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“NightShift” caches Netflix shows on your home network to boost speed

Are you having problems streaming Netflix? A startup called Aterlo Networks claims it has a solution: download Netflix shows and cache them locally so you can view them later without problems. Aterlo’s “ NightShift ” service could theoretically help anyone with slow home Internet connections access high-definition Netflix video. But Aterlo is primarily targeting it at satellite Internet customers who have to abide by strict data caps during the day and evening hours when most people watch streaming video. “Most satellite subscriptions in the US have a 10GB to 25GB monthly usage restriction, which effectively makes it impossible to use Netflix or other streaming video,” Aterlo CTO Scot Loach told Ars in a phone interview. Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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“NightShift” caches Netflix shows on your home network to boost speed

DNA used as velcro to form cells into 3D structures

One of the great hopes for stem cells is that they’ll allow us to eventually replace injured or damaged tissues. But there’s a big gap between the cells of stem cells and anything resembling an organ. Organs are complex, three-dimensional structures populated by multiple cell types. Getting a bunch of cells to form these structures is a significant challenge. One idea has been to use 3D printers. With multiple print-heads and a protein polymer gel, it’s possible to construct a rough approximation of the structure of a mature organ. Now, a team of California scientists has come up with an interesting alternative: use DNA as a sort of cellular velcro to get cells to stick to each other and form a complex, three-dimensional tissue. The basic idea is pretty simple. If they have the appropriate sequences, individual DNA molecules will pair up to form a double helix. If you coat one cell type with a short DNA sequence and then a second cell type with the sequence’s partner, the two cells will stick to each other. And it’s possible to coat a cell’s surface with DNA simply by adding a lipid molecule to the end of the DNA strand. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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DNA used as velcro to form cells into 3D structures

Microsoft, Google, Amazon, others, aim for royalty-free video codecs

Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Cisco, Intel, Netflix, and Amazon today launched a new consortium, the Alliance for Open Media. The group plans to develop next-generation media formats—including audio and still images, but with video as the top priority—and deliver them as royalty-free open source, suitable for both commercial and noncommercial content. The issue of patent licenses and royalties continues to plague the video industry. While H.264/AVC video had relatively cheap licensing, it looks as if its successor, H.265/HEVC, is going to be considerably more expensive . Organizations that derive significant income from patent royalties and IP licensing weren’t happy with the low-cost model used for H.264, and so are pushing back. This is a great threat to open source and non-commercial streaming, which has no obvious way to pay the royalties. The HEVC royalty structure would even threaten the viability of commercial streamers such as Netflix. The Alliance for Open Media would put an end to this problem. The group’s first aim is to produce a video codec that’s a meaningful improvement on HEVC. Many of the members already have their own work on next-generation codecs; Cisco has Thor , Mozilla has been working on Daala , and Google on VP9 and VP10. Daala and Thor are both also under consideration by the IETF’s netvc working group, which is similarly trying to assemble a royalty-free video codec. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft, Google, Amazon, others, aim for royalty-free video codecs

Tesla strikes deal to buy lithium hydroxide mined in northern Mexico

On Friday, Tesla struck a deal with mining companies Bacanora Minerals Ltd and Rare Earth Minerals Plc. to purchase lithium compounds from a proposed mining site in northern Mexico. The mine is not functional yet—the deal requires the mining companies to raise funding to construct a mine as well as processing facilities over the next two years. But as the supply contract published by Bacanora  (PDF) states, the companies project that once the mine is up and running, it will be able to supply 35,000 tons of lithium compounds (namely, lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate) per year at first, eventually expanding to 50,000 tons per year. Tesla has agreed to purchase a minimum amount of lithium hydroxide from Bacanora Minerals and Rare Earth Minerals for five years after the mine becomes operational, with the potential to extend the agreement. In exchange, the mining companies will sell their mined materials to Tesla at below market rate, the Wall Street Journal reports . Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Tesla strikes deal to buy lithium hydroxide mined in northern Mexico

AT&T grudgingly accepts $428 million in annual government funding

AT&T has struck a deal with the US government to get nearly $428 million per year to bring 10Mbps Internet service to parts of rural America after protesting that it shouldn’t have to provide speeds that fast. The money comes from the Connect America Fund, which draws from surcharges on Americans’ phone bills to pay for rural Internet service. AT&T accepted the money even though it  argued last year that rural customers don’t need Internet service better than the old standard of 4Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream. The FCC ignored AT&T’s protests  in December, raising the Connect America Fund download standard to 10Mbps while leaving the 1Mbps requirement unchanged. Eight months later, AT&T is now willing to provide at least 10Mbps/1Mbps service to 1.1 million rural homes and businesses in 18 states in exchange for “$427,706,650 in annual, ongoing support from the Connect America Fund,” yesterday’s FCC announcement said . The FCC said this will bring broadband to 2.2 million customers, apparently assuming an average of two people for each home and business. AT&T will get the money over six years with an option for a seventh, potentially bringing the total to about $3 billion, according to Multichannel News . AT&T and other carriers getting Connect America funding have to deploy Internet service to 40 percent of funded locations by the end of 2017, 60 percent by the end of 2018, 80 percent by the end of 2019, and to 100 percent of locations by the end of 2020, the article said. “This is one of the largest amounts accepted by any company,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said. “The financial support provided by American ratepayers will bring significant benefits to AT&T’s rural communities, and we urge state and local leaders to help communities realize these benefits by facilitating the broadband buildout.” 10Mbps/1Mbps is still lower than the definition of broadband, which the FCC raised to 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up. The 18 states where AT&T will use the money are Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin. AT&T has had wireline operations in 22 states since it bought BellSouth in 2006. In exchange for getting that merger approved, AT&T promised home Internet service of at least 200kbps (meeting the definition of broadband at the time) to 100 percent of residences by the end of 2007. AT&T claimed it met the requirement but has let its network fall into disrepair in the years since, leaving millions with slow Internet service or none at all. AT&T promised to expand broadband deployment in exchange for the FCC’s recent approval of its purchase of DirecTV, but not in the areas where it will use Connect America funding. The Connect America funding is for “rural service areas where the cost of broadband deployment might otherwise be prohibitive,” the FCC said. AT&T wasn’t the only company to get Connect America Fund money yesterday. CenturyLink accepted $506 million  annually to get 10Mbps Internet to nearly 1.2 million rural homes and businesses in 33 states. Overall, ten carriers accepted $1.5 billion in annual support to serve 3.6 million homes and businesses under the latest Connect America Fund awards, another FCC announcement said . The others include Cincinnati Bell, Consolidated Telecom, Fairpoint, Frontier, Hawaiian Telcom, Micronesian Telecom, and Windstream. The tenth carrier is Verizon, though that case is a bit complicated. Verizon conditionally accepted $48.6 million a year to serve rural areas in Texas and California, subject to regulatory approval of a sale that will transfer Verizon’s systems in those states to Frontier. Verizon, which also objected to the new 10Mbps requirement, did not accept any funding in states where it’s keeping its wireline facilities. There’s still $175 million left to be doled out, due to carriers not accepting the entire amount. “In states where carriers have declined support, the subsidies will be awarded by a competitive bidding process,” the FCC said.

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AT&T grudgingly accepts $428 million in annual government funding

BitTorrent patched against flaw that allowed crippling DoS attacks

The maintainers of the open BitTorrent protocol for file sharing have fixed a vulnerability that allowed lone attackers with only modest resources to take down large sites using a new form of denial-of-service attack. The technique was disclosed two weeks ago in a research paper submitted to the 9th Usenix Workshop on Offensive Technologies. By sending vulnerable BitTorrent applications maliciously modified data, attackers could force them to flood a third-party target with data that was 50 to 120 times bigger than the original request. By replacing the attacker’s IP address in the malicious user datagram protocol request with the spoofed address of the target, the attacker could cause the data flood to hit the victim’s computer. In a blog post published Thursday , BitTorrent engineers said the vulnerability was the result of a flaw in a  reference implementation called libuTP . To fix the weakness, the uTorrent, BitTorrent, and BitTorrent Sync apps will require acknowledgments from connection initiators before providing long responses. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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BitTorrent patched against flaw that allowed crippling DoS attacks

Largest TV blackout in US history hits Dish because of money dispute [Updated]

Update 8pm ET:  The blackout ended today following an emergency meeting. “On behalf of more than 5 million consumers nationwide, I am pleased DISH and Sinclair have agreed to end one of the largest blackouts in history and extend their negotiations,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a statement. “The FCC will remain vigilant while the negotiations continue.” Original story: Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Largest TV blackout in US history hits Dish because of money dispute [Updated]

Comcast planning gigabit cable for entire US territory in 2-3 years

While Comcast has started deploying  2Gbps fiber-to-the-home service to certain parts of its territory, much of its network is going to be stuck on cable for years to come. But customers outside the fiber footprint will still be able to buy gigabit Internet service after Comcast upgrades to DOCSIS 3.1, a faster version of the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification. Comcast said in April  that DOCSIS 3.1 will be available to some of its customers in early 2016 and eventually across its whole US footprint. Last week, Comcast said it wants to complete the whole upgrade within two years. “Our intent is to scale it through our footprint through 2016,” Comcast VP of network architecture Robert Howald said in an interview with FierceCable . “We want to get it across the footprint very quickly… We’re shooting for two years.” It could take up to three years, the story said. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Comcast planning gigabit cable for entire US territory in 2-3 years

Elon Musk’s hyperloop is actually getting kind of serious

The hyperloop sounds like science fiction, Elon Musk’s pipe dream: leapfrog high speed rail and go right to packing us into capsules that fling us across the country in hours using what are, essentially, pneumatic tubes. It sounds crazy, when you think about it. It’s starting to look a little less crazy. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies announced today that it has signed agreements to work with Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum and global engineering design firm Aecom. The two companies will lend their expertise in exchange for stock options in the company, joining the army of engineers from the likes of Boeing and SpaceX already lending their time to the effort. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Elon Musk’s hyperloop is actually getting kind of serious

New record temperature for a superconductor

Superconductivity was first seen in metals cooled down to close to absolute zero. But after exhausting every metal on the periodic table, the critical temperature at which the metal transitions to superconductivity never budged far from those extremely low temperatures. That changed dramatically with the development of cuprate superconductors, copper-containing ceramics that could superconduct in liquid nitrogen—still very cold (138K or −135°C), but relatively easy to achieve. But progress has stalled, in part because we don’t have a solid theory to explain superconductivity in these materials. Now, taking advantage of the fact that we do understand what’s going on in superconducting metals, a German research team has reached a new record critical temperature: 203K, or -70°C, a temperature that is sometimes seen in polar regions. The material they used, however, isn’t a metal that appears on the periodic table. In fact, they’re not even positive they know what the material is, just that it forms from hydrogen sulfide at extreme pressures. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New record temperature for a superconductor