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ISPs will send warning letters to illegal downloaders from next year

If you’re suspected of naughtily downloading copyrighted content , then expect the most savage of punishments: a letter asking you to stop. BT, Sky, Virgin Media and TalkTalk have signed a deal with the music and movie industries whereby the ISPs will send out ” educational ” missives to pirates from next year. The deal is the culmination of four years of negotiation between the big four and the lobby groups, the latter of which wanted much stronger action and access to a database of serial torrenters. Thankfully, the internet companies won out, so the odd letter asking you to re-think your ways is the only thing you’ve got to deal with… for now. Filed under: Internet Comments Source: BBC News

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ISPs will send warning letters to illegal downloaders from next year

Router company that threatened a reviewer loses Amazon selling license

The Medialink router that was reviewed. Mediabridge Update 5/8/2014 19:44 CT: On Thursday, Mediabridge Products posted an official statement about this incident to its Facebook page, clarifying its position and saying that Amazon has revoked its selling privileges. (Thanks to PrimalxConvoy for the tip). In the statement, the company says that it did not actually sue the Amazon reviewer, but that it did insist that the reviewer’s “untrue, damaging, and disparaging statements” be taken down. “It’s our sincere belief that reasonable people understand that not only is it within our rights to take steps to protect our integrity, but that it should be expected that we would do so when it is recklessly attacked,” Mediabridge Products wrote. “The reviewer has since changed his review completely to remove the libelous statements, but unfortunately not before having an army attack us on the internet.” The company did not give any clue as to the terms of Amazon’s rescinding of Mediabridge’s selling license, but only said at the end of its statement “Unfortunately, as a result of our attempt to get this reviewer to do the right thing & remove his untrue statements about our company, Amazon has revoked our selling privileges. Many hard-working employees whose livelihood depended on that business will likely be put out of a job, by a situation that has been distorted & blown out of proportion.” Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Sprint is ready to throttle its unlimited data plans, but only in ‘congested’ areas

It was a big promise: unlimited data , without quotes, throttling or restrictions. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has repeatedly defended the company’s pledge to offer a true unlimited plan, but now the company is quietly eating its words. Customers on Sprint, Virgin Mobile USA and Boost Mobile have all started receiving text messages warning them that heavy users will be subject to data “prioritization” next month in order to “provide more customers with a high quality data experience during heavy usage times.” This prioritization (read: throttling ) will only apply to the top 5 percent of data users and only in “congested areas, ” however, and Sprint tells FierceWireless that users will only experience limited speeds if they’re connected to a congested cell site. A small concession to your unlimited data plan — and one without a defined data cap — but a small asterisk is still an asterisk. Filed under: Cellphones , Mobile , Sprint Comments Via: PhoneScoop Source: FierceWireless

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Sprint is ready to throttle its unlimited data plans, but only in ‘congested’ areas

Apple is reportedly close to buying Beats for $3.2 billion

The days of Apple limiting itself to ( relatively ) small acquisitions may soon be over. The Financial Times hears from sources that the folks at 1 Infinite Loop are close to buying Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion. It’s not clear exactly why the company would splurge on such a deal, although there are some strong incentives — Beats Music could provide Apple with a streaming music platform more advanced than iTunes Radio, while Beats’ audio hardware could complement existing iOS and Mac devices. Apple hasn’t commented on the rumor, but the rumored deal could be official as early as next week — we’ll know the truth soon enough. Filed under: Cellphones , Peripherals , Internet , Mobile , Apple Comments Source: Financial Times

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Apple is reportedly close to buying Beats for $3.2 billion

Four weeks on, huge swaths of the Internet remain vulnerable to Heartbleed

Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock More than four weeks after the disclosure of the so-called Heartbleed bug found in a widely used cryptography package , slightly more or slightly less than half the systems affected by the catastrophic flaw remain vulnerable, according to two recently released estimates. A scan performed last month by Errata Security CEO Rob Graham found 615,268 servers that indicated they were vulnerable to attacks that could steal passwords, other types of login credentials, and even the extremely sensitive private encryption keys that allow attackers to impersonate websites or monitor encrypted traffic. On Thursday, the number stood at 318,239. Graham said his scans counted only servers running vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL crypto library that enabled the “Heartbeat” feature where the critical flaw resides. A separate scan using slightly different metrics arrived at an estimate that slightly less than half of the servers believed to be vulnerable in the days immediately following the Heartbleed disclosure remain susceptible. Using a tool the researcher yngve called TLS Prober, he found that 5.36 percent of all servers were vulnerable to Heartbleed as of April 11, four days after Heartbleed came to light. In a blog post published Wednesday , he said 2.33 percent of servers remained vulnerable. It’s important to remember the results don’t include the number of Heartbleed-vulnerable servers providing services such a virtual private networks or e-mail. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Four weeks on, huge swaths of the Internet remain vulnerable to Heartbleed

Single Gene Can Boost IQ By Six Points

ananyo (2519492) writes “People are living longer, which is good. But old age often brings a decline in mental faculties and many researchers are looking for ways to slow or halt such decline. One group doing so is led by Dena Dubal of the University of California, San Francisco, and Lennart Mucke of the Gladstone Institutes, also in San Francisco. Dr Dubal and Dr Mucke have been studying the role in ageing of klotho, a protein encoded by a gene called KL. A particular version of this gene, KL-VS, promotes longevity. One way it does so is by reducing age-related heart disease. Dr Dubal and Dr Mucke wondered if it might have similar powers over age-related cognitive decline. What they found was startling. KL-VS did not curb decline, but it did boost cognitive faculties regardless of a person’s age by the equivalent of about six IQ points. If this result, just published in Cell Reports, is confirmed, KL-VS will be the most important genetic agent of non-pathological variation in intelligence yet discovered.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Single Gene Can Boost IQ By Six Points

Remember Unreal Tournament? Epic’s making a new one and it’s free

Epic Games is known for a lot of things, the Gears of War game franchise and development tool Unreal Engine prime among them. But old-school game fans might know Epic Games for another classic franchise: Unreal Tournament . The long-dormant series is making its return starting today! Sort of . Epic announced this afternoon that the next Unreal Tournament game begins development starting today with “a small team of UT veterans.” The entire development is open source, which Epic characterizes as, “a collaboration between Epic, UT fans and UE4 developers.” As that line infers, the game’s being created using Unreal Engine 4. Best of all? When the game’s ready to play, it will be free. As Epic puts it: “Not free to play, just free.” So, other than acting as a love letter to longtime Epic Games fans, how does the developer make money on this new endeavor? Epic’s creating a marektplace within the game for devs, mods, artists and players “can give away, buy and sell mods and content.” When goods are purchased, earnings are split between Epic and its creator. The marketplace won’t be in the first version of the game, though; Epic says it’s coming “eventually.” First things first, creating a new Unreal Tournament . Given that work begins today, Epic admits it’ll take “many months” to produce a working product. Even that sounds like an overly optimistic deadline, as most games take several years to create. Comments Source: Epic Games

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Remember Unreal Tournament? Epic’s making a new one and it’s free

Epic announces crowdsourced dev model for next Unreal Tournament

It’s been a long six-and-a-half years since we’ve gotten a new Unreal Tournament game (not counting expansion packs), but today marks the beginning of the end for that wait. Epic announced that work on a new game, simply titled Unreal Tournament , begins today for PC, Mac, and Linux, and the process will heavily involve participation from the modding and player community from the get go. While a “small team of UT veterans” at Epic will be spearheading the development of the game, everything from design decisions to art direction will primarily “happen in the open, as a collaboration between Epic, UT fans, and [Unreal Engine 4] developers,” Epic says. The developers are inviting everyone from regular players to experienced modders from sites like Polycount to sign up at the Unreal Engine forums and use an official wiki to take direct part in driving the game’s direction. Already, mere minutes after the announcement, those forums are filled with players discussing everything from series maps and weapons they’d like to see return to things like VR headset compatibility. Epic says it will be “many months” until the game is in any sort of playable state, but when it is playable it “will be free. Not free to play, just free.” Source code will be made available directly from GitHub as it is updated, and modders will even be able to fork their own builds if they want to take the project in a new direction. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Epic announces crowdsourced dev model for next Unreal Tournament

United States credit card system begins complete overhaul in the next 18 months

The United States is lagging behind most of the world when it comes to credit card technology , but luckily it’s about to catch up. In the next 18 months, the US is gearing up to transition debit and credit cards away from the magnetic stripe to chip-and-PIN technology, which is already widely used in Europe, Asia and beyond. Who can you thank for the long-overdue upgrade? Target , whose data security breach earlier this year highlighted the security flaws in the magnetic stripe system. It’s a 50-year-old technology, after all, and it’s much easier to counterfeit than the computer chip in your next Visa card. In addition to adding a chip to each of the 1.2 billion credit and debit cards circulating in the US, the rehaul requires upgrading card readers at retail locations, and there’s plenty of incentive for businesses to hop on board with the change. If your local WalMart doesn’t adopt chip and PIN readers, it will be held accountable for any fraudulent face-to-face transactions. Point-of-sale systems used by smaller businesses, such as Square and PayPal here, will need to reissue card scanners as well. According to research firm Javelin, the upgrade could take about three years, with international and premium cards getting the switch to chip and PIN first. For the record, there are already several cards with the new tech available to Americans, from American Express and JPMorgan Chase among other institutions. Filed under: Misc Comments Via: Bloomberg

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United States credit card system begins complete overhaul in the next 18 months

Throwback Thursday: Before Pantone, Color Aficianados Got Their Fix From This Centuries-Old Hue Mixing Manual

Long before the days of annually featured colors with quirky names, there was this monster of a book by a mysterious artists that goes by A. Boogert. It comes in around 800 pages and features every color you can imagine—much like a grandaddy of the beloved Pantone color guide. Medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel (talk about a job title) found this encyclopedia and quickly it lit up the Internet after he featured his find on his blog . Kwakkel goes into more detail on where he found the book and what Boogert shared in the book on his blog : I encountered this Dutch book from 1692 in a French database today and it turns out to be quite special. For one thing, no Dutch scholar appears to have published on it, or even to know about it. Moreover, the object is special because it provides an unusual peek into the workshop of 17th-century painters and illustrators. In over 700 pages of handwritten Dutch, the author, who identifies himself as A. Boogert describes how to make watercolor paints. To illustrate his point he fills each facing page with various shades of the color in question. To top it he made an index of all the colors he described, which in itself is a feast to look at. (more…)

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Throwback Thursday: Before Pantone, Color Aficianados Got Their Fix From This Centuries-Old Hue Mixing Manual

Ken May

Author: kenmay