newsletters – Page 17 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

YouTube subscription plan leaks: offline play, no ads, 20 million songs

A handful of the full set of screenshots obtained by Android Police. Android Police More details have leaked about Google’s upcoming subscription service for YouTube, these in the form of screenshots posted by Android Police on Monday. The service, called YouTube Music Key, will give subscribers ad-free and offline playback of YouTube videos, as well as audio-only material. Per the screenshots, users will be able to play music on their mobile phones “with or without video, in the background, or with your screen off”—all things that the single-tasking YouTube apps could not previously do. Subscribers will also be able to play music via “YouTube Mix,” a recently-added feature that works similarly to radio stations on other streaming services. A YouTube Music Key subscription provides access to a 20-million-song catalog, roughly the same size as that of Spotify and Rdio , as well as a collection of material the app refers to as “concerts, covers, and remixes.” While YouTube is rife with content beyond artists’ official discographies, a lot of it of legally questionable provenance, it’s not clear from the screenshots how Google will decide what goes into YouTube Music Key. Subscribers to the service will also be subscribed to “Google Play Music Key” for free, which is likely a rebranded Google Play Music All Access . Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

See more here:
YouTube subscription plan leaks: offline play, no ads, 20 million songs

Linux-on-the-desktop pioneer Munich now considering a switch back to Windows

The world is still waiting for the year of Linux on the desktop, but in 2003 it looked as if that goal was within reach. Back then, the city of Munich announced plans to switch from Microsoft technology to Linux on 14,000 PCs belonging to the city’s municipal government. While the scheme suffered delays , it was completed in December 2013. There’s only been one small problem: users aren’t happy with the software, and the government isn’t happy with the price. The switch was motivated by a desire to reduce licensing costs and end the city’s dependence on a single company. City of Munich PCs were running Windows NT 4, and the end of support for that operating system meant that it was going to incur significant licensing costs to upgrade. In response, the plan was to migrate to OpenOffice and Debian Linux. Later, the plan was updated to use LibreOffice and Ubuntu. German media are reporting that the city is now considering a switch back to Microsoft in response to these complaints. The city is putting together an independent expert group to look at the problem, and if that group recommends using Microsoft software, Deputy Mayor Josef Schmid of the CSU party says that a switch back isn’t impossible. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Original post:
Linux-on-the-desktop pioneer Munich now considering a switch back to Windows

A brief history of USB, what it replaced, and what has failed to replace it

We’ve all had this first-world problem, but USB is still leagues better than what came before. Like all technology, USB has evolved over time. Despite being a “Universal” Serial Bus, in its 18-or-so years on the market it has spawned multiple versions with different connection speeds and many, many types of cables. The USB Implementers Forum , the group of companies that oversees the standard, is fully cognizant of this problem, which it wants to solve with a new type of cable dubbed Type-C . This plug is designed to replace USB Type-A and Type-B ports of all sizes on phones, tablets, computers, and other peripherals. Type-C will support the new, faster USB 3.1 spec with room to grow beyond that as bandwidth increases. It’s possible that in a few years, USB Type-C will have become the norm, totally replacing the tangled nest of different cables that we all have balled up in our desk drawers. For now, it’s just another excuse to pass around that dog-eared XKCD comic about the proliferation of standards . While we wait to see whether Type-C will save us from cable hell or just contribute to it, let’s take a quick look at where USB has been over the years, what competing standards it has fought against, and what technologies it will continue to grapple with in the future. Read 26 remaining paragraphs | Comments

More:
A brief history of USB, what it replaced, and what has failed to replace it

Insect that ekes out a living in Antarctica has tiny genome

The larval form of the midge (left) and the adult. Denlinger Lab, Ohio State When the term “extremophiles” gets thrown around, it’s usually in reference to single-celled organisms that thrive in high salt or near-boiling water. But there are a few animals that also manage to make do in rather extreme conditions. Perhaps the top example is a wingless midge that goes by Belgica antarctica . As its name implies, it’s native to the frozen continent—in fact, it’s the only insect that’s native. (A few others have more recently introduced themselves from South America in recent years, and cockroaches undoubtedly ride in shipments to research bases.) Now, to try to help understand how anything can survive in such inhospitable conditions, researchers sequenced the genome of the midge and discovered it’s gotten rid of a lot of the DNA that’s frequently termed junk. The researchers describe just how difficult the insect’s living conditions are in detail: “The larvae, encased in ice for most of the year, require two years to complete their development and then pupate and emerge as adults at the beginning of their third austral summer. The [wingless] adults crawl over surfaces of rocks and other substrates, mate, lay eggs and die within 7–10 days after emergence.” Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Excerpt from:
Insect that ekes out a living in Antarctica has tiny genome

Prosecutors: ex-LulzSec hacker “Sabu” helped authorities stop 300+ cyberattacks

The much delayed sentencing of former LulzSec hacker-turned-FBI informant Hector “Sabu” Monsegur is set to take place next week. But before any decisions are made public, new court documents (PDF) show Monsegur has helped the feds disrupt more than 300 attacks against targets ranging from the US military to NASA, Congress to private companies. “The amount of loss prevented by Monsegur’s actions is difficult to fully quantify, but even a conservative estimate would yield a loss prevention figure in the millions of dollars,” the document stated. The tale of Sabu’s arrest and LulzSec’s fall: FBI still needs Hector “Sabu” Monsegur, sentencing delayed (again) “Literally” the day he was arrested, hacker “Sabu” helped the FBI LulzSec leader “Sabu” worked with FBI since last summer FBI names, arrests Anon who infiltrated its secret conference call Inside the hacking of Stratfor: the FBI’s case against Antisec member Anarchaos All the latest on the unmasking of LulzSec leader “Sabu,” arrests Stakeout: how the FBI tracked and busted a Chicago Anon Doxed: how Sabu was outed by former Anons long before his arrest Anonymous attacks security firm as revenge for LulzSec arrests “Everything incriminating has been burned”: Anons fight panic after Sabu betrayal Monsegur assisted in high-profile hacks of security firm HBGary and others as a member of LulzSec, a sect of Anonymous. He began cooperating with the FBI in June 2011 after his arrest at the Jacob Riis public housing complex in New York City. His work for the feds began immediately . Eventually Monsegur helped the government build cases against numerous Anonymous hackers, including Stratfor hacker Jeremy Hammond . He apparently also assisted the government in its investigation of Wikileaks . According to the New York Times , prosecutors filed the new documents because they are asking Judge Loretta A. Preska for leniency in light of Monsegur’s “extraordinary cooperation.” Sentencing in Monsegur’s case is currently scheduled for Tuesday in a Federal District Court in Manhattan. But while some of the other hackers in the LulzSec saga have faced steep penalties (for example, Hammond is serving a 10-year sentence), the government has asked for Monsegur to only be sentenced to time served— just seven months . Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read this article:
Prosecutors: ex-LulzSec hacker “Sabu” helped authorities stop 300+ cyberattacks

Apple will fix iMessage bug that makes it harder to leave the service

Andrew Cunningham iPhone users (and ex-iPhone users) attempting to sign out of Apple’s iMessage service recently began running into a nasty bug. Signing out of iMessage means that iPhones trying to text your number should seamlessly switch back to using SMS. However, this hasn’t been happening lately—instead, these iMessages continue to be sent as iMessages. They never actually make it to their destination, and neither the sender nor the receiver is given any indication that the message has failed. Apple acknowledged the bug in a statement to Re/code this morning , noting that it has “recently fixed a server-side iMessage bug which was causing an issue for some users,” and that an additional software update was being planned to fix more problems. Signing out of the iMessage service has always been more difficult than enabling it, and I say that as someone who recently disabled iMessage to make jumping between iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and other mobile operating systems easier. In my case, iMessages sent to my newly disconnected number would simply fail to send, and the problem only worked itself out after I changed my Apple ID password (thereby signing all of my devices out of the service), disassociating my phone number from my Apple ID, and then calling Apple support about the problem. This new bug sounds worse, since message senders don’t even know that the texts aren’t arriving at their destination. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

More:
Apple will fix iMessage bug that makes it harder to leave the service

Airbnb gives up customer data to NY attorney general

Airbnb Home renting company Airbnb announced Wednesday that under pressure from the New York attorney general’s office, it will hand over the anonymized personal data of its New York hosts to the state. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman subpoenaed three years’ worth of data in 2013 in an effort to suss out whether Airbnb users are running “illegal hotels” and to determine if Airbnb’s business model and platform comply with the law. Schneiderman stated his suspicions in April that Airbnb hosts in New York operate residences or parts of their homes like hotels—but without the fire, safety, and tax regulations normally applied to hotels. Airbnb hosts could also be in violation of a 2010 law that prohibits New Yorkers from renting entire apartments for less than 29 consecutive days. Schneiderman claimed that Airbnb sells itself to investors as a hotel network, but it attempts to keep that pitch out of the public sphere for fear of incurring legal hotel status. The New York Supreme Court rejected Schneiderman’s subpoena request on May 13, “but the judge’s ruling also made it clear that he would accept a new, narrower subpoena and require Airbnb to turn over personal information about hosts if the Attorney General’s Office made some changes to their demands,” wrote Airbnb in its blog post Wednesday. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

More:
Airbnb gives up customer data to NY attorney general

Missing features we’d like to see in the next version of OS X

It’s only been about seven months since Apple released OS X 10.9, the latest and greatest version of its Mac operating system. But the yearly upgrade cycle means that unless something unexpected happens, Apple will tell us about OS X 10.10 at the traditional keynote next month on the first morning of its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). The operating system is over 13 years old and it’s come a long way since those first versions , but it’s still not perfect. What areas do we think Apple should focus on in 10.10? Think of the SSDs Isn’t it time our modern hard drives got a modern filesystem? The latest Macs may have solid state drives that can read and write over 700 megabytes per second over a direct PCI Express connection, but all that data is still organized by a file system from the previous millennium: HFS+. There’s something to be said for using stable, battle-hardened code for the file system, which is probably the most critical part of the operating system. Unfortunately, Apple’s current HFS+ implementation isn’t as stable as it should be, much to the chagrin of Ars’ OS X reviewer extraordinaire John Siracusa. With the introduction of a logical volume manager—Core Storage—it looks like Apple has found a way to innovate in the area of storage without having to replace HFS+. One of the big missing features in HFS+ is snapshots . Time Machine, for example, works per-file. Changing a few bytes in the middle of a large file means that the entire file is copied during the next backup. With snapshots, that’s not necessary: multiple snapshots share the unmodified disk blocks. As such, snapshots could be implemented in Core Storage rather than in the file system. This would allow Time Machine backups to be much faster and more efficient. Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Continued here:
Missing features we’d like to see in the next version of OS X

Intel CEO: Delayed next-gen Broadwell CPUs will be here for holidays

One of the few looks we’ve gotten at a Broadwell CPU so far. Intel New CPUs and chipsets from Intel normally go hand-in-hand, but earlier this month when the company announced its 9-series chipsets , all we got was a slightly faster clock speed bump to Haswell . News of truly new CPUs based on the upcoming “Broadwell” architecture was nowhere to be found, and we’ve generally heard very little about Broadwell aside from an announcement of a delay into the second half of 2014. There are many months in the second half of 2014, but Intel CEO Bryan Krzanich got a little more specific in a statement to Reuters today . “I can guarantee for holiday, and not at the last second of holiday,” said Krzanich. “Back to school—that’s a tight one. Back to school you have to really have it on-shelf in July, August. That’s going to be tough.” This means we’ll most likely see Broadwell chips (and, more importantly, new devices from OEMs that can use Broadwell chips) sometime between September and early December. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Former Subway sandwich franchisee cops to $40,000 gift-card hack scheme

A former Subway sandwich shop franchisee pled guilty to taking part in a scheme to hack point-of-sale terminals for at least 13 stores and obtaining gift cards worth $40,000. Shahin Abdollahi, who also ran a business that sold and maintained point-of-sale terminals, sold the computerized checkout registers to the Subway shops that were illegally accessed, according to federal prosecutors in Massachusetts. He set up the terminals with software from LogMeIn , which allows people to remotely log in to PCs over the Internet. Abdollahi and other conspirators then used the software to repeatedly access the Subway terminals without authorization, usually early in the morning, when the restaurants were closed. Once logged in, they loaded gift cards with credit totaling $40,000. Co-conspirator Jeffrey Wilkinson, 37, of Rialto, California, would then advertise the cards for sale on eBay and Craigslist and hand deliver them to buyers. On Wednesday, Abdollahi 46, of Lake Elsinore, California, pled guilty in federal court in Massachusetts to one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and wire fraud and one count of wire fraud. He is scheduled to be sentenced on for August 6. Wilkinson, 37, of Rialto, California, pled guilty in February and is scheduled to be sentenced on May 28. It’s not the first time Subway point-of-sale terminals have been illegally accessed by crooks for purposes of skimming the till. In 2012, two men pled guilty to participating in an international conspiracy that hacked into credit-card payment terminals at more than 150 Subway franchises and racked up more than $10 million in losses. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

Originally posted here:
Former Subway sandwich franchisee cops to $40,000 gift-card hack scheme