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We've got a special holiday deal for new Premier Subscribers: subscribe to Ars Technica, and get a 12-month subscription to Wired Magazine (recently named magazine of the decade) free. This offer is only valid for US subscribers, but we will work on expanding that in the future.

This adds to an already pretty amazing feature set, if I do say so myself. The ad-free version of our site is not only easy to browse, but it's a clear-conscience way to support our work for those readers who don't want to see ads. Our full-text RSS feeds and PDF library have also been hits, and feedback has told us that the ability to view our long features on a single page is also a plus. Of course, exclusive access to the full site is a big bullet point, as is automatic entry into every contest we run. Check out the full line-up of features for yourself.

^* Only Valid for new United States subscribers. Existing US subscribers can participate, but must follow different instructions that incur the immediate cost of a new subscription ($50) that will extend the time remaining on their current subscription. For more details on this process, click here.

Top stories: Dec 21 - 28, 2009

Gear & Gadgets From Cinepak to H.265: a brief history of video compression by Anders Bylund Today's video-rich Internet wouldn't be possible without highly efficient compression. Ars rewinds the history of digital video compression to help understand how we arrived at the land of YouTube and Hulu. Read More

Infinite Loop Apple exec: Jobs "happy" with unannounced Apple tablet by Chris Foresman The long-rumored, long-imagined Apple tablet may be close to being unveiled to the public, now that Steve Jobs is said to be "happy with the new tablet." Read More

Opposable Thumbs $40 gets you stereoscopic pseudo-3D on the PSP. No... really by Ben Kuchera Adding depth to your PSP games and videos? An upcoming product called the V-Screen makes this possible, although the science behind the technology has long been known to PC gamers. Ars investigates. Read More

Gear & Gadgets For NVIDIA and Intel, Flash video is a double-edged sword by Jon Stokes Adobe's Open Screen Project, which puts Flash acceleration support on a variety of platforms, has killed Intel's "full Internet" rationale for mobile x86. But the same project has also brought HD YouTube and Hulu to Intel's Pine Trail platform, which hurts the case for NVIDIA's Ion. Read More

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