ars – Page 3 – Ken May

“Mega Cable” is here, as Charter finalizes purchase of TWC

(credit: Cole Marshall ) Charter Communications today said it has closed its acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks following approvals from the Federal Communications Commission and regulators in California , the final state that had to sign off on the deal. Charter has nearly quadrupled in size as a result of the transactions, going from 6.8 million customers to about 25.4 million in 41 states, second in the US after Comcast’s 28 million. The merger drew opposition from some advocacy groups, including one that took to calling the new Charter ” Mega Cable .” The cost of the acquisitions was originally expected to be about $67.1 billion, though Charter will reportedly end up paying a bit more than that. Charter’s announcement today said, “The completion of the transactions will drive investment into the combined entity’s advanced broadband network, resulting in faster broadband speeds, better video products, more affordable phone service, and more competition for consumers and businesses.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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“Mega Cable” is here, as Charter finalizes purchase of TWC

Windows 7 now has a Service Pack 2 (but don’t call it that)

This should become a thing of the past. (credit: Microsoft ) Anyone who’s installed Windows 7 any time in the last, oh, five years or so probably didn’t enjoy the experience very much. Service Pack 1 for the operating system was released in 2011, meaning that a fresh install has five years of individual patches to download and install. Typically, this means multiple trips to Windows Update and multiple reboots in order to get the system fully up-to-date, and it is a process that is at best tedious, typically leading one to wonder why, at the very least, it cannot pull down all the updates at once and apply them with just a single reboot. The answer to that particular question will, unfortunately, remain a mystery, but Microsoft did today announce a change that will greatly reduce the pain of this process. The company has published a “convenience rollup” for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (and Windows Server 2008 R2), which in a single package contains all the updates, both security and non-security, released since the Service Pack, up through April 2016. Installing the rollup will perform five years of patching in one shot. In other words, it performs a very similar role to what Windows 7 Service Pack 2 would have done, if only Windows 7 Service Pack 2 were to exist. It’s not quite the same as a Service Pack—it still requires Service Pack 1 to be installed, and the system will still report that it is running Service Pack 1—but for most intents and purposes, that won’t matter. Microsoft will also support injecting this rollup into Windows 7 Service Pack 1 system images and install media. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 7 now has a Service Pack 2 (but don’t call it that)

The Wheel of Time turns… into a “cutting-edge TV series”

Cover art for the first Wheel of Time novel. (credit: Tor Books) After a rough false start , it looks like Robert Jordan’s fantasy epic The Wheel of Time will be coming to television after all. The news was delivered on the series’ Google+ page by Jordan’s widow, Harriet McDougal, who owns the copyright to the novels and has controlled the franchise’s direction since Jordan’s death in 2007. We have few details about the project at this point, aside from assurances that a “major studio” will have more to share soon: Wanted to share with you exciting news about The Wheel of Time . Legal issues have been resolved. The Wheel of Time will become a cutting edge TV series! I couldn’t be more pleased. Look for the official announcement coming soon from a major studio —Harriet Optioning The Wheel of Time makes sense, given the appetite for TV adaptations of dense, sprawling fantasy series. HBO’s Game of Thrones and Starz’s Outlander have both been successful, and Wheel of Time is a firmly established property that has the added benefit of actually being a finished story already. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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The Wheel of Time turns… into a “cutting-edge TV series”

Microsoft experiments with DNA storage: 1,000,000,000 TB in a gram

Microsoft is buying ten million strands of DNA from biology startup Twist Bioscience to investigate the use of genetic material to store data. The data density of DNA is orders of magnitude higher than conventional storage systems, with 1 gram of DNA able to represent close to 1 billion terabytes (1 zettabyte) of data. DNA is also remarkably robust; DNA fragments thousands of years old have been successfully sequenced. These properties make it an intriguing option for long-term data archival. Binary data has already been successfully stored as DNA base pairs , with estimates in 2013 suggesting that it would be economically viable for storage of 500 years or more. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft experiments with DNA storage: 1,000,000,000 TB in a gram

A Comcastic miracle: Data caps will go from 300GB to a terabyte

Comcast today announced that it will boost its data cap from 300GB per month to 1TB beginning June 1, but will also charge more to customers who want unlimited data. Comcast has been trialling different caps in various cities in preparation for a potential nationwide rollout. Typically, customers would get 300GB per month and have to pay another $10 for each additional 50GB when they go over. Comcast also allowed customers to pay an extra $30 to $35 a month for unlimited data, depending on the city. After the June 1 change, fewer customers will need to buy unlimited data—but it will cost them $50 a month to do so instead of $30 or $35. Overage fees will stay the same, $10 for each additional 50GB. Thus far, Comcast has allowed customers to exceed the cap in three “courtesy months” before charging them overage fees. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

New Windows 10 build: New Start menu, notifications, and pen features

The new Pen Workspace. (credit: Microsoft) At its Build developer conference a few weeks ago, Microsoft announced the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, a major update for Windows 10 due this summer. One of its biggest aspects was substantially reworked and improved pen support (“Ink” in Microsoft terminology) intended to make pen applications easier to find and use and to make stylus use more powerful. A new Windows build that provides the first access to these new features, version 14328, has just been promoted to the fast ring . The core of this new support is the Windows Ink Workspace, a panel that provides instant access to pen-powered apps. Pressing the eraser button on a Surface Pen will show the panel instead of its current action (which opens OneNote). The Anniversary Update also comes with a trio of new pen apps: Sketchpad, a sketching app; Screen sketch, a screenshot annotation app; and a new Sticky Note app. New Sticky Notes. (credit: Microsoft) The new build contains a lot more than just Ink improvements. The Start menu has been revised to make All Apps permanently visible, and in tablet mode, All Apps is now full-screen. Also in tablet mode, the taskbar can autohide without being autohide in desktop mode. The taskbar clock now shows on all monitors on multihead systems, and the calendar now shows your appointments. The Action Center notification system has had its layout refined to show more notifications and now includes rich Cortana notifications. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New Windows 10 build: New Start menu, notifications, and pen features

“Nuclear” exploit kit service cashes in on demand from cryptoransomware rings

The web console for Nuclear, the customer-friendly malware-as-a-service platform. Some Nucleus infrastructure operating on DigitalOcean servers was recently disrupted. (credit: Check Point) Security researchers at Cisco Talos and Check Point have published reports detailing the inner workings of Nuclear, an “exploit kit” Web service that deployed malware onto victims’ computers through malicious websites. While a significant percentage of Nuclear’s infrastructure has been recently disrupted, the exploit kit is still operating—and looks to be a major contributor to the current crypto-ransomware epidemic. Introduced in 2010, Nuclear has been used to target millions of victims worldwide, giving attackers the ability to tailor their attacks to specific locations and computer configurations. Though not as widely used as the well-known Angler exploit kit , it has been responsible for dropping Locky and other crypto-ransomware onto over 140,000 computers in over 200 countries, according to statistics collected by Check Point (PDF). The Locky campaign appeared to be placing the greatest demand on the Nuclear pay-to-exploit service. Much of Talos’ data on Nuclear comes from tracking down the source of its traffic—a cluster of “10 to 15” IP addresses that were responsible for “practically all” of the exploit infrastructure. Those addresses were being hosted by a single cloud hosting provider—DigitalOcean. The hosting company’s security team confirmed the findings to Talos and took down the servers—sharing what was on them with security researchers. Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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“Nuclear” exploit kit service cashes in on demand from cryptoransomware rings

Volkswagen makes it official—it’s buying back 500,000 2.0L diesels

(credit: Spanish Coches ) In San Francisco this morning, US District Judge Charles Breyer said Volkswagen Group would buy back nearly 500,000 2.0L diesel vehicles which were discovered in September to have software that illegally disabled the emissions control system during normal driving conditions. VW Group is facing some 600 lawsuits that Judge Breyer is overseeing collectively, and the German automaker was compelled by court order to present a plan for fixing the faulty vehicles by today. Specifics of the plan will be hammered out in the coming months. Volkswagen will also set up a fund for people who bought certain diesel Jettas, Golfs, Passats, Beetles, and Audi A3s after 2009. Breyer said this would offer customers “substantial compensation,” on top of the car buyback . Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Volkswagen makes it official—it’s buying back 500,000 2.0L diesels

Windows 10 Anniversary Update: Google’s WebM and VP9 codecs coming to Edge

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update, due this summer, will expand the range of video and audio codecs that are supported by the Edge browser. Microsoft is adding the VP9 video codec, the Opus audio codec, and the WebM container format . VP9 and WebM are both spearheaded by Google. Google bought video codec company On2 in 2010 with the intent of opening up On2’s VP8 codec to serve as an open source, royalty-free alternative to the open but royalty-incurring H.264. Unfortunately, groups claiming to have patents that covered VP8 emerged. Google ultimately came to an agreement with those groups in 2013 to ensure the codec’s royalty-free status, but by then, H.264 was too firmly entrenched to displace. VP9 is a successor to VP8 that is more efficient and essential for the growing demand for 4K video. Along with Microsoft and others, Google has joined the Alliance for Open Media to promote VP9’s development and try to ensure that it remains royalty-free. As with VP8 before it, VP9 is covered by patents, but the companies hope that they own all the relevant patents and hence are in a position to grant a royalty-free license. Microsoft announced in September 2015 that it was starting work on VP9 for Edge. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 10 Anniversary Update: Google’s WebM and VP9 codecs coming to Edge

One of the “most important” shipwreck treasures ever discovered

It wasn’t exactly what divers searching for sunken ships expect to find. When the Texel Divers Club glimpsed a package in the sand-buried remains of a sunken ship off the island of Texel in the Wadden Sea, they brought it to the surface—only to discover it held a wealthy lady’s most prized possessions : a silk damask dress, velvet embroidered purse, perfume ball, lice comb, stockings, and books bound in beautiful leather. Kaap Skil Museum A lice comb made from cow horn. 6 more images in gallery Preserved beneath a layer of sand since the 17th century, the dress was probably for everyday wear and was of a style frequently seen in paintings from the late Renaissance. Made of rich silk damask, it likely belonged to a woman of the upper classes. Despite its fanciness, experts believe it was for everyday wear because it wasn’t beaded or embroidered with golden or silver threads. The woman’s books were stamped with the emblem of King Charles I, of the Stuart royal family from England, which suggests she may even have been royalty. It’s exceedingly rare to find such a well-preserved collection of textiles and makes this find one of the most important of its kind in Europe. The find is also a boon for historians who want to understand what everyday life was like during this era. What we see in paintings is not always an accurate record of people’s lives. Finding this cache of typical (albeit expensive) clothing verifies that privileged women of the era really did dress in the ways we might expect and carry tiny metal balls of scented, dried flowers to mask body odors that would have been common in a culture where people didn’t bathe very often—and never got any medical remedies for all the funguses and bacterial infections that flourish on human bodies. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments