Tag: golf

Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison

NEW YORK—Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison Friday, following a jury’s finding in February that the 31-year-old was the mastermind behind the Silk Road, once the Internet’s largest online drug marketplace. Operating online as “Dread Pirate Roberts,” Ulbricht worked with a small staff to control everything sold on the site. He was arrested in October 2013, and the government made its case against him during a three-week trial here earlier this year. Ulbricht pleaded for leniency  during the hearing. “I wish I could go back and convince myself to take a different path,” he said. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison

Amazon Prime launches free same-day delivery in 14 cities

Amazon Prime’s list of benefits grew one bigger on Thursday, as the $99/year subscription service now includes free same-day shipping—and same-day delivery—for certain parts of the United States. Should an Amazon Prime member live in one of 14 qualifying metropolitan areas—including the company’s home base of Seattle, along with the Bay area, New York City, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Baltimore, and Boston—they can get free same-day delivery on orders of $35 and up. Be advised: you’ll want to check at Amazon’s zip code search site  for your own eligibility if you live in a sprawling region; our test of addresses in the Seattle and Dallas/Fort Worth regions proved scattershot. Prime members in these 14 metropolitan areas should double-check the linked zip code search tool before attempting to place a same-day delivery order. Qualifying same-day orders that cost less than $35 will be charged an additional $5.99 for same-day speed, as Prime customers had already paid up until today. Meanwhile, should an order be placed too late in the day, Prime customers will still enjoy free one-day shipping. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Amazon Prime launches free same-day delivery in 14 cities

SourceForge grabs GIMP for Windows’ account, wraps installer in bundle-pushing adware [Updated]

SourceForge, the code repository site owned by Slashdot Media, has apparently seized control of the account hosting GIMP for Windows on the service, according to e-mails and discussions amongst members of the GIMP community—locking out GIMP’s lead Windows developer. And now anyone downloading the Windows version of the open source image editing tool from SourceForge gets the software wrapped in an installer replete with advertisements. Update: In a blog post issued shortly after this story posted, an unidentified member of SourceForge’s community team wrote that, in fact, “this project was actually abandoned over 18 months ago, and SourceForge has stepped-in to keep this project current.” That runs counter to claims by members of the GIMP development community. The GIMP project is not officially distributed through SourceForge—approved releases are only posted on the GIMP project’s own Web page. But Jernej Simončič, the developer who has been responsible for building Windows versions of GIMP for some time, has maintained an account on SourceForge to act as a distribution mirror. That is, he had until today, when he discovered he was locked out of the Gimp-Win account , and the project’s ownership “byline” had been changed to “sf-editor1″—a SourceForge staff account. Additionally, the site now provided Gimp in an executable installer that has in-installer advertising enabled. Ars tested the downloader and found that it offered during the installation to bundle Norton anti-virus and myPCBackup.com remote backup services with GIMP—before downloading the installer authored by Simončič (his name still appears on the installer’s splash screen). Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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SourceForge grabs GIMP for Windows’ account, wraps installer in bundle-pushing adware [Updated]

Database of 4 million Adult Friend Finder users leaked for all to see

E-mail addresses, sexual orientations, and other sensitive details from almost four million AdultFriendFinder.com subscribers have been leaked onto the Internet following a hack that rooted the casual dating service, security researchers said. The cache includes more than 3.8 million unique e-mail addresses of current and former subscribers, Australian security researcher Troy Hunt reported early Friday morning . The data, which is in the form of 15 Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, was first seeded to anonymous sites hosted on the Tor privacy network. It has since spread to sites on the open Internet. Links to sites hosting the data are easily found on Twitter and other social networking sites, (Ars isn’t publishing the locations). The compromise was first reported by British broadcaster Channel 4. In addition to including e-mail addresses and sexual preferences of users, the data also provided other sensitive information, such as ages, zip codes, and whether the subscriber was seeking an extramarital affair. The trove included information for deleted accounts as well as those still current. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Database of 4 million Adult Friend Finder users leaked for all to see

Google Fiber’s botched software update locks out users, disables Wi-Fi

Many Google Fiber customers have been reporting that a software update turned off their Wi-Fi and prevented them from logging into the Google Network Box’s administration panel. Customers can still get online using Ethernet connections. Customers in Kansas City and Provo, Utah have been affected and took to Twitter  and sites including DownDetector.com  to describe the problem. I’m not eradicating disease with my @googlefiber internet connection, but it would sure be nice for it to work after a 24-hour-long outage. — Sam Hartle (@Sam_Hartle) May 22, 2015 We have had way more outages with @googlefiber than we ever had with @comcast . Google needs to step up its game. — Austin Graff (@AustinLGraff) May 21, 2015 A DSLReports forum member from Kansas City wrote yesterday , “Having an issue today with my network box. It lost my custom IP address scheme and went back to default. Now I can’t access the advanced menu.” A few hours later, the customer had been able to talk to Google Fiber support. “GF Support had to factory reset my network box so I could get in. They acknowledged that a software update this morning caused the issue,” the customer wrote. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google Fiber’s botched software update locks out users, disables Wi-Fi

Luxury bus startup Leap suspends service after regulators crack down

Late last night, luxury bus startup Leap issued a statement on its Facebook page noting that the company would be temporarily suspending its San Francisco service, citing regulatory issues with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). The commission issued Leap a cease-and-desist letter last week, saying that Leap Transit did not have a permit to operate in the city. The company has proved devisive in the Bay Area , where public transportation suffers from a litany of problems, and Leap buses are seen as a way for the wealthy to create a “two-tiered” transportation system . A ride on a Leap bus costs $6 and offers charging ports, free Wi-Fi, and a guaranteed seat. By contrast, a ride on Muni, San Francisco’s municipal public transportation system, costs only $2.25 but the buses are unreliable, packed to the gills, and employ not a single on-board bus manager to bring you coconut water. Leap so far only operates one bus line in the city, which goes from the Marina neighborhood to the Financial District. The company applied for a state permit from the CPUC in 2013, which would have afforded the company “the potential for less oversight and fewer rules,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle . But the city of San Francisco said that it ought to be able to regulate Leap, as SF municipal services would experience the greatest toll from competition from Leap. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Luxury bus startup Leap suspends service after regulators crack down

New Windows 10 build smooths tablet experience, makes Edge super fast

A new Windows 10 build is now available for Fast Ring users. Build 10122 should be available to download, but Microsoft is advising that users with AMD video cards pass on it for the time being. That’s because there’s currently a crashing issue in the Edge browser (still named “Project Spartan” in this release). Microsoft is working with AMD to update its drivers to address the issue, but until an update is available, AMD users are advised to switch to the Slow Ring. The new build makes Windows 10 look the way it looked when Microsoft demonstrated it at its Build and Ignite conferences earlier this month. This has two major parts; the Start menu has been reorganized to group Explorer, Settings, Power, and All Apps together, and the Start screen now puts more focus on new, larger tiles, putting the menu-like parts (including the aforementioned grouped icons) together in a hamburger menu. Similarly, Edge now includes the new tab screen shown off at Build. This is strongly reminiscent of iGoogle, including a search bar, popular links, news, and weather. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New Windows 10 build smooths tablet experience, makes Edge super fast

“Rachel” robocaller victims to get $1.7 million in refunds

The Federal Trade Commission’s fight against the infamous ” Rachel from Cardholder Services ” robocalls has produced a court order to give $1.7 million in refunds to defrauded consumers. The case dates to November 2012 , involving defendants including Universal Processing Services of Wisconsin, a payment processor, and telemarketer Hal Smith and his HES Merchant Services Company, the FTC said today . Per an order from US District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Universal Processing Services and HES will have to pay $1,734,972, which the FTC said “will be used to provide refunds to defrauded consumers.” “The court held Smith and HES liable for 11 violations of the FTC Act and the Commission’s Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), based on their participation in a deceptive telemarketing scheme purporting to be a credit card interest rate reduction service that used robocalls to solicit consumers,” the FTC said. “The defendants failed to disclose the identity of the person(s) responsible for placing the robocalls and unlawfully calling numbers that had been registered on the FTC’s Do Not Call Registry.” Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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“Rachel” robocaller victims to get $1.7 million in refunds

Apple announces new 15-inch MacBook Pro with Force Touch and other upgrades [Updated]

Some good news for power users ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference  next month: the company has just updated its 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, completing the 2015 MacBook refresh it began with the new  MacBook Air , 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro , and the MacBook . The 15-inch Pros include some upgrades that other MacBooks have gotten this year—faster PCI Express storage enabled by increasing the number of PCIe lanes used from two to four and the Force Touch trackpad are chief among them. The discrete graphics option on the high-end $2,499 version of the laptop has also been upgraded, from an Nvidia GeForce GT 750M to an AMD Radeon R9 M370X with 2GB of DDR5 RAM. The entry-level $1,999 version still comes with Intel’s Iris integrated graphics. Visually, the MacBook Pro looks much like the 2012 and 2013 models. The one noticeable physical difference is its Force Touch trackpad, also included in the 13-inch Pro and the new MacBook. These pressure-sensitive trackpads use haptic feedback to simulate the feel of a standard clicky trackpad, but they don’t need as much physical space to move. The trackpad’s inclusion in the MacBook is obviously necessary because of how thin the device is, but its presence in the new Pros is probably intended to encourage developers to adopt Force Touch APIs in their software. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple announces new 15-inch MacBook Pro with Force Touch and other upgrades [Updated]

How the USPS targeted a drug dealer via his IP address

A federal drug case in Massachusetts has shed new light on how the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) law enforcement unit uses something as simple as IP logs on the postal tracking website to investigate crimes. According to a December 2013 affidavit  of an ongoing federal criminal case in Rockland, Massachusetts (20 miles southeast of Boston), one alleged drug dealer named Harold Bates was found out simply by his digital trail left on the USPS’ Track n’ Confirm website. The affidavit was added to the court docket in January 2015, and the case was first reported on by Motherboard . Bates was charged back in March 2014 with conspiracy to import methylone (also known as “molly”), importation of methylone, and possession with intent to distribute methylone, among other crimes. Last month, the judge in the case ruled against Bates in his attempt to supress evidence seized in those packages. Read 24 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How the USPS targeted a drug dealer via his IP address