Tag: events

Cablevision buyout makes Altice the fourth-largest US cable operator

Cablevision , an iconic US cable TV company founded in 1973, has been purchased by France’s Altice for $17.7 billion. The sale has been approved by shareholders and is expected to go through in the first half of 2016. “Nearly half a century later, the time is right for new ownership of Cablevision and its considerable assets, ” said CEO James L. Dolan. Not included in those assets, however, is Cablevision’s Madison Square Garden company — the Dolan family will keep the downtown New York arena, along with Radio City Music Hall and the Rangers and Knicks pro sports franchises. It’s also holding onto AMC Networks, the home of Mad Men , Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead . Altice was a company little known in the US until it purchased regional cable group Suddenlink for $9.1 billion in May. In Europe, the family-owned company provides internet, pay-TV and mobile phone offerings. “The acquisition of Cablevision represents Altice’s next step in the US market, ” said CEO Patrick Drahi.” That’s an understatement — with the Cablevision acquisition, Altice is now the fourth-largest cable TV provider in the US. Filed under: Home Entertainment , Internet , HD Comments Source: Cablevision Tags: Acquisition, Altice, Cable, Cablevision, France, hdpostcross, ISP, Knicks, MadisonSquareGarden

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Cablevision buyout makes Altice the fourth-largest US cable operator

Buy items right from their Facebook pages with the new Shop section

Facebook is on its way to becoming a one-stop shop for all of your social networking, selfie, news, disliking and retail therapy needs. Select merchants will now feature a Shop section on their Facebook pages, allowing customers to purchase items without leaving the site. The new section is made in collaboration with digital commerce company Shopify , and at first the Shop addition will be available only to Shopify retailers (at no additional charge). It’s designed with mobile devices in mind, since that’s where most of Facebook’s users are, Shopify says. “Existing Facebook Store apps don’t work on mobile devices, which is how most people now use Facebook, ” Shopify writes . “As well, existing Facebook Store apps only add a tab to your page, while the new Facebook Shop section appears as a larger section on your main Facebook Page…. Finally, the new Shop section includes a subscribe button that lets people get notified when you add new products.” Facebook and Shopify have been testing out the Shop function over the past few months. So far, Facebook doesn’t take a cut from sales secured via Shop. [GIF credit: Shopify] Filed under: Internet , Facebook Comments Via: Wired Source: Shopify Tags: facebook, shop, Shopify, shopping

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Buy items right from their Facebook pages with the new Shop section

Nine of World’s Biggest Banks Create Blockchain Partnership

An anonymous reader writes: Nine major banks, including Barclays, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, and JP Morgan have teamed up to bring Bitcoin’s blockchain technology to financial markets. “Over the past year, interest in blockchain technology has grown rapidly. It has already attracted significant investment from many major banks, which reckon it could save them money by making their operations faster, more efficient and more transparent.” Leaving aside the question of whether banks actually want to become more transparent, they’re funding a firm dedicated to running tests on how data can be shared and collected through the blockchain. “The blockchain works as a huge, decentralized ledger of every bitcoin transaction ever made that is verified and shared by a global network of computers and therefore is virtually tamper-proof. … The data that can be secured using the technology is not restricted to bitcoin transactions. Two parties could use it to exchange any other information, within minutes and with no need for a third party to verify it.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Nine of World’s Biggest Banks Create Blockchain Partnership

EPIX enables mobile downloads for offline movie watching

Joining the likes of Google Play Movies and iTunes, streaming content provider EPIX announced on Tuesday that it will allow subscribers to download movies onto their mobile devices for later playback, whether or not there’s an available internet connection. The feature will reportedly be available on iOS and Android devices as well as Amazon’s Kindle, beginning this month. Available titles will include The Hunger Games , James Bond and Star Trek . There’s no word on limits to how many titles subscribers will be able to concurrently download or how long they’ll be able to keep each one. Filed under: Internet Comments Source: Business Wire Tags: Amazon, Comparison of Android devices, downloads, hungergames, iOS, iTunes, jamesbond, Kindle, Star Trek, streaming

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EPIX enables mobile downloads for offline movie watching

Apple will (eventually) let you remove some of its iOS apps

Apple’s iOS devices have long included apps that you’re unlikely to use (do you really need a stock tracker?), and that list only seems to be getting longer . That’s potentially a big problem, especially when the company is still shipping 16GB flagship iPhones where every megabyte counts. However, there might be some relief in sight. In a chat with BuzzFeed News , CEO Tim Cook says that his company will eventually “figure out a way” for you to remove some of those apps. You won’t get to yank all of them (that “might cause issues” with some device features, Cook says), but this could spare you from creating a folder for the bundled apps that would otherwise gather virtual dust. There’s no timetable for when this will happen, so don’t be surprised if you end up waiting a while to clean up your home screens. However, the very mention of the idea represents a shift in Apple’s stance toward bundled apps. Cook wants you “to be happy” with your gear, not to “suck up your real estate.” To him, it’s better to let you purge some software than to risk losing a customer. Filed under: Cellphones , Tablets , Mobile , Apple Comments Source: BuzzFeed News Tags: app, apple, apps, bloatware, ios, ipad, iphone, mobilepostcross, smartphone, tablet, timcook

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Apple will (eventually) let you remove some of its iOS apps

Linux 4.3 Bringing Stable Intel Skylake Support, Reworked NVIDIA Driver

An anonymous reader writes: Mr. Torvalds has released Linux 4.3-rc1 this weekend. He characterized the release as “not particularly small — pretty average in size, in fact. Everything looks fairly normal, in fact, with about 70% of the changes being drivers, 10% architecture updates, and the remaining 20% are spread out.” There are a number of new user-facing features including stabilized Intel “Skylake” processor support, initial AMD R9 Fury graphics support, SMP scheduler optimizations, file-system fixes, a reworked open-source NVIDIA driver, and many Linux hardware driver updates. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Linux 4.3 Bringing Stable Intel Skylake Support, Reworked NVIDIA Driver

The second ‘StarCraft II’ expansion arrives November 10th

It’s been a long time coming, but the second StarCraft II expansion is nearly here: Blizzard has announced that Legacy of the Void will arrive on November 10th. As with both the original game ( Wings of Liberty ) and Heart of the Swarm , this latest title will focus primarily on one species. In this case, you’re reuniting the mysterious Protoss so that they can confront a dire threat and reclaim their homeworld. You’ll also get new units for all factions, and there are fresh multiplayer modes that include shared bases and objective-based co-op. It’s not really a revolution, then. However, this also represents the end of the StarCraft II story line — if you’re determined to see the conclusion to Blizzard’s five-year sci-fi saga, you’ll want to check this out. Filed under: Gaming Comments Via: Kotaku Source: Battle.net , BusinessWire Tags: activision, blizzard, gaming, legacyofthevoid, starcraft, starcraft2, starcraftii, starcraftiilegacyofthevoid, video

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The second ‘StarCraft II’ expansion arrives November 10th

Purdue ‘HUSH’ Tool Promises 16% Battery Life Gain For Wasteful Android Phones

MojoKid writes: Researchers from Purdue University have developed a software tool for Android smartphones that purportedly slows down battery drain when handsets enter a sleep state. With the software tool installed, the researchers claim that smartphone battery life can be extended by nearly 16 percent. Called “HUSH, ” the software solution was developed in response to what the researchers say is the first large-scale study of smartphone energy drain occurring from everyday use by consumers. According to their research, apps drain 28.9 percent of battery power while the screen is turned off. HUSH dynamically identifies app background activities that it deems aren’t useful to the user experience on a per-app basis and suppresses those apps when the screen is turned off. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Purdue ‘HUSH’ Tool Promises 16% Battery Life Gain For Wasteful Android Phones

Open Source Router Firmware OpenWRT 15.05 Released

aglider writes: The newest stable iteration of the famous and glorious OpenWRT has just been released in the wild for all the supported architectures. The latest version is 15.05, codenamed “Chaos Calmer” after a cocktail drink, just like all previous ones. Major changes from the official announcements: “Linux kernel updated to version 3.18. Improved Security Features. Rewritten package signing architecture based on ed25519. Added support for jails. Added support for hardened builds. Improved Networking Support. Platform and Driver Support.” For the full details you are welcome on the forums while the firmware itself and extra packages are available from the distribution servers. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Open Source Router Firmware OpenWRT 15.05 Released

Benchmark Battle, September 2015: Chrome Vs. Firefox Vs. Edge

An anonymous reader writes: The next browser battle is upon us. Edge has been out for more than a month, and its two biggest competitors have received significant updates: Chrome 45 and Firefox 40. This article puts all three through their paces, and each manages to win a few tests. Edge convincingly won the JetSteam and SunSpider JavaScript benchmarks, while also eking out a victory in Google’s Octane test. Chrome was victorious in Mozilla’s Kraken benchmark for JavaScript performance, while also edging out Firefox in HTML5Test and the Oort Online WebGL test. Firefox won the WebXPRT test that combines HTML5 and JavaScript performance, and also the Peacekeeper test for general browser performance. There’s no clear dominant browser for performance, and none of the three are obvious laggards, either. Browser competition seems to be in a good place right now. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Benchmark Battle, September 2015: Chrome Vs. Firefox Vs. Edge