Five years later, Thunderbolt is finally gaining some traction in PCs

Walking around Pepcom at CES 2016, putting our hands on some laptops and plenty of other things. Video shot by Nathan Fitch and Jennifer Hahn, edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link) For many years, it looked like Thunderbolt was destined to be a modern version of FireWire: faster and smarter than contemporary USB interfaces, but so rare outside of Macs that we haven’t seen a very wide range of Thunderbolt accessories beyond adapters and external hard drives. Thunderbolt versions 1 and 2 are available in most Macs sold between 2011 and now, but it has been included in just a handful of PC laptops and high-end motherboards. Thunderbolt 3 is turning that around. The port is suddenly beginning to show up in high-end offerings from just about every major PC OEM, starting with some Lenovo workstation laptops and Dell’s new XPS lineup and continuing in laptops and convertibles from HP , Acer , Intel , and others . Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Five years later, Thunderbolt is finally gaining some traction in PCs

T-Mobile added another 8.3 million customers in 2015

T-Mobile USA added 8.3 million customers last year, including 2.1 million in the fourth quarter, solidifying its position as the country’s number three wireless carrier ahead of Sprint and behind Verizon Wireless and AT&T. T-Mobile had 63.3 million customers as of December 31, 2015, up from 55 million customers at the end of 2014, the company announced today  in a preliminary earnings report. In total, T-Mobile now has 29.4 million postpaid phone customers, 2.3 million postpaid mobile broadband customers, 17.6 million prepaid customers, and 14 million wholesale customers. This was the second consecutive year that T-Mobile boosted its customer total by more than 8 million. (credit: T-Mobile) T-Mobile has also improved its churn rate—the percentage of subscribers who discontinued service—meaning that fewer customers are leaving for other carriers. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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T-Mobile added another 8.3 million customers in 2015

Microsoft readies kill switch for Internet Explorer 8, 9, and 10

Microsoft has reminded Internet Explorer users that it will imminently end support for older versions of its browser from next week. The software giant plans to hit the kill switch on IE 8, 9, and 10 on January 12, and it has been advising users to upgrade to Internet Explorer 11, or its new Edge browser , to avoid being exposed to potential security risks after that date. From next Tuesday, Microsoft will end updates for the aged browsers and the nudge brigade from the Redmond camp is in full, sharp elbow mode to encourage users to swiftly upgrade to IE 11 or Edge. There will be one last patch on January 12 that will include an “End of Life” notification, asking users to upgrade. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft readies kill switch for Internet Explorer 8, 9, and 10

ArcaBoard is a real hoverboard—but it’ll cost you $20,000

(credit: Arca Space Corporation ) After all the teased products that didn’t live up to their promises and the trouble caused by self-balancing scooters, ArcaBoard appears to be the closest we’ll get to an actual hoverboard in 2015. Designed by the US-based Arca Space Corporation, the mattress-shaped vehicle packs 272 horsepower and is propelled by 36 ducted fans spinning at 45,000rpm. Buying one will set you back about £13,500 ($19,900). Arca has begun taking pre-orders for ArcaBoard and promises to start shipping it to the customers in April 2016. The device’s speed is limited to 20km/h (12mph) and its flying height to 30cm (1ft). It’s powered by a set of Li-Po batteries that account for a significant part of its price: getting a new battery pack after the 1-year warranty has expired will cost you £4,600 ($6,840). There are two versions of the device: one for riders that weigh up to 80kg (176lbs), and another for riders up to 110kg (242lbs). The lighter option can hover for six minutes, the heavier just three minutes. The lighter rider can theoretically travel up to 2km (1.2mi) on one charge. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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ArcaBoard is a real hoverboard—but it’ll cost you $20,000

Yandex worker stole search engine source code, tried selling for just $28K

(credit: Yandex ) An employee of Russia’s Internet giant Yandex, Dmitry Korobov, stole the source code of its search engine and tried to sell it on the black market to fund his own startup, according to a report by the Russian newspaper Kommersant . A Russian court has found Korobov guilty and handed down a suspended sentence of two years in jail. The Kommersant  investigation revealed that Korobov downloaded a piece of software codenamed Arcadia from Yandex’s servers, which contained the source code and algorithms of the company’s search engine. Later on, he tried to sell it to an electronics retailer called NIX, where a friend of his allegedly worked. Korobov also trawled the darknet in search of potential buyers. Korobov put a surprisingly low price on the code and algorithms, asking for just $25,000 and 250,000 Russian rubles, or about £27,000 in total. There’s no information on Korobov’s position within the company, but it appears that he wasn’t aware that the data he had in his possession could be worth much more. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Yandex worker stole search engine source code, tried selling for just $28K

YouTube mad at T-Mobile for throttling video traffic

(credit: Aurich Lawson) T-Mobile USA’s recently instituted practice of downgrading video quality to 480p in order to reduce data usage now has a prominent critic: YouTube. “Reducing data charges can be good for users, but it doesn’t justify throttling all video services, especially without explicit user consent,” a YouTube spokesperson said, according to a  Wall Street Journal article today . T-Mobile’s “Binge On” program automatically reduces the quality of video while allowing many video services to stream without counting against customers’ high-speed data limits. Video services that cooperate with T-Mobile by meeting the company’s “technical criteria” have their videos exempted from customers’ data caps. Netflix, HBO, Hulu, and many others worked with T-Mobile to get the exemption. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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YouTube mad at T-Mobile for throttling video traffic

Self-driving Ford Fusions are coming to California next year

Apart from the sensor bar on the roof, this Ford Fusion Hybrid looks just like a normal car. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin) Even more robots are coming to California’s roads next year. Yesterday, Ford announced that it will start testing its autonomous Fusion sedans in the state now that it is officially enrolled in the California Autonomous Vehicle Testing Program . The company opened a new R&D center in Palo Alto at the beginning of the year, which among other projects has been working on virtual simulations of autonomous driving as well as sensor fusion to improve the way its cars perceive the world around them. Ford is the 11th group to obtain a California driving license for its autonomous cars, joining other OEMs (BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Nissan, Tesla, and Volkswagen Group), tier one suppliers (Bosch and Delphi ), and tech companies (Cruise Automation and Google). A condition of the self-driving car regulations requires companies to provide California’s DMV with a report any time one of their cars is involved in a collision. Since the rules went into effect in September 2014, there have been a total of 10 incidents . The first, in October 2014, involved one of Delphi’s test vehicles, although it was being driven by a human at the time. The nine other incidents all involve Google’s cars, seven of which were being driven autonomously. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Self-driving Ford Fusions are coming to California next year

OneDrive for Business to get unlimited storage for enterprise customers

Amid the brouhaha surrounding Microsoft’s decision to backtrack on its offer of unlimited OneDrive storage for home Office 365 subscribers , one issue remained unaddressed: what about the related OneDrive for Business storage that’s offered to enterprise Office 365 subscribers? The company has finally laid out its plans for these users, and unlimited storage is back for at least some. Enterprise and government customers on the E3, E4, and E5 plans, education customers, and OneDrive for Business Plan 2 and SharePoint Online Plan 2 customers will all see their storage allocation increased provided that the organization has at least five subscribers. This move to unlimited storage will be phased in two parts. The first part will be an automatic increase from the current 1TB to a new 5TB per user, expected to complete by the end of March 2016. Subsequently, customers will be able to request additional storage. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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OneDrive for Business to get unlimited storage for enterprise customers

Hackers actively exploit critical vulnerability in sites running Joomla

Enlarge / An payload that’s been modified so it can’t be misused. Malicious hackers are using it to perform an object injection attack that leads to a full remote command execution. (credit: Sucuri ) Attackers are actively exploiting a critical remote command-execution vulnerability that has plagued the Joomla content management system for almost eight years, security researchers said. A patch for the vulnerability, which affects versions 1.5 through 3.4.5, was released Monday morning . It was too late: the bug was already being exploited in the wild, researchers from security firm Sucuri warned in a blog post . The attacks started on Saturday from a handful of IP addresses and by Sunday included hundreds of exploit attempts to sites monitored by Sucuri. “Today (Dec 14th), the wave of attacks is even bigger, with basically every site and honeypot we have being attacked,” the blog post reported. “That means that probably every other Joomla site out there is being targeted as well.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Hackers actively exploit critical vulnerability in sites running Joomla

Copyright case over “Happy Birthday” is done, trial canceled

With less than a week to go before a trial, a class-action lawsuit over the copyright status of “Happy Birthday” has been resolved. Details of the settlement, including what kind of uses will be allowed going forward, are not clear. A short order (PDF) filed yesterday by US Chief District Court Judge George King says that all parties have agreed to a settlement, and it vacates a trial which was scheduled to start on December 15. The key turning point came in September , when King ruled that Warner/Chappell’s copyright transfer was invalid because there was no proof it was ever properly transferred from the Hill sisters, who claimed to have written the song. The trial would have addressed damages issues. Also looming was a late copyright claim by Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI), a children’s’ charity affiliated with the Hill sisters. ACEI came forward in November to say that if Warner/Chappell didn’t own the song, it did. The settlement revealed yesterday resolves all claims by the plaintiffs, Warner/Chappell, and ACEI. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Copyright case over “Happy Birthday” is done, trial canceled