Siri, Apple's widely advertised voice-activated "intelligent assistant," has so far been limited to the latest iPhone 4S hardware after Apple's acquisition. Though observers have come up with various reasons for the restriction, a newly revealed piece of the puzzle suggests the issue is related to hardware after all. According to recent SEC filings from technology start-up Audience, Apple incorporated an improved version of its background noise filtering technology directly into the A5 processor used in the iPhone 4S—technology that improves Siri's speech recognition capabilities.

Siri was originally a third-party app for the iPhone that ran on devices as old as the iPhone 3GS. Apple later bought the company behind Siri, and integrated the tech directly into iOS 5, which was released to the public in October of 2011. Siri is now only available on the iPhone 4S, however, and Apple subsequently pulled the old app from the App Store when the 4S was released.

Apple has begun to take action against iPhone app ripoffs that have been crudding up the App Store. Over the weekend, the company removed a number of apps that bear a striking similarity to ones that are already popular among iOS users—the list includes Angry Ninja Birds, Plant vs. Zombie, and Temple Jump, which correlate to the popular titles Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies, and Temple Run (hat tip to Gamasutra). The move is encouraging to developers who have been struggling with knockoffs attempting to steal their business on the App Store, but there's plenty left to do if Apple wants to show it's serious about tackling the problem once and for all.

Apps attempting to clone—or at least ride the popularity wave of—other apps has been a problem for iOS developers for years now. Ars first started covering the phenomenon in early 2009, but examples continue to pop up on both the mobile App Store as well as the Mac App Store.

Verizon and Redbox are developing a new video service to compete against Netflix, which will combine Redbox's kiosk DVD and Blu-Ray rental service with streaming and downloadable video content made possible by Verizon's network.

Verizon and Redbox parent company Coinstar announced the partnership today with a press release and press conference, saying a subscription service "and more" will become available in the second half of 2012. Details were limited due to "competitive reasons."

The joint venture will apparently not include DVDs through the US Postal Service, as Netflix offers. Redbox has kiosks at 29,000 locations nationwide, including grocery stores, convenience stores, drug stores, and at some Wal-Mart stores. "By offering instantly available online and mobile content with immediate access to physical media through rental kiosks, Verizon and Redbox will be uniquely positioned to deliver the best of both worlds—digital and physical—to consumers across the country," the companies said.

Verizon owns 65 percent of the new joint venture, which is also described in an SEC filing, with Redbox owning the other 35 percent. While Netflix is struggling after a shaky 2011, Verizon and Redbox will still have their work cut out for them. No mention of specific content was made, but Verizon said it will use its "industry-wide relationships with entertainment content providers" to ensure a good selection of movies online.

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Microsoft has published the specification for C++ AMP (Accelerated Massive Parallelism), its new system for heterogeneous parallel processing in C++. When Microsoft first announced C++ AMP in June last year, it said that it wanted to make the AMP specification open to all.

AMP has been developed by Microsoft with input from AMD and NVIDIA. Microsoft's implementation allows AMP programs to use both the main CPU and Direct3D video cards (via the company's DirectCompute API), though the specification should also permit OpenGL/OpenCL-based implementations.

Digital forms of Solitaire have been included with Windows since it reached version 3.0, and they may well represent the most widely played video game series this side of Angry Birds, enjoyed by bored cubicle workers and bored, procrastinating students alike. While most serious gamers probably wouldn't put these games top ten picks of all time, you'd be hard-pressed to find a single PC owner that hasn't put in at least a few hours on a machine that has nothing else available.

Plants vs. Zombies and Peggle maker Popcap is targeting this familiar genre with its latest Facebook time-waster, Solitaire Blitz, a supremely addictive and well-crafted offering that adds just the right amount of tension to the zen autonomy of mindlessly clicking cards.