gaming – Page 3 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Verizon boosts top FiOS speeds to 750Mbps, has multi-gigabit in works

Enlarge (credit: Matthew Stevens ) Verizon will start offering a 750Mbps Internet package for $150 a month in parts of its FiOS fiber-to-the-home territory, the company announced today. “FiOS Instant Internet” with symmetrical upload and download speeds of 750Mbps will launch Saturday “to nearly seven million homes and businesses in greater New York City/northern New Jersey, Philadelphia and Richmond, [Virginia] with more to follow in 2017,” Verizon’s announcement said. The Boston and Norfolk, Virginia markets will get the new speed tier later in the first quarter, the company said. This is an improvement over the top speed tiers currently advertised on the FiOS website , which lists 300Mbps for $170 a month and 500Mbps for $270, plus taxes, equipment charges, and other fees. Those are promotional prices that last only a year before increasing. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Verizon boosts top FiOS speeds to 750Mbps, has multi-gigabit in works

How hackers made life hell for a CIA boss and other top US officials

Enlarge (credit: Flickr user Erica Zabowski ) A North Carolina man has pleaded guilty to a conspiracy that illegally accessed the e-mail and social media accounts of Central Intelligence Director John Brennan and other senior government officials and then used that access to leak sensitive information and make personal threats. Justin Gray Liverman, 24, of Morehead City, North Carolina, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, commit identity theft, and make harassing, anonymous phone calls, federal prosecutors said Friday . Among the 10 people targeted in the conspiracy were Brennan; then-Deputy FBI Director Mark Giuliano; National Intelligence Director James R. Clapper; Greg Mecher, the husband of White House Communication Director Jen Psaki; and other government officials. The group called itself Crackas with Attitude, and it was led by a co-conspirator going by the name of Cracka. “She talks mad shit abt snowden,” Liverman said on December 10, 2015 in an online chat with Cracka, referring to a target who is believed to be Psaki, according to a statement of facts signed by Liverman and filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. (The document refers to Mecher and Psaki as Victim 3 and the spouse of Victim 3 respectively.) “If you come across anything related to [Victim 3’s spouse] let me know. If you find her cell or home number omg gimme.” Liverman went on to say he wanted to “phonebomb the shitt [sic] outta” Psaki. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How hackers made life hell for a CIA boss and other top US officials

Verizon purges unlimited data customers, targets those using 200GB

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Spencer Platt) Verizon Wireless customers with unlimited data plans who use more than 200GB a month will have to switch to limited plans next month or be disconnected, a company spokesperson confirmed today. Since Verizon stopped offering unlimited data to new smartphone customers in 2011, this change affects only longtime customers who were allowed to hang on to the old plans. Verizon could simply force all customers who aren’t under contract to switch to new plans, but instead it has periodically made moves that reduce the numbers of unlimited data subscribers. “Because our network is a shared resource and we need to ensure all customers have a great mobile experience with Verizon, we are notifying a small group of customers on unlimited plans who use more than 200GB a month that they must move to a Verizon Plan by February 16, 2017,” Verizon spokesperson Kelly Crummey told Ars today. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Feds may let Playpen child porn suspect go to keep concealing their source code

Enlarge (credit: ullstein bild / Getty Images News) Rather than disclose the source code that the FBI used to target a child porn suspect, federal prosecutors in Tacoma, Washington recently dropped their appeal in United States v. Michaud . The case is just one of 135 federal prosecutions nationwide involving the Tor-hidden child porn website Playpen. The vast effort to bust Playpen has raised significant questions about the ethics, oversight, capabilities, and limitations of the government’s ability to hack criminal suspects. In United States v. Michaud , Jay Michaud of Vancouver, Washington allegedly logged on to Playpen in 2015. But unbeknownst to him at that point, federal investigators were temporarily operating the site for 13 days before shutting it down. As authorities controlled Playpen, the FBI deployed a sneaky piece of software (a “network investigative technique (NIT),” dubbed by many security experts as malware), which allowed them to reveal Playpen users’ true IP addresses. With that information in hand, identifying those suspects became trivial. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Feds may let Playpen child porn suspect go to keep concealing their source code

AT&T imposes another $5 rate hike on grandfathered unlimited data plans

Enlarge AT&T is raising the price of its grandfathered unlimited data plans by $5 a month, the second such increase in the past year. The price increase affects longtime mobile customers who have held onto unlimited data plans for years after AT&T stopped selling them to new subscribers. The latest price increase was reported by DSLReports yesterday , and AT&T confirmed the move to Ars. “If you have a legacy unlimited data plan, you can keep it; however, beginning in March 2017, it will increase by $5 per month,” AT&T said. The unlimited data price had been $30 a month for seven years, until AT&T raised it to $35 in February 2016. The price increase this year will bring it up to $40. That amount is just for data: Including voice and texting, the smartphone plans cost around $90 a month. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AT&T imposes another $5 rate hike on grandfathered unlimited data plans

Shamoon disk-wiping malware can now destroy virtual desktops, too

Enlarge / A computer infected by Shamoon System is unable to find its operating system. (credit: Palo Alto Networks) There’s a new variant of the Shamoon disk-wiping malware that was originally unleashed on Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company in 2012, and it has a newly added ability to destroy virtual desktops, researchers said. The new strain is at least the second Shamoon variant to be discovered since late November, when researchers detected the return of disk-wiping malware after taking a more than four-year hiatus. The variant was almost identical to the original one except for the image that was left behind on sabotaged computers. Whereas the old one showed a burning American flag, the new one displayed the iconic photo of the body of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian refugee boy who drowned as his family tried to cross from Turkey to Greece. Like the original Shamoon, which permanently destroyed data on more than 30,000 work stations belonging to Saudi Aramco , the updates also hit one or more Saudi targets that researchers have yet to name. According to a blog post published Monday night by researchers from Palo Alto networks, the latest variant has been updated to attack virtual desktops, which have emerged as one of the key protections against Shamoon and other types of disk-wiping malware. The update included usernames and passwords related to the virtual desktop infrastructure products from Huawei, which can protect against a destructive malware through its ability to load snapshots of wiped systems. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Shamoon disk-wiping malware can now destroy virtual desktops, too

“Neon” screenshots leak, showing off a refreshed Windows 10 look and feel

Enlarge / Neon introduces the use of transparency, such as on the left panel of Groove Music. (credit: MSPoweruser ) After reports last year that Microsoft was going to revise and update the design language used for Windows applications, some screenshots have leaked to MSPoweruser giving an indication of how the appearance is going to change. Windows 10 presently uses a design language known as MDL2 (Microsoft Design Language 2), which is an evolved version of the Metro design first introduced with Windows Phone 7. Both Metro and MDL2 put an emphasis on clean lines, simple geometric shapes, attractive typography, photographic imagery, and minimal use of ornamentation. Both heavily borrow from responsive Web design concepts. Google’s Material design language builds on similar themes, adding transitions and animations to better show how pieces of information are related. The new Microsoft look is named Neon. It continues the evolution of Metro—it retains the emphasis on clean text and a generally flat appearance but adds certain elements of translucency (which the company is calling “acrylic”) and greater use of animation and movement. Additional new elements are “Conscious UI,” wherein an acrylic element might change depending on what’s behind the current app, and “Connected Animations.” The current preview of the Groove Music app, available to users of Windows Insider builds, already includes Connected Animations. Headers and pictures shrink as you scroll down the list of songs. As with Metro before it, much of this is already familiar and commonplace in Web design. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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“Neon” screenshots leak, showing off a refreshed Windows 10 look and feel

The Game Boy’s Being Brought Back From the Dead With Some Awesome Upgrades

Though there were several iterations and updates to Nintendo’s insanely popular handheld gaming system, the Game Boy was officially retired just over a decade ago. And while Nintendo has no plans to revive the portable console, a company called Retro-Bit is stepping up to bring the Game Boy back from the dead. Read more…

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The Game Boy’s Being Brought Back From the Dead With Some Awesome Upgrades

Sony’s Gigantic Space Wall Is Actually Hundreds of Tiny LED Tiles

That image above appears to show one giant seamless LED display, but Sony’s new CLEDIS system, presumably intended for use in convention centers like the one hosting CES in Las Vegas, is actually hundreds of LED tiles smooshed together. Read more…

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Sony’s Gigantic Space Wall Is Actually Hundreds of Tiny LED Tiles

Two India-based call center employees blew whistle on massive phone scam

Enlarge / This is a call center in New Dehli, India, not the Phoenix 007 operation that was busted. (credit: ILO ) Last year’s unraveling of the massive India-based telephone scam ring may have been helped by a phone call to a Federal Trade Commission lawyer. According to a Tuesday report in The New York Times , the bust seemingly was aided by the efforts of two teenage employees from one of the companies. The pair blew the whistle on their former employer, the Phoenix 007 call center that’s based outside of Mumbai. The workers reached Betsy Broder of the FTC after being shuffled from the Internal Revenue Service’s main switchboard. Indian and American authorities believe that this call center, along with several others, was part of a massive ring to call Americans in the United States and trick them into ponying up thousands of dollars in fraudulent fees. This criminal operation is believed to have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments