wired – Page 32 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

FTC fines online dating service $616,000 for using “virtual cupids”

More and more people are becoming familiar with the joys—and frustrations—of online dating. A recent Pew study found that 10 percent of the US public is using online dating services, and a full 38 percent of those people say they are “single and looking.” There’s enough money to be made as an Internet matchmaker that it’s apparently sparking some companies to push the boundaries of what’s legal. Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission disclosed that it reached a settlement with JDI Dating Ltd. , a UK company that runs 18 dating sites that it claims have over 12 million members. The sites include CupidsWand.com, FlirtCrowd.com, and FindMeLove.com. JDI will have to pay $616,165 in redress, and it must stop business practices that were said to violate both the FTC Act and a newer law that regulates recurring billing online. JDI’s dating sites would make fake profiles, which the company called “virtual cupids,” and have them send computer-generated messages to new users who had created profiles but hadn’t yet paid. On JDI’s websites, users received an e-mail notifying them that another user sent them a “wink” within minutes of joining. Then they got additional winks, messages, and photo requests, supposedly from other members in their geographic area. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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FTC fines online dating service $616,000 for using “virtual cupids”

MPAA, movie theaters announce “zero tolerance” policy against wearables

Biblioteca de Art A movie theater industry group and the Motion Picture Association of America updated their anti-piracy policies and said that “wearable devices” must be powered off at show time. “Individuals who fail or refuse to put the recording devices away may be asked to leave. If theater managers have indications that illegal recording activity is taking place, they will alert law enforcement authorities when appropriate, who will determine what further action should be taken,” said a joint statement from the MPAA and the National Association of Theatre Owners, which maintains 32,000 screens across the United States. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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MPAA, movie theaters announce “zero tolerance” policy against wearables

One week later, Google algorithm change hits streaming, torrent sites hard

One of Project Free TV’s domains has dropped in traffic since Google’s algorithm change. se Video streaming and torrent sites have dropped precipitously in Google rankings after the company altered its algorithm last Monday, according to reports from Searchmetrics. One of Project Free TV’s main operating domains, free-tv-video-online.me, fell 96 percent in Searchmetric’s rankings, one of the biggest drops alongside torrentz.eu and thepiratebay.se. Google committed to fighting piracy by decrementing search results that allow users to access illegal streams or torrents back in 2012. The first round of changes didn’t help much, according to interested parties like the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America. Google complies with takedown requests, of which it received 224 million in the last year, according to its own report. The company responded to these within six hours on average, but industry parties pushed for Google to make content sites less visible overall. Even with its new solution, Google notes that this won’t be the same as removing domains from search entirely: “the number of noticed pages is typically only a tiny fraction of the total number of pages on the site,” the company said. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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One week later, Google algorithm change hits streaming, torrent sites hard

Leader of “most sophisticated cybercrime ring” sentenced to 11 years

An Estonian man who US authorities said was a leader in one of the world’s “most sophisticated” illegal hacking organizations was handed an 11-year prison sentence in connection to a scheme that got away with $9.4 million from ATMs across the globe. The sentence handed to Sergei Nicolaevich Tšurikov on Friday is among the largest ever given a hacker in the US. The biggest term , 20 years, was first given to Albert Gonzalez in 2010 for being the ringleader of the hack of retail outlet TJX . “A leader of one of the most sophisticated cybercrime rings in the world has been brought to justice and sentenced,” United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates of Atlanta said about Tšurikov’s sentencing. “In just one day in 2008, an American credit card processor was hacked in perhaps one of the most sophisticated and organized computer fraud attacks ever conducted.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Comcast lost 81,000 video customers in Q3, “the best result in 7 years”

Comcast reported its third quarter earnings today with positive results—and even the bad news was good. “Video customer net losses declined to 81,000, the best third quarter result in seven years,” the company’s announcement said . “I am pleased to report strong revenue, operating cash flow, and free cash flow growth for the third quarter of 2014,” CEO Brian Roberts said. In addition to slowing video losses over the past three months, “cable results highlight the consistent strength of high-speed Internet and business services,” he said. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Comcast lost 81,000 video customers in Q3, “the best result in 7 years”

A huge Halo: Master Chief Collection clocks in at 65GB

Microsoft reportedly scrapped its original plans to ship Master Chief Collection in a “car full of 5.25″ disks” format. Lenore Edman About a year ago, we had to quickly get used to 50 GB download sizes for console games like PS4 launch title Killzone: Shadow Fall . Game size inflation hasn’t exactly stopped since then, as evidenced by word that the upcoming Halo: Master Chief Collection will take up a whopping 65 GB on Xbox One hard drives next month. Buried in Friday’s official “gone gold” announcement was word that the Xbox One’s remastered edition of the first four Halo games, which is currently available for pre-loading, would actually be bigger than a standard 50GB Blu-ray disc. Rather than splitting the 65GB across two discs for the retail edition, Microsoft has decided to include 45GB of data in the box and require players to download a 20GB day one “content update” to access “some features and multiplayer content.” Players will be able to play the bulk of the single-player content while the 20GB content pack is downloading and installing, Microsoft says. Why make even retail buyers download so much data? “The game is designed to run as a single, unified product,” 343 Industries Franchise Development Director Frank O’Connor explained on gaming forum NeoGAF over the weekend . “Digital is seamless obviously, but we also wanted disc users to have the same experience, without swapping discs. Since the bulk of [the download] is [multiplayer] or MP related, the logic is sound.” While it may have been feasible to simply install a single, unified game to the Xbox One hard drive from two discs, O’Connor elaborated that such a solution “simply wasn’t practical for this product, this year in this timeline.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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A huge Halo: Master Chief Collection clocks in at 65GB

Obama signs “BuySecure” initiative to speed EMV adoption in the US

A chip card and the inside of a card’s chip. Explain That Stuff On Friday, President Obama signed an executive order to speed the adoption of EMV-standard cards in the US. The transition to EMV—an acronym eponymous of Europay, MasterCard, and Visa, the companies that developed the standard—has been slow to gain traction in the US. The EMV standard will require credit card companies to do away with the magnetic stripe cards that are common today in favor of cards with embedded-chips that will offer more secure credit card transactions. Lawmakers and credit card companies confirmed earlier this year that the US would make the transition to EMV cards in October 2015. But over the past several months, retail stores like Target , Home Depot , Michaels , Neiman Marcus , and more have sustained major hacks that caused the retailers to loose credit card information and personal information of millions upon millions of customers, giving new urgency to the call for more secure credit cards. Speaking at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Friday , President Obama said that the federal government would apply “chip-and-PIN technology to newly issued and existing government credit cards, as well as debit cards like Direct Express.” The White House also said that all payment terminals at federal agencies will soon be able to accept embedded chip cards. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Apple announces iOS 8.1 with Apple Pay, iCloud Photo Library

Apple Pay is the most important thing to launch with iOS 8.1. Apple Apple has just released iOS 8.1, the first major update to iOS 8. The majority of the update’s new features have already been announced, but for one reason or another weren’t ready to be included in iOS 8 when it shipped last month . In the update, Apple plans to add back the “Camera Roll” album in iOS 8 with 8.1, to help users find their recently taken shots. The new version will also include a beta of iCloud Photo Library. iCloud Photo Library offers users the options of either backing up their photos to iCloud, or using it as primary storage to clear up space on their devices, only downloading photos when necessary. 8.1 will also mark the formal release Apple Pay, the contactless payment system Apple teased when it unveiled the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in September. The new iPhones can store credit card data locally in what Apple calls the “Secure Element,” which also contains a Device Account Number unique to each phone. Stored cards can then be used to make purchases by using TouchID to authenticate and NFC to transmit the data. The Device Account Number and randomly generated per-transaction codes are used to obfuscate your credit card data, which isn’t exposed directly to retailers or to Apple. App developers can also integrate Apple Pay buttons into their apps to be used in lieu of credit card numbers. Apple stated that it plans to roll out Apple Pay in November. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple announces iOS 8.1 with Apple Pay, iCloud Photo Library

Latest Xbox One update adds MKV support, quicker voiceless commands

Quick-snap! Now, Kinect-less Xbox One owners can do a few more cool system functions on the fly. Microsoft’s near-monthly streak of Xbox One updates continued on Wednesday with a substantial October update . The console maker had already teased the update’s most intriguing feature in August when it announced a media-player app set to handle a staggering number of codecs—particularly the MKV container—and DLNA streaming from other devices on a home network. XB1’s new media player, like the system’s Blu-ray player, must be loaded as a separate app. We were able to test it during a beta period, and it worked as advertised, meaning it allowed us to watch all of our favorite, legitimately acquired TV shows and films in crisp MKV format. The update’s other major addition, a quick-snap menu, can be accessed with a double-tap of the controller’s home button. It focuses largely on functions that were formerly locked to voice control, including quick loads of previous games and apps and the ability to record your last 30 seconds of gameplay—which should make it easier for players who snapped up a cheaper, Kinect-less XB1 to multitask with the system. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Rogue Albanian drone flies over Serbian soccer stadium, cancelling match

Deadspin An already tense soccer match in Belgrade between the national teams of Albania and Serbia has been suspended after a drone flew over the field waving an Albanian flag. Based on online footage, the drone appears to be a DJI Phantom or a Phantom 2, which retails for roughly $500 to $800 depending on the model. The Tuesday game, which was to be a Euro 2016 qualifier match between the two sides, was the first time they had met in the Serbian capital since 1967. According to The Guardian , away fans were not allowed in the stadiums in either Belgrade or in the upcoming rematch in Tirana, the capital of the Republic of Albania. The two sides’ enthusiasm for soccer has been overshadowed by a larger political issue: Kosovo, a republic that broke away from Serbia in 2008. Kosovo, which has a majority ethnic Albanian population, is not formally recognized by Serbia but is recognized by the United States, Canada, Australia, France, the United Kingdom, and many other states. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Rogue Albanian drone flies over Serbian soccer stadium, cancelling match