Tag: data

Charter/Time Warner Cable merger nearing FCC approval

Charter’s footprint after the proposed merger. (credit: Charter ) Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler is likely to support Charter’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable (TWC) and may circulate a proposal to approve the merger with conditions “as soon as this week,”  The Wall Street Journal reported last night, citing “people familiar with the matter.” Wheeler would be circulating a draft order to fellow commissioners, a preliminary step to approving the deal. “The order would impose a number of conditions on the transaction, many of them aimed at boosting online video as a competitor to cable,” the Journal reported. “One condition would bar Charter from including clauses in its pay-TV contracts that restrict a content company’s ability to offer its programming online or to new entrants, the people said. FCC officials worry those clauses, which are thought to be widespread in the pay-TV marketplace, could be impeding the growth of online video.” Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Charter/Time Warner Cable merger nearing FCC approval

Encrypted WhatsApp messages frustrate new court-ordered wiretap

(credit: Hernán Piñera ) The US Department of Justice has opened another legal front in the ongoing war over easy-to-use strong encryption. According to a Saturday report in  The New York Times , prosecutors have gone head-to-head with WhatsApp, the messaging app owned by Facebook. Citing anonymous sources, the  Times  reported that “as recently as this past week,” federal officials have been “discussing how to proceed in a continuing criminal investigation in which a federal judge had approved a wiretap, but investigators were stymied by WhatsApp’s encryption.” The case, which apparently does not involve terrorism, remains under seal. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Encrypted WhatsApp messages frustrate new court-ordered wiretap

16 years later, Blizzard is still patching Diablo II

No rest for the weary. These days, you’re lucky if some titles from certain big publishers get a year or two of post-launch online support for their games before they’re unceremoniously dropped . And then there’s Diablo II . Blizzard issued a new version 1.14 patch for the nearly 16-year-old game Thursday, five years after the game was last officially updated (not to mention, four years since the game’s sequel launched with its own attendant post-release problems and patches ) The new Diablo II patch doesn’t add any new gameplay features, balance tweaks, or anything like that. Instead, Blizzard has added compatibility with modern operating systems like Windows 10 and OS X. But Blizzard says it’s working on improvements to the game’s “cheat-detection and hack-prevention capabilities” and hints at more improvements to come. “There is still a large Diablo II community around the world, and we thank you for continuing to play and slay with us,” Blizzard writes . “This journey starts by making Diablo II run on modern platforms, but it does not end there. See you in Sanctuary, adventurers.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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16 years later, Blizzard is still patching Diablo II

Man hacks Tesla firmware, finds new model, has car remotely downgraded

The image that hacker Jason Hughes found hidden in Tesla’s latest Model S firmware. (credit: Jason Hughes) It seems Tesla is set to bump the battery capacity of its Model S sedan up to a hefty 100kWh some time in the near future. We know this thanks to the work of a white-hat hacker and Tesla P85D owner named Jason Hughes. Hughes—who previously turned the battery pack from a wrecked Tesla into a storage array for his solar panels—was poking around in the latest firmware of his Model S (version 2.13.77) and discovered an image of the new car’s badge, the P100D. Hughes let the world know via a cryptic tweet: @elonmusk @teslamotors #tesla I know your secret. SHA256 of best part: 5fc38436ec295b0049f186651ebba5fd55e8d7b81eb61cbd00d3f1bf18dd9c81 — Jason Hughes (@wk057) March 4, 2016 That message was soon decrypted by enthusiasts on the Tesla Motors Club forum, at which time Hughes posted a copy of the picture: Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Man hacks Tesla firmware, finds new model, has car remotely downgraded

OS X blacklist accidentally disables Ethernet in OS X 10.11

Enlarge / An errant update may have disabled your Mac’s Ethernet port recently. (credit: Andrew Cunningham) If you’re having problems with your Mac’s Ethernet port this morning, the culprit may be an errant automatic update that Apple published over the weekend. Luckily, the damage isn’t permanent: an Apple support article posted yesterday will walk you through diagnosing and fixing the problem, which involves connecting to your network via Wi-Fi and running a software update command in the Terminal. If you’re reading this and your Ethernet port is working fine, odds are good that you’ve already installed the follow-up update released to fix the problem. The culprit is an update for the System Integrity Protection feature for OS X, the El Capitan feature that protects some system folders and keeps unsigned or incorrectly signed kernel extensions (or “kexts,” roughly analogous to drivers in a Windows or Linux machine) from loading. In this case, the kext used to enable the Ethernet port on Macs was blacklisted—if you restarted your Mac after applying this update but before your computer had a chance to download the quickly issued fix, you’ll find yourself without an Ethernet connection. This blacklist isn’t updated through the Mac App Store like purchased apps or OS X itself. Rather, it uses a seamless auto-update mechanism that executes in the background even if you haven’t enabled normal automatic updates. Apple uses a similar mechanism to update OS X’s anti-malware blacklist, a rudimentary security feature introduced in 2011 following the high-profile Mac Defender malware infection and occasionally used to push other critical software updates . Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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OS X blacklist accidentally disables Ethernet in OS X 10.11

Next-gen Ultra HD Blu-ray discs probably won’t be cracked for a while

DVDFab, a software tool for ripping and decrypting DVDs and Blu-ray discs, will not be upgraded to support newer Ultra HD (4K) Blu-ray discs. Fengtao Software, which makes DVDFab, said in a statement that it “will not decrypt or circumvent AACS 2.0 in the days to come. This is in accordance with AACS-LA, (which has not made public the specifications for AACS 2.0), the BDA [Blu-ray Disc Association] and the movie studios.” AACS-LA is the body that develops and licenses the Blu-ray DRM system. Curiously, Fengtao’s announcement comes just a day after SlySoft—the company that makes the ripping tool AnyDVD—ceased operations and vanished from the Web . All that’s left is a cryptic message on SlySoft’s website: “Due to recent regulatory requirements we have had to cease all activities relating to SlySoft Inc.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Next-gen Ultra HD Blu-ray discs probably won’t be cracked for a while

Report: Siri for Mac will be one of OS X 10.12’s major new features

(credit: Apple) Apple’s Siri personal assistant will finally be coming to OS X 10.12 when the OS is released later this year, according to a report from 9to5Mac . According to the report, a Siri icon will live in the menu bar in the upper-right corner of the screen along with icons for Spotlight, the Notification Center, and other features. Users will also be able to use a keyboard shortcut to bring up Siri, which will be an optional feature that can be enabled during first-time setup or in System Preferences (much as it works in iOS today). Microsoft’s Cortana feature made a similar jump from Windows Phone 8.1 to Windows 10 last year, and Google supports its “OK Google” voice commands in Chrome OS as well. Since launching on the iPhone 4S in 2011, Siri has become a mainstay in most of Apple’s products; it spread to the iPad relatively quickly, it came to the Apple TV when it was refreshed last year, and it’s a primary input method for the Apple Watch. OS X already supports an optional Dictation feature for turning speech into text—in other words, the feature is a natural and long-awaited addition to the Mac platform. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Report: Siri for Mac will be one of OS X 10.12’s major new features

Microsoft kills off Qik, the video messaging service you didn’t know it had

Playing back a conversation, on the Windows Phone version. You’ll be forgiven for having forgotten about Skype Qik, the short video messaging service from Skype that Microsoft launched in October 2014. It offered low friction messaging—no need to create an account, merely having a phone number would do—similar to WhatsApp, SMS, or all sorts of other popular messaging services. Well, now it’s going away. The company says that the major features of Qik have been rolled into the regular Skype apps; video messaging already existed in Skype when Qik was released, and filters were added in October last year. As such, the app isn’t really needed any more, and Qik will stop working on March 24. Skype Qik was a successor to a short video messaging service called Qik that Skype bought in January 2011 for $150 million, just months before Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion. The original Qik service was built around capturing video messages and sharing them with others. It was closed down in April 2014, as Skype introduced its own integrated video messaging capability. In that context, the new Skype Qik was a little strange, as it overlapped strongly with both the previously shuttered service, and the newly-added Skype capabilities. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft kills off Qik, the video messaging service you didn’t know it had

Valve releases tool to test whether your PC is VR ready

(credit: Valve ) With HTC beginning to take pre-orders for the SteamVR-powered Vive headset in just one week, you may well be wondering if your PC tower is up for running high-end VR without any distracting lag. Worry not: Valve has just released a SteamVR Performance Test Tool to determine whether you are technologically ready to shell out $799 for an HTC Vive . Unlike Oculus’ own Rift Compatibility Tool , which just seems to check your PC parts against a list without actually running a diagnostic, Valve’s tool takes a few minutes to run through a small, non-interactive animation of a GLaDOS robot repair facility. The goal is to “determine whether your system is capable of running VR content at 90fps and whether VR content can tune the visual fidelity up to the recommended level,” according to a Valve blog post . Afterwards, the tool gives an average fidelity rating (on a numerical and Low/Medium/High/Very High scale). It also tells you what percentage of tested frames dipped below the recommended 90 fps for a smooth VR experience and whether any of those frames were bound by the CPU, rather than the GPU. The tool does warn that “the varying CPU cost of positional tracking and processing-intensive applications” could mean actual software runs worse than the test would suggest and warns that it doesn’t test for available USB slots either. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Valve releases tool to test whether your PC is VR ready

LG jumps on the VR bandwagon with the LG 360 VR

Jennifer Hahn The LG 360 VR. I can see the future! 6 more images in gallery LG’s biggest announcement today is undoubtedly the LG G5 , but next to the company’s flagship smartphone, it was also demoing this crazy VR headset called the “LG 360 VR.” It requires a smartphone to work, but unlike Galaxy Gear-style headsets that require you to slot the phone into the headset, this headset is just tethered to the LG G5 via a USB cable. The device is basically an external display for the G5, allowing the headset to have a slimmer profile while cutting the weight down to only 118g. LG isn’t offering many specifics about the display inside the headset, only saying it has a resolution of 639 ppi. LG also isn’t saying much in the way of pricing, a launch date, or even capabilities, but it does mention that it “is compatible with 360-degree images as well as all Google Cardboard content.” We were able to briefly check out prototype hardware at LG’s G5 event, and we can say the big, face-engulfing VR headsets are that size for a reason—namely blocking out the light in the room. This was more like wearing a pair of opaque eyeglasses; allowing light to gush in from the top and bottom of the device. For the most part, the headset didn’t work yet, but it did briefly mirror the G5’s home screen when we plugged in the USB cable. The display area is about what you would expect from looking at the outside of the device. It’s a long, thin screen the fills maybe half your vertical vision. It won’t be a device for immersion, but LG says it will “simulate a 130-inch TV viewed from two meters.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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LG jumps on the VR bandwagon with the LG 360 VR