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Sony’s profits triple as PS4 sales reach 25 million units worldwide

Sony’s profits have more than tripled year-on-year in the April to June quarter ( PDF link ), thanks to strong sales of camera sensors and the PlayStation 4, which has now sold 25.3 million units globally to date. The company’s overall net profit rose to ¥82.4 billion yen (£425 million, $664 million), significantly surpassing market expectations. Sony moved three million PS4s during the quarter, while peripheral and software shipments also increased, leading to the division’s 12.1 percent increase in sales to ¥288.6 billion (£1.4 billion, $2.3 billion), and an operating profit of ¥19.5 billion (£100 million, $160 million). The PS4 has taken a significant lead in the console market, massively outselling the rival Xbox One and Nintendo Wii U, the latter of which has sold just 10 million units . Sony’s devices division—which makes the camera sensors in high-end phones from Samsung and Apple— continues to grow . The unit saw a 35.1 percent increase in sales to ¥237.9 billion (£1.2 billion, $2 billion). Sales to external customers—i.e., those high-end phone makers—increased 41.2 percent year-on-year. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

AT&T gets DirecTV merger approval, must deploy fiber to 12.5M customers

AT&T’s $48.5 billion purchase of DirecTV is a done deal, as the Federal Communications Commission today announced that it has voted to approve the merger. The FCC imposed conditions on the acquisition, saying they ensure the combination will be in the public interest. AT&T will become the largest pay-TV company in the nation with about 26 million subscribers, jumping ahead of Comcast.”As part of the merger, AT&T-DirecTV will be required to expand its deployment of high-speed, fiber optic broadband Internet access service to 12.5 million customer locations as well as to E-rate eligible schools and libraries,” the FCC’s announcement said. (The federal E-rate program provides discounts on Internet service. AT&T will also have to provide discounted broadband to low-income customers.) AT&T had proposed the fiber build condition itself, though it has said the total number of planned fiber connections is just 2 million more than the amount it would have built even if the merger had not been approved. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AT&T gets DirecTV merger approval, must deploy fiber to 12.5M customers

Bug in latest version of OS X gives attackers unfettered root privileges

A bug in the latest version of Apple’s OS X gives attackers the ability to obtain unfettered root user privileges, a feat that makes it easier to surreptitiously infect Macs with rootkits and other types of persistent malware. The privilege-escalation bug, which was reported in a blog post published Tuesday by security researcher Stefan Esser, is the type of security hole attackers regularly exploit to bypass security protections built into modern operating systems and applications. Hacking Team, the Italian malware-as-a-service provider that catered to governments around the world, recently exploited similar elevation-of-privileges bugs in Microsoft Windows . When combined with a zero-day exploit targeting Adobe’s Flash media player , Hacking Team was able to pierce security protections built into Google Chrome , widely regarded as the Internet’s most secure browser by default. According to Esser, the OS X privilege-escalation flaw stems from new error-logging features that Apple added to OS X 10.10. Developers didn’t use standard safeguards involving additions to the OS X dynamic linker dyld , a failure that allows attackers to open or create files with root privileges that can reside anywhere in the OS X file system. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Bug in latest version of OS X gives attackers unfettered root privileges

Man arrested after filming fatal crash from inside car

Paul Pelton Lorain Police Department Whether Paul Pelton is a Good Samaritan is beside the point. The 41-year-old Ohio man was charged Wednesday in connection to him going inside a vehicle in the immediate aftermath of a car crash to film the two teen victims before one of them died in the grisly mishap. All the while, Good Samaritans were struggling to rescue the boys as the car caught fire. It’s not unlawful to film a crime scene with a mobile phone. And it’s not illegal to try to sell the footage of a heinous crime scene, which police suggest was Pelton’s motive. But it is illegal to trespass on a crime scene, the Lorain Police Department said. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Man arrested after filming fatal crash from inside car

Adobe Flash exploit that was leaked by Hacking Team goes wild; patch now!

Adobe Systems has updated its Flash media player to patch a vulnerability that attackers started exploiting soon after attack code leaked from the devastating Hacking Team breach. As Ars reported Tuesday morning, the previously unknown Flash vulnerability was part of some 400 gigabytes of data dumped on the Internet by unknown attackers who hacked Hacking Team over the weekend. By Tuesday afternoon, the critical flaw was being targeted in the wild by an array of malware titles, including the Angler and Nuclear exploit kits, as first documented by the security researcher known as Kafeine . The exploit has also been folded in to the Metasploit hacking framework . The vulnerability is cataloged as CVE-2015-5119 and is active in Flash versions 18.0.0.194 and earlier. According to security firm Rapid 7, it stems from a use-after-free bug that can be exploited while Flash is handling ByteArray objects. The update is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux systems. Adobe has credited Google’s Project Zero and Morgan Marquis-Boire, director of security, First Look Media, for reporting the critical bug and working to protect Flash users. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Adobe Flash exploit that was leaked by Hacking Team goes wild; patch now!

Google-owned Waze launches “RideWith” carpooling app on Android

RideWith, seen here looking very, very Waze-y. 5 more images in gallery Waze, the traffic-mapping app that Google acquired in 2013 for upwards of $1 billion, launched its first spin-off app on Monday. The new app, RideWith, sees Waze and Google entering the carpooling business. The app is now live in the Google Play store for Android devices, but it currently only works in Waze’s home country of Israel (and you’ll need to turn Google Translate on if you visit the official site and don’t read Hebrew). An announcement at Waze’s official blog described the app as a “carpool pilot,” and it clarified that hopeful passengers will need to download and load the new app while drivers could opt into the program directly through the Waze app. With the RideWith app, riders can enter their commute info, then wait for an alert when a route-friendly driver has been found. Users can suss out drivers by way of profiles, prior riders’ reviews, and even through a chat option. The announcement explained that the app creates a price quote, based on distance and wear-and-tear values, when someone seeks a ride (which they can edit with their own “maximum” value). Potential drivers can then decide whether or not they want to accept that payment and take the passenger in question. The app handles payment with an apparent “nominal Waze commission” added to the price. The announcement didn’t clarify an amount, and a Google spokesperson declined to answer our question about the exact figure. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google-owned Waze launches “RideWith” carpooling app on Android

Daily builds? Microsoft bangs out two public Windows 10 builds in two days

Daily Windows 10 builds? OK, not really. Or at least not yet. But Microsoft will today be releasing a new Windows 10 Insider Preview build, version 10159, to its fast track testers just a day after releasing build 10158 to the fast track. Yesterday’s build was the first to sport the new Microsoft Edge branding in the browser—prior builds had used the “Project Spartan” codename—along with many bug fixes and other minor improvements. Today’s build includes a further 300 fixed bugs, along with another piece of branding: it includes the new default wallpaper, a Windows logo made with lasers. As we discussed a couple of weeks ago , both yesterday’s build and today’s build are on the final path toward creating the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) build. While early builds didn’t have Windows Activation and preinstalled the Insider Hub for getting news about the previews, the latest builds are set up for the general public. As such, they include the activation system and only preinstall the apps that will ship when Windows 10 goes live. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Daily builds? Microsoft bangs out two public Windows 10 builds in two days

Days after taxi union protests, French authorities take Uber execs into custody [Updated]

On Monday, French authorities took two Uber executives into custody for questioning as part of an investigation into UberPop, the startup’s lower cost alternative. Local media have named the men as Thibaut Simphal, the CEO for France, and Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, the CEO for Western Europe. Under French law, both men can be held for up to 48 hours without being charged. “Our general managers for France and Western Europe today attended a hearing with the French police,” Gareth Mead, an Uber spokesman, told Ars in a statement. “We are always happy to answer questions the authorities have about our service—and look forward to resolving these issues. Those discussions are ongoing. In the meantime, we’re continuing to ensure the safety of our riders and drivers in France given last week’s disturbances.” Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

As French taxi drivers protest, UberBoat arrives in Istanbul as on-demand ferry

As taxi drivers across France protested UberPop in several cities nationwide, on the other side of Europe, Uber quietly launched UberBoat in Istanbul on Thursday. Uber As the name implies, the service allows people to summon boats to ferry them across the Bosphorous Strait, the waterway separating the European and Asian sides of Turkey’s largest city. Uber is working with an existing boat company, Navette-Tezman Holding , to provide the maritime service. According to Bloomberg , public ferries currently serve roughly 20 different routes and are quite affordable to most locals at the price of 2.15 Turkish lira (81¢) per ride. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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As French taxi drivers protest, UberBoat arrives in Istanbul as on-demand ferry

Samsung silently disabling Windows Update on some computers

Microsoft MVP Patrick Barker, who spends a large portion of his life analysing, debugging, and helping other people troubleshoot Windows, has discovered that Samsung is actively disabling Windows Update on some of its PCs. Barker stumbled across the issue while trying to assist a user who found that Windows Update “kept getting disabled randomly.” By using Auditpol and registry security auditing, Barker discovered that a program called Disable_Windowsupdate.exe was being run every time the PC booted up—and that EXE file, unfortunately, belonged to Samsung’s SW Update suite. SW Update is exactly what it sounds like: it’s one of those bundled OEM tools that ostensibly keeps all of your PC’s software and drivers up-to-date. In this case, though, SW Update also installs a service that regularly downloads and executes a file called Disable_Windowsupdate.exe directly from Samsung’s servers. The file is even digitally signed by Samsung (but don’t run it unless you want to disable Windows Update). Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Samsung silently disabling Windows Update on some computers

Ken May

Tag: production