ASSASSIN'S CREED 4: BLACK FLAG REVIEW

THE GOLDEN AGE OF PIRACY.

Reviewed on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and Xbox 360

→ OCTOBER 29, 2013 Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is a smart, sprawling sequel that wisely places an emphasis on freedom and fun while trimming most of the fat that bogged down Assassin’s Creed III’s ambitious but uneven adventure. Ubisoft’s take on the Golden Age of Piracy begins in 1715, and is presented with a much-appreciated lighter tone that isn’t afraid to make fun of itself in the name of an entertaining journey.

Sailing across the massive expanse of The Caribbean, exploring gorgeous and unique islands, and getting yourself into all sorts of swashbuckling trouble provide some of the most rewarding and memorable stretches of gameplay I’ve experienced all year. Even after putting in well over 40 hours with the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4 versions, I’m still discovering new islands to explore and tombs to raid.

No matter which system you decide to play Black Flag on, you can rest easy knowing that it’s one of the best looking games of 2013. The current-gen versions build

 upon the already-gorgeous AC 3 by showcasing well-lit, tropical locales and the amazing water effects on the open seas. And on next gen, the experience is even more impressive thanks to minimal loading and maximum draw distances that seem to go on for miles. The way the camera zooms out when your ship reaches its maximum speed, the speakers bombard you with the sounds of the wind, and the sunset turns blood-orange, is simply amazing.

Black Flag learns from AC 3’s initial 10 hours of banal hand-holding by immediately throwing you into the action. After a lean and exhilarating opening mission that places you in the blood-soaked boots of Connor’s much livelier and more likeable grandfather Edward Kenway, the world blossoms and allows you to explore its vast uncharted waters. The size of the world is staggering, and the fact that it's absolutely brimming with fun and rewarding activities made me want to get lost as possible as I traveled from point A to point B.

When you ignore the main mission prompt and simply set out in search of your own fun, Black Flag is at its best. It treats you like an adult, and allows you to explore its gorgeous and activity-filled world to your heart’s content. Want to discover every nook and cranny of Kingston’s sprawling expanse in search of Templar secrets? Or would you rather buy a small fishing boat and hunt for all manner of deadly sea creatures, using your spoils to upgrade your character? Maybe you just want to sail to a remote island, climb to the top of a mountain, and gaze in awe at the world around you. Black Flag is all about embracing freedom and carving your own path through the world.

The freedom to tell your own stories also exists in the multiplayer mode, which, once again, refines the unique cat-and-mouse gameplay originally introduced in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Having to blend into your surroundings and try to trick other players into thinking you're an A.I.-controlled NPC provides ample moments of tense and entertaining mayhem. Just like previous versions, it’s a welcome alternative to the standard deathmatch that's become the norm in most multiplayer games, but it’s not substantial enough to be the main reason to keep coming back to Black Flag.

Also back and better than ever is the series' signature feeling of momentum. It does a great job of marrying the vertical city-based traversal of Assassin’s Creed II with the energetic frontier movement of AC 3. That being said, Edward still occasionally disobeyed my commands by errantly jumping off rooftops and climbing up walls that I never wanted to scale in the first place, but those are minor nuisances. Also, the world’s vast scope invites a handful of hiccups. For instance, the body of a guard who’s holding a necessary key might disappear if you leave the area, meaning that you have to restart a mission. Black Flag is peppered with these sorts of annoyances, and though they certainly aren't deal-breakers, they had a tendency to pull me out of the experience a bit too often.

Ubisoft wisely avoids the morose spaghetti bowl that Assassin’s Creed’s plot lines have become in favor of a much lighter tale that embraces the adventuresome spirit of classic pirate stories. I loved the fact that Edward is so unlike his Assassin relatives, and much more interested in the pursuit of money than the opaque goals of some secret cabal. It's a refreshing change of pace from a series that had started to take itself a bit too seriously.

This lighter tone is also evident in the way that Black Flag feels less violent than its predecessors. Death animations are relatively short and sweet, with a surprising lack of blood for a game centered around stabbing people. The restraint is admirable, and it makes combat more fun and less serious business slaughter than in recent years. Then again, Black Flag also tends to repeat some of the Assassin's Creed series’ favorite mistakes, like forcing you to tail a prospective victim at a safe distance for minutes on end while you’re given an exposition dump. It’s mighty annoying that I had to spend 10 minutes listening to rarely memorable dialogue before I could make the kill.

While the main story is a bit of letdown, I was honestly shocked at how much I enjoyed my time spent outside of the Animus. These first-person missions are mostly optional, but surprisingly great. As a new Abstergo employee working to develop an entertainment product based on Edward’s life, you’ll quickly find yourself embroiled in a bit of corporate espionage that ultimately leads to you to discover all sorts of secrets that gleefully hint at the future of the series.

THE VERDICT

The amazing world of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag has kept me gladly occupied for longer than any other game in the series, even though its story isn’t the strongest. At no point in my dozens of hours was I ever at a loss for something to do. Simply sailing wherever the wind takes me and seeing what sort of trouble I can get into is a complete joy. Beyond the underwhelming main campaign, Black Flag delivers a world brimming with gorgeous places to go, amazing secrets to discover, and nefarious pirates to stab.

WWE 2K14 REVIEW

SQUARED CIRCLE SCHOLAR.

Reviewed on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360

→ OCTOBER 28, 2013 Somewhere deep in the heart of every hardcore wrestling mark, there's a rowdy little kid recreating their favorite matches with six-inch plastic figures. They're pitting the irresistible forces against the immovable objects. They're dropping elbows and raising eyebrows. They love reliving old memories, but they're hungry to create new ones, too. WWE 2K14 gives that wrestling fan in all of us the tools required to do both. Though it continues to suffer from many of the same AI and commentary issues that have plagued the series for years, it also builds on its many successes, delivering a sports-entertainment extravaganza that can easily steal dozens of hours of your time.

Last year we saw WWE ‘13's fresh approach to story mode, The Attitude Era, which felt like the start of something special. This year's greatly expanded version, 30 Years of Wrestlemania, collects 46 of the most memorable matches to ever grace the event, leveraging historically accurate objectives to make bouts like Ric Flair’s retirement match against Shawn Michaels feel like more than just another fight for the old 1, 2, 3. Developer Yukes has outdone itself with its faithful curation of WWE history here, utilizing tons of archival footage, photos, and historical accounts to frame each match. Even the TV overlays and ‘80s film grain are accurately represented.

Pro wrestling is nothing if not a form of physical theatre, and having the option to play along with the true-to-life highs and lows of each historic match honors that

 element of performance without hamstringing player freedom. Following the script accurately nets you some nicely done mid-match cutscenes, as well as some unlockable goodies, so there's incentive to play along even if you aren't old enough to mark-out over Hulk vs Andre or even Rock vs. Austin.

There's also an Undertaker-centric section called The Streak in which you can try to either defend or end The Phenom's 22-0 Wrestlemania run, but it isn't as entertaining as I'd hoped. The latter approach works fine as a sort of optional boss fight, but defending the streak is oddly handled through a slobber-knocker match, which any wrestling fan knows has nothing to do with ‘Taker’s streak. While it’s entirely functional, it clashes with the sense of tradition and reverence to history that otherwise permeates the mode.

That mild disappointment aside, 30 Years of Wrestlemania is still a meaty and varied single-player mode that would justify my purchase all on its own. The choice to lean so heavily on the Fed's history is a savvy one, allowing older fans to reconnect with their most gleeful wrestling memories while giving new fans a fun, interactive way to experience what they've missed.

In the ring, Yukes' WWE games strive to give us almost every option available to real-life wrestlers, and 2K14 continues to do so without making the controls unnecessarily complicated. Once you’ve learned the ropes, matches take on a pleasing ebb and flow that’s not unlike what you see on a typical Monday night. Whether I was working the legs like The Nature Boy, or working the crowd like The Brahma Bull, I always felt in total control.

While there aren't any monumental changes to the way it plays this year, there are some notable tweaks and additions. For one, characters with catch finishers can now set them up by thrusting running opponents up into the air first, which looks especially awesome when big guys like Brock Lesnar use it to pancake helpless little cruiser-weights. Strike combinations have been sped up dramatically, and with the elimination of those endless reversal cycles from last year, fights have gotten smoother and snappier.

Perhaps a bit too snappy in some cases. The increased speed makes striking a lot more strategically viable, but it can also make them look like they're playing in fast forward, robbing them of weight and impact when compared to the more methodical grapple moves. It's a good change in terms of playability, but still something I'd like to see smoothed out visually for next year.

But there are plenty of other things on that fix-it list, including some age-old issues that have dogged the WWE games for years. The slightly improved AI still has a habit of standing there slack-jawed even when it has you dead-to-rights, collision detection gets dodgy when more than two wrestlers are near each other, and the commentary continues to be overly broad and disjointed. I grew up listening to JR and Lawler call matches, and knowing how much they can add to the experience makes it all the more disappointing that they take away from it here instead.

It's easy to complain about a few trees, but this forest is vast and dense. WWE 2K14's creation suite, for example, is dizzying both in terms of breadth and detail. As ever, you can tailor nearly every minute detail, from game balance to rosters and venues to your whim. You can sync up camera cues with custom pyrotechnics for wrestlers’ entrances, create dudes with pink hair and devil horns, or give Chris Jericho a tattoo he should never, ever get in real life. You can even use the powerful story creator to plan, write, and direct branching plotlines for existing shows, or just create your own shows to go nuts with.

Custom character storage space has doubled to a whopping 100 slots, which you’ll be thankful for since you can now use existing WWE superstars as templates to build from directly, as well as fully color-edit their ring attire. Don’t like the version of HBK that’s in there? No problem, you can make your own in minutes. Improved rivalry management, pay-per-view options, and championship belt customization round out the highlights this year, but yet again, it's the way all of your creations come together in the never-ending, randomly generated WWE Universe that make 2K14 such an enjoyable sandbox to flop around in. And with the ability to share and download other people's creations as well, you'll have a regular stream of new content right up until 2K15 inevitably comes out.

THE VERDICT

It still lacks the brains to deliver competent AI and commentators, but WWE 2K14 has more than enough brawn to make up for it. 30 Years of Wrestlemania provides the strongest campaign backbone the series has had in a long time, the in-ring action is faster and more fluid than it's been in years, and thanks to WWE 2K14's continually expanding creation suite, we’re swimming in more options than we ever knew we wanted. It is indeed “time to play the game.”

Battlefield 4 review: Corralling chaos

by David Hinkle  on Oct 29th 2013 12:01AM

Battlefield 4 drops players into a sandbox and unhooks all tethers, loosing scores of soldiers to squad up and take down the opposition however they choose. The series' trademark, free-form multiplayer is reinforced with some smart albeit incremental upgrades, giving players even more incentive to work together. That in itself isn't terribly surprising; multiplayer has always been Battlefield's bread and butter.

What is surprising is that developer DICE has crafted a competent campaign to go along with it.

Battlefield 4 (Fishing in Baku)

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Battlefield 3's campaign highlighted rote shooting and a generic story punctuated by soldiers whose zest for combat was equaled only by their lust for profanity. Battlefield 4's campaign attempts to present a more relatable story of a squad perpetually stuck between a brilliantly-rendered rock and a slow-motion explosion. The campaign centers around Admiral Chang, an absentee villain in the midst of inciting a civil war in China. Chang convinces the military that Jin Jie, a local politician advocating peace and free speech, was killed by the United States. Chang enlists Russia's aid in his coup and the makings of a modern military drama are born.

Call of Duty's influence on Battlefield 4's campaign is palpable. The campaign is a string of fantastic scenarios from one moment to the next. The five-hour jaunt sees you narrowly escaping death while falling through a collapsing building, surviving an EMP blast in downtown Shanghai, downing enemy fighter planes in a vicious dogfight and hitching a ride on a plane via a skyhook. There's even one especially explosion-fueled moment when you climb a massive dam, lace it with C4 and bring the whole thing crumbling down.

The campaign never languishes and offers a few surprises. While it's odd that you never come face-to-face with Chang or have a big climactic showdown, the majority of the campaign's scenarios and narrative provide a thoroughly enthusiastic adventure that makes up for Battlefield 3's lackluster single-player.

As dizzying and volatile as Battlefield 4's campaign is, there are a few rough edges. The constant waves of enemy AI flushed into the various sandbox encounters are entirely scripted, and their ability to avoid your crosshairs leaves a lot to be desired. Thankfully the addition of a light tactical layer, which allows you to order your squad to suppress and engage individual targets, opens up flanking opportunities and provides just enoughvariety to these scripted sequences. Unfortunately, the distance between checkpoints in some of the larger skirmishes can become a problem in later levels full of enemy vehicles.

Even with these flaws, Battlefield 4's campaign manages to be far more entertaining thanBattlefield 3's bland military affair, and it's clear that DICE learned has learned a lesson or two since 2011.

Multiplayer, unsurprisingly, remains the main draw, presenting a new iteration of DICE's large-scale combat anchored by incremental improvements focused on better squad play. Players assume one of four classes and battle across ten maps, each tailoring itself to the specific mode being played. For example, Hainan Resort, a map composed of a series of tropical islands, will only open up a portion of itself for matches of Squad Deathmatch or Domination, but all of its many islands are utilized when playing Conquest and its 64-player PC variant, Conquest Large.

One of the more obvious changes is that squads can now accommodate five members instead of four. More important to fostering team tactics is the new Field Upgrade system. Each class has a handful of Field Upgrades they can choose from. During any given match, as you perform actions within the squad – things like giving your buddies ammo or reviving fallen squadmates – you'll climb the Field Upgrade ladder and unlock four different skills catering to a certain play style.

For example, as a match progresses and more squad actions are completed, the Engineer's Anti-Tank tier will unlock additional mines and rockets while reducing explosive damage taken. The Combat Medic upgrade path increases sprint speed, decreases Defibrilator charge time and even unlocks a skill that allows friendly vehicles to heal nearby comrades. It's not a revolutionary system, but it's enough to emphasize teamwork and add a new wrinkle to an already strong multiplayer suite.

The many multiplayer modes of Battlefield 4, which include returning favorites like the flag-capturing Conquest and asymmetrical attack mode Rush, are headlined by Obliteration. This new mode has two teams duke it out over a bomb and attempt to deliver it to one of a handful of objectives. Once the enemy team's objectives have all been destroyed, victory is achieved.

Obliteration feels like an intense tug-of war. The bomb is dropped into the middle of the map and only through concerted and coordinated effort can its explosive payload be delivered. The downside is that one of my many matches resulted in a forty-minute stalemate, with both teams pushing the bomb toward each others' base only to have it repelled right back. At launch, it's impossible to impose a time restriction on Obliteration. Still, when playing with a coordinated team, Obliteration offers an intense ebb and flow that's fresh to the series.

Battlefield 4 also marks the return of Commander mode, a top-down RTS-light variant, where players who have reached the rank of 10 can aid their team through weapon and vehicle drops, EMP blasts that disrupt enemy radar and cruise missile strikes that will level anything caught in the blast zone. Commander mode has been absent in recent Battlefield games, and it's a welcomed addition here. Commanders can put in work either throughBattlefield 4 proper or via a tablet app – the latter being an especially intuitive way to order squads toward attack points thanks to a simple touch-and-drag control setup.

The final leg of multiplayer is EA's cringe-worthy buzzword, Levelution. Put simply, all maps have some kind of interesting and exploitable environmental hazard. In Siege of Shanghai, a skyscraper can be toppled; in Paracel Storm, a chain of tropical islands, a storm rolls in and a large military ship crashes onto the shore. Flood Zone features a levee that, once destroyed, floods the entire war zone and pushes infantry toward the rooftops of the sprawling downtown locale.

Levelution often feels more like window dressing than an impactful mechanic, and it works better in some levels than it does in others. The events in Flood Zone and Siege of Shanghai, for example dramatically affect the dynamics of play. When Flood Zone's levee breaks and drowns the city, soldiers are forced to swim on the ground level, making them vulnerable to fire from the rooftops. Bringing down the skyscraper in Siege of Shanghai hampers visibility with a thick coating of dust in the air. Meanwhile, there are weaker interactive elements like scattered IEDs players can trigger in Golmud Railway, or a semi-collapsible hotel in Hainan Resort. It's impressive to watch the US destroyer slam into the shore in Paracel Storm, but it doesn't really do much to change gameplay.

Levelution aside, each of Battlefield 4's ten levels feel massive - especially on PC. Not only are these maps truly beautiful – Battlefield 4 has some of the best lighting I've ever seen – but they're also far more destructible than the war zones of Battlefield 3. Taking part in a 64-player match across the sprawling Hainan Resort, watching jets strafe and battle in the skies while boats assault beaches and tanks level condos is awe-inspiring.


Sadly, the same can't be said for the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, which limit maps to 24 players each. Playing a match of Conquest often feels like a traipse through a ghost town in search of the next guy to shoot. The current-generation console versions of Battlefield 4 are also hampered by short draw distance, texture pop-in and a 30 frames-per-second presentation. Between the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, the latter suffered from a much more sluggish frame rate and even some animations like reloading were inconsistent. The game would recognize I reloaded by placing a new clip in my gun but my soldier didn't go through the motions. The Xbox 360 and PS3 offerings maintain the solid core gameplay of Battlefield 4, but the gap between PC and current-gen consoles is definitely starting to show.

Ultimately, Battlefield 4 successfully piles more content onto its excellent multiplayer while adding just a hint of innovation through Commander mode and Field Upgrades. The single-player campaign, while suffering from a dearth of checkpoints in some missions, does a good job of entertaining throughout its brief conflict, trading in the abysmal dreck that was Battlefield 3's story for high-energy spectacle.

The main draw for the Battlefield series has always been the chaotic camaraderie of its multiplayer, and that's no different here. But the sum of Battlefield 4's parts shows that DICE is capable of more. Not only has the developer iterated on and progressed its marquee multiplayer, it's provided a tight and cohesive campaign that is everything a military shooter needs to be.

Nokia sold 8.8 million Lumia phones in Q3

The wallet-friendly Lumia 520 drove the 19 percent quarter-on-quarter increase.

Nokia sold 8.8 million Lumia phones in the past three months, a 19 percent increase over previous numbers, driven in large part by the success of the wallet-friendly Lumia 520.

The company also appears to be gaining ground in North America. Although Nokia only sold 1.4 million phones in North America this past summer, that's nearly four times as many as this time last year.

Nokia revealed the numbers today in its Q3 results for the three months from July to September. Net sales for Q3 totaled $7.85 billion, as the total number of units sold, including both smartphones and feature phones, rose by 4 percent to 55.8 million. Operating profit was $162.4 million.

Over the whole of 2013 so far, from January to September, Nokia's total sales have fallen 22 percent.Nokia sold 7.4 million Lumia phones in the previous quarter, but still suffered a Q2 loss of $150 million.

It's been a tumultuous few months for what was once the biggest phone manufacturer in the world. Nokia's Windows Phone partner Microsoft is to cement its relationship with the ailing Finnish firm by buying Nokia's device and services division for $7 billion -- but the Finnish government has criticized Nokia CEO Stephen Elop over his "quite outrageous" bonus.

The deal is expected to be finalized at a shareholder meeting on November 19 in Helsinki.

Nokia is forging ahead with new devices, launching its first tablet, the Lumia 2520, alongside theLumia 1520 and 1320 smartphones last week. CNET met Elop at the launch of the new phones, where he told us "our challenge is to get you to try (Windows Phone and Windows RT) in the first place."

Adobe hack attack affected 38 million accounts

A cyberattack recently launched against Adobe impacted more than ten times the number of users initially estimated.

On October 3, Adobe revealed that it had been the victim of an attack that gained access to Adobe customer IDs and encrypted passwords. At the time, the company said that credit card records and login information for around 3 million users had been stolen. But the number of affected accounts has turned out to be much higher.

The attack actually compromised 38 million active accounts, according to security blog Krebs on Security. Adobe confirmed that number in an e-mail to Krebs.

"So far, our investigation has confirmed that the attackers obtained access to Adobe IDs and (what were at the time valid), encrypted passwords for approximately 38 million active users," Adobe spokeswoman Heather Edell said. "We have completed email notification of these users. We also have reset the passwords for all Adobe IDs with valid, encrypted passwords that we believe were involved in the incident -- regardless of whether those users are active or not."

The attack also gained access to many invalid or inactive Adobe accounts, those with invalid encrypted passwords, and those used as test accounts.

"We are still in the process of investigating the number of inactive, invalid, and test accounts involved in the incident," Edell added. "Our notification to inactive users is ongoing."

CNET contacted Adobe for comment and will update the story with any further details.

Following the initial report of the attack, Adobe reset the passwords on compromised customer accounts and e-mailed those whose accounts were breached and whose credit or debit card information was exposed.

Adobe provides a Customer security alert page with more information on the breach and an option whereby users can change their password.

Google ready to charge into smartwatch fray, Journal says

Google wants to cement its position in wearable technology by taking on both the watch and glass markets.

The Samsung Galaxy Gear hasn't been popular with users.

(Credit: Andrew Hoyle/CNET)

Google has a smartwatch and it could go into mass production within months, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Internet search giant is in talks with Asian manufacturers on the production of a potential smartwatch that would run Android and Google Now, the company's voice-assistant feature that powers Google Glass, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited anonymous sources. The report also noted that it was working to reduce the power consumption of the device.

Google's smartwatch would give the company a solid position in the burgeoning wearable technology business. The company already has carved out a notable position with its Google Glass initiative, and it could cement it with a smartwatch. Such a device would follow efforts by multiple companies, most recently Samsung Electronics and its Galaxy Gear.

The Galaxy Gear has been panned because of its lack of capabilities and weak battery life, something Google appears to be addressing with its effort. The Google smartwatch reportedly will work with smartphones, but it also draws information from e-mail through Google Now.

CNET contacted Google for comment, and we'll update the story when the company responds.

The smartwatch also comes as the traditional tech giants are exploring more wearable products. Microsoft reportedly is looking at connected eyewear, similar to Google Glass. Apple, meanwhile, has long been rumored to be working on an iWatch, and CEO Tim Cook hinted at new "categories" of products for next year.

Motorola unveils Project Ara for custom smartphones

The highly modular approach aims to let you swap in items such as keyboard, battery, or display so that your handset stays up-to-date much longer than today's smartphones.

An example of a Project Ara customized handset.

(Credit: Motorola)

Motorola has announced a new initiative to help smartphone users take handset customization beyond ringtones, wallpaper, and body colors to its very form and function.

The Google-owned handset company on Monday announced Project Ara, a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. An endoskeleton, or structural frame, holds the smartphone modules of the owner's choice, such as a display, keyboard, or extra battery. The approach should allow users to swap out malfunctioning modules or upgrade as innovations emerge, providing a handset that stays up-to-date much longer than today's smartphones.

"Our goal is to drive a more thoughtful, expressive, and open relationship between users, developers, and their phones," Motorola wrote in a company blog post. "To give you the power to decide what your phone does, how it looks, where and what it's made of, how much it costs, and how long you'll keep it."

Early design ideas from Project Ara.

(Credit: Motorola)

This isn't Motorola's first foray into smartphone customization, though Project Ara takes things much further. Over the summer, the company launched its Moto Maker service, which lets buyers of Moto X phones indulge their build-to-order desires, mixing and matching body and interface features including onboard memory, wallpaper, and front, back, and accent colors for the device's shell.

In the works for more than a year, Project Ara recently partnered with Dave Hakkens, the creator of Phonebloks. Although still largely in its infancy, Phonebloks' build-your-own-phone approach has garnered plenty of interest online, with nearly a million people signing up to support it.

"We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software: create a vibrant third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, increase the pace of innovation, and substantially compress development timelines," Motorola said in its blog post.

The project plans to begin inviting developers to create modules for the platform in the coming months. It also expects to release an alpha version of a module developers kit this winter.

Lavabit founder says he fought feds to protect the Constitution

In a sit-down at CNET headquarters, Lavabit CEO Ladar Levison discusses the legal bureaucracy the US government employed to try to force him to become complicit with NSA surveillance.

Lavabit founder Ladar Levison in a public sit-down with reporter Declan McCullagh at CNET headquarters here in San Francisco, Calif. on Monday, Oct. 28.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

SAN FRANCISCO -- Like a story straight out of the universe of Franz Kafka, Lavabit founder Ladar Levison found himself before a judge in Washington, representing himself against an entire team of representatives for the US government.

The founder of the secure e-mail service couldn't find an affordable lawyer in the only one week's time he was given to travel from Texas to DC. Still, he found it imperative to argue his case for why federal agents were not authorized to gather Lavabit's SSL keys for its mounting case against National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

In a talk here at CNET headquarters with chief political correspondent Declan McCullagh and the Electronic Frontier Foundation senior staff attorney Kurt Opsahl, Levison laid out the timeline of this summer's events leading up to his decision to shutdown Lavabit in August to prevent himself from becoming "complicit in crimes against the American people."

Levison's struggle, resembling in parts a spy movie on par with Snowden's flight from the US, involved a series of attempts wrapped in mind-boggling legal intricacies imposed by the US government to prevent authorities from collecting his user's data. To comply with the request would have been antithetical to Levison's mission in providing a secure e-mail service with Lavabit. But Levison also saw the efforts of the government as profoundly dangerous in its potential to set a legal precedent.

"It was about more than keeping me out of jail," Levison said. "It was about protecting the Constitution."

Now Levison is in a drawn out legal battle over his decision to shutter the e-mail service. That move sidestepped a FBI search warrant that finally, after months of ambiguous wrangling and attempts to coerce him into handing them over voluntarily, spelled out the government's explicit request for the SSL keys. In another now-infamous anecdote, Levison printed out Lavabit's SSL keys in a hard-to-copy font -- "Everyone says it was four-point font, but I think it was more like eight" -- so that he had enough time to fly back to Texas and shutdown his company.

Levison recounted how he endured multiple visits from federal agents and the tailing of his vehicle outside his Texas home. The most telling aspect of the tale is the measures taken by authorities to bend the language of its motions to further empower the US government. In other words, the authorities at the behest of the NSA were interested in turning Levison and Lavabit into an example for using broad language to justify limitless collection of personal data from businesses, and then legally barring them from telling anyone about it.

"They didn't fully comprehend the implications of what they were demanding. "They didn't understand the industry implications. I do know they have done it before, if that helps," Levison admitted, adding that he thinks the NSA more or less told the non-technical members of the Department of Justice to collect the information, which it followed through with without any regard for what that meant for security and privacy on the Web in an age of increasing government surveillance.

"They didn't understand the industry implications," he added. Only after Levison fought aggressively, and openly said he would comply with every other demand of the court orders, did the government equip itself with a search warrant.

"One of the things I found most disturbing about some of these leaks this summer was that even our own members of Congress didn't understand the extent of this surveillance," Levison said of the importance of challenging the NSA. "Tomorrow the technology will change and the issue will come back up again if we don't address the issue legislatively."

As for what he's working on next, Levison dropped a hint. "I'll just call it a potential technical solution to the problem that I'm calling dark mail," he said. He plans on releasing more information about the initiative on Wednesday.

G Flex features curved battery and 6-inch HD touch screen

CNET Editors' Take

October 28, 2013 11:34 AM PDT

The LG G Flex

(Credit: LG)

Not long after LG revealed that it had successfully developed curved smartphone batteries, the Korean-based company announced the G Flex, a 6-inch quad-core smartphone that features an arched touch screen and rear control buttons. Though US pricing and availability remain unknown, the device will hit Korea in November, with more markets announced afterward.

Usually, LG suits up its high-end devices with IPS LCD displays, but the OLED screen is bendable, which lends to the G Flex's vertically bowed design. In addition, the 6-inch HD display has a 1,280x720-pixel resolution.Like the name suggests, the G Flex sports a curved, 0.34-inch-thick construction, partly thanks to its plastic OLED screen.

The handset also includes the aforementioned curved battery inside. According to LG, the 3,500mAh battery uses patented technology that takes advantage of its unique shape to perform more reliably.

Another novel aspect is the G Flex's back side, which features an elastic "self-healing" coating. This coat reportedly mends and protects the phone from day-to-day scuffs and scratches.

Another look at the LG G Flex.

(Credit: LG)

Powering the device is a 2.26GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor (the same blazing fast CPU that's seen in the LG G2 flagship) and a 450MHz Adreno 330 GPU for ultra-smooth gameplay.

For shutterbugs, the phone is equipped with a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera. It runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean and is LTE enabled.

Other features include 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal memory, and NFC.

As previously mentioned, the G Flex houses its key control buttons on its backside, just like the G2. As such, it will feature the KnockOn functionality, which allows you to wake up the handset by tapping on the touch screen twice.

Additional new features to LG's Optimus 3.0 user interface include Q Theater. This lets you view photos and videos directly from the lock screen. There's also an urgent call alert, which flashes the LED notification light when you miss several calls in a row from the same number, and swing lock screen, which changes the lock screen image depending on how you hold the phone.

The G Flex follows news of Samsung releasing its own, albeit horizontally curved, smartphone, known as the Galaxy Round. What do you guys think of this new trend of concave displays, is it neat or ridiculous? Be sure to tell us in the comments below.