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Twitter's move to comply with government requests and block tweets in specific countries could blunt its edge as a political tool, but there may be an upside in...

As Flash's ubiquity begins to erode, standards-based Web technologies are going to become the path forward for developers who want to offer a user experience that works across all screens. The HTML5 video element is already widely supported in modern Web browsers, but the capabilities and codecs that are available differ between implementations.

A new State of HTML5 Video document offers some clarity by painting a clear picture of the current status of standards-based video across the spectrum of browsers and mobile environments. The document was authored by LongTail Video, the company behind JW Player, a very popular video playback framework that supports Flash and HTML5.

Based on statistics from various browser marketshare trackers, LongTail says that two thirds of Internet users are running browsers that support HTML5. Support for standard HTML video element attributes is relatively consistent, though there are gaps: Android and iOS both lack support for the preload and autoplay attributes, for example.

Fullscreen playback and support for adaptive streaming are still highly limited. The latter will likely be remedied in the future as MPEG's DASH standard sees adoption. Codec compatibility is still a tricky issue--some browser vendors are standing behind H.264 while others favor Google's WebM.

LongTail says it will keep the document updated as the status of Web video evolves.

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On World Tech Update this week, the EU proposes new online data-protection rules, Apple shatters sales records under CEO Tim Cook, and a new Facebook app is to die for.

Think your Lego collection is expansive? Think again when you check out this guy's record-breaking brick bounty.

Twitter has announced that it will allow governments to censor some (but not all) tweets. Did they really have any other choice?

Most iPad and iPhone owners rely on their Apple ID password to prevent access to their account details. This won't stop a hacker gaining access to your personal account and log in details.

Adscend Media, the defendant in lawsuits filed this week by Facebook and the Washington attorney general, on Friday denied the allegations in the complaints and shifted blame to its affiliates.

Review copies of Electronic Arts's Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning are starting to reach critics, who have made a surprising collective discovery: an insert containing a code to download a "House of Valor" content pack featuring "seven additional single player quests."

EA has confirmed to Ars Technica that this downloadable content will be included free with all new copies of the game, including digital copies purchased on the PC through Origin, Steam, or other services. Players who would rather purchase a pre-owned copy, however, will presumably have to pay an additional fee if they want to access to this portion of the game.

Charging used game players for such an "Online Pass" is nothing new in the game industry, of course. But implementing an Online Pass in the single-player Kingdoms of Amalur represents a continuing tumble down a slippery slope for the entire game industry.

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Microsoft has awarded an Imagine Cup Grant to a team that developed a custom Windows Phone 7 and application that can diagnose malaria then upload the data to cloud servers that map the data to help track outbreaks.

If you’re like most people, you’re annoyed by passwords. You’ve got dozens to remember — some of them tortuously complex — and on any given day, as you read e-mails, send tweets, and order groceries online, you’re bound to forget one, or at least mistype it. You may even be one of those unfortunate people who’ve had a password stolen, thanks to the dodgy security on the machines that store them.

But who’s to blame? Who invented the computer password?

Like the invention of the wheel or the story of the doorknob, the password’s creation is shrouded in the mists of history. Romans used them. Shakespeare kicks off Hamlet with one — “Long live the King” — when Bernardo must prove he’s a loyal soldier of the King of Denmark. But where did the first computer password show up?

It probably arrived at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the mid-1960s, when researchers at the university built a massive time-sharing computer called CTSS. The punchline is that even then, passwords didn’t protect users as well as they could have. Technology changes. But, then again, it doesn’t.

Nearly all of the computer historians contacted by Wired in the past few weeks said that the first password must have come from MIT’s Compatible Time-Sharing System. In geek circles, it’s famous. CTSS pioneered many of the building blocks of computing as we know it today: things like e-mail, virtual machines, instant messaging, and file sharing.

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Will Apple's recent attempt to break into the textbook market, and other rapidly evolving e-book distribution models, help to moderate soaring textbook prices? From what I've seen so far, it could do just the opposite.

App maker Global Delight wants to make mobile video editing less of a chore and more of a game. That’s the idea behind Game Your Video, an iPhone video-editing app introduced at this week’s Macworld | iWorld.

It was another busy week for hactivists attacking the online targets of their ire.

Phoronix has been reporting for a while a now that it looks like Wine 1.4 would be released by April of 2012. This looks like it will all pan out with Wine 1.4 now entering a code freeze and 1.4-rc1 was released this Friday rather than a Wine 1.3 development point release...

Apple reclaimed the top spot in a brand listing by collecting an estimated $900 million worth of traditional media, social media and Twitter coverage in the fourth quarter of 2011, a measurement company said today.

The largest-ever Android malware campaign may have duped as many as 5 million users into downloading infected apps from Google's Android Market, Symantec said Friday.

Physicists have been working for decades on a "theory of everything," one that unites quantum mechanics and relativity. Apparently, they were being too modest. Yesterday saw publication of a press release claiming a biologist had just published a theory accounting for all of that—and handling the origin of life and the creation of the Moon in the bargain. Better yet, no math!

Where did such a crazy theory originate? In the mind of a biologist at a respected research institution, Case Western Reserve University Medical School. Amazingly, he managed to get his ideas published, then amplified by an official press release. At least two sites with poor editorial control then reposted the press release—verbatim—as a news story.

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Adscend Media, the defendant in lawsuits filed this week by Facebook and the Washington attorney general, on Friday denied the allegations in the complaints and...

iKeyboard is a $35 device that attaches to your iPad's screen to provide a touch keyboard feel without needing a Bluetooth connection.