Tag: portfolio-cond

Apple releases OS X 10.10.2 with a pile of security, privacy, and Wi-Fi fixes

Apple has just released the final build of OS X 10.10.2, the second major update for OS X Yosemite since its release. Version 10.10.1, published just a month after Yosemite’s release, focused mostly on quick fixes for the new OS’ most noticeable problems. Apple has been issuing betas for 10.10.2 since November, though, and a longer testing period usually implies that there are more extensive fixes. First up, the new release is supposed to fix more of the Wi-Fi problems that some users have been experiencing since Yosemite’s launch. 10.10.1 also included Wi-Fi fixes, though it apparently didn’t resolve the problems for all. The new update will also address “an issue that may cause webpages to load slowly” and improve general stability in Safari, all of which should go a long way toward improving Yosemite’s network and Internet performance. Several privacy and security problems that we’ve reported on have been resolved in 10.10.2, as well. Though Apple will still share limited search and location information with Microsoft to enable Spotlight’s Bing-powered Web searching feature, the company has fixed a bug that caused Spotlight to “load remote e-mail content” even when the setting was disabled in Mail.app itself. Our original report describes why this is a problem: Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple releases OS X 10.10.2 with a pile of security, privacy, and Wi-Fi fixes

Don’t cry for the Google Play edition program; it was already dead

Earlier this week, the last of the Google Play edition Android phones in Google’s online storefront were listed as ” no longer available for sale .” When contacted for comment, Google had nothing to say, but it’s not hard to read between the lines here. The last new Google Play phone was introduced in the spring of 2014. Plans for a Galaxy S5 GPe phone made it far enough that official press photos leaked out into the wild , but the phone never materialized. The program hit its peak early last year, when a full half-dozen devices were listed all at once: the Galaxy S4 , the HTC Ones M7 and M8 , the first-generation Moto G , the Sony Z Ultra , and the LG G Pad 8.3 . Like doomed kids making their way through Willy Wonka’s factory, they silently dropped out one by one. Now they’re all gone, and it looks a whole lot like the program has wrapped up. If so, it’s a quiet, inconspicuous end to a quiet, inconspicuous program. Normally we’d say that fewer choices for Android shoppers would be a bad thing, but the changes Google has made to Android since the GPe program was introduced had already rendered it mostly irrelevant. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Don’t cry for the Google Play edition program; it was already dead

PlayStation Now review: Sony finally proves streaming gaming is viable

When Sony launched its PlayStation Now service as a beta last year, the ridiculous per-game rental pricing structure stopped us from giving it any serious consideration almost immediately. Last week, though, the service graduated from beta with a more feasible all-you-can-play subscription plan . Suddenly this was an opportunity. Has the idea of running games on remote servers advanced at all since OnLive’s ahead-of-its-time launch back in 2010 ? We’ve been kicking the tires on the service for about a week now, and what we’ve found is a surprisingly compelling addition to the pay-per-game ownership model of retail discs and downloads. If you have the bandwidth and a yearning to sample some PS3 classics among the service’s somewhat limited initial selection on your PlayStation 4, PlayStation Now is well worth checking out. Performance When initially reviewing OnLive back in 2010 , running a game through the offering’s remote servers was a noticeably worse experience than running that same game locally. Even with a 20Mbps FiOS connection, our reviewer “could tell that the game was not running natively” thanks to “framerate bumps, sudden resolution drops, and gameplay blips.” Read 21 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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PlayStation Now review: Sony finally proves streaming gaming is viable

Verizon nears “the end” of FiOS builds

It’s been nearly five years since Verizon decided to stop expanding its FiOS fiber network into new cities and towns, so this week’s news won’t come as a huge surprise: Verizon is nearing “the end” of its fiber construction and is reducing wireline capital expenditures while spending more on wireless. “I have been pretty consistent with this in the fact that we will spend more CapEx in the Wireless side and we will continue to curtail CapEx on the Wireline side. Some of that is because we are getting to the end of our committed build around FiOS, penetration is getting higher,” Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said yesterday in the Q4 2014  call with investors . Wireline capital spending totaled $1.6 billion in the most recent quarter and $5.8 billion for 2014, down 7.7 percent from 2013, Verizon said. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Verizon nears “the end” of FiOS builds

Google drops three OS X 0days on Apple

Don’t look now, but Google’s Project Zero vulnerability research program may have dropped more zero-day vulnerabilities—this time on Apple’s OS X platform. In the past two days, Project Zero has disclosed OS X vulnerabilities here , here , and here . At first glance, none of them appear to be highly critical, since all three appear to require the attacker to already have some access to a targeted machine. What’s more, the first vulnerability, the one involving the “networkd ‘effective_audit_token’ XPC,” may already have been mitigated in OS X Yosemite, but if so the Google advisory doesn’t make this explicit and Apple doesn’t publicly discuss security matters with reporters. Still, the exploits could be combined with a separate attack to elevate lower-level privileges and gain control over vulnerable Macs. And since the disclosures contain proof-of-concept exploit code, they provide enough technical detail for experienced hackers to write malicious attacks that target the previously unknown vulnerabilities. The security flaws were privately reported to Apple on October 20, October 21, and October 23, 2014. All three advisories appear to have been published after the expiration of the 90-day grace period Project Zero gives developers before making reports public. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google drops three OS X 0days on Apple

4chan founder Chris “moot” Poole steps down

On Wednesday, 4chan founder Christopher Poole, better known by the moniker “moot,” announced his retirement from running the site. moot started 4chan 11 and a half years ago when he was 15, and the image-based bulletin board has grown into a staunch supporter of anonymity for its posters since. That notoriety has drawn some of the best and also a lot of the very, very worst to its 63 boards. In his post today, moot explained the decision: 4chan has faced numerous challenges over the years, including how to continuously satisfy a community of millions, and ensure the site has the human, technical, and financial resources to continue operating. But the biggest hurdle it’s had to overcome is myself. As 4chan’s sole administrator, decision maker, and keeper of most of its institutional knowledge, I’ve come to represent an uncomfortably large single point of failure. moot continued to say that he has made sure the site will be financially secure in the foreseeable future and has delegated the tasks of running the site to “a few senior volunteers.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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4chan founder Chris “moot” Poole steps down

Hard disk reliability examined once more: HGST rules, Seagate is alarming

A year ago we got some insight into hard disk reliability when cloud backup provider Backblaze published its findings for the tens of thousands of disks that it operated. Backblaze uses regular consumer-grade disks in its storage because of the cheaper cost and good-enough reliability, but it also discovered that some kinds of disks fared extremely poorly when used 24/7. A year later on and the company has collected even more data , and drawn out even more differences between the different disks it uses. For a second year, the standout reliability leader was HGST. Now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Western Digital, HGST inherited the technology and designs from Hitachi (which itself bought IBM’s hard disk division). Across a range of models from 2 to 4 terabytes, the HGST models showed low failure rates; at worse, 2.3 percent failing a year. This includes some of the oldest disks among Backblaze’s collection; 2TB Desktop 7K2000 models are on average 3.9 years old, but still have a failure rate of just 1.1 percent. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Hard disk reliability examined once more: HGST rules, Seagate is alarming

British spy agency captured 70,000 e-mails of journalists in 10 minutes

The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British sister agency of the National Security Agency, captured 70,000 e-mails of journalists in 10 minutes during a November 2008 test. According to The Guardian , which on Monday cited some of its Snowden documents as its source (but did not publish them), the e-mails were scooped up as part of the intelligence agency’s direct fiber taps . Journalists from the BBC, Reuters, The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, The Sun , NBC, and The Washington Post were apparently targeted. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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British spy agency captured 70,000 e-mails of journalists in 10 minutes

Why DNS in OS X 10.10 is broken, and what you can do to fix it

Recently, there has been a lot of  discussion about the current state of Apple’s software quality. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with development knows that bugs are par for the course, and most people aren’t bothered by small, day-to-day bugs that are fixed within a reasonable timeframe. Obviously, like everyone else, Apple’s software has its share of those. But there’s another category of bug—glaring, perplexing bugs that couldn’t possibly have escaped the attention of the software engineers in question, let alone the quality assurance department. Such issues exist, and sometimes they go unfixed for months. Or years. Or ever. Hopefully, the set of network issues with OS X 10.10 described below won’t fall into this column, but they do raise an obvious question: why? For 12 years, the mDNSResponder service managed a surprisingly large part of our Mac’s networking, and it managed this task well. But as of OS X 10.10, the mDNSResponder has been replaced with discoveryd, which does the same thing. Mostly. Here are some strange networking problems we’ve observed since installing 10.10: Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Why DNS in OS X 10.10 is broken, and what you can do to fix it

Cable lobby says Google Fiber doesn’t need Title II to get pole access

The top cable lobby group says Google is blowing smoke when it comes to Title II and pole attachment rights. Google told the Federal Communications Commission that reclassifying broadband providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act would help Google and other companies gain access to infrastructure controlled by utilities. Section 224 of Title II covers pole attachments, and Google urged the FCC to enforce this section if it does move broadband under Title II. But that isn’t even necessary, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA)  argued in a filing today , saying that “Google already can avail itself of pole attachment rights under Section 224, notwithstanding its assertions to the contrary. Google’s letter states that Google Fiber ‘lacks federal access rights pursuant to Section 224’ because it offers an ‘Internet Protocol video service that is not traditional cable TV.’ But as NCTA has explained on numerous occasions… the law is clear that facilities-based providers of Internet Protocol television (‘IPTV’) services do qualify as cable operators under the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (‘the Act’). The Act defines ‘cable operator’ as one who ‘provides cable service over a cable system,’ without any reference to the technology (IP-based, QAM-based, or otherwise) used to provide such service.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Cable lobby says Google Fiber doesn’t need Title II to get pole access