Tag: production

AT&T wants to choose which online video services count against data caps

AT&T doesn’t want any rules preventing it from choosing which online video services count against its customers’ data caps. AT&T’s “Sponsored Data” program already charges businesses , often in the ad industry, for the right to deliver services without counting against customers’ mobile data caps. AT&T could potentially charge online video streaming services for exemptions from the caps imposed on AT&T home broadband subscribers as well or exempt its own online services from caps. Though AT&T doesn’t appear to have done this yet, the company this week asked the FCC to make sure it’s allowed to do so. AT&T’s request came after a group of companies and consumer advocacy organizations asked the Federal Communications Commission to prevent AT&T from granting data cap exemptions.  Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AT&T wants to choose which online video services count against data caps

Luxury bus startup Leap suspends service after regulators crack down

Late last night, luxury bus startup Leap issued a statement on its Facebook page noting that the company would be temporarily suspending its San Francisco service, citing regulatory issues with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). The commission issued Leap a cease-and-desist letter last week, saying that Leap Transit did not have a permit to operate in the city. The company has proved devisive in the Bay Area , where public transportation suffers from a litany of problems, and Leap buses are seen as a way for the wealthy to create a “two-tiered” transportation system . A ride on a Leap bus costs $6 and offers charging ports, free Wi-Fi, and a guaranteed seat. By contrast, a ride on Muni, San Francisco’s municipal public transportation system, costs only $2.25 but the buses are unreliable, packed to the gills, and employ not a single on-board bus manager to bring you coconut water. Leap so far only operates one bus line in the city, which goes from the Marina neighborhood to the Financial District. The company applied for a state permit from the CPUC in 2013, which would have afforded the company “the potential for less oversight and fewer rules,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle . But the city of San Francisco said that it ought to be able to regulate Leap, as SF municipal services would experience the greatest toll from competition from Leap. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Luxury bus startup Leap suspends service after regulators crack down

New Windows 10 build smooths tablet experience, makes Edge super fast

A new Windows 10 build is now available for Fast Ring users. Build 10122 should be available to download, but Microsoft is advising that users with AMD video cards pass on it for the time being. That’s because there’s currently a crashing issue in the Edge browser (still named “Project Spartan” in this release). Microsoft is working with AMD to update its drivers to address the issue, but until an update is available, AMD users are advised to switch to the Slow Ring. The new build makes Windows 10 look the way it looked when Microsoft demonstrated it at its Build and Ignite conferences earlier this month. This has two major parts; the Start menu has been reorganized to group Explorer, Settings, Power, and All Apps together, and the Start screen now puts more focus on new, larger tiles, putting the menu-like parts (including the aforementioned grouped icons) together in a hamburger menu. Similarly, Edge now includes the new tab screen shown off at Build. This is strongly reminiscent of iGoogle, including a search bar, popular links, news, and weather. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New Windows 10 build smooths tablet experience, makes Edge super fast

“Rachel” robocaller victims to get $1.7 million in refunds

The Federal Trade Commission’s fight against the infamous ” Rachel from Cardholder Services ” robocalls has produced a court order to give $1.7 million in refunds to defrauded consumers. The case dates to November 2012 , involving defendants including Universal Processing Services of Wisconsin, a payment processor, and telemarketer Hal Smith and his HES Merchant Services Company, the FTC said today . Per an order from US District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Universal Processing Services and HES will have to pay $1,734,972, which the FTC said “will be used to provide refunds to defrauded consumers.” “The court held Smith and HES liable for 11 violations of the FTC Act and the Commission’s Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), based on their participation in a deceptive telemarketing scheme purporting to be a credit card interest rate reduction service that used robocalls to solicit consumers,” the FTC said. “The defendants failed to disclose the identity of the person(s) responsible for placing the robocalls and unlawfully calling numbers that had been registered on the FTC’s Do Not Call Registry.” Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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“Rachel” robocaller victims to get $1.7 million in refunds

Apple announces new 15-inch MacBook Pro with Force Touch and other upgrades [Updated]

Some good news for power users ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference  next month: the company has just updated its 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, completing the 2015 MacBook refresh it began with the new  MacBook Air , 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro , and the MacBook . The 15-inch Pros include some upgrades that other MacBooks have gotten this year—faster PCI Express storage enabled by increasing the number of PCIe lanes used from two to four and the Force Touch trackpad are chief among them. The discrete graphics option on the high-end $2,499 version of the laptop has also been upgraded, from an Nvidia GeForce GT 750M to an AMD Radeon R9 M370X with 2GB of DDR5 RAM. The entry-level $1,999 version still comes with Intel’s Iris integrated graphics. Visually, the MacBook Pro looks much like the 2012 and 2013 models. The one noticeable physical difference is its Force Touch trackpad, also included in the 13-inch Pro and the new MacBook. These pressure-sensitive trackpads use haptic feedback to simulate the feel of a standard clicky trackpad, but they don’t need as much physical space to move. The trackpad’s inclusion in the MacBook is obviously necessary because of how thin the device is, but its presence in the new Pros is probably intended to encourage developers to adopt Force Touch APIs in their software. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple announces new 15-inch MacBook Pro with Force Touch and other upgrades [Updated]

Pandora, fresh off one copyright win, loses its rate case to BMI

Songwriters’ group Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) has beaten online radio provider Pandora after a two-year legal battle, winning a substantially larger copyright royalty rate of 2.5 percent. That’s a large increase from the 1.75 percent Pandora was paying before. It’s also a stark contrast to Pandora’s win in a similar case against BMI’s rival, the American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers, or ASCAP. It was just last week that a federal appeals court upheld Pandora’s win in that case, finding that the royalty rate should rise to only 1.85 percent. The judge’s opinion in BMI v. Pandora  isn’t yet public, but both sides have put out statements about the results. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Pandora, fresh off one copyright win, loses its rate case to BMI

How the USPS targeted a drug dealer via his IP address

A federal drug case in Massachusetts has shed new light on how the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) law enforcement unit uses something as simple as IP logs on the postal tracking website to investigate crimes. According to a December 2013 affidavit  of an ongoing federal criminal case in Rockland, Massachusetts (20 miles southeast of Boston), one alleged drug dealer named Harold Bates was found out simply by his digital trail left on the USPS’ Track n’ Confirm website. The affidavit was added to the court docket in January 2015, and the case was first reported on by Motherboard . Bates was charged back in March 2014 with conspiracy to import methylone (also known as “molly”), importation of methylone, and possession with intent to distribute methylone, among other crimes. Last month, the judge in the case ruled against Bates in his attempt to supress evidence seized in those packages. Read 24 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How the USPS targeted a drug dealer via his IP address

Meta analysis finds self-braking cars reduce collisions by 38 percent

While we’re still some way off seeing full-blown, self-driving cars winding their way across continental Europe, a more modest autonomous technology has found approval with safety bods. Research conducted by the European road safety research organisation Euro NCAP concluded that having a car automatically slam on the brakes to avoid low-speed accidents leads to a 38 percent reduction in rear-end crashes. The notable statistic was the result of a meta-analysis of various Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) cars, comparing them to cars without the technology in accidents where the car either struck a car in front, or was being struck from behind. Euro NCAP, with support of Australian safety organisation ANCAP, pooled data from five European countries and Australia using a standard analysis format, as well as a prospective meta-analysis approach. In non-AEB cars, the split between striking and being struck was close to 50/50, improving significantly for cars with AEB. However, despite the apparent success of the study, the researchers noted that in order to get the best results out of the technology, widespread adoption was required; slamming on the brakes to avoid an accident requires following traffic to be alert enough to react to the situation and not cause a cascade. They also noted that AEB cars might be more likely to be struck from behind, as an unintended consequence of AEB’s better reaction time, compared to a human driver. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Meta analysis finds self-braking cars reduce collisions by 38 percent

Don’t look now, but 3DS emulation is becoming a thing

Given enough time and attention from the development community, it’s practically inevitable that any video game console can and will be emulatable on a general-use computer. Hardware makers, always wary of the piracy implications of such a development, may hope that doesn’t happen until many years after that console ceases to be commercially viable. Unfortunately for Nintendo, that seems unlikely in the case of the 3DS. The Citra emulation project has been in the works for at least a year , but developers reached a breakthrough last December when they managed to load Ocarina of Time 3D for the first time. That title has now been shown running at nearly full speed on Citra with the help of an OpenGL renderer (though some visual artifacts still exist). Since then, compatibility work has continued on a seemingly game-by-game basis.  Virtual Console titles were shown off in February, and just this week team members posted evidence of Animal Crossing New Leaf , Super Monkey Ball 3D , and even the system’s home menu  running through emulation. There are a few homebrew demos available as well, including emulators for other systems running inside of the 3DS emulator and the kind of Minecraft port that’s seemingly required for all emulation projects these days. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Don’t look now, but 3DS emulation is becoming a thing

Nvidia turns on 1080p 60 FPS streaming for its Grid cloud gaming service

Starting today, Nvidia has enabled 1080p 60 FPS streaming from its Grid cloud gaming service . To use the new mode, you need to be part of the public Shield Hub beta group , have a Shield device, and at least a 30Mbps connection to the Internet. For the moment, around 35 Grid games support 1080p60 streaming, with Nvidia promising that rest (another 14 at the moment) will get a resolution bump after a server-side hardware refresh. Nvidia won’t say what that hardware refresh entails, but did confirm that its servers would be using the same Kepler-based Grid GPUs. Grid streaming remains free until June 30, after which Nvidia will offer a paid-for premium tier in addition to the free service. While Nvidia still won’t spill the beans on exactly what the premium tier gets you, or how much it’ll cost, we can confirm that 1080p streaming will not require a premium subscription. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Nvidia turns on 1080p 60 FPS streaming for its Grid cloud gaming service