yorker-vanity – Page 3 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

This 1996 Sega training video is the most ‘90s thing you’ll see this week

This internal Sega video for testers is a wonderful snapshot of the ’90s. If you’ve ever wondered what Sega was like at the height of its game-making powers, wonder no more. A staff video from the Sega vaults—made in 1996, the same year that the Sony PlayStation would begin to take over the world—has been released by the production company behind it, Green Mill Filmworks . Not only is the video a fascinating behind-the scenes look at game development and game testing, it is also, without doubt, the most ’90s thing I’ve ever seen. Even excluding the baggy clothes, questionable hair cuts, and horrifying denim, the desks of game testers interviewed—many of whom said they worked up to 90 hours a week squashing bugs—are littered with ’90s paraphernalia. My personal favourite, aside from the multiple appearances of the obligatory (for the ’90s at least) Jurassic Park merchandise, is the spinning holographic disk that appears 13 minutes in. I had one of those as a kid, and while I still don’t quite understand what the appeal was, they were all the rage at school, even over here in the UK. Of course, there’s lots of Sega tech on show too, with testers having access to the Mega Drive (Genesis to our US friends), 32X, Sega CD, Game Gear, Saturn, and even the short-lived Sega Pico, a laptop-like educational system for kids that was powered by Genesis hardware. Each tester was also issued with development cartridges—which you can see being loaded up with memory chips by hand around 18 minutes in—before having to sit and play the game relentlessly, using a VHS recorder (yes really) to record gameplay and identify when and how bugs appeared. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

See original article:
This 1996 Sega training video is the most ‘90s thing you’ll see this week

Verizon’s corrupt data to blame for weeks-long outages, Frontier says

It’s been seven weeks since Frontier completed a purchase of Verizon’s fiber and copper networks in California, Florida, and Texas, and the company is finally explaining why so many former Verizon customers have been hit by service outages. Bad data from Verizon is the culprit, Frontier West Region President Melinda White told lawmakers in California yesterday during a nearly-two-hour hearing held by the State Assembly’s Utilities & Commerce Committee. Corrupted data prevented Frontier’s network from communicating properly with equipment at customers’ homes, making it impossible to provision service to everyone, she said. Frontier is providing bill credits to customers who lost service. Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Continue reading here:
Verizon’s corrupt data to blame for weeks-long outages, Frontier says

Windows 7 now has a Service Pack 2 (but don’t call it that)

This should become a thing of the past. (credit: Microsoft ) Anyone who’s installed Windows 7 any time in the last, oh, five years or so probably didn’t enjoy the experience very much. Service Pack 1 for the operating system was released in 2011, meaning that a fresh install has five years of individual patches to download and install. Typically, this means multiple trips to Windows Update and multiple reboots in order to get the system fully up-to-date, and it is a process that is at best tedious, typically leading one to wonder why, at the very least, it cannot pull down all the updates at once and apply them with just a single reboot. The answer to that particular question will, unfortunately, remain a mystery, but Microsoft did today announce a change that will greatly reduce the pain of this process. The company has published a “convenience rollup” for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (and Windows Server 2008 R2), which in a single package contains all the updates, both security and non-security, released since the Service Pack, up through April 2016. Installing the rollup will perform five years of patching in one shot. In other words, it performs a very similar role to what Windows 7 Service Pack 2 would have done, if only Windows 7 Service Pack 2 were to exist. It’s not quite the same as a Service Pack—it still requires Service Pack 1 to be installed, and the system will still report that it is running Service Pack 1—but for most intents and purposes, that won’t matter. Microsoft will also support injecting this rollup into Windows 7 Service Pack 1 system images and install media. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Continued here:
Windows 7 now has a Service Pack 2 (but don’t call it that)

OS X 10.11.5 and iTunes 12.4 updates bring security and usability fixes

Enlarge / iTunes 12.4. (credit: Andrew Cunningham) Apple today released OS X 10.11.5, the fifth major update to OS X El Capitan since it was released last September. The company also released iTunes 12.4, a minor update that tweaks the user interface in an effort to simplify it. The El Capitan update doesn’t change much. There are quite a few security fixes and a few tweaks related to enterprise usage , but little in the way of user-visible changes. iTunes 12.4 is more noticeable change. It doesn’t fix the core problem with iTunes—that having one program to handle local music, streamed music from Apple Music, TV and movie purchases, podcasts, and iOS device backups and administration makes for lots of clutter and confusion—but it does present a marginally more streamlined version of the app everyone loves to hate. The top navigation bar has had several buttons removed, and the app uses a persistent sidebar instead of multiple drop-down menus to let you view your media. iTunes versions of yore also made heavier use of sidebars for navigation—sometimes the old ways really are best. Finally, the back and forward buttons now let you “navigate between your Library, Apple Music, iTunes Store, and more.” Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read the article:
OS X 10.11.5 and iTunes 12.4 updates bring security and usability fixes

FDA flexes regulatory muscles, says vaping, e-cigs now under its control

(credit: Flickr/ecig click ) The US Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday that it has extended its authority and will now regulate electronic cigarettes, hookah tobacco, cigars, and other tobacco products under the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act . The regulatory move, first proposed in 2014, is largely aimed at protecting kids from tobacco and nicotine products. The result is that e-cigs and the other products will now be subject to the same federal regulations as regular cigarettes. These regulations include some relatively uncontroversial rules such as a ban on selling e-cigs to minors (which some states have already done), requiring a photo ID to buy e-cigs, not selling e-cigs out of vending machines, and a ban on free e-cig samples. But the regulations also require that e-cigarette manufactures register with the agency and put any new devices through a pre-market regulatory approval process. By “new,” the FDA means any novel devices put on the market after February 15, 2007. Devices released before then will be grandfathered into the regulations. However, in the relatively young e-cig market, the vast majority of current products were introduced after 2007 and will be subject to the approval process. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Taken from:
FDA flexes regulatory muscles, says vaping, e-cigs now under its control

ResetPlug is a $60 device to keep you trapped in crappy Wi-Fi hell

If you need this, you probably deserve this. (credit: ResetPlug ) It’s Monday night and you finally collapse into your favorite chair after a day that started at 5:00am. The dogs are crated, the kids are in bed, and your spouse has graciously agreed to do dinner clean-up. You lean your head back and sigh. There’s a whole week’s worth of worry stacked up in your forebrain, but for the next 20 minutes, none of it will matter. The tablet is warm in your hands as you tap the Netflix app, and you smile in anticipation of the one truly good thing that you’ll get to experience today. The theme song is already playing in your head: “Un— BREAKABLE! They’re alive, dammit! It’s a mir -a-cle!” For the next 20 minutes, you can escape. …except you can’t, because instead of transporting you away from your worries, the stupid screen is showing a giant-ass error message: “Netflix is not available.” The vein in your forehead—you know the one, right at your hairline—starts throbbing. You can feel it. You know what comes next. You can already see it in your mind. You’re going to have to go upstairs into your youngest’s room—because for some incredibly insane reason the cable drop is in there, which makes you want to find the person who built the damn house and throttle them to death with six feet of coax—and you’re going to have to reach back under the kid’s bed, over the dust and the dog hair and the Lego bricks and broken Star Wars toys and whatever the hell else is under there and find the damn plug for the damn router. After you unplug and plug it back in, you’re going to have to lie there watching the damn lights on the stupid thing blink for minutes—whole minutes!—while your tiny window of Netflix time slowly trickles away. Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Continue Reading:
ResetPlug is a $60 device to keep you trapped in crappy Wi-Fi hell

The Wheel of Time turns… into a “cutting-edge TV series”

Cover art for the first Wheel of Time novel. (credit: Tor Books) After a rough false start , it looks like Robert Jordan’s fantasy epic The Wheel of Time will be coming to television after all. The news was delivered on the series’ Google+ page by Jordan’s widow, Harriet McDougal, who owns the copyright to the novels and has controlled the franchise’s direction since Jordan’s death in 2007. We have few details about the project at this point, aside from assurances that a “major studio” will have more to share soon: Wanted to share with you exciting news about The Wheel of Time . Legal issues have been resolved. The Wheel of Time will become a cutting edge TV series! I couldn’t be more pleased. Look for the official announcement coming soon from a major studio —Harriet Optioning The Wheel of Time makes sense, given the appetite for TV adaptations of dense, sprawling fantasy series. HBO’s Game of Thrones and Starz’s Outlander have both been successful, and Wheel of Time is a firmly established property that has the added benefit of actually being a finished story already. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

View article:
The Wheel of Time turns… into a “cutting-edge TV series”

From TV trailblazer to IP afterthought: TiVo bought for $1.1 billion

(credit: cncphotos ) Entertainment company Rovi announced that it has officially acquired DVR maker TiVo in a deal worth $1.1 billion. Rovi will pay for the deal mostly in stock at $10.70 per share, with approximately $277 million to be paid in cash at $2.75 per share. Rovi’s CEO Tom Carson will continue to run the company, although it will now assume the “iconic TiVo brand” as its name. The deal seems to be centered on patents. According to The New York Times , Rovi’s interactive TV program guides account for less than half of its $526 million revenue last year, while the rest is made up of its licensed intellectual property. TiVo made a name for itself with its DVR technology, but the patents that make its DVR hardware and software work are proving to be more valuable. Together, Rovi and TiVo have over 6,000 patents issued and pending in the digital entertainment space. “Rovi’s acquisition of TiVo, with its innovative products, talented team, and substantial intellectual property portfolio, strengthens Rovi’s position as a global leader in media discovery, metadata, analytics, and IP licensing,” Carson said in a statement . “It’s an exciting time as the media and entertainment landscape undergoes a significant evolution…. By working together, Rovi and TiVo will revolutionize how consumers experience media and entertainment and at the same time build value for our stockholders.” Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Microsoft experiments with DNA storage: 1,000,000,000 TB in a gram

Microsoft is buying ten million strands of DNA from biology startup Twist Bioscience to investigate the use of genetic material to store data. The data density of DNA is orders of magnitude higher than conventional storage systems, with 1 gram of DNA able to represent close to 1 billion terabytes (1 zettabyte) of data. DNA is also remarkably robust; DNA fragments thousands of years old have been successfully sequenced. These properties make it an intriguing option for long-term data archival. Binary data has already been successfully stored as DNA base pairs , with estimates in 2013 suggesting that it would be economically viable for storage of 500 years or more. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

See the original article here:
Microsoft experiments with DNA storage: 1,000,000,000 TB in a gram

A Comcastic miracle: Data caps will go from 300GB to a terabyte

Comcast today announced that it will boost its data cap from 300GB per month to 1TB beginning June 1, but will also charge more to customers who want unlimited data. Comcast has been trialling different caps in various cities in preparation for a potential nationwide rollout. Typically, customers would get 300GB per month and have to pay another $10 for each additional 50GB when they go over. Comcast also allowed customers to pay an extra $30 to $35 a month for unlimited data, depending on the city. After the June 1 change, fewer customers will need to buy unlimited data—but it will cost them $50 a month to do so instead of $30 or $35. Overage fees will stay the same, $10 for each additional 50GB. Thus far, Comcast has allowed customers to exceed the cap in three “courtesy months” before charging them overage fees. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments