business – Page 2 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

T-Mobile Is Becoming a Cable Company

T-Mobile has revealed that it’s launching a TV service in 2018, and that is has acquired Layer3 TV (a company that integrates TV, streaming and social networking) to make this happen. The company thinks people are ditching cable due to the providers, not TV itself. Engadget reports: It claims that it can “uncarrier” TV the way it did with wireless service, and has already targeted a few areas it thinks it can fix: it doesn’t like the years-long contracts, bloated bundles, outdated tech and poor customer service that are staples of TV service in the U.S. T-Mobile hasn’t gone into detail about the functionality of the service yet. How will it be delivered? How much will it cost? Where will it be available? And will this affect the company’s free Netflix offer? This is more a declaration of intent than a concrete roadmap, so it’s far from certain that the company will live up to its promises. Ultimately, the move represents a big bet on T-Mobile’s part: that people like TV and are cutting the cord based on a disdain for the companies, not the service. There’s a degree of truth to that when many Americans are all too familiar with paying ever-increasing rates to get hundreds of channels they don’t watch. However, there’s no guarantee that it’ll work in an era when many people (particularly younger people) are more likely to use Netflix, YouTube or a streaming TV service like Sling TV. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AMD Quietly Made Some Radeon RX 560 Graphics Cards Worse

Brad Chacos: When the Radeon RX 560 launched in April it was the only RX 500-series card with a meaningful under-the-hood tech boost compared to the RX 400-series. The graphics processor in the older RX 460 cards packed 14 compute units and 896 stream processors; the upgraded Radeon RX 560 bumped that to 16 CUs and 1, 024 SPs. Now, some — but not all — of the Radeon RX 560s you’ll find online have specs that match the older 460 cards, and sometimes run at lower clock speeds to boot. AMD’s Radeon RX 560 page was also quietly altered to include the new configurations at some point, Heise.de discovered. The last snapshot of the page by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine occurred on July 7 and only lists the full-fat 16 CU version of the card, so the introduction of the nerfed 896 SP model likely occurred some time after that. Sifting through all of the available Radeon RX 560s on Newegg this morning reveals a fairly even split between the two configurations, all of which are being sold under the same RX 560 name. In a statement, AMD acknowledged the existence of 14 Compute Unit (896 stream processors) and 16 Compute Unit (1024 stream processor) versions of the Radeon RX 560. “We introduced the 14CU version this summer to provide AIBs and the market with more RX 500 series options. It’s come to our attention that on certain AIB and etail websites there’s no clear delineation between the two variants. We’re taking immediate steps to remedy this: we’re working with all AIB and channel partners to make sure the product descriptions and names clarify the CU count, so that gamers and consumers know exactly what they’re buying. We apologize for the confusion this may have caused.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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AMD Quietly Made Some Radeon RX 560 Graphics Cards Worse

Yesterday Americans Spent $5 Billion Online

An anonymous reader quotes CNN Money: Black Friday 2017 was all about digital sales. American shoppers spent a record $5 billion in 24 hours. That marks a 16.9% increase in dollars spent online compared with Black Friday 2016, according to data from Adobe Digital Insights, which tracks 80% of online spending at America’s 100 largest retail websites… Meanwhile, malls and big-box retailers were left only slightly emptier. Early estimates from ShopperTrak, a data analytics company that measures the number of shoppers at stores, said foot traffic “decreased less than one percent when compared to Black Friday 2016.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

WeWork Employees Caught Spying on Competition

An anonymous reader shares a report: The battle in the red-hot co-working space business is heating up. WeWork, the No. 1 player in the sector, allegedly sent two spies to infiltrate rival Knotel — to steal info and some customers, Knotel claimed. The spies showed up at seven Knotel properties in Manhattan last month in a “systematic attempt to pilfer Knotel’s proprietary information and trade secrets, ” according to a cease-and-desist letter the smaller company sent to WeWork. The Post has obtained a copy of the letter. The corporate espionage rookies may have pulled off the caper except, in a totally random happening, a Knotel employee recognized one of them as a friend of a friend, according to sources close to Knotel. While the pair used fake names to gain entry, according to the letter, a call to the Knotel worker’s pal got the spy’s real name — and a couple of social media inquiries turned up the fact that he worked for rival WeWork, sources said. The letter to WeWork asks for a reply by Oct. 13 — but so far Knotel hasn’t heard a peep from its rival, according to CEO Amol Sarva. While inside the Knotel offices, visited Sept. 12-14, the luckless spies posed “as the founders of a fast-growing startup” and said they needed space for their six-person company, according to the letter. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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WeWork Employees Caught Spying on Competition

First Floating Wind Farm Delivers Electricity

The world’s first floating offshore wind farm began delivering electricity to the Scottish grid today. “The 30MW installation, situated 25km (15.5mi) from Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, will demonstrate that offshore wind energy can be harvested in deep waters, miles away from land, where installing giant turbines was once impractical or impossible, ” reports Ars Technica. “At peak capacity, the wind farm will produce enough electricity to power 20, 000 Scottish homes.” From the report: The installation, called Hywind Scotland, is also interesting because it was built by Statoil, a Norwegian mega-corporation known for offshore oil drilling. Statoil has pursued offshore wind projects in recent years, using the companyâ(TM)s experience building and managing infrastructure in difficult open sea conditions to its advantage. Hywind Scotland began producing power in September, and today it starts delivering electricity to the Scottish grid. Now, all that’s left is for Statoil and its partner company Masdar to install a 1MWh lithium-ion battery, charmingly called âoeBatwind, â on shore. Batwind will help the offshore system regulate power delivery and optimize output. After a number of small demonstration projects, the five 6MW turbines are the first commercial turbines to lack a firm attachment to the seafloor. They’re held in place using three giant suction anchors, which are commonly used in offshore oil drilling. Essentially, an enormous, empty, upside-down âoebucketâ is placed on the seafloor, and air is sucked out of the bucket, which forces the bucket downward, further into the seafloor sediment. The report mentions a 2013 video that shows how offshore wind farms work. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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First Floating Wind Farm Delivers Electricity

Uber’s iOS App Had Secret Permissions That Allowed It to Copy Your Phone Screen, Researchers Say

To improve functionality between Uber’s app and the Apple Watch, Apple allowed Uber to use a powerful tool that could record a user’s iPhone screen, even if Uber’s app was only running in the background, security researchers told news outlet Gizmodo. From a report: After the researchers discovered the tool, Uber said it is no longer in use and will be removed from the app. The screen recording capability comes from what’s called an “entitlement” — a bit of code that app developers can use for anything from setting up push notifications to interacting with Apple systems like iCloud or Apple Pay. This particular entitlement, however, was intended to improve memory management for the Apple Watch. The entitlement isn’t common and would require Apple’s explicit permission to use, the researchers explained. Will Strafach, a security researcher and CEO of Sudo Security Group, said he couldn’t find any other apps with the entitlement live on the App Store. “It looks like no other third-party developer has been able to get Apple to grant them a private sensitive entitlement of this nature, ” Strafach said. “Considering Uber’s past privacy issues I am very curious how they convinced Apple to allow this.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Uber’s iOS App Had Secret Permissions That Allowed It to Copy Your Phone Screen, Researchers Say

NASA’s inflatable ISS habitat could stay in space until 2020

The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module ( BEAM ) was only supposed to stay attached to the ISS for two years. It’s been performing well enough in its technological demonstration, however, that NASA now wants to extend its stint for three more years. Astronauts aboard the ISS installed BEAM in early 2016 as an experiment, with the intention of regularly checking its integrity, conducting radiation shielding experiments and collecting microbial air and surface samples from within its confines. The results of those tests prove that the module is tough enough to survive the harsh conditions of outer space for far longer than its original lifespan. While Bigelow Aerospace ultimately wants its expandable habitat to serve as living quarters, it’s way too early to expect astronauts to live inside the module. BEAM will instead serve as storage space to hold up to 130 cargo transfer bags used to transport supplies from a spacecraft to the station. Its new role will free up space inside the ISS for more experiments. It will also allow NASA to learn more about modular habitats’ structural integrity, thermal stability and resistance to space debris, radiation and microbial growth. The extended experimental period could bring us closer to the independent inflatable stations Bigelow Aerospace wants to send to low-Earth orbit. Based on the procurement filing NASA submitted, the new contract will overlap with the older one and will begin later this year. By the end of the new three-year contract, the agency could choose to extend it for one more year or to finally jettison and allow it to burn as it enters our planet’s atmosphere. Via: Ars Technica Source: NASA , Federal Business Opportunities

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NASA’s inflatable ISS habitat could stay in space until 2020

Google Scraps Controversial Policy That Gave Free Access To Paywalled Articles Through Search

For years, Google has provided a nifty trick to get around subscriptions for newspapers and magazines. But the company is now doing away with it. From a report: Google is ending its controversial First Click Free (FCF) policy that publishers loathed because it required them to allow Google search results access to news articles hidden behind a paywall. The company is replacing the decade-old FCF with Flexible Sampling, which allows publishers instead to decide how many (if any) articles they want to allow potential subscribers to access. Google says it’s also working on a suite of new tools to help publishers reach new audiences and grow revenue. Via FCF, users could access an article for free but would be prompted to log-in or subscribe if they clicked anywhere else on the page. Publishers were required to allow three free articles per day which Google indexed so that they appeared in searches for a particular topic or keyword. Opting out of the FCF feature was detrimental because it demoted a publisher’s ranking on Google Search and Google News. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Scraps Controversial Policy That Gave Free Access To Paywalled Articles Through Search

Microsoft plans Office 2019 release for next year

The next version of Microsoft Office is coming to a computer near you soon. The company announced today that Office 2019 will be released sometime in the second half next year. Previews will ship in mid-2018. It will include the applications we’re used to, such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint, as well as servers such as Skype for Business and Exchange. Microsoft is making the cloud a centerpiece of its Ignite conference this week, but the company also realizes that not all of its users are ready to fully commit. As such, Microsoft is making this version of Office software work for both customers that are already fully working in the cloud as well as those who are still on their way to that point. Some of the new features in Office 2019 that it highlights are new formulas and charts for Excel, inking features that are both new and improved and visual animation for presentations. Additionally, Office 2019 will focus on IT manageability, usability, voice and security for server updates. Microsoft will release more information about Office 2019 over the next few months. Via: The Verge Source: Microsoft

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Microsoft plans Office 2019 release for next year

Nestle Makes Billions Bottling Water It Pays Nearly Nothing For

Nestle, the world’s largest food and beverage company, has been bottling water since 1843 and has grown into the largest seller of bottled water. But a detailed report on Bloomberg uncovers the company’s operation in Michigan, revealing that Nestle has come to dominate in the industry in part by going into economically depressed areas with lax water laws. It makes billions selling a product for which it pays close to nothing. Find the Bloomberg Businessweek article here (it might be paywalled, here’s an alternative source). Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Nestle Makes Billions Bottling Water It Pays Nearly Nothing For