digest – Page 3 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Windows 10’s Wi-Fi credential sharing is going away in the Anniversary Update

Last night, a new Windows 10 Insider Preview unexpectedly made its way onto the Internet after Microsoft accidentally started releasing it to end users while sending it to Windows Update. The new build, 14342, takes some big steps forward in Edge’s extension support. Previously, extensions in the Edge browser had to be manually downloaded and installed. Now they are installed and updated in the same way as Universal Windows Apps. The number of extensions available for Edge has also grown, with a couple of ad blockers now joining the fray. With this build, Microsoft is starting to bring back some of the more tablet-oriented features that were in Windows 8 but removed from Windows 10. Swipe navigation in the browser is now back, allowing you to navigate back and forward just by swiping the page left and right. The next Mobile build will also include this capability. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

No more get-out-of-jail-free card for CryptXXX ransomware victims

(credit: Aurich Lawson) For the past month, people infected with the CryptXXX ransomware had a way to recover their files without paying the hefty $500 fee to obtain the decryption key. On Tuesday, that reprieve came to an end. Researchers from security firm Proofpoint said in a blog post that version 2.006 has found a way to bypass a decryption tool that has been freely available for weeks. The tool was provided by Kaspersky Lab and was the result of flaws in the way CryptXXX worked. The crypto ransomware update effectively renders the Kaspersky tool useless, Proofpoint said. It did this with the use of zlib , a software library used for data compression. The new version also makes it harder to use the Kaspersky tool by locking the screen of an infected computer and making it unusable until the ransom is paid. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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No more get-out-of-jail-free card for CryptXXX ransomware victims

From TV trailblazer to IP afterthought: TiVo bought for $1.1 billion

(credit: cncphotos ) Entertainment company Rovi announced that it has officially acquired DVR maker TiVo in a deal worth $1.1 billion. Rovi will pay for the deal mostly in stock at $10.70 per share, with approximately $277 million to be paid in cash at $2.75 per share. Rovi’s CEO Tom Carson will continue to run the company, although it will now assume the “iconic TiVo brand” as its name. The deal seems to be centered on patents. According to The New York Times , Rovi’s interactive TV program guides account for less than half of its $526 million revenue last year, while the rest is made up of its licensed intellectual property. TiVo made a name for itself with its DVR technology, but the patents that make its DVR hardware and software work are proving to be more valuable. Together, Rovi and TiVo have over 6,000 patents issued and pending in the digital entertainment space. “Rovi’s acquisition of TiVo, with its innovative products, talented team, and substantial intellectual property portfolio, strengthens Rovi’s position as a global leader in media discovery, metadata, analytics, and IP licensing,” Carson said in a statement . “It’s an exciting time as the media and entertainment landscape undergoes a significant evolution…. By working together, Rovi and TiVo will revolutionize how consumers experience media and entertainment and at the same time build value for our stockholders.” Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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

4U Storage Pods offer 240TB of storage for 3.6¢/GB

That’s a lot of hard disks. (credit: Backblaze) For the last few years, we’ve looked at the hard disk reliability numbers from cloud backup and storage company Backblaze, but we’ve not looked at the systems it builds to hold its tens of thousands of hard disks. In common with some other cloud companies, Backblaze publishes the specs and designs of its Storage Pods, 4U systems packed with hard disks, and today it announced its sixth generation design , which bumps up the number of disks (from 45 to 60) while driving costs down even further. The first design, in 2009, packed 45 1.5TB disks into a 4U rackable box for a cost of about 12¢ per gigabyte. In the different iterations that have followed, Backblaze has used a number of different internal designs—sometimes using port multipliers to get all the SATA ports necessary, other times using PCIe cards packed with SATA controllers—but it has stuck with the same 45 disk-per-box formula. The new system marks the first break from that setup. It uses the same Ivy Bridge Xeon processor and 32GB RAM of the version 5, adding extra controllers and port multipliers to handle another 15 disks for 60 in total. The result is a little long—it overhangs the back of the rack by about four inches—but it’s packed full of storage. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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4U Storage Pods offer 240TB of storage for 3.6¢/GB

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

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

Ancient shopping lists point to widespread Bible-era literacy

The fortress in Arad. Around 2,600 years ago, in a military fortress in Southern Judah, a man called Eliashib sent and received messages written in ink on fragments of pottery. The contents were mundane, mainly concerning food supplies, but they provide evidence of literacy that could inform the debate about when major Biblical texts were written. Eliashib’s correspondence happened on the cusp of the fall of the Kingdom of Judah, which took place during 588-87 BCE. The date plays an important role in an ongoing debate among Biblical scholars: were the first Biblical texts produced before the fall of Jerusalem—as events were unfolding—or afterwards? One part of the debate hinges on the literacy levels at the time: if the pre-demolition population wasn’t generally literate, it wouldn’t have been likely that important historical texts were created in this era. But Eliashib and his colleagues in the Arad military fortress provide some evidence that literacy in this era may have been more widespread than previously thought. A multidisciplinary group of researchers from Tel Aviv University have combined their expertise in applied math, Jewish history, and archaeology to assess communications from the fortress, trying to establish how many people, and of what rank, were writing messages. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Ancient shopping lists point to widespread Bible-era literacy

Homebrew patch makes many Oculus VR games perfectly playable on HTC Vive [Updated]

What’re those SteamVR “chaperone” grid lines doing in an Oculus-exclusive game? Find out yourself if you own an HTC Vive and use the new Revive patch on many “exclusive” Oculus games. (credit: Sam Machkovech) In the race to the top of virtual reality, Oculus and HTC have kicked off a hardware showdown the likes of which we haven’t seen since the “Nintendon’t” days. However, the war includes a curious compatibility issue: HTC’s current software hub, SteamVR, can be accessible by Oculus headset wearers, but Oculus Home doesn’t currently support the HTC Vive. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has publicly stated that “we can only extend our SDK to work with other headsets if the manufacturer allows us to do so,” seemingly passing the buck to HTC and Valve in regard to why its Oculus Store games don’t natively support the other leading PC headset. Valve has denied this assertion . Either way, we no longer have to wait for the companies to settle their legal and licensing differences, thanks to the efforts of the LibreVR plugin, dubbed Revive . Short version: it works, as proven by the above screenshot we snapped of pack-in Oculus game Lucky’s Tale running within the SteamVR interface (complete with its “chaperone” boundary lines). The author’s test system, which includes a 4.2 GHz i7 processor and a GTX 980Ti, ran all test games without hitches in performance, while other users have reported similarly smooth performance on “VR-ready” Windows 10 PCs. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Homebrew patch makes many Oculus VR games perfectly playable on HTC Vive [Updated]