Intel has revealed all about its new Thunderbolt 3 specification at this year’s Computex conference, and it could be the port that best serves Apple’s single I/O vision of the MacBook’s future: Thunderbolt 3 uses a reversible USB-C connector, and includes USB 3.1 support, as well as increasing data transfer speed over Thunderbolt 2 by 100 percent to 40Gbps, and supporting use… Read More
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Thunderbolt 3 Uses Reversible USB Type-C And Could Be The Ultimate Port
Transportation Security Administration screeners allowed banned weapons and mock explosives through airport security checkpoints 95 percent of the time, according to the agency’s own undercover testing. ABC News reported the results on Monday, but Ars could not independently confirm them. According to ABC News, a Homeland Security Inspector General report showed that agents failed to detect weapons and explosives in 67 out of 70 undercover operations . The report said: Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was apparently so frustrated by the findings he sought a detailed briefing on them last week at TSA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, according to sources. US officials insisted changes have already been made at airports to address vulnerabilities identified by the latest tests. It’s been a bad past two days when it comes to the government’s anti-terror strategy. The ABC News revelation came a day after a Senate impasse Sunday allowed parts of three terrorism-fighting aspects of the USA Patriot Act to expire, including the bulk telephone metadata program that Edward Snowden disclosed. Lawmakers are trying to broker a deal to the legislation that is needed, according to Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) because terrorists “want to kill us all.” Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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US airport screeners missed 95% of weapons, explosives in undercover tests
Intel, after a couple of months of negotiation, has agreed to buy Altera for $16.7 billion (£11 billion) in cash. The acquisition comes just a few days after Avago announced its $37 billion acquisition of Broadcom, the largest deal ever seen by the tech sector. The timing is probably not coincidental: Intel and Altera had reportedly been in talks since March. Much like the Avago-Broadcom deal, Intel-Altera is a consolidation move. Altera is the second largest maker of FPGAs and other programmable logic devices behind Xilinx . Intel makes a wide range of chips, but has only ever dabbled in FPGAs. Buying Altera will let Intel sell a wider variety of chips through its existing sales channels, while also potentially realising some savings through strategic job cuts. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Intel will acquire FPGA maker Altera for $16.7 billion
NEW YORK—Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison Friday, following a jury’s finding in February that the 31-year-old was the mastermind behind the Silk Road, once the Internet’s largest online drug marketplace. Operating online as “Dread Pirate Roberts,” Ulbricht worked with a small staff to control everything sold on the site. He was arrested in October 2013, and the government made its case against him during a three-week trial here earlier this year. Ulbricht pleaded for leniency during the hearing. “I wish I could go back and convince myself to take a different path,” he said. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison
USB Type-C is still a rarity today, but as the year goes on, the new port is going to begin showing up in more and more devices. In anticipation of this, Google has introduced a handful of features in the Android M release to support some of Type-C’s new features. Google hasn’t released a ton of information about the new features, but the most significant ones relate to the USB Power Delivery spec . A menu that pops up when you plug one USB Type-C device to another asks you what kind of connection you’re trying to make. The standard MTP and PTP file and photo transfer protocols, available in current versions of Android, are on this list, but the menu will also ask you if you’d like to charge the device or use it as a power supply for another device. The USB selection pop-up in Android M. Google This effectively makes Android M devices with USB Type-C ports into external batteries. Your tablet can charge your phone. Your phone could charge a camera battery or Bluetooth headset. Not every device combination makes sense (using a large laptop or tablet battery to charge a small phone battery seems useful; using a small phone battery to charge anything else seems ill-advised) but for compatible devices, it will be a handy feature. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Android M embraces USB Type-C, MIDI devices
AT&T doesn’t want any rules preventing it from choosing which online video services count against its customers’ data caps. AT&T’s “Sponsored Data” program already charges businesses , often in the ad industry, for the right to deliver services without counting against customers’ mobile data caps. AT&T could potentially charge online video streaming services for exemptions from the caps imposed on AT&T home broadband subscribers as well or exempt its own online services from caps. Though AT&T doesn’t appear to have done this yet, the company this week asked the FCC to make sure it’s allowed to do so. AT&T’s request came after a group of companies and consumer advocacy organizations asked the Federal Communications Commission to prevent AT&T from granting data cap exemptions. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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AT&T wants to choose which online video services count against data caps
In an official statement issued today, the IRS announced that it has shut down an online service to obtain tax records after determining that “unusual activity had taken place on the application, which indicates that unauthorized third parties had access to some accounts on the transcript application.” according to an official statement by the agency. An initial review of that activity revealed that “access was gained to more than 100,000 accounts through the Get Transcript application,” according to the statement. The data was obtained not because of a hack of IRS systems, but because of the weak authentication used by the IRS to protect access to taxpayer data. The attackers were able to obtain taxpayer records using stolen personal identifying information—likely pulled from online financial fraud marketplaces. The Get Transcript application, a feature of the IRS’ site that allows taxpayers to download tax return and tax payment transaction data, was apparently targeted by financial fraudsters between February and mid-May. The service was shut down last week as the IRS investigated the activity, which may have been linked to the fraudulent filing of tax returns and transfer of tax refunds. Attempts were made to access over 200,000 accounts; roughly half failed because of incorrect information during the IRS’ authentication process. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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IRS system mined for over 100,000 taxpayer records by fraudsters [Updated]
Online geek-y retailer ThinkGeek and its parent company Geeknet Inc. are in the process of being acquired by Hot Topic, a popular mall-based retailer best known for selling vampire T-shirts and other faux-goth-pop accoutrements. According to a press release issued this morning , Hot Topic will be picking up all of Geeknet’s outstanding shares of common stock for $17.50 per share, and the company will also be fronting about $37 million in cash. The total value of the transaction will be $122 million. Geeknet CEO Kathryn McCarthy said in the press release that the move would enable Geeknet and ThinkGeek to bring its products to the attention of new consumers, as well as to “expand [its] product offerings to keep up with industry and customer demands.” Geeknet’s shareholders appear to be onboard with the purchase, with the press release noting that a contingent of shareholders holding about 21 percent of the company’s common stock have agreed to go along with the offer. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Hot Topic enters agreement to buy ThinkGeek parent company Geeknet Inc.
The California Seafloor Mapping Program is the most extensive of its kind, initiated in 2008 and bearing fruit in a series of beautiful maps. Read the rest
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Amazing sea floor maps reveal California’s offshore depths
We’re just a few weeks out from WWDC, and new details about Apple’s next-generation operating systems continue to surface. A new report from the well-sourced 9to5Mac details a handful of features, the most interesting of which is a note about support for older devices. We had assumed that Apple would include support for some devices based on its aging A5 SoC—the fifth-gen iPod Touch, original iPad Mini, and third-gen Apple TV are all still being sold, after all—but the report indicates that we can expect an update for out-of-production devices like the iPhone 4S (the iPad 2 isn’t mentioned by name, but the implication is that it will be supported as well). If true, this would be the longest that Apple has ever provided software updates for any one iPhone model. Normally, iOS releases support four iPhone generations at a time, but iOS 9 could include support for everything from 2011’s iPhone 4S to whatever phones Apple introduces in 2015. New iOS updates have a history of running poorly on older devices— iOS 7 was unkind to the iPhone 4 , and iOS 8 wasn’t much better to the iPhone 4S —but Apple is apparently taking steps to avoid that problem this time around. The report says that Apple is taking a different approach to supporting older devices in iOS 9. In the past, Apple reportedly put the full version of the operating system on older devices and then disabled features that performed particularly poorly. For iOS 9, Apple is apparently starting with a barebones version of the operating system and enabling features one at a time. As usual, owners of older devices will miss out on some features, but they’ll still get the underlying improvements, API changes, and security updates that newer phones and tablets get. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Report: iOS 9 will be optimized for older devices, including iPhone 4S