internet – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Charter promises gigabit Internet to “virtually” all customers this year

Enlarge / Charter’s gigabit service is available in these eight markets and will spread across the ISP’s 41-state footprint this year. (credit: Charter ) Charter’s cable network extends to about 50 million homes and businesses across the US, and nearly all of them should have the opportunity to buy gigabit-speed cable Internet by the end of 2018. So far, prices for the service range from $105 to $125. “By year-end, we’ll offer gigabit services in virtually everywhere we serve at all 50 million passings,” Charter CEO Tom Rutledge told investors in an earnings call Friday. The number of residential units among those 40 million locations is somewhere above 40 million. An earnings call transcript by Seeking Alpha is available here , and Rutledge’s remarks were pointed out by news site Stop the Cap . Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Charter promises gigabit Internet to “virtually” all customers this year

Out of nowhere, currency-mining botnet infects 5,000 Android devices

Enlarge (credit: Google ) A fast-moving botnet that appeared over the weekend has already infected thousands of Android devices with potentially destructive malware that mines digital coins on behalf of the unknown attackers, researchers said. The previously unseen malware driving the botnet has worm-like capabilities that allow it to spread with little or no user interaction required, researchers with Chinese security firm Netlab wrote in a blog post published Sunday . Once infected, Android phones and TV boxes scan networks for other devices that have Internet port 5555 open. Port 5555 is normally closed, but a developer tool known as the Android Debug Bridge opens the port to perform a series of diagnostic tests. Netlab’s laboratory was scanned by infected devices from 2,750 unique IPs in the first 24 hours the botnet became active, a figure that led researchers to conclude that the malware is extremely fast moving. “Overall, we think there is a new and active worm targeting Android systems’ ADB debug interface spreading, and this worm has probably infected more than 5,000 devices in just 24 hours,” Netlab researchers wrote. “Those infected devices are actively trying to spread malicious code.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Out of nowhere, currency-mining botnet infects 5,000 Android devices

Microsoft Office 2019 Will Only Work on Windows 10

Microsoft on Thursday provided an update on Office 2019, in which it revealed that the apps will only run on Windows 10. From a report: In a support article for service and support of Windows and Office, Microsoft has revealed you’ll need to upgrade to Windows 10 if you want the latest version of Office without subscribing to the company’s Office 365 service. It’s a move that’s clearly designed to push businesses that are holding off on Office 365 into subscriptions, as the standalone Office 2019 software will only be supported on Windows 10 and not Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 machines. Microsoft is also altering the support lifecycle for Office 2019, so it will receive 5 years of mainstream support and then “approximately 2 years of extended support.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft Office 2019 Will Only Work on Windows 10

Crooks Created 28 Fake Ad Agencies To Disguise Massive Malvertising Campaign

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bleeping Computer: A group of cyber-criminals created 28 fake ad agencies and bought over 1 billion ad views in 2017, which they used to deliver malicious ads that redirected unsuspecting users to tech support scams or sneaky pages peddling malware-laden software updates or software installers. The entire operation — codenamed Zirconium — appears to have started in February 2017, when the group started creating the fake ad agencies which later bought ad views from larger ad platforms. These fake ad agencies each had individual websites and even LinkedIn profiles for their fake CEOs. Their sole purpose was to interface with larger advertising platforms, appearing as legitimate businesses. Ad security company Confiant, the one who discovered this entire operation, says ads bought by this group reached 62% of ad-monetized websites on a weekly basis. All in all, Confiant believes that about 2.5 million users who’ve encountered Zirconium’s malicious ads were redirected to a malicious site, with 95% of the victims being based in the U.S. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Crooks Created 28 Fake Ad Agencies To Disguise Massive Malvertising Campaign

Now Even YouTube Serves Ads With CPU-draining Cryptocurrency Miners

YouTube was recently caught displaying ads that covertly leach off visitors’ CPUs and electricity to generate digital currency on behalf of anonymous attackers, it was widely reported. From a report: Word of the abusive ads started no later than Tuesday, as people took to social media sites to complain their antivirus programs were detecting cryptocurrency mining code when they visited YouTube. The warnings came even when people changed the browser they were using, and the warnings seemed to be limited to times when users were on YouTube. On Friday, researchers with antivirus provider Trend Micro said the ads helped drive a more than three-fold spike in Web miner detections. They said the attackers behind the ads were abusing Google’s DoubleClick ad platform to display them to YouTube visitors in select countries, including Japan, France, Taiwan, Italy, and Spain. The ads contain JavaScript that mines the digital coin known as Monero. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Now Even YouTube Serves Ads With CPU-draining Cryptocurrency Miners

Wine 3.0 Released

prisoninmate shares a report from Softpedia: The Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) project has been updated today to version 3.0, a major release that ends 2017 in style for the open-source compatibility layer capable of running Windows apps and games on Linux-based and UNIX-like operating systems. Almost a year in the works, Wine 3.0 comes with amazing new features like an Android driver that lets users run Windows apps and games on Android-powered machines, Direct3D 11 support enabled by default for AMD Radeon and Intel GPUs, AES encryption support on macOS, Progman DDE support, and a task scheduler. In addition, Wine 3.0 introduces the ability to export registry entries with the reg.exe tool, adds various enhancements to the relay debugging and OLE data cache, as well as an extra layer of event support in MSHTML, Microsoft’s proprietary HTML layout engine for the Windows version of the Internet Explorer web browser. You can read the full list of features and download Wine 3.0 from WineHQ’s website. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google’s museum app finds your fine art doppelgänger

If you’ve ever wondered if there’s a museum portrait somewhere that looks like you and you’re ready to have your ego crushed, there’s now an app for that. Google Arts & Culture’s latest update now lets you take a selfie, and using image recognition, finds someone in its vast art collection that most resembles you. It will then present you and your fine art twin side-by-side, along with a percentage match, and let you share the results on social media, if you dare. My Google Arts & Culture match is with a guy literally named Bourgeois A post shared by Steve Dent (@stevetdent) on Jan 15, 2018 at 1:43am PST The app is like an automated version of an article that circulated recently showing folks standing in front of portraits at museums. In many cases, the old-timey people in the paintings resemble them uncannily, but, other than in rare cases, that’s not the case at all with Google’s app. Google matched me with someone who doesn’t look like me in the slightest, a certain Sir Peter Francois Bourgeois, based on a painting hanging in Dulwich Picture Gallery. Taking a buzz around the internet, other folks were satisfied with their matches, some took them as a personal insult, and many were just plain baffled, in that order, as presented below. From all that, it’s pretty clear that deep learning systems like those from Google are great at matching individual details, but painfully miss the big picture. The left is from “Children Begging, ” from the second half of the 17th century. Anonymous painter, Italy. I can kind of see it #googleartsandculture A post shared by Avren Keating (@mxavren) on Jan 12, 2018 at 7:59am PST Nothing like a little self esteem boost from google arts and culture on a Saturday night pic.twitter.com/hYYtdNN308 — Amy Stone (@amyhannumstone) January 14, 2018 Cool 🙂 #googleartsandculture A post shared by BoyWonder (@boywonderrocks) on Jan 14, 2018 at 5:12am PST Via: GQ Source: Google Arts & Culture (Play Store)

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Google’s museum app finds your fine art doppelgänger

Congo Shuts Down Internet Services ‘Indefinitely’

On Saturday Engadget wrote: Authoritarian leaders are fond of severing communications in a bid to hold on to power, and that tradition sadly isn’t going away. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s government has ordered telecoms to cut internet and SMS access ahead of planned mass protests against President Joseph Kabila, whose administration has continuously delayed elections to replace him. Telecom minister Emery Okundji told Reuters that it was a response to “violence that is being prepared, ” but people aren’t buying that argument. Officials had already banned demonstrations, and the country has history of cutting communications and blocking social network access in a bid to quash dissent. And today in the wake of deadly protests, Congo announced that the internet shutdown will continue “indefinitely.” The New York Times reports: At least eight people were killed and a dozen altar boys arrested in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday after security forces cracked down on planned church protests against President Joseph Kabila’s refusal to leave office before coming elections… Congolese security forces set up checkpoints across Kinshasa, and the government issued an order to shut down text messaging and internet services indefinitely across the country for what it called “reasons of state security.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Congo Shuts Down Internet Services ‘Indefinitely’

Kodi 18 ‘Leia’ 64-Bit For Windows Is Finally Ready To Replace the 32-bit Version

BrianFagioli shares a report from BetaNews: Earlier this year, we shared with you that a pre-release version of Kodi 18 “Leia” 64-bit for Windows was available. There was a big catch, however — it was not up to par with its 32-bit brother. And so, many people just stuck with the 32-bit version, because, well… why not? It is finally time to make the jump to the 64-bit variant, however, as according to the Kodi team, it is now identical to the 32-bit version from a feature perspective. “The 64-bit Kodi version for Windows is now feature complete and on the same level as 32-bit. From now on the 32-bit installer will include a warning to ask you to install the 64-bit instead. This upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit version is seamless and you just need to install on top of the old version, ” says Kodi. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Kodi 18 ‘Leia’ 64-Bit For Windows Is Finally Ready To Replace the 32-bit Version

Plexamp, Plex’s Spin on the Classic Winamp Player, Is the First Project From New Incubator Plex Labs

Media software maker Plex today announced a new incubator and community resource called Plex Labs. “The idea here is to help the company’s internal passion projects gain exposure, along with those from Plex community members, ” reports TechCrunch. “Plex Labs is also unveiling its first product: a music player called Plexamp, ” which is designed to replace the long-lost Winamp. From the report: The player was built by several Plex employees in their free time, and is meant for those who use Plex for music. As the company explains in its announcement, the goal was to build a small player that sits unobtrusively on the desktop and can handle any music format. The team limited itself to a single window, making Plexamp the smaller Plex player to date, in terms of pixel size. Under the hood, Plexamp uses the open source audio player Music Player Daemon (MPD), along with a combination of ES7, Electron, React, and MobX technologies. The end result is a player that runs on either macOS or Windows and works like a native app. That is, you can use media keys for skipping tracks or playing and pausing music, and receive notifications. The player can also handle any music format, and can play music offline when the Plex server runs on your laptop. The player also supports gapless playback, soft transitions and visualizations to accompany your music. Plus, the visualizations’ palette of colors is pulled from the album art, Plex notes. Additionally, Plexamp makes use of a few up-and-coming features that will be included in Plex’s subscription, Plex Pass, in the future. These new features are powering functionality like loudness leveling (to normalize playback volume), smart transitions (to compute the optimal overlap times between tracks), soundprints (to represent tracks visually), waveform seeking (to present a graphical view of tracks), Library stations, and artist radio. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Plexamp, Plex’s Spin on the Classic Winamp Player, Is the First Project From New Incubator Plex Labs