Month: August 2017

Charter has moved millions of customers to new—and often higher—pricing

Enlarge / A Charter Spectrum vehicle. (credit: Charter ) Charter Communications has moved 30 percent of the customers it acquired in a blockbuster merger onto new pricing plans, resulting in many people paying higher prices. Charter closed the acquisitions of Time Warner Cable (TWC) and Bright House Networks in May 2016. Before the merger, Charter had about 6.8 million customers; afterwards, Charter had 25.4 million customers in 41 states and became the second-largest US cable company after Comcast. The merger was quickly followed by customer complaints about pricing in the acquired territories. In November 2016 , we noted that “tens of thousands of ex-Time Warner Cable video subscribers have canceled their service since the company was bought by Charter, and pricing changes appear to be the driving factor.” At the time, Charter CEO Thomas Rutledge explained that the TWC video customer base was “mispriced” and needed to be moved “in the right direction.” Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Charter has moved millions of customers to new—and often higher—pricing

America’s newest aircraft carrier uses “digital” catapult on fighter for first time

Enlarge / An F/A-18 flies above the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) as its pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Jaime Struck, prepares for the first arrested landing aboard the new carrier on July 28. (credit: US Navy ) Last week, an F/A-18F Super Hornet from the US Navy’s Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 23 successfully landed and then took off from the recently commissioned USS Gerald R. Ford —the first full use of the ship’s next-generation flight arresting system and electromagnetic catapult. The landing and launch off the Virginia coast are a pair of major milestones for the systems, which have seen their share of controversy (and cost overruns). But the test doesn’t close the book on the catapult’s problems. The catapult, called the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), has suffered from control problems that have prevented the Navy from certifying it for use with fully loaded strike aircraft. Earlier launches at a test site at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, in April of 2014 caused a high level of vibration in the wings of F/A-18s loaded with 480-gallon wing-mounted fuel tanks—the configuration commonly used to launch aircraft on long-range strike missions. The vibrations were so strong that Navy officials were concerned about the safety of launching aircraft fully loaded. US Navy Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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America’s newest aircraft carrier uses “digital” catapult on fighter for first time

After 43 years, gentle touch of a neutrino is finally observed

Enlarge / The neutron source at Oak Ridge National Lab. (credit: Oak Ridge National Lab ) Neutrinos are noted for being extremely reluctant to interact with other matter. While it’s possible to build hardware that will detect them, these detectors tend to be enormous in order to provide sufficient material for the neutrinos to interact with. Those interactions also take the form of energetic events that transform the identity of particles (for example, converting protons to neutrons). Given the neutrino’s low mass and tendency not to interact, the idea of detecting one simply bumping into another particle seems almost ludicrous. But that’s what scientists from Oak Ridge National Lab are reporting today. They’ve seen brief flashes as atoms get nudged by a neutrino, which imparts a tiny bit of its tiny momentum to the atom’s nucleus. Oak Ridge National Lab is home to some hardware called the Spallation Neutron Source. This accelerates a beam of protons and smashes them into a tank of mercury. This creates debris that includes lots of neutrons, which are used for a variety of scientific purposes. But the debris also includes some neutrinos that are otherwise lost in the spray of particles that come flowing out of the collisions. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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After 43 years, gentle touch of a neutrino is finally observed

Man sues Los Angeles for parking ticket, gets $650K

In 2015 Cody Weiss got a ticket for parking longer than the posted time limit. He says the ticket was wrongfully issued, and decided to contest the ticket. He learned that the City of LA doesn’t directly review tickets; it outsources the job to a private company. That didn’t sit well with Weiss, so he sued the city and won. Yesterday, the Los Angeles City Council approved a $650,000 payout. From the LA Times : Weiss argued that his ticket, which he received for parking longer than the posted time limit, was wrongfully issued. The court found a problem with the fact that the initial review was handled by a company called PRWT, a subcontractor for Xerox. An investigation by NBC4 found that PRWT automatically denied most ticket appeals, even when strong evidence was presented that someone was wrongly ticketed. Image: Charleston’s TheDigitel

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Man sues Los Angeles for parking ticket, gets $650K

iOS 11 camera features may include scene recognition

Smartphones may have effectively killed off dedicated point-and-shoot cameras, but Apple is looking to them for inspiration with iOS 11. Developers have dug through beta firmware for the HomePod, and tucked inside the code for Apple’s smart speaker, there are hints that the next version of its mobile OS will feature something called “SmartCam.” iOS 11 (or the next iPhone) will have something called SmartCam. It will tune camera settings based on the scene it detects pic.twitter.com/7duyvh5Ecj — Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) August 2, 2017 If you’ve ever used a point-and-shoot camera, the feature should sound pretty familiar: different scene modes and photo settings depending on what you’re shooting. So, one each for fireworks, foliage, pets, skies, snow, sports and others, as SlashGear notes. There’s even one for documents. The “smart” in its name suggests that maybe machine learning will play a role here as well, potentially analyzing the scene for you and picking the best settings. This might not use machine learning to improve photography a la what Google does with the Pixel , but it could make Apple’s woefully basic camera app a little more full featured. Whether this will be exclusive to Apple’s next round of mobile hardware — whenever it’s announced — or if it’ll apply to legacy handsets too is hard to tell. Via: SlashGear Source: Guilherme Rambo (Twitter)

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iOS 11 camera features may include scene recognition

FBI arrests UK security researcher who stopped WannaCry outbreak (Updated)

Marcus Hutchins, the 23-year-old security researcher who is credited with halting the spread of the WannaCry malware program earlier this year has been arrested by the FBI while attending the DefCon security conference in Las Vegas, Motherboard reports . This is a developing story and details remain scarce as of the publication of this post, however The Telegraph states that “UK law enforcement and security agencies confirmed a British citizen has been arrested” as part of an ongoing FBI investigation. I can confirm @MalwareTechBlog was detained yesterday and FBI/US Marshalls won’t tell me where he is. https://t.co/lV5SxZjsRi — Andrew Mabbitt (@MabbsSec) August 3, 2017 Hutchins was hailed as a hero in May when he found the killswitch to the WannaCry virus, a malware program that had infected vulnerable targets across Europe and Asia, including the UK’s National Health Service and a Spanish telecommunications company. Hutchins, who works for Kryptos Logic, halted the virus’ spread by registering a web domain that the program’s code relied on. Motherboard reports that as of early Thursday morning Hutchins was being held in the Henderson Detention Center in Nevada, however he was later moved to an undisclosed location. “I’ve spoken to the US Marshals again and they say they have no record of Marcus being in the system. At this point we’ve been trying to get in contact with Marcus for 18 hours and nobody knows where he’s been taken, ” an unnamed friend of Hutchins told Motherboard . “We still don’t know why Marcus has been arrested and now we have no idea where in the US he’s been taken to and we’re extremely concerned for his welfare.” Engadget has reached out to Kryptos Logic and the FBI for comment. This story will be updated as they reply. Update (2:29 pm EDT): Hutchins has reportedly been located and is being held at the FBI’s Las Vegas field office. Finally located @MalwareTechBlog , he’s in the Las Vegas FBI field office. Can anyone provide legal representation? — Andrew Mabbitt (@MabbsSec) August 3, 2017 Update: (2:45 pm EDT) : The Department of Justice has just announced that Hutchins is in custody not for his role in the Wannary event but for “his role in creating and distributing the Kronos banking Trojan.” According to the DoJ, between July 2014 and July 2015 Hutchins developed the malware and shared it online. Source: Telegraph UK , Motherboard

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FBI arrests UK security researcher who stopped WannaCry outbreak (Updated)

Font Maker Sues Universal Music Over ‘Pirated’ The Vamps Logo

An anonymous reader writes: Universal Music Group is being sued by HypeForType, which accuses the record label of using “pirated” copies of its fonts for the logo of The Vamps. The font is widely used for artwork, promotion material and merchandising of the popular British band, and the font creator is looking for a minimum of $1.25 million in damages. The font maker has filed a lawsuit accusing the major label of using its “Nanami Rounded” and “Ebisu Bold” fonts without permission. According to a complaint, filed in a New York federal court, Universal failed to obtain a proper license for its use, so they are essentially using pirated fonts. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Font Maker Sues Universal Music Over ‘Pirated’ The Vamps Logo

The external graphics dream is real: Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box reviewed

Enlarge / The Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box and Sapphire RX 580. (credit: Mark Walton) Specs at a glance: Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box Power 350W Asaka AK-PS035AF01 SFX Ports 1x PCIe 3.0 X16, 1x Thunderbolt 3.0 Size 18.5cm x 34.0cm x 20.2cm Other perks 120mm Asaka Fan Price $300 (~£300, but TBC) The external graphics card (or eGFX), long the pipe dream of laptop-touting gamers the world over, has finally come of age. Thanks to Thunderbolt 3 —which offers up to 40Gbps of bandwidth, the equivalent of four PCIe 3.0 lanes—consumers finally have access to enough bandwidth in a universal standard to make eGFX a viable option. So the theory goes, you can now take most laptops with a Thunderbolt 3 port, plug in a box containing a power supply and your GPU of choice, and enjoy better visuals and higher frame rates in games, and faster rendering in production tasks. You can even whack a PCIe video capture card or a production-ready audio interface in that external box, if you so wish. Thus far the limiting factor, aside from some potential performance bottlenecks and driver support, has been price. The Razer Core , as beautifully designed as it is, costs a whopping £500/$500 without a graphics card—and that’s if it’s even in stock. Meanwhile, the Asus ROG XG Station 2—which is most certainly not beautifully designed—costs £400/$400. When paired with a decent graphics card like an Nvidia GTX 1070 or an AMD RX 580, a full eGFX setup runs just shy of £900/$900, not including the price of a laptop to pair it with. Read 34 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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The external graphics dream is real: Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box reviewed

Sony and IBM created 330TB data tapes for a massive analog archive

Storing data on magnetic tape is back, baby. Sony has announced that thanks to a partnership with IBM Research in Zurich, the pair have developed a magnetic tape cartridge capable of storing 201 gigabytes of data per square inch for a total of 330 terabytes per cartridge. Previously, IBM’s analog storage maxed out at 123 gigabytes per square inch. The trick here is that IBM and Sony are using sputtered media made up of several layers of nano particles to extend tape length. IMB says this technique uses a process similar to printing integrated circuits. What’s more, 330TB of data storage isn’t the maximum storage limit. In the video below, IBM Research’s Dr. Mark Lantz says that tape storage could reach even higher capacities in the future. The last time IBM announced it’d made advancements in the space was in 2015. At the time, cartridge capacity was 220 terabytes and 123 gigabytes per square inch. When the research started in 2006 , density was a paltry 6.67GB per square inch with total cartridge capacity of 8TB. What’s here is “an archival tier for cold data, which is not frequently accessed, ” according to Lantz. Specifically, this would be a boon for cloud storage companies. Lantz says we’ll be seeing these types of increases for awhile, and will double cartridge capacity every two years for at least ten years. That should be enough to keep your selfies backed up to your favorite non-local storage provider for awhile. Source: Sony

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Sony and IBM created 330TB data tapes for a massive analog archive

Twelve Americans were enslaved in Africa after an 1815 shipwreck

In 1815 an American ship ran aground in northwestern Africa, and its crew were enslaved by merciless nomads. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll follow the desperate efforts of Captain James Riley to find a way to cross the Sahara and beg for help from Western officials in Morocco. We’ll also wade through more molasses and puzzle over a prospective guitar thief. Show notes Please support us on Patreon!

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Twelve Americans were enslaved in Africa after an 1815 shipwreck