Tag: wired

Feds gather phone data from the sky with aircraft-mimicking cell towers

Aleksander Markin On Thursday afternoon, the Wall Street Journal published a report saying that the US Marshals Service (USMS) was using small, fixed-wing Cessnas equipped with so-called “dirtboxes”—receivers that act like cellphone towers—to gather data from citizens’ phones below. The purpose of such collection is to target and spy on criminal suspects, but the data from any citizen’s phone is collected by such devices. Sources told the WSJ that USMS operated these planes from five major airports in the US and that the program had a flying range “covering most of the US population.” The devices on the planes can capture unique identifying information from “tens of thousands” of cellphones on the ground. Using that information, federal authorities can pinpoint a cellphone user’s location from “within three meters or within a specific room in a building,” the WSJ said. Individuals with knowledge of the matter told the news outlet that the plane flyovers were targeted at “fugitives and criminals” and that non-target phone data is “let go” as it is gathered. The dirtboxes are described as higher-grade Stingrays, which police use  on the ground to collect International Mobile Subscriber Numbers (IMSI). Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Feds gather phone data from the sky with aircraft-mimicking cell towers

WTF, Russia’s domestic Internet traffic mysteriously passes through Chinese routers

Dyn Research Domestic Internet traffic traveling inside the borders of Russia has repeatedly been rerouted outside of the country under an unexplained series of events that degrades performance and could compromise the security of Russian communications. The finding, reported Thursday in a blog post published by Internet monitoring service Renesys , underscores the fragility of the border gateway protocol (BGP), which forms the underpinning of the Internet’s global routing system. In this case, domestic Russian traffic was repeatedly routed to routers operated by China Telecom, a firm with close ties to that county’s government. When huge amounts of traffic are diverted to far-away regions before ultimately reaching their final destination, it increases the chances hackers with the ability to monitor the connections have monitored or even altered some of the communications. A similar concern emerged last year, when Renesys found big chunks of traffic belonging to US banks, government agencies, and network service providers had been improperly routed through Belarusian or Icelandic service providers . The hijacking of Russian traffic is linked to last year’s peering agreement between Russian mobile provider Vimpelcom and China Telecom. The pact allowed the firms to save money by having some of their traffic carried over the other’s network rather than through a more expensive transit operator. On multiple occasions since then, according to Renesys, communications destined for Russia has followed extremely round-about routes that take the traffic into China before sending it on to its final stop. Doug Madory, director of internet analysis in Renesys research arm Dyn wrote: Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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WTF, Russia’s domestic Internet traffic mysteriously passes through Chinese routers

NYPD officers charged after video catches teen getting pistol whipped

“The video speaks for itself, doesn’t it?” Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson said Wednesday about a brief video recording that led to two New York Police Department cops being charged in connection to the pistol-whipping assault of a 16-year-old Brooklyn boy. The boy, who was arrested for marijuana possession, ended up with broken teeth and bruises. The officers charged in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Wednesday are David Afanador, 33, and Tyrane Isaac, 36, both nine-year veterans. The 82-second video of the teen’s August 29 beating—widely available on the Internet—was captured by a local Crown Heights business. The tape shows the boy running before eventually stopping and raising his hands, after which he is pummeled and taken to the ground. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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NYPD officers charged after video catches teen getting pistol whipped

Comcast to issue discounts for days-long outage caused by bad update

Even this DSL-loving turtle thought Comcast’s service was too slow this week. Comcast Comcast attempted to update its X1 cable platform this week, but it ended up causing a lengthy outage for many customers. The company apologized yesterday and promised to issue credits to compensate customers for the time they weren’t able to use their TV service. Customer reports suggest that Internet service went down as well. “We know some of our customers may have missed their favorite shows off and on over the past few days and were unable to easily reach our customer care representatives for assistance… and we’re really sorry,” Comcast Senior VP Charlie Herrin wrote . Herrin’s new job is fixing Comcast’s disappointing customer service. His announcement yesterday, titled, “Our mistake: making it right for customers,” continues: In the process of upgrading the X1 platform with new services and features, a technical issue arose that caused problems for our customers. We’re working now to identify the customers who were impacted to personally apologize and proactively give them credits which we plan to have out to them within the next two weeks. This issue was our fault and we want to make it right. So what happened? While we were deploying an upgrade to the X1 platform, we discovered an issue in the way the software that updates X1 was configured. We immediately stopped the deployment, and our engineers began working to identify the root cause and fix the issue. While service has returned to normal for most X1 customers, our engineers are now going back over this issue and taking extra steps to prevent it from happening again. The fix we’ve put in place should be automatic—customers don’t need to do anything (such as rebooting or unplugging the box). Thanks to our customers who have been patient with us, and to our employees who have been working around the clock on this. Outages were reported  in Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, and other cities. According to customer reports at DownDetector.com, more customers experienced Internet outages than TV outages, with 10 percent reporting a “total blackout.” We’ve asked Comcast whether the faulty update also caused Internet outages but haven’t received an answer yet. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Comcast to issue discounts for days-long outage caused by bad update

Ubisoft pulls upcoming holiday titles off Steam [Updated]

Update:  It seems all three games discussed below are now back up  on the US Steam store, though they are still unavailable in the UK. We’ll continue to monitor the situation and reach out for comment from Ubisoft and Valve. Original Story PC gamers who want to download upcoming Ubisoft titles like Far Cry 4 , The Crew , and Assassin’s Creed: Unity won’t be able to go through Valve’s Steam service, it seems. The Steam store pages for all three of those holiday titles have been taken down, being pulled in the UK early yesterday and disappearing in the US and other countries over last night and into this morning. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Ubisoft pulls upcoming holiday titles off Steam [Updated]

GM’s next-gen infotainment system to run Android—not Android Auto—in 2016

The 2015 Cadillac ATS coupe with integrated LTE. It’s basically a big red smartphone. Ron Amadeo Harman International, the car infotainment manufacturer, recently spilled the beans on a “next-gen” infotainment system it is building for General Motors.  Automotive News  has quotes from the company’s CEO, Dinesh Paliwal, who describes an Android-based system with an app store and “instant” boot up. The report says that Harman is “working closely” with Google to make the system a reality. This system isn’t Android Auto. Unlike regular Android, Android Wear, and Android TV, Android Auto isn’t an operating system. It doesn’t live on the car’s computer, it doesn’t control peripherals, and it doesn’t have an app store. Like Apple’s CarPlay, Android Auto is just a “casted” interface. Your plugged-in smartphone sends a custom interface to the car’s screen and receives touch events, but the car still has to run some other operating system. Harman won a $900 million contract from GM to build the system, and judging by the Harman CEO’s description, this is an actual embedded Android system that will power the entire infotainment setup. That typically includes the audio system, air conditioning, navigation, voice recognition, phone calls, reverse cameras, and Internet access. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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GM’s next-gen infotainment system to run Android—not Android Auto—in 2016

LED bulb efficiency clearly pulling ahead of compact fluorescents

US EIA A few years back, when I got my first LED-based lightbulb, it seemed natural to stick it into a wattmeter to get a sense of its efficiency. At under 15 Watts of power drawn, it clearly beat any incandescent bulbs I’d ever put into the same lamp. But I was disappointed to find that it wasn’t any better than a compact fluorescent bulb. Based on the graph shown above, my experience was hardly unique; in fact, it was decidedly average. Although the technology behind LEDs had the potential to be far more efficient than any other lighting source, the complete LED bulb package wasn’t doing that much better at the time than the far more mature fluorescent bulbs, which output roughly 60 lumens for every Watt put in. After some small boosts in 2013, however, a new generation of more efficient LEDs hit the market this year, raising the typical efficiency to nearly 100 lumens per Watt. The increased efficiency is coming at a time when prices for the bulbs continue to drop; given their expected lifetimes, they’re now far and away the most economical choice for most uses. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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LED bulb efficiency clearly pulling ahead of compact fluorescents

GTA V’s new console/PC re-release to add optional first-person view

Since its launch as a top-down, sprite-based crime simulator in 1997, the Grand Theft Auto series has always taken place strictly from a third-person perspective. That’s set to change on November 18, as the previously announced re-release of Grand Theft Auto V hits the Xbox One and PS4 with a series-first optional first-person perspective. The new first-person mode goes a lot farther than unofficial mods that have tried to add a behind-the-eyes perspective to GTA games in the past. “You have to change pretty much everything,” GTA V animation director Rob Nelson told IGN in a promotional interview talking about the new feature. “I mean, if you want to do it right. We have a very solid third-person animation system, but you don’t just put the camera down there and expect to see the guns, aim, and shoot. All those animations are new when you switch to first-person, because it all has to be animated to the camera, to make it feel like a proper first-person experience that I think people would expect. All the timings have to be re-evaluated.” Other little details added for the benefit of the new view include recoil on weapons, view-restricting goggles and helmets when piloting certain vehicles, and a cell phone menu that your character now actually holds in front of his face. The official trailer for the new mode seems to show the perspective automatically swiveling around to view important story and character moments. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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GTA V’s new console/PC re-release to add optional first-person view

Egypt jails 8 men for 3 years after same-sex wedding video goes viral

Eight men accused of participating in a same-sex wedding on a Nile riverboat in Egypt were handed a three-year prison term Saturday for committing “debauchery,” state run media said. Ahram Online reported  that the Prosecutor-General Hisham Barakat viewed the one-minute video, said to be filmed in April, and concluded it was of two men getting married. Eight men who were aboard the riverboat were detained in September after the minute-long video went viral on YouTube and other sites, Ahram Online said. They were jailed for broadcasting footage that “violates public decency,” CNN said . Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Egypt jails 8 men for 3 years after same-sex wedding video goes viral

“The Devil had possessed his netbook”—and other tales of IT terror

Few things are scarier than 4Chan. But our readers told a few stories that spooked us. Paul van der Werf Earlier this week, we asked readers to share their most frightening tales of technology terror and support horror. And via both comments and Twitter (using the hashtag #ITTalesofTerror), in poured stories that raised goosebumps from those of us who have worked in IT at one point or another. After reading through them, we’ve picked out some reader favorites and a few of our own. Some of us at Ars were inspired to recount further tales of horror from our own IT careers—including one of mine that I’ve saved for last; it should cause a shudder of recognition from our more veteran readers and a bit of schadenfreude from those too young to remember five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks. The chamber of horrors Many readers had short tales of terror about mishaps in the closed spaces where we hide our network infrastructure. Eli Jacobowitz (@creepdr on Twitter) shared a short, shocking scenario by tweet : “Raccoons in the network closet (not kidding).” David Mohundro shared another story of a somewhat more smelly infrastructure invasion that brings new meaning to “data scrubbing”: “I saw our IT guys lugging shop vacs through the lower parking deck one day. There was a sewage backup into the server room.” Read 24 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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“The Devil had possessed his netbook”—and other tales of IT terror