Tag: portfolio-cond

Prosecutors hit Silk Road suspect Ross Ulbricht with new drug charges

The US government claims these are Ross Ulbricht’s fraudulent identification cards. United States Attorney’s Office, Southern District of NY Federal prosecutors have tacked on three new charges in the criminal case against Ross Ulbricht, the suspect that the government has identified as the mastermind of the Silk Road online drug marketplace. According to a 17-page amended indictment filed late Thursday night, the government added one count of “narcotics trafficking,” one count of “distribution of narcotics by means of the Internet,” and ” conspiracy to traffic in fraudulent identification documents .” Previously, Ulbricht had been indicted in February 2014 on four formal criminal offenses: narcotics trafficking conspiracy, continuing criminal enterprise, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Prosecutors hit Silk Road suspect Ross Ulbricht with new drug charges

49ers’ stadium Wi-Fi served 25,000 concurrent users, 2.13TB in all

Levi’s Stadium crowd on August 17, 2014. Jim Bahn The San Francisco 49ers’ heralded Wi-Fi network  served its first NFL crowd in a preseason game on Sunday, and the team has now released statistics showing that it was able to serve lots of data to lots of fans, just as intended. “We offloaded 2.13 terabytes during the event,” 49ers VP of Technology Dan Williams told Mobile Sports Report . The newly built Levi’s Stadium has 68,500 seats and more than a third of attendees used the Wi-Fi network simultaneously. “We peaked at 24,775 (roughly 38 percent of attendance) concurrent connections with an average of 16,862 (roughly 25 percent of attendance),” Williams said. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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49ers’ stadium Wi-Fi served 25,000 concurrent users, 2.13TB in all

California DMV says Google’s self-driving car must have a steering wheel

Left: Google’s prototype car. Right: the eventual final design. Google Traditionally, Google’s self-driving car prototypes have taken existing cars from manufacturers like Toyota and Lexus and bolted on the self-driving car components. This is less than ideal, since it limits the design possibilities of the car’s “vision” system and includes (eventually) unnecessary components, like a steering wheel and pedals. However, Google recently built a self-driving car of its own design, which had no human control system other than a “go” button. The California DMV has now thrown a speed bump in Google’s car design, though, in the form of  new rules  that require that all self-driving cars allow a driver to take “immediate physical control” if needed. The new law means Google’s self-designed car will need to have a steering wheel and gas and brake pedals any time it hits the public road. According to  The Wall Street Journal , Google will comply with the law by building a “small, temporary steering wheel and pedal system that drivers can use during testing” into the prototype cars. The report says California officials are working on rules for cars without a steering wheel and pedals, but for now, a human control system is mandatory. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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California DMV says Google’s self-driving car must have a steering wheel

Blizzard no longer expects World of Warcraft subscriber growth

The World of Warcraft isn’t usually this empty, but it’s getting there… For about six years after its early 2005 launch, it looked like there was nothing that could stop the runaway success of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft , which grew to a peak of 12 million paid subscribers by the end of 2010. Since then, though, the game has seen a long, mostly uninterrupted slide in its player numbers, with only 6.8 million subscribers as of July . Blizzard obviously isn’t happy about this trend for one of its biggest products but seems to have accepted that things aren’t going to change any time soon. “We really don’t know if [ World of Warcraft ] will grow again,” lead game designer Tom Chilton told MCV in a recent interview. “It is possible, but I wouldn’t say it’s something that we expect. Our goal is to make the most compelling content we can.” A new expansion pack like the upcoming Lords of Draenor could juice those subscriber numbers, as previous expansion packs have seemed to do. Chilton seems to see a bit of diminishing returns in this strategy, however. “By building expansions, you are effectively building up barriers to people coming back. But by including the level 90 character with this expansion, it gives people the opportunity to jump right into the new content.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Blizzard no longer expects World of Warcraft subscriber growth

Steve Ballmer leaves Microsoft board

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has announced that he’s stepping down from the company’s board, effective immediately. With his ownership of the LA Clippers , teaching, and “civic contribution” taking his time, Ballmer wrote  that he’s now “very busy,” and with both a new NBA season and new class of students, it would be “impractical” for him to remain on the board. In announcing his departure, Ballmer expressed confidence in new CEO Satya Nadella’s leadership, noting that although there are challenges ahead, there are also great opportunities, and he said that Microsoft’s mix of software, hardware, and cloud skills is unmatched in the industry. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Steve Ballmer leaves Microsoft board

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

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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

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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

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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

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Insect that ekes out a living in Antarctica has tiny genome

Windows 9 preview could materialize as soon as next month

Microsoft could be shipping a preview release of the next major version of Windows—codenamed “Threshold,” and expected to be named “Windows 9″—in either late September or early October, according to sources speaking to ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley . The preview will be widely available to anyone who wants to install it. The final version of the operating system is currently believed to be scheduled for spring 2015. Microsoft has all but confirmed some of the features that Threshold will ship with, including a new hybrid Start menu that includes bits of the old Windows 7 Start menu alongside new live tiles and the ability to run modern Metro applications in windows. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 9 preview could materialize as soon as next month