Tag: yorker-vanity

Comcast and Time Warner Cable lost 1.1 million video customers in 2013

Mr.TinDC Comcast, Time Warner Cable (TWC), and all other top cable companies lost pay-TV subscribers in 2013, but the companies were able to boost their total broadband Internet subscribers, according to research by Leichtman Research Group. Comcast and TWC, the two biggest cable companies in the US, combined for 1.1 million lost video subscribers. Comcast finished 2013 with 21.7 million multi-channel video subscribers, down 305,000 according to  Leichtman’s research . TWC lost 825,000 video subscribers, dropping to 11.4 million.”The top nine cable companies lost about 1,735,000 video subscribers in 2013—compared to a loss of about 1,410,000 subscribers in 2012,” the research said. At the same time, Comcast added 1.3 million broadband Internet subscribers to hit a total of 20.7 million . TWC gained 211,000 broadband subscribers to bring its total to 11.6 million. Comcast’s 1.3 million broadband subscriber gain accounted for “49 percent of the total net additions for the top providers in the year,” the research said. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Comcast and Time Warner Cable lost 1.1 million video customers in 2013

How to set up your own private instant messaging server

For the past few years, I’ve run my own XMPP-based instant messaging server. It’s an incredibly convenient way for my wife and I to send links back and forth to each other while we’re on our computers, and I very much like the idea of not having to depend on a third party for the exchange of simple messages. Not that Google is going to mine a lot of useful data out of our instant messages anyway (though they would be able to tell that we like funny cat pictures)—still, the server has come in extremely handy on occasions in the past. Getting the server application set up is quite easy, and even better, it works with any XMPP-compatible instant messaging application—Adium, Pidgin, Trillian, and just about anything else that can speak the open XMPP protocol. The video below will walk through the process of setting up and installing Prosody , a lightweight Lua-based instant messaging server application. We’ll be using Ubuntu 12.04 for our server, though Prosody is a cross-platform application and will run on Windows, OS X, and a number of different Linuxes. Strap in, grab your server, and let’s roll! Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How to set up your own private instant messaging server

Google search redesign hews closer to competitor DuckDuckGo

Google’s makeover kicks the underlined URL to the curb, with a few other changes. Experiencing mild disorientation while using Google today? Google has quietly rolled out a subtle redesign for its search results that, among other things, removes the age-old hyperlink underline, bumps the font size two points, and evens out the line spacing. Google search results have gotten incremental changes over the years, and the search page certainly no longer looks like it did when the site first launched. Jon Wiley, the lead designer for Google search, took to Google+ Wednesday to say that the new look “improves readability and creates an overall cleaner look.” Having gone nearly a decade without underlined hyperlinks, we here at Ars wholeheartedly agree with the decision. The redesign moves Google up and away from competitors like Yahoo and Bing , which preserve the underline. However, it only catches Google up to the upstart DuckDuckGo, which does not use underlines and is cleaner still on its search results page, with truncated URLs for each result. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google search redesign hews closer to competitor DuckDuckGo

Mozilla strives to take Web gaming to the next level with Unreal Engine 4

Around this time last year Mozilla and Epic Games showed off the Unreal 3 game engine running in the browser, using a combination of the WebGL 3D graphics API and asm.js , the high performance subset of JavaScript. Commercial games built using this technology were launched late in the year. With this apparently successful foray into using the browser as a rich gaming platform, Mozilla and Epic today demonstrated a preview of Epic’s next engine, Unreal Engine 4, again boasting near-native speeds. The Web version of UE4 uses Emscripten to compile regular C and C++ code into asm.js. Unreal Engine 4 running within Firefox. Over the past year, Mozilla has improved asm.js’s performance, to go from around 40 percent of native performance, to something like 67 percent of native. Our own testing largely supported the organization’s claims, though we noted certain limitations at the time, such as JavaScript’s lack of multithreading. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Mozilla strives to take Web gaming to the next level with Unreal Engine 4

Refinements, additions, and un-breaking stuff: iOS 7.1 reviewed

Time to update! iOS 7.1 is here, and it fixes a lot of iOS 7.0’s biggest problems. Aurich Lawson There were about six months between the ouster of Scott Forstall from Apple in late October of 2012 and the unveiling of iOS 7.0 in June of 2013. Jony Ive and his team redesigned the software from the ground up in that interval, a short amount of time given that pretty much everything in the operating system was overhauled and that it was being done under new management. The design was tweaked between that first beta in June and the final release in mid-September, but the biggest elements were locked in place in short order. iOS 7.1’s version number implies a much smaller update, but it has spent a considerable amount of time in development. Apple has issued five betas to developers since November of 2013, and almost every one of them has tweaked the user interface in small but significant ways. It feels like Apple has been taking its time with this one, weighing different options and attempting to address the harshest criticism of the new design without the deadline pressure that comes with a major release. We’ve spent a few months with iOS 7.1 as it has progressed, and as usual we’re here to pick through the minutiae so you don’t have to. iOS 7.1 isn’t a drastic change, but it brings enough new design elements, performance improvements, and additional stability to the platform that it might just win over the remaining iOS 6 holdouts. Read 42 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Refinements, additions, and un-breaking stuff: iOS 7.1 reviewed

iOS 7.1 released, improves iPhone 5S stability, iPhone 4 speed, and more

After months of testing, iOS 7.1 is finally here. Andrew Cunningham Apple has just released iOS 7.1, the first major update to iOS 7 . The new update provides a variety of security and stability fixes, some speed improvements, and UI tweaks that refine the new design introduced back in December. The update is available for all devices that can run iOS 7: the iPhone 4, 4S, 5, 5C, and 5S; the iPad 2, both Retina iPads, both iPad minis, and the iPad Air; and the fifth-generation iPod touch. The update brings a whole pile of fixes. It addresses a crashing bug with the iPhone 5S, improves speed on the iPhone 4, introduces the new CarPlay feature, adds new accessibility options, and makes a handful of other refinements to the UI. The first iOS 7.1 beta was released to developers back in mid-November, and four additional betas have been issued since then. Throughout the beta cycle, Apple has continuously adjusted the operating system’s user interface, polishing it and making it more consistent. We’ve been playing with the iOS 7.1 betas for a few months now, and we’ll be publishing a full review of the software after we’ve spent a little more time with the final release. We’ll also be revisiting our original article about performance on the iPhone 4 later today. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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iOS 7.1 released, improves iPhone 5S stability, iPhone 4 speed, and more

Microsoft is a “2.5-trick pony” according to Steve Ballmer

In Conversation with Steve Ballmer at Saïd Business School Most companies fail, successful companies are often one-trick ponies, but Microsoft is a two-and-a-half trick pony, according to former CEO Steve Ballmer, speaking at Oxford’s Said Business School . He was responding to a question about why Microsoft had failed to innovate in the mobile space, particularly given that it had invented the tablet computer way before it was popularized by Apple. “Most tech companies fail,” Ballmer replied. “They are zero-trick ponies. They never do anything well and they go away. You are a genius in the industry if you are a one-trick pony. You get some innovation right and then spin it. I am very proud of the fact that [Microsoft] has done at least two tricks. Tricks are worth billions and billions and billions of dollars.” Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft is a “2.5-trick pony” according to Steve Ballmer

Critical crypto bug leaves Linux, hundreds of apps open to eavesdropping

A. Strakey Hundreds of open source packages, including the Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Debian distributions of Linux, are susceptible to attacks that circumvent the most widely used technology to prevent eavesdropping on the Internet, thanks to an extremely critical vulnerability in a widely used cryptographic code library. The bug in the GnuTLS library makes it trivial for attackers to bypass secure sockets layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protections available on websites that depend on the open source package. Initial estimates included in Internet discussions such as this one indicate that more than 200 different operating systems or applications rely on GnuTLS to implement crucial SSL and TLS operations, but it wouldn’t be surprising if the actual number is much higher. Web applications, e-mail programs, and other code that use the library are vulnerable to exploits that allow attackers monitoring connections to silently decode encrypted traffic passing between end users and servers. The bug is the result of commands in a section of the GnuTLS code that verify the authenticity of TLS certificates, which are often known simply as X509 certificates . The coding error, which may have been present in the code since 2005 , causes critical verification checks to be terminated, drawing ironic parallels to the extremely critical “goto fail” flaw that for months put users of Apple’s iOS and OS X operating systems at risk of surreptitious eavesdropping attacks. Apple developers have since patched the bug . Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Critical crypto bug leaves Linux, hundreds of apps open to eavesdropping

MtGox code posted by hackers as company files for bankruptcy protection

Cross Office Shibuya Medio, the office building in Tokyo that is home to MtGox and Mark Karpeles’ other companies. Tokyo Apartments As MtGox CEO Mark Karpeles and his lawyers officially filed for court-supervised restructuring of the Bitcoin exchange, someone posted a chunk of code to Pastebin that would appear to lend credence to Karpeles’ contention that his company was hacked. The block of PHP code appears to be part of the backend for MtGox’s Bitcoin exchange site, and it includes references to IP addresses registered to Karpeles’ Web hosting and consulting company, Tibanne . In an update to the MtGox website late Monday, the company reasserted its claim that it had been hacked through an exploit of a weakness in its exchange website code. “Although the complete extent is not yet known, we found that approximately 750,000 bitcoins deposited by users and approximately 100,000 bitcoins belonging to us had disappeared,” the company’s spokesperson said in the latest update at the MtGox website. “We believe that there is a high probability that these bitcoins were stolen as a result of an abuse of this bug and we have asked an expert to look at the possibility of a criminal complaint and undertake proper procedures.” That loss was discovered on February 24. On the same day, the company found “large discrepancies between the amount of cash held in financial institutions and the amount deposited from our users. The amounts are still under investigation and may vary, but they approximate JPY 2.8 billion [$27 million US].” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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MtGox code posted by hackers as company files for bankruptcy protection

Snow Leopard updates are probably done—here are your OS X upgrade options

End of the line, Snowy. Apple Apple offers no end-of-life roadmaps for its operating systems, and it doesn’t officially comment on whether support has dried up for this or that version of OS X. The best you can do is look at historical data. Since switching to a yearly release cadence with Lion back in 2011, Apple seems to be willing to support whatever the latest version is plus the two preceding versions. When OS X 10.9.2 was released earlier this week, it was accompanied by security updates for OS X 10.8 and 10.7 but not for 2009’s OS X 10.6.  It’s the first major security update that Snow Leopard has missed—the OS is still getting iTunes updates, but its last major security patch happened back in September. This has prompted a flurry of posts from various outlets. All point out the same Net Applications data that says 10.6 still powers around 19 percent of Macs. Most compare the OS X support cycle to the much-longer Windows cycle. Some make  a bigger deal about it than others. None really tell anyone in that 19 percent what to do next. You’ll need to know the exact kind of Mac you’re using before proceeding—typing your serial number into this Service and Support page should give you the information you need if you’re not sure. Launching the System Profiler application from the Utilities folder will show you your serial number and your Mac’s specific model identifier (something like MacBook4,1 or iMac11,2), the latter of which can be used with this EveryMac lookup page to find what you’re looking for. Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Snow Leopard updates are probably done—here are your OS X upgrade options