Author: kenmay

Amazon’s Giving Away 40 Premium Android Apps and Games for Christmas

Amazon’s celebrating Christmas Eve by giving away 40 premium Android apps via the Amazon App Store. The full list is below, and a lot of them are actually really popular apps, including Terraria , djay 2 , and Plex . Read more…

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Amazon’s Giving Away 40 Premium Android Apps and Games for Christmas

Pirate Bay Domain Back Online

Zanadou writes On December 9 The Pirate Bay was raided but despite the rise of various TPB clones and rumors of reincarnations, thepiratebay.se domain remained inaccessible, until today. This morning the Pirate Bay’s nameservers were updated to ones controlled by their domain name registrar binero.se . A few minutes later came another big change when The Pirate Bay’s main domain started pointing to a new IP-address (178.175.135.122) that is connected to a server hosted in Moldova. So far there is not much to see, just a background video of a waving pirate flag (taken from Isohunt.to) and a counter displaying the time elapsed since the December 9 raid. However, the “AES string” looks promising. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Pirate Bay Domain Back Online

Chevy’s Insane PowerWall Display Has More Pixels Than an IMAX Theater

Used to be that even the smallest tweaks to an upcoming automobile’s design could require weeks of fabrication to produce the modified clay, wood, and metal models. And while physical representations of prototype vehicles are still a big part of the production process today, a new 4K UHD monitor wall from Chevrolet could soon supplant them all. Read more…

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Chevy’s Insane PowerWall Display Has More Pixels Than an IMAX Theater

You can now chat on Skype inside Office Online apps

Want to get advice while you’re plugging away at that big report in Office Online? You won’t have to fire up a separate app (or website) any longer. As hinted at by recent leaks , Skype chat is now built into the web productivity suite’s versions of PowerPoint and Word. If you want to share ideas with a colleague, you can keep the conversation running alongside your docs without having to juggle windows or browser tabs. Yes, Google Drive has had a similar option for a while, but this collaboration upgrade is definitely handy if you frequently work in Microsoft’s world. Filed under: Internet , Microsoft Comments Source: Skype

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You can now chat on Skype inside Office Online apps

Google and Microsoft fight hotels’ attempts to block personal WiFi

The battle between hotels and hotspot-toting travelers isn’t over just because Marriott settled a complaint that it blocked personal WiFi — far from it. Google, Microsoft and a US carrier lobbying group (the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association) are opposing a hotel industry petition asking the FCC to let them block guests’ hotspots while they’re on the premises. Google and its allies contend that the hospitality business is not only trying to make customers pay for expensive WiFi, but to effectively take control of unlicensed wireless frequencies. Everyone has “equal rights” to use those airwaves, the carriers say. Hoteliers are mostly repeating Marriott’s arguments. They claim they need blocking to provide a “secure and reliable” connection for guests, and that they’re using FCC-approved gear designed to fight interference and intruders. The FCC hasn’t yet weighed in on this latest battle, but the hotels may have a tough fight ahead of them given the reasoning that led to the recent settlement. Officials didn’t believe that Marriott’s security claims held water, and they argued that the company was trying to charge customers for internet access they already had. Unless the federal agency has a change of heart, there’s a greater chance that you’ll get to use your own hotspot in the future. [Image credit: AP Photo/Mark Humphrey] Filed under: Wireless , Networking , Mobile , Microsoft , Google Comments Via: Recode , NetworkWorld Source: FCC (1) , (2)

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Google and Microsoft fight hotels’ attempts to block personal WiFi

NYT: JPMorgan Chase was hacked due to two-factor authentication blunder

The hackers that stole millions of depositors’ contact info from JPMorgan Chase earlier this year didn’t use any kind of sophisticated malware like the one that took down Sony Pictures’ computers. No, they managed to steal people’s info, because the bank failed to upgrade one of its servers with two-factor authentication, according to The New York Times . Due to the lack of two-factor, the hackers gained access to sensitive info using just log-in credentials stolen from an employee. NYT says people within the company are (understandably) embarrassed about what happened, since the bank typically spends $250 million to make sure its networks are secure. Also, the other banks targeted by the same hackers weren’t as affected, presumably because all their security measures were working properly. A group of internal investigators, comprised of cybersecurity experts and even NSA agents, are now trying to get to the bottom of the oversight and to discover who launched the attack. Authorities used to think the Russian government was behind the breach due to the US economic sanctions against Russia, but the FBI dropped that idea way back in October. The bank maintains that the attackers didn’t get away with any money, though it admits that they harvested passwords, phone numbers and home addresses. [Image credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images] Filed under: Misc Comments Source: The New York Times

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NYT: JPMorgan Chase was hacked due to two-factor authentication blunder

Samsung Announces Production of 20nm Mobile LPDDR4, Faster Than Desktop DDR4

MojoKid writes Samsung announced today that it has begun volume production of its 8Gb LPDDR4 memory chips, with expected commercial shipments in 2015. The announcement is noteworthy for a number of reasons. First, one of the most important characteristics of a modern mobile device is its battery life, and moving to a new memory standard should significantly reduce the memory subsystem’s power consumption. Second, however, there’s the clock speed. Samsung is claiming that its LPDDR4 will hit 3.2GHz, and while bus widths on mobile parts are significantly smaller than the 64-bit channels that desktops use, the higher clock speed per chip will help close that gap. In fact, multiple vendors have predicted that LPDDR4 clock speeds will actually outpace standard DDR4, with a higher amount of total bandwidth potentially delivered to tablets and smartphones than conventional PCs will see. In addition, the power savings are expected to be substantial. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Samsung Announces Production of 20nm Mobile LPDDR4, Faster Than Desktop DDR4

The Morphing E-Ink Keyboard May (Almost) Finally Be Here

Those of us who are terrible at memorizing keyboard shortcuts dream of a day when we don’t have to keep a reference card handy for Photoshop or Office. And while they’ve been teased before, it looks like we might finally be able to buy, or at least pre-order, an E Ink keyboard with keys that change and provide shortcut hints depending on what software you’re using. Read more…

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The Morphing E-Ink Keyboard May (Almost) Finally Be Here