At one time when all you needed to connect was a couple of laptops, a cheap wireless router would more than suffice for most homes. But these days, when there’s everything from phones to tablets to TVs relying on your Wi-Fi network, it makes sense to splurge on your hardware. And D-Link’s new 11AC Ultra Performance Series routers promise speeds of up to 5.6 Gbps optimized for the myriad of different devices constantly hopping on and off your network. Read more…
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D-Link’s New Wi-Fi Routers Look Like Reverse-Engineered Alien Technology
MRothenberg writes Bitcoin’s not just for libertarians and drug dealers any more! Electronic payment service BitPay this week launched a campaign aimed at making Bitcoin transactions more appealing to mainstream business owners — the first time Bitcoin has been featured in a TV spot. Conceived by Felton Interactive Group, the two new ads promote Bitcoin and BitPay as a secure alternative to traditional credit-card transactions. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
jones_supa writes: Another day, another corporate network intrusion. NVIDIA has reportedly been breached in the first week of December, with the attack compromising personal information of the employees. There is no indication that other data has been compromised. This is according to an email sent out by the company’s privacy office and Nvidia’s SVP and CIO Bob Worwall on December 17th. It took NVIDIA a couple of weeks to pick up all the pieces and assess the incident. It appears that the issue was pinned down by an employee or several employees getting their personal data compromised outside of the company network. After that, the information was used to gain unauthorized access to the internal corporate network. NVIDIA’s IT team has taken extensive measures since then to enhance the security of the network against similar attacks in the future. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
The global telecom network Signal System 7 helps phone carriers across the world, including AT&T and Verizon, route calls and texts . It’s also apparently perforated with security holes that lets hackers and spies listen to your calls and read your texts. It’s so bad the ACLU’s chief technologist told me that people worried about being snooped should just not use their cell phone to make calls. Privacy: Remember that? Read more… 
mrspoonsi writes The global race is on to develop 5G, the fifth generation of mobile network. While 5G will follow in the footsteps of 4G and 3G, this time scientists are more excited. They say 5G will be different — very different. “5G will be a dramatic overhaul and harmonization of the radio spectrum, ” says Prof Rahim Tafazolli who is the lead at the UK’s multimillion-pound government-funded 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey. To pave the way for 5G the ITU is comprehensively restructuring the parts of the radio network used to transmit data, while allowing pre-existing communications, including 4G and 3G, to continue functioning. 5G will also run faster, a lot faster. Prof Tafazolli now believes it is possible to run a wireless data connection at an astounding 800Gbps — that’s 100 times faster than current 5G testing. A speed of 800Gbps would equate to downloading 33 HD films — in a single second. Samsung hopes to launch a temporary trial 5G network in time for 2018’s Winter Olympic Games. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
If you tried to visit Craigslist late Sunday night, you probably had a very weird experience. Instead of arriving at that sultry sea of classifieds, you were probably sent to DigitalGangster.com . Then, you were likely redirected to YouTube, where a very strange animated rap video filled your ears with lyrics about freedom, privacy, and net neutrality. Read more… 
mrspoonsi writes Microsoft has announced today that they will be pushing an out-of-band security patch today. The patch, which affects nearly all of the company’s major platforms, is rated ‘critical’ and it is recommended that you install the patch immediately. The patch is rated ‘critical’ because it allows for elevation of privileges and will require a restart. The platforms that are affected include: Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows 8 and 8.1, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows RT and Windows RT 8.1 and Windows 10 Technical Preview customers are affected, too. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
