.::REALITYRECALL::.

South Korea says it has accepted a North Korean offer to hold high-level defence talks.

George Hotz hacked Sony’s PS3, and then told everyone how to do it. That pissed Sony off, and the company is taking him to court. Rival Microsoft is ready to play nice, though. With a gift. More »

We’ve heard of apps getting 187’d from the iTunes App Store ad nauseum, but Google’s Android Marketplace? That’s pretty novel. In what is probably the most high profile bait-and-switch since the mobile platform’s launch, Kongregate found its eponymous software pulled on the very same day it came out. As CEO Jim Greer tells Joystiq, the app was pulled due to the “claim you can’t use their app store to distribute another app store.” Which is all well and good until you realize that what Kongregate the app does is simply serve as a portal for Kongregrate the mobile site — Greer says it’s the same experience as visiting m.kongregate.com to play its free Flash games — with the option for offline mode. “It’s all essentially cached content delivered in a browser,” he said, “which to me is just bizarre that that would be considered an ‘app store,'” he said.

The Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement says, “you may not use the Market to distribute or make available any Product whose primary purpose is to facilitate the distribution of Products outside of the Market,” with Product defined broadly as “Software, content and digital materials created for Devices in accordance with the Android SDK and distributed via the Market.” When we talked to Google, the company pointed out the same clause and said, “Applications in violation of our policies (like Kongregate) are removed from Android Market.”

Greer adds that a number of people in Google had seen it previously and liked the app (not the ones who ultimately pulled it), and he hopes this is all some grand misunderstanding. We’ll see, but in the meantime, the app is still available for side loading care of Kongregate’s website. Nothing like a backup plan, eh?

Kongregate app pulled from Android Marketplace, CEO hopes it’s just a misunderstanding originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 22:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ANDROID
An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor away

The story of the Trojan Horse must be a favorite among video game console manufacturers, because software updates these days often come with more than bargained for — today, Microsoft issued a mandatory Xbox 360 update, reportedly for a single bugfix, but which seems to have coincidentally halted scores of pirates and hackers from playing Call of Duty: Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2 on the console. Members of the Xbox-Scene forums noted the update was taking suspiciously long to download, discovered that backup copies of these games ceased to work, and presently believe that Microsoft included a patch for these two games to enable an anti-piracy feature that specifically targets burned copies. What does the mandatory update do for you if you’re not part of the hacking scene? It merely enables the console to automatically boot a pre-inserted game when you power it on, a feature that was accidentally disabled in November.

[Thanks, Brian]

Xbox 360 mandatory update restores boot to disc, detains Call of Duty pirates for a tad originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 20:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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An energy consultant is warning Canadian consumers to brace for higher gasoline prices in February or March.

Although the Android Market offers thousands upon thousands of applications to choose from, sometimes you’ll want to break free and install applications that aren’t available on the Market. Read on to learn how.

Manufacturers are constantly popping out new Android phones, and it can all be a bit overwhelming when it comes time to buy a new phone. Here’s how to avoid getting overwhelmed and narrow down your buying decisions. More »

via

ANOTHER APP
Excellent!

Buying a Samsung Galaxy S sounded like a fantastic decision when Android 2.1 was hot stuff, but now that Gingerbread‘s out of the oven, Fascinate, Captivate, Vibrant and Epic 4G owners are starting to get a little tired of being stuck behind the curve. And while we can think of at least one fairly nasty reason why Samsung might be delaying, we’ve been hearing all sorts of conspiracy theories, ranging from holding back Froyo to sell more dedicated Gingerbread phones to making the cellular carriers foot the bill for Android updates for every handset sold or else not get the update at all.

Well, it seems that last rumor’s gained a little traction, because Samsung’s taken it upon itself to squash the story flat. The company gave Phone Scoop the following statement: “No. Samsung is not charging carriers for Froyo updates to Galaxy S. We hope to have more detail on status shortly. Promise!” At this rate, we’re wondering if Samsung should just skip Froyo and just start rolling out some Gingerbread men instead.

Samsung says it isn’t charging carriers for Android updates, promises Galaxy S status report originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Jan 2011 22:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The lynchpin for all discussions of open web standards, HTML5, has been spruced up with a dedicated logo from its parent organization, the W3C. We’d wax poetic about it, but that job has already been done:

“It stands strong and true, resilient and universal as the markup you write. It shines as bright and as bold as the forward-thinking, dedicated web developers you are. It’s the standard’s standard, a pennant for progress. And it certainly doesn’t use tables for layout.”

[Thanks, Matt]

Continue reading HTML5 gets a brave new logo for this brave new world

HTML5 gets a brave new logo for this brave new world originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Jan 2011 21:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By now, every single person on the internet is well aware of the release of the PlayStation 3′s root keys. The guy responsible, George Hotz (aka Geohot), is the same fellow who brought us the jail break for iPhone.

“What’s the big deal?” some people might ask. To answer that, it’s necessary for us to first explain what a root key is. At its most basic, a root key is a specific string of characters used to authenticate all PS3 software as being produced by Sony. If a piece of software doesn’t have the root key, your PS3 knows it isn’t legit. The release of this key, the very core of the PS3′s security, is a devastating blow to Sony, and one that could spell the end of the platform as a whole.

I can hear the supporters of this guy out there right now, screaming, “This doesn’t even let people run pirated games!” While that may or not be true (I certainly haven’t tested it), no one can argue that this places the tools for pirating, hacking, and all sorts of other nefarious activities into the hands of those who have been longing to do exactly that. As I have said before, it’s like giving a heroin addict a box of needles and a pound of smack and asking him not to use any. It just ain’t gonna happen. Every time a console has had its protection cracked, piracy has been the result.

Yeah, I see you waving your hand. You’re saying that this doesn’t hurt anything, it’s just allowing people to use their consoles however they want, which is part of ownership, right? Sony should never have removed OtherOS, right? Forget for a minute that the only reason it was removed was that people were attempting to use that functionality to bypass the console’s security, and riddle me this, Batman: Which right of ownership allows you to destroy the integrity of Sony’s online service?

Reports are pouring in that the PS3 version of Modern Warfare 2 is overrun with hackers and exploiters. Already we’ve seen Robert Bowling of Infinity Ward say that, “Games rely on the security of the encryption on the platforms they’re played on, therefore; updates to the game through patches will not resolve this problem, unless the security exploit itself is resolved on the platform.” Basically, he’s putting it on Sony’s head, and quite rightfully so. No matter what Infinity Ward might do, the PS3 sees these hacks as legitimate software (because they’ve got the proper root key), so it will continue to run them.

If you’re playing Modern Warfare 2, you can expect to see folks using aimbots and wallhacks out there. You will likely also see folks altering clan tags, unlocking content, and doing just about anything else they want to. Now, get this: It isn’t just MW2 that’s affected. It’s every single game on the console. Sony has pledged to fix this, but there seems to be general disagreement on whether or not they can close this hole through firmware upgrades.

Furthermore, it’s still up in the air whether or not Sony can permanently remove these lovely folks from PSN. There are hacks out there (we won’t be linking to them) that allow the console’s ID to be changed. While Sony appears to use a whitelist method to validate PSIDs, if an unscrupulous individual gained access to a list of valid PSIDs, he could be virtually unstoppable for Sony, unless they devise an additional check that will block the console’s access.

While all of these things are being discussed around the web, there’s one thing no one seems to have thought of yet: the future implications of this action. You see, consoles and videogame systems have been a fairly secure platform to play games on for a while. Sure, there are consoles floating around with mod chips in them, but those historically have been a fairly small number, and they don’t affect anyone other than the console owner. If you torrent an XBox 360 game and play it, you’re stealing from the game developer, but you’re not going online and ruining the game that everyone else actually paid for.

Now, Sony is looking at a situation where their flagship console could be rendered all but useless for online play. Speculation is that they would need to issue a recall to replace hardware in every single system. Not only is it a logistics nightmare, but the cost of it would be staggering. More importantly, it might not even be effective. After all, there is a ton of software already out there that is imprinted with the existing root key, and that all has to work, too. You can bet that they are already planning for their next console, and now the security on it is going to be more robust than anything we’ve ever seen.

We don’t pretend to have any knowledge of anything Sony is working on, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see copy protections requiring at least regular online authentications of software. Perhaps you’ll have to be connected to the internet to play your console games. Maybe something even worse that I can’t think of right now. Remember, once you get burned, you tend to overprotect against getting burned a second time.

So this little incident will have some far-reaching repercussions. Don’t think that Microsoft isn’t watching this closely while they scramble in their security department to make sure it doesn’t happen to them as well. It seems small, but this sort of incident could shape the next generation of consoles. Scary, huh?

Let’s hope it’s not as bad as all that. Let’s hope that Sony can close up the security holes generated by this devastating hack. If not, let’s at least agree that when the PlayStation 4 with Gestapo-like security is released, we won’t complain to Sony about it. Instead, we can send all the complaint emails to Mr. Hotz. After all, he worked hard to earn them.

The biggest news from Wikileaks today isn’t that the US embassy in Jakarta requested $100,000 to get a million people to “like” them on Facebook. Apparently, the UFO cable has been leaked. More »