Everyone who purchased one of Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad tablets last year during the company’s infamous fire sale can finally feel vindicated in doing so. That’s because the first beta release of Open webOS ships today, HP announced in a blog post. It’s been a long eight months since HP first announced it would contribute the webOS software to the open source community, essentially handing the reins over to third-party developers.

The beta release contains 54 webOS components, all available as open source code. It represents more than 450,000 lines of code released under the Apache 2.0 license, “which is one of the most liberal and accepted in the open source community,” HP stated in a blog post.

There are two environments developers can tap into with today’s release. One is a desktop build, and the second is an OpenEmbedded build, which HP says “provides the ideal environment for porting webOS to new and exciting devices.” The latter includes an ARM emulator, and HP said it’s actively converging on an OE Core image, which boots to System Manager and the full webOS experience.

HP said more updates are forthcoming, along with a final release in September.

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Two websites that were once among the top file locker websites in the world, have disappeared offline, marking the end of a steep downwards decline in user numbers and market influence.

Filesonic and Wupload, two sister sites were at the top of their game in the earliest days of 2012, seeing a temporary increase in activity following the seizure and closure of Megaupload.com, one of their rivals. However, soon after, and likely in response to Mega’s takedown and the arrest of its owner, Kim Dotcom, Filesonic announced that it would no longer allow third party sharing and that it planned to shut down its reward scheme. Wupload similarly closed down its affiliate scheme in late 2011 and in April this year became a backup site, where only files that users had personally uploaded, could be downloaded from it.

This led to nose dives in traffic, as the alexa ranking histories of both site’s show. While Alexa is hardly a gospel traffic tracking service, it does provide a rough idea of what happened.

Both sites took an obvious hit after they announced the cessation of sharing services

And now it looks like the final death knell has come, with both sites disappearing.

Some have pointed the finger at organisations like the MPAA and RIAA for scaring the owners of these sites into submission, while others have said with a centralised structure like those employed by file lockers, they were doomed from the start. Others still have been angered at the lack of contact from the owners of these sites. In one blog comment, a user suggested that ultimately, Filesonic and Wupload took their user’s money and ran.

There’s a new arms race brewing, and this one is destined to be very, very fast. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin is calling for the development of a X-51 Waverider, a hypersonic experimental scramjet that the deputy PM holds up as an example of what the Russian aerospace and defense sectors should be aspiring to (along with DARPA’s HTV Falcon test vehicle and America’s other hypersonic development programs).

But there’s one key point Rogozin seems to be missing here: the Waverider crashed into the ocean during its most recent test after a control fin broke. Darpa’s Falcon literally flew out of its own heat-protective skin during its last trial. Hypersonic flight is far from a stable reality on this side of the old Iron Curtain. And if Russia is planning on integrating hypersonic technology into the PAK-DA program (that’s the acronym for Russia’s future long-range bomber initiative), it should’ve started working on the technology piece of this long before now.

It should’ve started working on the funding piece as well. Hypersonic scramjets and the like are expensive to build and then–if DARPA and the Air Force are any indication–they are generally crashed. That’s how aerospace engineers learn. It’s also really, really expensive. Aerospace analysts familiar with both the technology and budget situations in Russia reportedly say the PAK-DA will be at best supersonic, and probably subsonic. If Rogozin’s aspirations are relevant to anything it might be a hypersonic missile, and even that is beyond the 2020 horizon.

Still, that this conversation is taking place at all at this level demonstrates the amount of strategic interest in cracking the hypersonic frontier, something the U.S. Pentagon has invested heavily in for years now. Payload delivery systems (we won’t call them missiles, but they’re missiles) moving at speeds upward of Mach 5–the generally agreed-upon definition of “hypersonic”–would be mighty difficult to defend against with conventional countermeasures. Perhaps we’re all lucky that stable hypersonic flight is going to take quite a few more years to figure out.

[Ria Novosti]

An app that alerts users to drone strikes around the world keeps getting denied by the Apple’s App Store reviewers, and no one can explain why

We’ve covered the technology aspects of the ongoing drone wars thoroughly here at PopSci. The geopolitical and legal ramifications have been fodder for an endlessly cycling debate in the blogosphere. Esquire’s Tom Junod recently termed it the “Lethal Presidency” while examining the moral ramifications. The bottom line is, the U.S. is engaged in several shadow wars around the globe in which unmanned aircraft are lethally striking at a list of individuals in places like Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. And Apple’s App Store, for its part, seems to want nothing to do with it.

Drones+ is a smartphone app developed by NYU student Josh Begley. The app itself is pretty basic: when a drone strike occurs, the U.K.’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism compiles media reports and logs the strike in its database. Drones+ then displays that strike on a map within the app and links users to a few news stories about it. If the user chooses, he or she will get a push notification, a quick realtime alert that a drone strike just happened somewhere in the world.

The idea is to connect people a little more with the actions being carried out in their name and bring awareness, for good or ill, to the ongoing drone war that is now the longest continuous aerial bombardment the United States military has ever engaged in. But the Apple App Store reviewers have rejected the app on three separate occasions for reasons ranging from “this app isn’t entertaining enough” to “the content is objectionable and crude.”

Apple routinely turns down apps for reasons that are less-than clear, and it is under no obligation to accept any app. But these are strange charges to level against an app that simply aggregates news reports. It does not display any images of the carnage wrought at the scene of a strike. It’s simply meant to connect the drone wars with the citizens who are, willingly or not, supporting them and to make them aware of the frequency with which the U.S. Military and CIA are acting with deadly force on foreign soil. That has Begley wondering exactly what to do next. And the rest of us wondering what exactly it is that Apple really has a problem with: the app or the drone wars?

[Danger Room]

For those of you wondering what Xbox Live titles Microsoft will have ready for Windows 8 when it ships to the general public on October 26, 2012, you can stop guessing. The Redmond software giant today unveiled the first wave of titles that will ship for the platform, a total of 40 games, 29 of which are from Microsoft Studios. If you’re expecting heavy-hitting titles like Halo, you’re going to be disappointed, but if you’re more into Angry Birds these days, you’ll like what the company has on tap.

Angry Birds and Angry Birds Space are among the 40 titles, as are similar casual games like Cut the Rope. Microsoft said a number of studios are committed to bringing Xbox Live games to Windows 8, including Rovio, Miniclip, Gameloft, ZeptoLab, Glu Mobile, and Halfbrick studios.

“Xbox games will be super easy to discover through the Games app that comes with Windows 8 and available through the Windows Store,” Microsoft said. “Xbox games for Windows 8 will have Xbox Achievements as well as the ability to take advantage of certain Xbox features such as leaderboards, multiplayer modes, and connecting with friends.”

You can view a full list of titles on Microsoft’s Windows Team blog.

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