firehose

Microsoft has issued its first bug bounty award to a Google engineer. The software maker created several bug bounties late last month that will run until the end of July. The IE11 preview bug bounty awards up to $11,000 for critical vulnerabilities, and Google engineer Ivan Fratric is the first to be awarded for his vulnerability. Microsoft has traditionally avoided general and public bug bounty programs in the past, opting to hold smaller contests for specific exploits.

Microsoft's Katie Moussouris revealed that the company has issued its first bug bounty in a blog post recently, but Moussouris stopped short of identifying the individual involved. In a Twitter post on Thursday, Moussouris congratulated the Google employee on being the first to quality for the IE11 bug bounty. The win is ironic, but not unusual. Google engineers regularly report security issues in Microsoft's software direct to the company, and some choose the open and public approach of disclosure.

Microsoft wants to squash bugs earlier

While Microsoft's bug bounty program offers up to $11,000 as a reward, it's not clear how much the company is paying for its first successful entry. "We have other researchers who have qualified for bounties under the IE11 program as well," notes Moussouris. Over a dozen issues have been reported to Microsoft in the first two weeks since the bug bounties launched, more than the company normally receives during an average month. Happy with its strategy so far, Moussouris explains that "It’s not about offering the most money," instead focusing on gathering the bugs during Microsoft's preview stages of product releases. With a more frequent cycle of updates planned for Windows, these bug bounty programs could become essential for Microsoft during its new focus on software and services updates.

Police in the UK have the power to seize mobile devices from any traveler entering the country, and can retain their personal data for as long as they see fit, according to a report from the Telegraph. Such blanket powers are outlined under UK counterterrorism laws, and are broadly applied to thousands of travelers each year — regardless of whether police establish grounds for suspicion before confiscating a device. The revelations, published late Friday, have raised concerns among civil libertarians and privacy advocates, and an independent reviewer is expected to propose tighter checks on border police this week.

According to the Telegraph, UK border officials can download a person's photos, contact lists, and call logs, and retain them for "as long as necessary" — even if a traveler is allowed to proceed after being stopped. Authorities can also retain information on who a traveler texts or e-mails, though they remain barred from seizing the contents of these messages. Up to 60,000 travelers are "stopped and examined" every year under powers delegated by the Terrorism Act 2000, but the number of seized mobile devices remains unclear.

Considering the high volume of travel that the UK sees every year, the procedures could be applied to a broad range of international passengers. In 2012, an estimated 70 million people traveled through London's Heathrow Airport alone, according to the most recent data from Airports Council International.

"ordinary travelers need to know that their private information will not be taken without good reason."

Under the Terrorism Act 2000, police can detain and question a passenger for up to nine hours to determine whether he or she poses a security risk, and can do so without prior authorization or proof of suspicion. David Anderson, the UK's independent reviewer of counterterrorism laws, acknowledges that mobile phone data remains critical to police investigations, though he says there should be stronger provisions to guarantee that officers don't abuse their power. Anderson will present recommended changes to UK counterterrorism policies this week, in an annual report.

"Information downloaded from mobile phones seized at ports has been very useful in disrupting terrorists and bringing them to justice," Anderson told the Telegraph. "But ordinary travelers need to know that their private information will not be taken without good reason, or retained by the police for any longer than is necessary."

London's Metropolitan Police Service insists that data seizures are only conducted under appropriate circumstances.

"As with any power to detain an individual, [Terrorism Act 2000] is used appropriately and proportionally and is always subject to scrutiny by an independent reviewer of UK anti-terror laws," a Scotland Yard spokesperson said in a statement to the Telegraph. "Holding and properly using intelligence gained from such stops is a key part of fighting crime, pursuing offenders and protecting the public."

"the modern equivalent of searching your home and office"

But privacy advocates say confiscating a person's cellphone without probable cause constitutes a direct violation of civil liberties, adding that such seizures should only be conducted when a mobile device is proven to be critical to an investigation.

"Seizing and downloading your phone data is the modern equivalent of searching your home and office, searching through family albums and business records alike, and identifying all your friends and family, then keeping this information for years," Dr. Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International, told the Telegraph. "If you were on the other side of the border, the police would rightly have to apply for warrants and follow strict guidelines. But nowhere in Britain do you have less rights than at the border."

Audience members turned ugly at last week's EVO 2013 tournament, according to a video posted on YouTube showing developer and manufacturer Double Helix and Mad Catz booed off stage at the mention of Xbox One.

Representatives of both companies were on hand to show the upcoming fightstick accessories for Killer Instinct but ended up greeted by a room of boos when Microsoft's controversial console was mentioned by the duo.

You can check out the video in full above.

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has never been shy about voicing his opinions on digital media, but now he's taken things a step further: he's pulled his various side projects off streaming music services altogether. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Yorke and Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich took to Twitter on Sunday to announce that they were removing Yorke's solo album The Eraser, their joint project Atoms for Peace, and the debut album from Godrich's band Ultraísta from Spotify and its ilk.

Characterizing the move as a "small meaningless rebellion," Godrich wrote that streaming services are "bad for new music" in that they don't pay up-and-coming artists enough money. Yorke expressed similar sentiments, warning music consumers that any new favorites they discover on streaming services will not get paid.

The profitability of streaming music has been an ongoing concern. Streaming services have in the past blamed record labels for not delivering enough revenue into artists' hands, but according to Godrich it's more fundamental than that. "The music industry is being taken over by the back door," he wrote, "and if we don't try and make it fair for new music producers and artists then the art will suffer. Make no mistake. These are all the same old industry bods trying to get a stranglehold on the delivery system... The numbers don't even add up for Spotify yet."

As of the writing of this article, the three albums in question are not available on Spotify or Rdio, though they are available for streaming via Pandora and for purchase through online storefronts like iTunes and Google Play. Radiohead's music, however, is still available for streaming.

Nathan Mishler makes video games. But now he wants to make "non-games" that transform the physical world surrounding his audience.

"Game designers bring people together," Mishler told Polygon. "In real-world games, people have a lot of agency, and gaming is about agency, acting out and doing things. And in a game not ruled by a computer, we allow gamers to truly craft their own experiences."

Mishler and his small company, Studio Cypher, make games that are "non-games," games that aren't technically video games but will sometimes utilizing gaming technology, like Microsoft's Kinect motion control peripheral. The three-man team met while attending graduate school at Indiana University in Bloomington. They began working on a series of alternate reality games that utilized both computers and the physical space, sending participants on scavenger hunts through various locations and across websites.

After graduating in 2005, the trio began branching out, developing educational games and more real-world games. Indiana University's Bloomington branch has hosted a number of TEDx conferences, a series of talks focused on current technology and the spreading of ideas. This past March, Studio Cypher created a game for attendees that used sticker collection as an icebreaking technique.

"Game designers bring people together."

"The organizers of TEDx expressed interest in us making a game to help people icebreak, mix and talk to each other," Mishler explained. "So we created the conference version of our Stickers in Public game."

Stickers in Public uses stickers printed with different rules and directions to apply to the environment they are used in. Mishler explained the stickers are designed to transform spaces and people's experiences in them, at least in some small way, in order to encourage them to communicate with each other. Studio Cypher ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for Stickers in Public and debuted the game at E3, setting up boards in different areas of the convention center with rules meant to give attendees incentive to interact. The game can also be used to set up walking tours, guides and scavenger hunts without involving technology.

"We noticed that certain places, like in a doctor's waiting room, there's nothing to do and everyone is miserable, it's a very somber place," Mishler said. "It's not fun. One of the goals of Stickers in Public is to have a small game that people can play at any time, and you can peel off and stick it up someplace, have something for them to do to take their mind of things and communicate with each other, and all those other benefits of gaming we don't realize we get from it."

Attendees at the TEDx conference using Studio Cypher's sticker game kept stickers on the back of their lanyards where others couldn't see them. Each sticker had an interaction printed on it, such as high-fiving someone or finding something in common with another attendee. Successful completion of an action rewarded players with the sticker belonging to the person they interacted with, as well as one point. The person with the most points at the end of the conference won.

"There's a certain amount of training that has to happen with people who automatically make the connection between 'game' and 'video game.'"

"People really liked it," Mishler said. "And we took it to E3, and people had a lot of fun there too. But at E3, people were surprised it wasn't a video game. They kept asking if the stickers had QR codes, and how to interact with it using their smartphone.

"There's a certain amount of training that has to happen with people who automatically make the connection between 'game' and 'video game.'"

Studio Cypher has made video games for exhibits in the Chicago Natural History Museum, an interactive quiz game as part of a traveling exhibit for Volkswagon and a handful of web-based flash games. But the company's heart lies in non-traditional real-world games.

"We've always highly viewed non-technological games," Mishler said. "People have been playing games for hundreds of thousands of years, and we didn't have computers up until the last 50 or so. Our games are about transforming environments and empowering people.

"And in Bloomington, not everyone has that technology. We assume that all people are connected to the internet and have a smartphone, we assume people have access to these technologies, but our company works in a lot of spaces where people don't have them," he added. "When we work with a client who wants something to help people communicate or connect, we look at who they're audience is and ask ourselves, is a tech game right for this?"

Studio Cypher also helps medical institutions make and implement games for physical therapy patients using the Kinect. Currently the studio is working on two: one designed to help children with pain management following surgery and a game for patients recovering from a stroke, which is currently in development for local Bloomington group Well Played Health. Mishler couldn't go into detail on either, stating Cypher's clients aren't ready to talk about these games publicly, but did share that he believes gamifying physical therapy can help make recovery more tolerable — and possibly easier.

"Physical therapy for stroke victims is painful, and it's a long and arduous process," he said. "The physicians might tell you they need you to raise your hand up 500 times in a row. That gets very dull and boring very quickly if you don't have any external reason for doing it other than the physician saying so.

"People have been playing games for hundreds of thousands of years."

"The Kinect is great for tracking moment-to-moment all the motions a patient does," he added, noting the peripheral's power to do more than just provide an alternate game controller. "Now we can really watch patients' entire body, and while the Kinect isn't 100 percent accurate, [doctors] can definitely watch more closely where people put their limbs and how far and how fast their movements are."

A major way Kinect-based physical therapy can benefit patients is tied to medical insurance. Games like the ones Studio Cypher is developing can be cheaply installed in homes, allowing people to play the games and work through therapy on their own without shelling out thousands of dollars for specialist visits. Doctors will still be able to monitor patients over time through the data collected by the Kinect.

"Hopefully with all that data they can see where people are succeeding or failing, and hopefully all this data will also let them see things they would not have noticed if they were just watching the patient move around," Mishler said. "There are lots of datamining capabilities there."

Studio Cypher is making games that alter the world around us without using a screen. The group is currently working on a card game, an educational world game to be used in schools and is preparing to launch Stickers in Public to consumers later this month.

"Our goal is really to find more projects that help us transform the lives of people in some way, that's really what we're looking for," Mishler said. "Positive games with positive impact, in a variety of places."

According to a leaked video that appears to be from Canadian wireless carrier Rogers, Google's upcoming Moto X device will feature passive listening in order to respond to voice requests without a button press. The video, originally spotted by Ausdroid, shows a user speaking to the phone to retrieve weather information from Google Now. "Your Moto X is ready to listen and respond," the Rogers representative says in the video. "Talk to it, and it learns your voice." If you've been keeping score, that makes the Moto X the second high-profile device this year to boast an always-on listening feature.

The leaked video also demonstrates an alert system called that flashes "active updates" when the phone is asleep to show which programs have notifications waiting. "Instead of a blinking light that doesn't actually tell you anything," the ad says, "information quietly appears on the screen."

Finally, the video shows off the Moto X's photo features, including a new trick that allows a user to flick their wrist twice to access the phone's camera. Another feature demonstrated in the leaked video will allow users to take a photo by tapping anywhere on the screen instead of having to press a shutter button.

The Moto X is the first phone to be created by Motorola entirely under Google's hand, and is expected to be available this summer.

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The Justice League’s favorite martian will soon make the jump from noncombatant to full-on playable fighter in Injustice: Gods Among Us. Previously only playable as part of the game’s single player “S.T.A.R. Labs” mission component, Martian Manhunter a.k.a. J’onn J’onzz has been announced as a full-fledged fighter in an upcoming DLC pack that will also include a Green Lantern skin bringing John Stewart into the fold.

Although Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and NetherRealm Studios have released a new video featuring a battle between MM and John Stewart, the duo’s exact DLC arrival date and sale price haven’t been announced just yet. The forthcoming details, however, will most likely follow a pricing structure similar to the previously released Zod, Scorpion and Batgirl packs.

While Martian Manhunter seems to pack all-new fighting moves (including his signature shapeshifting skills), the skinned nature of John Stewart in the DLC means he’s merely got a new look and new voice on top of Hal Jordan’s basic fighting frame. This is a bit of a shame for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that Stewart’s background as an architect and a US Marine have always given him impressive construct capabilities that Hal Jordan doesn’t necessarily possess. As the very public face of the Green Lantern franchise from 2001 to 2007 on Cartoon Network’s successful Justice League and Justice League Unlimited animated series, Stewart’s arguably more well known to a segment of gamers than Jordan, whose character — though wildly popular in comics under Geoff Johns and others’ comic book storylines since “Rebirth” – didn’t prove popular enough to sustain the 2011 Green Lantern motion picture starring Ryan Reynolds or the recently canceled CGI series on DC Nation. Stewart’s a rich character in his own right and it would be a better call to create a brand new fighter for the game rather than to simply re-skin Jordan.

You can see what you think in the new Injustice: Gods Among Us DLC promo vid below.