Charter acquisition of Time Warner Cable approved by the FCC

It feels like forever since Time Warner Cable agreed to merge with Charter Communications , for an estimated $55 billion . But today, nearly a year after the two companies struck a deal, the Federal Communications Commission has finally granted its approval . The announcement follows FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and the US Justice Department green-lighting the merger in April, which confirmed that it was only a matter of time before it became official. It’s worth noting that Charter is also acquiring Bright House Networks , a regional TV and internet provider, as part of the agreement between it and the government. Additionally, last month Wheeler revealed there would be some caveats for Charter , including not being be able to impede access to streaming content. Namely, Charter can’t set data caps for subscribers or charge for service based on usage — and there might be more compromises. A detailed release of the conditions for the merger will be released over the coming days, according to a statement from the FCC . Nevertheless, this positions Charter as the second largest cable and internet service in the US with 24 million subscribers total, right behind Comcast’s 28 million . Persistence pays off , folks. Source: Federal Communications Commission

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Charter acquisition of Time Warner Cable approved by the FCC

All the Best Comics You’ll Want to Snag on Free Comic Book Day

Tomorrow, May 7, is the happiest day of the year for comics fans: Free Comic Book Day, which is both a celebration of the hobby and a chance to read tons of new comics given away without paying a dime! While some are reprints, most contain awesome new material—and here’s our guide to the very best of this year’s offerings. Read more…

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All the Best Comics You’ll Want to Snag on Free Comic Book Day

Check Out the Seriously Gnarly Creatures Discovered at the Bottom of the Mariana Trench

Need a pick-me-up on this dreary Friday afternoon? After checking out some of the nightmare-inducing life forms NOAA’s deep-sea diving robot discovered at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, sleep will be the last thing on your mind. Read more…

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Check Out the Seriously Gnarly Creatures Discovered at the Bottom of the Mariana Trench

Color-Changing Threads Might One Day Turn Your T-Shirt Into a Screen

Look around and count the number of screens surrounding you. You’ll probably run out of fingers before you’re done, but why stop there? Researchers at UC Berkeley have come up with a way to weave color-changing threads into fabrics, turning even garments into yet another display. Read more…

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Color-Changing Threads Might One Day Turn Your T-Shirt Into a Screen

Piracy site for academic journals playing game of domain-name Whac-A-Mole

Alexandra Elbakyan won’t let her Sci-Hub pirate site of academic journals die— despite publisher Elsevier’s lawsuit. (credit: Courtesy of Alexandra Elbakyan) We reported a few weeks ago on a popular pirate site for science journals whose oversees admin was being sued by one of the world’s leading academic publishers, Elsevier. Elsevier is the same New York publisher that the late Aaron Swartz had noted in his ” Guerilla Open Access Manifesto ” that told academics and researchers they had a “duty” to free the knowledge they were privileged to read behind Elsevier’s paywall. Because of the lawsuit, which Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan has refused to participate in, she’s been engaged in a game of domain-name Whac-A-Mole in response to Elsevier winning court orders demanding the shuttering of the popular site’s domain name. The site allows anybody, not just academics, to access tens of millions of scholastic research articles for free. When Ars interviewed Elbakyan and learned that she had a similar philosophy to Swartz, she had already altered the site’s domain from sci-hub.org to sci-hub.io and changed others because of a court order blocking the .org domain. Now that domain, registered with Chinese registrar Now.cn, has also been killed. That has forced the site to move to sci-hub.bz and sci-hub.cc. This cat-and-mouse domain game is reminiscent of the decade-long game the admins of The Pirate Bay have been playing. When one domain gets lost to a court order, the site springs up on another. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Piracy site for academic journals playing game of domain-name Whac-A-Mole

FDA flexes regulatory muscles, says vaping, e-cigs now under its control

(credit: Flickr/ecig click ) The US Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday that it has extended its authority and will now regulate electronic cigarettes, hookah tobacco, cigars, and other tobacco products under the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act . The regulatory move, first proposed in 2014, is largely aimed at protecting kids from tobacco and nicotine products. The result is that e-cigs and the other products will now be subject to the same federal regulations as regular cigarettes. These regulations include some relatively uncontroversial rules such as a ban on selling e-cigs to minors (which some states have already done), requiring a photo ID to buy e-cigs, not selling e-cigs out of vending machines, and a ban on free e-cig samples. But the regulations also require that e-cigarette manufactures register with the agency and put any new devices through a pre-market regulatory approval process. By “new,” the FDA means any novel devices put on the market after February 15, 2007. Devices released before then will be grandfathered into the regulations. However, in the relatively young e-cig market, the vast majority of current products were introduced after 2007 and will be subject to the approval process. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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FDA flexes regulatory muscles, says vaping, e-cigs now under its control

What It’s Like to Look Straight into a Rainbow

There’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but there are some colorful visuals you can trip out on if you can figure out how to stare the right way. Here’s a video that supposedly shows a camera gliding through the spectrum of a rainbow and making its way through ROYGBIV backwards. Read more…

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What It’s Like to Look Straight into a Rainbow

Windows 10 Upgrades Will Cost $120 Starting July 30th, So Go Do It Now

Free upgrades to Microsoft’s latest operating system are running out soon. On June 30th, one year after the release of Windows 10, anyone who hasn’t already upgraded will have to shell out $119 to move up to the latest and greatest. Read more…

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Windows 10 Upgrades Will Cost $120 Starting July 30th, So Go Do It Now

Hacker Guccifer Claims He Easily and Repeatedly Broke Into Hillary Clinton’s Email Server

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fox News: The infamous Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer, ” speaking exclusively with Fox News, claimed he easily — and repeatedly — breached former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal email server in early 2013. In the process of mining data from the Blumenthal account, Lazar said he came across evidence that others were on the Clinton server. “As far as I remember, yes, there were up to 10, like, IPs from other parts of the world, ” he said. From the report: “‘For me, it was easy … easy for me, for everybody, ‘ Marcel Lehel Lazar, who goes by the moniker ‘Guccifer, ‘ told Fox News from a Virginia jail where he is being held. Fox News could not independently confirm Lazar’s claims. The 44-year-old Lazar said he first compromised Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal’s AOL account, in March 2013, and used that as a stepping stone to the Clinton server. He said he accessed Clintonâ(TM)s server ‘like twice, ‘ though he described the contents as ‘not interest[ing]’ to him at the time.” Guccifer was sent to prison last month, which is when his potential role in the Clinton email investigation became apparent. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hacker Guccifer Claims He Easily and Repeatedly Broke Into Hillary Clinton’s Email Server

The Creators of Siri Are Releasing a New AI Next Week 

Although you might associate Siri with Apple, that particular pocket assistant wasn’t born in Cupertino. In fact, Siri was an independent app before its acquisition by Apple in 2010, and now its founders are back with a new and improved version, “Viv.” Read more…

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The Creators of Siri Are Releasing a New AI Next Week