Month: January 2016

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our partners at TechBargains, we have a slew of new deals for you to check out over the weekend. The highlight is a new smartphone from Huawei: you can now preorder the Huawei Honor 5X unlocked smartphone for just $200. It's a steal on a pretty robust handset, which features a 5.5-inch 1080p display, an octa-core processor with 2GB of RAM, up to 128GB of storage, and dual-sim capabilities for travel convenience. If you're in need of a cheap smartphone for daily use or an extra one for traveling, this is the perfect time to grab one at a good price. The Honor 5X officially comes out on January 31.

Also check out a number of new deals on tablets, laptops, TVs, and more below.

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(credit: Tor Project)

As a result of its recent crowdfunding campaign, the Tor Project announced Thursday that it had raised over $200,000 from more than 5,000 individuals over nearly two months.

The organization also released its 2014 Form 990, the financial document that all nonprofits must file with the IRS.

As of 2014, the organization took in about $2.5 million annually, roughly 75 percent of that coming from grants from US government institutions such as Radio Free Asia and the State Department.

(credit: Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock)

A year after the Federal Communications Commission changed the definition of broadband Internet to include only faster speeds, Republicans in Congress are still mad about the decision.

Using the new broadband minimum speed of 25Mbps download and 3Mbps upload, the FCC's annual review of deployment this month said that broadband isn't being offered to about 34 million Americans. ISPs immediately criticized that assessment; yesterday their friends in Congress piled on.

Six Republican Senators—Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Roger Wicker (R-Mich.), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.)—outlined their concerns in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler yesterday. (The Hill reported on the letter and posted a copy.) "We are concerned that this arbitrary 25/3 Mbps benchmark fails to accurately capture what most Americans consider broadband... Looking at the market for broadband applications, we are aware of few applications that require download speeds of 25Mbps," the senators wrote. "Netflix, for example, recommends a download speed of 5Mbps to receive high-definition streaming video, and Amazon recommends a speed of 3.5Mbps. In addition, according to the FCC's own data, the majority of Americans who can purchase 25Mbps service choose not to."

Enlarge / KrebsOnSecurity published this photo in July 2013 after foiling a plot to frame him for purchasing heroin. (credit: KrebsOnSecurity)

A Ukrainian hacker accused of trying to frame security reporter Brian Krebs for heroin possession has pleaded guilty to credit card fraud and illegally accessing more than 13,000 computers.

Sergey Vovnenko, 29, entered guilty pleas earlier this week to charges of aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He was accused of operating a botnet of more than 13,000 computers, which he used to harvest users' credit card data and other sensitive information. He used aliases including "Flycracker," "Centurion," and "Darklife."

In a blog post, KrebsOnSecurity's namesake wrote:

A fossilized lycopsid—a tree-sized relative of club moss—buried by Carboniferous sediment. (credit: Wikimedia)

It made for a neat story:

Question: Why did so much of the world’s coal form during the geologic period we now call the Carboniferous?

Answer: Large tree-like plants evolved before fungi evolved the ability to break down the fibrous lignin that helped give the plants structure. With nothing to make them decay, their remains were free to pile up and yield thick coal deposits.

It’s a neat story, but, a new study led by Stanford’s Matthew Nelsen argues, it’s not true.

While coal deposits formed both before and after the Carboniferous, this period provided the mother lode. It occurred a bit over 300 million years ago and was a funky time that saw relatives of club mosses grow to the size of trees while insects also reached comparatively gigantic proportions due to the higher-than-modern oxygen concentration.