Tag: digest

Linux Mint 17.1 review—less change is good change

The Linux Mint team recently released Linux Mint 17.1—a somewhat minor but still welcome upgrade to the Ubuntu-based ecosystem. And while Linux Mint 17.1 arrives as it usually does (a few weeks after the release of a new version of Ubuntu), version 17.1 is not based on Ubuntu’s latest effort, 14.10. Instead, this edition of Mint remains tied to the last Long Term Support (LTS) release, Ubuntu 14.04 . This marks the first time Linux Mint has not used the newest version of Ubuntu for a release. But if you paid attention to the curious approach of Linux Mint 17.0, you’ll know that was the plan all along. These days, Mint will not be changing its Ubuntu base again until the next LTS release—Ubuntu 16.04—arrives in 2016. And at first glance, it might seem like a bad thing. After all, Mint is missing out on whatever new stuff is in Ubuntu 14.10 (in this case it’s not much, but 15.04 will have plenty of changes). However, Mint 17.1 is in fact a very good sign for fans of the distro’s own tools, like its homegrown Cinnamon desktop. By relying on a consistent LTS release, Mint developers can more or less ignore the base system. Instead of spending all their time and effort making sure whatever Ubuntu has changed works with Mint, they can focus on what makes the ecosystem great—namely, its two primary desktops, MATE and Cinnamon. Read 32 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read more here:
Linux Mint 17.1 review—less change is good change

Apple manager gets year in jail, $4.5m fine for selling industry secrets

Onetime Apple supply manager Paul Shin Devine will spend a year in prison and repay $4.5 million for selling Apple’s secrets to suppliers, the AP reports . Devine, who worked at Apple from 2005 until his arrest in August of 2010 , pleaded guilty to wire fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering—and could have been sentenced to as much as 20 years in prison. Working with Singapore resident Andrew Ang, Devine was accused of selling confidential information to companies that hoped to become Apple suppliers, and to suppliers trying to negotiate better deals with the company. Winning an Apple contract can be a make-or-break moment for a supplier, as we saw in the recent dust-up between Apple and would-be sapphire manufacturer GT Advanced Technologies ; companies hoping to get in on the action sent “millions in kickbacks” to Devine. Ang and Chua Kim Guan, who were respectively the sales director and general manager of Jin Li Mould Manufacturing, were charged in 2013 for bribing Devine. They were accused of paying Devine $387,600 between 2006 and 2009. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

Continue reading here:
Apple manager gets year in jail, $4.5m fine for selling industry secrets

AT&T still throttles “unlimited data”—even when network not congested

A while back, we reported that AT&T had stopped throttling unlimited data users except in cases when the network is congested. We were wrong. AT&T did change its policy to stop the automatic throttling of many unlimited data plans, but the company’s older, more draconian throttling policy still applies to customers with unlimited LTE data. AT&T told Ars the policy will be changed for all customers sometime in 2015, but it did not say whether that will happen closer to the beginning of the year or the end of the year. Here’s how it works: Customers who have 3G or non-LTE 4G phones and “ legacy unlimited data plans ” are throttled for the remainder of the billing period after they exceed 3GB of data in a month, but only “at times and in areas that are experiencing network congestion.” 4G and LTE are practically synonymous these days, but AT&T also applies the 4G label to its HSPA network technology. Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Visit site:
AT&T still throttles “unlimited data”—even when network not congested

Police officer fired for refusing to turn on body cam

The idea of putting body-worn cameras on police officers has spread since protests and unrest following the shooting of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Missouri. Earlier this week, the Obama administration proposed federal funding to get 50,000 more officers equipped with the cameras. The increased use of cameras makes a few policy questions around them more pressing. One such question: what happens when a police officer fails—or straight-up refuses—to turn on the body camera? The issue was highlighted in today’s Wall Street Journal , which features a story about a New Mexico police officer who “was fired for allegedly not following an order to record and upload all contacts with citizens,” according to the Albuquerque Police Department and the officer’s lawyer. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Continue reading here:
Police officer fired for refusing to turn on body cam

FBI seizes 20 boxes of documents on LAUSD iPad program

On Monday morning, the FBI seized 20 boxes of documents pertaining to a $1.3 billion iPad program from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), according to the Los Angeles Times . The program, which was intended to give iPads to every student, teacher, and campus administrator of the nation’s second-largest school district, has met with many catastrophic difficulties, and this latest federal investigation led the new superintendent of the school system to shelve the project indefinitely on Tuesday. The program first hit a bump in the road back in 2013 when a number of students “hacked” the iPads —which is to say they deleted profile information that designated the user as a student, thus letting the student browse the Internet unencumbered by the filter restrictions enforced by the school district. At the same time, many teachers reported that they felt ill-equipped to use and teach with the iPads. In October, the LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy resigned amid allegations of malfeasance , although he claimed no wrongdoing. Deasy drew attention after the disclosure of his ties to Apple and curriculum-provider Pearson. On Tuesday, Deasy told the Los Angeles Times that he had had no contact with the FBI, nor did he know what the investigation was about. Ars contacted the FBI for more details about the investigation, but a spokesperson said she could not comment. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read More:
FBI seizes 20 boxes of documents on LAUSD iPad program

Feds want Apple’s help to defeat encrypted phones, new legal case shows

OAKLAND, CA—Newly discovered court documents from two federal criminal cases in New York and California that remain otherwise sealed suggest that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is pursuing an unusual legal strategy to compel cellphone makers to assist investigations. In both cases, the seized phones—one of which is an iPhone 5S—are encrypted and cannot be cracked by federal authorities. Prosecutors have now invoked the All Writs Act , an 18th-century federal law that simply allows courts to issue a writ, or order, which compels a person or company to do something. Some legal experts are concerned that these rarely made public examples of the lengths the government is willing to go in defeating encrypted phones raise new questions as to how far the government can compel a private company to aid a criminal investigation. Read 29 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Continue Reading:
Feds want Apple’s help to defeat encrypted phones, new legal case shows

Google Glass isn’t dead; Intel-powered hardware reportedly due in 2015

It’s been easy to believe Google Glass is dead given all the problems that have popped up lately. The device was introduced to the world more than two years ago, but it never came close to the original concept . The project’s founder left Google to work at Amazon, and monthly updates from Google have slowed from important feature releases to sometimes single-sentence changelogs . App developers are giving up on the platform, and Twitter recently pulled support for its Glass app. The official forums , once a bustling hive of optimism, now mostly discuss  declining usage  or low morale among remaining Glass users. And unless something happens in the next 30 days, Google will miss its original plans for a consumer release. Glass is not dead, though. A report from The Wall Street Journal   claims that a new version of Google Glass is on the way, and unlike the  minor revision  that Google released last year, it has totally overhauled internals. According to the report, Glass will switch from its dead Texas Instruments SoC to a processor built by Intel and will get a full hardware refresh. Google Glass has had a rough life thanks to its choice of SoC. The original unit (and the revision) used a Texas Instruments chip, but shortly after the launch of Glass, TI quit the smartphone business and ended support for many of its products. That was a big problem for Glass since, as early as this year, the device was still based on Android 4.0—an OS originally released in 2011. Glass was missing out on some big wearable-specific enhancements in later versions of Android like notification APIs, Bluetooth LE, and lower memory usage. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Original post:
Google Glass isn’t dead; Intel-powered hardware reportedly due in 2015

T-Mobile forced to stop hiding slow speeds from throttled customers

When T-Mobile US customers exceed their monthly data caps, they aren’t cut off from the Internet entirely. Instead, T-Mobile throttles their connections to 128Kbps or 64Kbps, depending on which plan they have, for the rest of the month. But T-Mobile has made it difficult for those customers to figure out just how slow their connections are, with a system that exempts speed test applications from the throttling. After complaints from consumer advocates , the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigated the issue and has forced T-Mobile to be more honest about its network’s throttled speeds. Announced today , an agreement between T-Mobile and the FCC ensures that customers will be able to accurately gauge their throttled speeds. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

More:
T-Mobile forced to stop hiding slow speeds from throttled customers

Here’s how to run homebrew on your 3DS

A video showing off Smealum’s Ninjhax homebrew exploit in action. Earlier this week, hacker Jordan “Smealum” Rabet announced that obscure 2011 3DS platformer Cubic Ninja held the key to unlocking the 3DS hardware to run homebrew code, causing an immediate run on the hard-to-find game . Now, Smealum has published the details of his hack , along with the instructions and tools needed to unlock the system. What Smealum is calling “Ninjhax” exploits an error in Cubic Ninja ‘s level creation and sharing function, which passes created level data via generated QR codes. Scanning a specifically manufactured QR code, generated by a tool on Smealum’s site to match any current 3DS hardware/firmware combination, causes the game to run a boot file loaded on the SD card. At that point, the bootloader downloads additional code over Wi-Fi and installs and runs a front-end channel that can run other homebrew software stored on the SD card. After that initial QR code scan, the homebrew menu can be loaded simply by accessing the save game file through Cubic Ninja . Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

More here:
Here’s how to run homebrew on your 3DS

Local judge unseals hundreds of highly secret cell tracking court records

Scott A judge in Charlotte, North Carolina, has unsealed a set of 529 court documents in hundreds of criminal cases detailing the use of a stingray, or cell-site simulator, by local police. This move, which took place earlier this week, marks a rare example of a court opening up a vast trove of applications made by police to a judge, who authorized each use of the powerful and potentially invasive device. According to the Charlotte Observer , the records seem to suggest that judges likely did not fully understand what they were authorizing. Law enforcement agencies nationwide have taken extraordinary steps to preserve stingray secrecy. As recently as this week, prosecutors in a Baltimore robbery case dropped key evidence that stemmed from stingray use rather than fully disclose how the device was used. The newspaper also reported on Friday that the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s office, which astonishingly had also never previously seen the applications filed by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD), will now review them and determine which records also need to be shared with defense attorneys. Criminals could potentially file new claims challenging their convictions on the grounds that not all evidence was disclosed to them at the time. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Follow this link:
Local judge unseals hundreds of highly secret cell tracking court records