr. Khan denounced the U.S. court summons as a move to pressure Pakistan. ?We will not allow any institution to be taken hostage by any international organization,? Mr. Khan said.

The ISI said through a spokesman that it bound to follow the directives of the Prime Minister?s government. ?It has made clear that nothing of the sort will happen, the spokesman said. ?Nobody can force anything on us. We are a sovereign nation.?

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Blog - Best of 2010: Microbial Life Found in Hydrocarbon Lake

Pitch Lake is a poisonous, foul smelling, hell hole on the Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago. The lake is filled with hot asphalt and bubbling with noxious hydrocarbon gases and carbon dioxide. Water is scarce here and certainly below the levels normally thought of as a threshold for life.

These alien conditions have made Pitch Lake a place of more than passing interest to astrobiologists. Various scientists have suggested that it is the closest thing on Earth to the kind of hydrocarbon lakes that we can see on Saturn's moon Titan. Naturally, these scientists would very much like to answer the question of what kind of life these places can support.

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Acer readies Aspire One 522 with AMD Fusion

Acer is reportedly among the manufacturers looking to utilize AMD's forthcoming Fusion chips, which incorporate a CPU and GPU into the same package. According to Macles, the Taiwanese system builder is preparing at least one mobile PC that is powered by AMD's C-50 Ontario APU, which features two 1Ghz Bobcat x86 cores (9W TDP) as well as Radeon 6250 graphics with support for DirectX 11 and UVD3 for accelerated video decoding.

Macles reports that the Acer Aspire One 522 uses a similar chassis design to the Aspire One D255, except it loses the textured touchpad and dons a new green color scheme. The netbook will sport a 10.1-inch 1280x720 display, HDMI and VGA-out, three USB ports, a webcam, and a multi-card reader. Acer will supposedly market the system with an emphasis on HD media, given the 720p screen and support for video acceleration.


Most of the Aspire One 522's remaining specifications will mirror the D255's, though it only carries a single speaker. Interestingly, battery life is rated at six hours, which is two hours less than the D255. We haven't seen any information about pricing or a release date, but we assume it will be available shortly after Fusion hits the market. We expect more information to slip out when CES kicks off in early January.

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iPhone Review: Hook Worlds

iPhone Review: Hook Worlds

Posted on 16th Dec 2010 at 11:39 by Joe Martin with 3 comments

Hooks are a recurring motif for Rocketcat Games, it seems - as 'Cry' is to Crytek, perhaps. It's a motif that has taken center stage in both of Rocketcat's previous titles, Hook Champ and Super Quick Hook.

Now, it shows up again in Hook Worlds - albeit under three different guises.

You see, there are three games in Hook Worlds. The first of these, Curse of the Watcher, doesn't anything new or wholly unfamiliar to fans of Rocketcat's previous games. A cross between Super Quick Hook's endless Avalanche mode and Hook Champ's story-driven levels, Curse has players using rocketboots and a grappling hook to flee a pursuing ghost. The controls have changed about since Super Quick Hook, but it's still super accessible; a tap on the left or right is all you need to whip through the scenery.


The second and third games are a slightly different affair, however, and offer a radical change of pace. The first of these, Bounty Gunner, is more action-orientated than the others and casts players as Zelle, a DLC character from the original Hook Champ. Tasked with cleansing a haunted cove of the ghost pirates that possess it, Zelle constantly charges forward automatically and uses her rifle to dispatch enemies and knock down barricades. There's nobody chasing Zelle, but as she gains speed the game gets much more difficult.

The final game, Cybergnome 202X, brings another change of pace and is by far the hardest of them all, though. Set in a dystopian future where it's illegal to be a gnome, Cybergnome couples the usual grappling hook controls with the ability to invert gravity as you try to dodge the police. It's a difficult feature to get to grips with, especially when you hit a stretch of the level that forces you to grapple across the city upside down, but it's also one of the most fun and rewarding.


Unfortunately, while Hook Worlds brings some welcome changes, it's also noticeably lighter on character and charm than the previous Hook games. The dialogue that introduces each game is even lighter than it was in Hook Champ, while none of the items that players can buy with their points bring anything but cosmetic tweaks. Most of all, we miss the ability to converse with other characters in the in-game store, a feature introduced in Super Quick Hook.

The upside to this, however, is that Rocketcat has already assured fans that there'll be plenty of updates in the future - including a fourth, retro-inspired game mode and a variety of unlockable endings that will bring more humour to the game. Normally we'd hesitate before praising a game based on nothing more than promises, but Rocketcat has a history of supporting titles, so it's a safe bet.

Conclusion: Hook Worlds lacks the aesthetic variety and scope of previous titles in the series, but it compensates for these failings with it's extra game modes. We wouldn't say it's as essential as Super Quick Hook, but that could easily change after a few updates.

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The evolution of mobile: Is Windows Phone 7 what Apple should have done? [TNW Mobile]

iPhone 4 32GB Black + Bumper Black (Front)photo © 2010 Yutaka Tsutano | more info

(via: Wylio)I used to be jealous of people who owned iPhones. After my initial ?I?ll never use that? wore off, it became obvious that applications in the palm of your hand was a pretty cool idea. That idea continued, as did my jealousy, until I started using the Android platform.

Come to find out, I?m not as app-centric as I thought I might be. Rather, I make use of widgets far more than I ever open applications on my phone. Sure, I like the fact that I can listen to music, watch videos, play games and the rest, but generally speaking I?m happy that my applications simply exist when I need them but are otherwise out of sight.

When Windows Phone 7 hit the market, a number of us in the technology-watching sector were pleasantly surprised. Though the phone has had its share of skeptics and issues already, Microsoft is onto something with its new OS. Mind you, it?s not the phone itself. Much like Android, the phone isn?t really the story.

Herein lies the problem, though. With the iPhone, the phone actually is the story. There?s no denying that the retina display is amazing. There?s also no denying that the hardware is second-to-none (save for that slight antenna issue). But if you put that aside, focusing only on the OS, I think it?s safe to say that even Apple might have something to learn from what Microsoft is doing.

Ballmer reaches for Kawasaki's notes during MIX08 Keynotephoto © 2008 D.Begley | more info (via: Wylio)This is where the screaming trolls come rushing in. Yes, I am indeed suggesting that Mr. Jobs could take a lesson from Mr. Gates (or Ballmer, as it were). The fact is, an apps-centric OS isn?t quite enough anymore. If you look at iOS, then you look at Android and finally take a peek at Windows Phone 7, it looks like evolution.

It?s as if the Android developers looked at iOS and say ?hey, that?s great, but what if you didn?t have to open an app to see the weather and Twitter updates?? With that thought, widgets were born. Not to replace apps, mind you, but rather to be time-saving supplements to them. Today, some of my favorite apps are the ones that simply have great widgets. That?s been my sole complaint about TweetDeck on Android ? the app is great, but the widget sucks. Seesmic still wins that widget race, hands down.

But then Ballmer and crew step in. They look at the next glaring reality and decide that it?s time to do something about the problem. That reality? There?s all of this screen space, all of these home screens?and there?s not a lot filling them. So what if we just narrowed down to a single, primary screen where all of your most important information was shared? What if you could fully customize that screen to show what you really wanted and thus eliminated the majority of need to open any applications? Would it speed up the overall process of using your phone? The Windows Phone 7 commercials would have us believe just that.

And so I posit to you, dear readers, that perhaps Apple needs to rework its way of thinking about iOS. Sure, iPhone users love their apps, but wouldn?t they also like widgets? Is this evolution, seemingly at the next iteration via Microsoft, the direction that Apple should have gone in the first place? Would the iPhone vs Android battle be even more bloody if both operating systems functioned in the same way?

Or is Apple just doing what it?s famous for doing?

My New Gadget :~)photo © 2010 Diego Torres Silvestre | more info (via: Wylio)Typically speaking, Apple is not a risk-taking organization when it comes to introducing new features. Its insistance on keeping FireWire alive notwithstanding, the company typically keeps a very conservative stance on changing how things happen, often letting others venture into unknown territory first before leaping in and showing how it should be done much later. Will we see widget integration to iOS in the next version or two, or will Apple do something completely different?

As it stands, iOS is still the hands-down winner for quality applications, But in a user market that appears to be shifting toward faster operation, can Apple choose to ignore that move without suffering for it? Or maybe I?m completely off and widgets are simply useless GUI pieces. Whatever your opinion, I?d love to hear it in the comments.

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Blog - Best of 2010: Microbial Life Found in Hydrocarbon Lake

Pitch Lake is a poisonous, foul smelling, hell hole on the Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago. The lake is filled with hot asphalt and bubbling with noxious hydrocarbon gases and carbon dioxide. Water is scarce here and certainly below the levels normally thought of as a threshold for life.

These alien conditions have made Pitch Lake a place of more than passing interest to astrobiologists. Various scientists have suggested that it is the closest thing on Earth to the kind of hydrocarbon lakes that we can see on Saturn's moon Titan. Naturally, these scientists would very much like to answer the question of what kind of life these places can support.

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Angry Birds update features 15 new levels, new themes and more! [TNW Apps]

Angry Birds from Rovio, recently unleashed the ?Seasons? version of its super popular, and equally excellent game for the iPhone and iPod Touch, has just released updates to the standard version of the game.

In version 1.5.0 one will get the following early holiday presents:

  • A new theme in the Front Badlands
  • 15, yes 15, new levels

  • A new Golden Egg for ?Y?all City Slickers?
  • The Mighty Eagle (a $.99 in-app purchase)

These updates are nothing short of grand.  I?ve downloaded the update and know the remainder of my day is shot.

If you don?t have Angry Birds, get it here for you iOS device, or here for Android, and enjoy!

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What is on that screen?

What is on that screen?

Posted on 18th Dec 2010 at 12:30 by James Gorbold with 88 comments

One of the first things I do when proof reading an article that is about to be published on bit-tech or Custom PC is check whether the URL at the top of the review does correctly link to the product manufacturer's homepage.

So while proofing the review of the MSI X58A-GD65 motherboard I came across this image which I just had to share with you. It's an advert admitedly, but the artwork is so bizarre that I thought it worth a caption competition.

What is on that screen? *What is on that screen?

To get things started, this is what some of the bit-tech/CPC editorial's team suggestions:

1. MSI has installed fans in the screen.

2. He's just seen a video of his parents having sex.

3. He's just seen the first benchmarks of a LGA2011 CPU.

Over to you...

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