Tag: portfolio-cond

AT&T still throttles unlimited data, and FCC isn’t promising to stop it

How long will AT&T continue to get away with throttling unlimited data plans? Even after the Federal Communications Commission’s recent net neutrality ruling banned throttling, the FCC isn’t saying whether it will put a stop to it. All major US cellular carriers impose some form of throttling on unlimited data plans, but AT&T’s throttling seems most likely to fall afoul of the FCC’s rules. The big carriers generally reserve the right to slow down data speeds for customers with unlimited data plans after they hit a certain usage threshold each month, but they only do the actual throttling when the user is connected to a congested tower. AT&T, on the other hand, slows its unlimited LTE users down for the rest of the month once they’ve hit a 5GB threshold, and the throttling happens at all hours of the day and in all locations regardless of whether the user is connected to a congested tower. More than any other throttling policy enforced by a major carrier, this one seems designed to push customers with grandfathered unlimited data plans onto newer, more expensive plans that charge automatic overage fees when customers go over their caps. Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AT&T still throttles unlimited data, and FCC isn’t promising to stop it

Microsoft to step up the pace of delivering Windows 10 builds

Though the plan was to give Windows 10 preview a series of regular updates, there hasn’t been a new build since January. Windows 10 has two public release channels. The fast channel is meant to get more regular updates, and so get new features sooner, while the slow channel is meant to be more thoroughly tested and a little more stable. Both channels have been quiet lately. While there’s no immediate change on that front—a new public candidate build is in testing but it’s not done yet—testers of the new operating system should take note: the fast channel is due to get faster. Gabe Aul, a General Manager in Microsoft’s Operating Systems Group tweeted today the fast channel is going to go faster , and if you want a more stable situation, you should switch to the slow channel . Further, Aul says that the company may introduce additional channels, perhaps to offer even more cutting edge builds. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft to step up the pace of delivering Windows 10 builds

CryptoLocker look-alike searches for and encrypts PC game files

Crypto-based “ransomware” has become a lucrative business for cybercriminals. Since the arrival of CryptoLocker on the scene last year, a number of copycat malware packages have appeared to compete in the cyber-extortion market, encrypting victims’ photos and other personal files with a key that will be destroyed if they don’t contact the malware’s operators and pay up. Recently, a new variant has emerged that seeks to raise the stakes with a particular class of victim by specifically seeking out files related to a number of popular PC games, as well as Valve’s Steam gaming platform. The malware, which is a variant of the crypt-ransomware called TeslaCrypt, superficially looks like CryptoLocker. But according to a number of security researchers who have analyzed the malware, it shares little code with CryptoLocker or its more well-known successor CryptoWall. And while it will also will target photos and documents, as well as iTunes-related files, as Bromium security researcher Vadim Kotov noted in an analysis on Bromium Labs’ blog , TeslaCrypt also includes code that specifically looks for files related to more than 40 specific PC games, gaming platforms, and game developer tools. The games include both single player and multiplayer games, though it isn’t clear how targeting some of the multiplayer games would affect users other than requiring a re-install. The games targeted include a mix of older and newer titles— for example, Blizzard’s StarCraft II and WarCraft III real-time strategy games and its World of Warcraft online game are targeted. Also on TeslaCrypt’s hit list: Bioshock 2, Call of Duty, DayZ, Diablo, Fallout 3, League of Legends, F.E.A.R, S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Minecraft, Metro 2033, Half-Life 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Resident Evil 4, World of Tanks, Metin 2, and The Elder Scrolls (specifically, Skyrim-related files), as well as Star Wars: The Knights Of The Old Republic. There’s also code that searches for files associated with games from specific companies that affect a wide range of titles, including a variety of games from EA Sports, Valve, and Bethesda, and Valve’s Steam gaming platform. And the game development tools RPG Maker, Unity3D and Unreal Engine are targeted as well. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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CryptoLocker look-alike searches for and encrypts PC game files

reddit CEO Ellen Pao: harassment complaints fell on deaf ears at Kleiner Perkins

SAN FRANCISCO—Interim reddit CEO Ellen Pao, a former junior partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, finally took the stand today in the high-profile gender discrimination case that she brought against the firm three years ago. Pao maintained a firm tone throughout the day, even looking at the jury occasionally while answering questions from her lawyer about her early days at Kleiner. It’s the first opportunity that Pao has taken to elaborate on the gender discrimination claims she made in 2012. And the questioning started by going all the way back to the day Pao was hired at Kleiner Perkins. Pao, a Mandarin-speaking, Princeton-educated engineer with law and business degrees from Harvard, applied to Kleiner Perkins in 2005. At the time, the firm was looking to expand its investments in China. She seemed like a perfect fit, her lawyer Therese Lawless said. In addition to Pao’s language skills, she had years of experience working with 90’s startups like WebTV, Tell Me Networks, and Danger Research (whose team went on to join the team that created Android). She also spent time with bigger companies like Microsoft and BEA Systems. Read 35 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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reddit CEO Ellen Pao: harassment complaints fell on deaf ears at Kleiner Perkins

Apple releases iOS 8.2 today with Apple Watch support and plenty of bug fixes

SAN FRANCISCO—iOS 8.2 has been in development for several months now, and today Apple is formally releasing the update to the public. It’s available as an over-the-air update or through iTunes for any device running iOS 8, including the iPhone 4S, 5, 5C, 5S, 6, and 6 Plus; all iPads except the first-generation model; and the fifth-generation iPod Touch. The biggest feature update is support for the Apple Watch. The device will work with the iPhone 5 and newer models, but it will not work with iPads or iPods. Once you’ve tethered a watch to your phone, a new companion app will allow you to change the watch’s settings, organize its Home screen, and make other changes. We’ll take a longer look at this companion app when the time comes to review the Apple Watch itself. For those of you with other iDevices and/or no particular interest in the Apple Watch, there are still plenty of reasons to install the update. HomeKit will allow users to control devices at home Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple releases iOS 8.2 today with Apple Watch support and plenty of bug fixes

The Ambassador who worked from Nairobi bathroom to avoid State Dept. IT

The current scandal roiling over the use of a private e-mail server by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is just the latest in a series of scandals surrounding government e-mails. And it’s not the first public airing of problems with the State Department’s IT operations—and executives’ efforts to bypass or work around them. At least she didn’t set up an office in a restroom just to bypass State Department network restrictions and do everything over Gmail. However, another Obama administration appointee—the former ambassador to Kenya—did do that, essentially refusing to use any of the Nairobi embassy’s internal IT. He worked out of a bathroom because it was the only place in the embassy where he could use an unsecured network and his personal computer, using Gmail to conduct official business. And he did all this during a time when Chinese hackers were penetrating the personal Gmail inboxes of a number of US diplomats. Why would such high-profile members of the administration’s foreign policy team so flagrantly bypass federal and agency regulations to use their own personal e-mail to conduct business? Was it that they had something they wanted to keep out of State’s servers and away from Congressional oversight? Was it that State’s IT was so bad that they needed to take matters into their own hands? Or was it because the department’s IT staff wasn’t responsive enough to what they saw as their personal needs, and they decided to show just how take-charge they were by ignoring all those stuffy policies? Read 19 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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The Ambassador who worked from Nairobi bathroom to avoid State Dept. IT

Apple becomes part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, AT&T gets the boot

Dow Jones has issued a press release this morning announcing that as of March 19, there will be a change to the list of companies that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average: AT&T is out, and Apple is in. According to the press release, the change is due in part to Visa’s upcoming 4:1 stock split, which will effectively lower Visa’s stock price and its effect on the index. To balance this reduction in Visa’s price—which the press release says can have “a material impact on sector representation”—Apple is being added to the index. The DJIA membership is fixed at thirty stocks , and so in order to add a company to it, one must be removed. The Dow has chosen to drop AT&T, leaving telecommunications to be represented on the index by AT&T’s rival Verizon—which, the release explains, is very similar to AT&T but has a higher market capitalization. The last time any membership changes were made to the DJIA was in September 2013, when Goldman Sachs, Nike, and Visa were added. AT&T has been a member of the DJIA since November 1999. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple becomes part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, AT&T gets the boot

Enormous Martian ocean evaporated into space

NASA scientists have published details of a huge ocean that once covered half of Mars’ northern hemisphere but was lost to space over millennia. Writing in the journal Science, the astronomers explained how they used the ratio of two different kinds of water to estimate how wet the red planet was 4.5 billion years ago. “Early Mars (4.5 billion years ago) had a global equivalent water layer at least 137 meters deep,” they say. Martian water molecules are just like those on Earth—they’re made of one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms. But there are two kinds of hydrogen—the normal type, and one that’s a little heavier, called deuterium. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Enormous Martian ocean evaporated into space

Water droplets bounce off these new self-cleaning surfaces

Every day, we interact with a myriad of surfaces ranging from soft fabrics to hard metals. Inevitably, this means we have to spend our time cleaning them. A class of self-cleaning materials would certainly make our lives easier. Previous attempts to create these materials have focused on developing surfaces that are rough and waxy; these cause water droplets to roll along the surface, picking up dirt and dust due as it goes. These materials have been relatively successful, but they have many limitations. For example, they’re easily worn away and easily contaminated by oils like those found on our skin. Luckily, scientists have now developed a waterproof, self cleaning coating that can be applied to materials that are as soft as cotton and as hard as glass. This coating is composed of titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles with two size distributions, delivered as a suspension in ethanol containing the chemical perfluorooctyltriethoxysilane. After application, the ethanol is allowed to evaporate for 180 seconds before the coating is ready for use. This coating can be sprayed, dipped, or painted onto a surface, and it maintains its performance after several types of damage. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Water droplets bounce off these new self-cleaning surfaces

Tech support scammer threatened to kill man when scam call backfired

Tech support scammers should probably just hang up the phone when a scam call goes wrong. But one scammer took things to a new level by threatening to kill a man who pointed out that the scammer was trying to steal money. As we’ve reported numerous times , scammers pretending to work for Microsoft tech support call potential victims, tell them their computers are infected, convince them to provide remote access, and then charge them hundreds of dollars to fix imaginary problems. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Tech support scammer threatened to kill man when scam call backfired