Some Surface Pro 3s with catastrophic battery life may get a software fix

Systems with Simplo batteries left with just minutes of battery life.

Enlarge / Surface Pro 3. (credit: Peter Bright)

Microsoft says that it is going to release a software update for Surface Pro 3 systems that should restore their battery life without requiring any hardware fixes.

Over the last few months, there have been scattered claims that some Surface Pro 3 systems are suffering from extremely poor battery life. Some amount of battery degradation over the lifetime of a system is to be expected, but some owners of Microsoft's tablet computer are saying that battery life has dropped to as little as one to two minutes, which is far below what it ought to be, even after many charging cycles.

Windows' own battery health reporting shows that the charge capacity of affected batteries has dropped precipitously, from the 42Wh they started with to, in some cases, less than 0.2Wh.

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Critics blast Trump calls for Russia to locate missing Hillary Clinton e-mails

“I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press,” he says.

In comments that appeared to condone the hacking of sensitive US correspondence, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Wednesday said he hoped Russia locates missing e-mails sent by Hillary Clinton when she was US secretary of state.

"Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing," Trump said during a news conference. "I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens. That'll be nice."

Donald Trump on Russia missing Hillary Clinton e-mails (C-SPAN).

At the same event, Trump also said, "I'm not gonna tell Putin what to do. Why should I tell Putin what to do?... It's not even about Russia or China or whoever it is that's doing the hacking. It's about the things they said in those e-mails. They were terrible things." A video of the entire news conference is here.

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Keysniffer: Millionen kabellose Tastaturen senden Daten im Klartext

Kabellose Tastaturen sollten eigentlich so gebaut sein, dass die darauf getippten Informationen nur verschlüsselt übertragen werden. Millionen Geräte von mindestens acht großen Herstellern patzen dabei aber heftig, wie Forscher entdeckt haben. (Security, Eingabegerät)

Kabellose Tastaturen sollten eigentlich so gebaut sein, dass die darauf getippten Informationen nur verschlüsselt übertragen werden. Millionen Geräte von mindestens acht großen Herstellern patzen dabei aber heftig, wie Forscher entdeckt haben. (Security, Eingabegerät)

Google Play Family Library launches: share apps, movies and more with up to 6 people

Google Play Family Library launches: share apps, movies and more with up to 6 people

Don’t want to pay multiple times for the same app, eBook, or movie just so that you, your spouse, and your kids can all have it on your phones? Apple has a Family Sharing feature that lets you link multiple accounts and share content between users in your household.

Now Google is launching its own version, called Family Library. It lets you share eligible apps, games, movies, TV shows, and eBooks. You only have to pay once for each app.

Continue reading Google Play Family Library launches: share apps, movies and more with up to 6 people at Liliputing.

Google Play Family Library launches: share apps, movies and more with up to 6 people

Don’t want to pay multiple times for the same app, eBook, or movie just so that you, your spouse, and your kids can all have it on your phones? Apple has a Family Sharing feature that lets you link multiple accounts and share content between users in your household.

Now Google is launching its own version, called Family Library. It lets you share eligible apps, games, movies, TV shows, and eBooks. You only have to pay once for each app.

Continue reading Google Play Family Library launches: share apps, movies and more with up to 6 people at Liliputing.

Tor inquiry: “Many people” reported being “humiliated” by Appelbaum

Going forward, group will now have a new anti-harassment policy, among other changes.

Jacob Appelbaum is a former Tor staffer. (credit: SHAREconference)

The Tor Project said Wednesday that its internal investigation has been completed into allegations of sexual misconduct allegedly perpetrated by one of its most prominent staffers, who has since left the organization.

In a statement, Executive Director Shari Steele wrote that the inquiry concluded that "many people inside and outside the Tor Project have reported incidents of being humiliated, intimidated, bullied, and frightened" by Jacob Appelbaum, a now-ex-member of Tor’s "Core Team," adding, "and several experienced unwanted sexually aggressive behavior from him."

The Tor Project is the Massachusetts-based nonprofit that maintains Tor, the well-known open source online anonymity tool.

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Verizon talking to cities about fiber expansion after years of stagnation

Verizon’s fiber plans are as much about wireless as they are about FiOS.

(credit: Virginia Tech)

As Verizon plans a fiber expansion in Boston, CEO Lowell McAdam yesterday said the company is talking to other cities about potentially building fiber networks.

Verizon stopped expanding its FiOS fiber-to-the-home Internet, TV, and phone service several years ago, making it a surprise when in April the telco announced plans to replace its copper network in Boston with fiber. In an earnings call yesterday (see transcript), McAdam said, "We are talking to other cities about similar partnerships."

Verizon's fiber expansion plans are as much about improving backhaul to its more profitable mobile network as they are about bringing wired Internet to people's homes. "We will create a single fiber-optic network platform capable of supporting wireless and wireline technologies and multiple products," McAdam said.

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Deals of the Day (7-27-2016)

Deals of the Day (7-27-2016)

The days when we could get excited about a $150 Android tablet are long gone. These days you can find Windows 10 tablets for about half that price.

Of course, you can’t get a very good Windows tablet for $80… but that doesn’t mean you have to break the bank to get a high-quality Windows tablet. Right now Micro Center is selling a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 model with a Core i5 Skylake processor for $750… and students with an .edu email address can get it for just $600.

Continue reading Deals of the Day (7-27-2016) at Liliputing.

Deals of the Day (7-27-2016)

The days when we could get excited about a $150 Android tablet are long gone. These days you can find Windows 10 tablets for about half that price.

Of course, you can’t get a very good Windows tablet for $80… but that doesn’t mean you have to break the bank to get a high-quality Windows tablet. Right now Micro Center is selling a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 model with a Core i5 Skylake processor for $750… and students with an .edu email address can get it for just $600.

Continue reading Deals of the Day (7-27-2016) at Liliputing.

Streaming Sites Dominate Movie and TV-Show Piracy

For many years torrent sites were the go-to destination for most movie and TV-show pirates. However, new data shows that this is no longer the case. The vast majority of unauthorized videos are now consumed through pirate streaming sites, good for more than 57 billion visits during last year alone.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

streamingkeyA decade ago online video streaming was still a relatively new phenomenon. YouTube had just celebrated its first anniversary and Netflix hadn’t even rolled out its streaming service.

The piracy landscape also looked quite different at the time. Streaming sites were pretty much non-existent and the vast majority of all movie and TV-show piracy was torrent related.

This has drastically changed in recent years. According to a new report published by piracy tracking outfit MUSO, streaming sites have taken over as the prime source of video piracy.

New figures released publicly this week are part of the company’s annual report, which shows that nearly three quarters of all movie and TV-show traffic now goes to streaming sites.

The data from MUSO covers visits to 14,000 of the largest global piracy websites from 226 countries. In total, the company recorded 141 billion visits to pirate sites last year.

More than half of these visits relate to video piracy, which includes movies and TV-shows. The vast majority of these, 57.84 billion (74%), are visits to pirate streaming sites.

According to MUSO, there is a clear transition away from P2P sites and services to streaming. This can in part be explained by improved Internet connectivity across the globe.

Despite the availability of legal services, the United States tops the list of video pirates, representing 12% of total traffic, which is good for nearly 10 billion visits.

Torrent site traffic is slowly declining, for video content at least. Roughly 17% of the traffic went to torrent sites, and MUSO reported a clear downward trend during 2015. Direct download sites account for 8% of video piracy visits, which is relatively stable.

The data further reveals that both streaming pirates and torrent users predominantly use desktop machines to visit these sites, 72 and 77 percent respectively. This means that mobile piracy remains relatively small.

Visits to streaming sites by device (Muso.com)

musostream

The movie and TV-show figures are in line with the overall trend MUSO revealed earlier, where pirates move away from torrent sites to other distribution platforms.

“Piracy audiences are becoming better connected, more tech savvy, and know what they want, which is why so many of them have chosen to stream infringing content, rather than download it illegally,” MUSO’s CCO Christopher Elkins says.

Overall, MUSO’s report concludes that the piracy ecosystem is rapidly changing. It will be interesting to see how the reported traffic trends develop during the years to come.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Here WeGo: Here Maps kommt mit neuem Namen und neuen Funktionen

Here Maps heißt jetzt Here WeGo und bietet einige neue Funktionen. So werden Routen jetzt nicht mehr nur für Autos, Fahrräder oder den öffentlichen Nahverkehr berechnet, auch Carsharing-Anbieter finden sich unter den Optionen – inklusive Kosten und Tankanzeige. (Here, Android)

Here Maps heißt jetzt Here WeGo und bietet einige neue Funktionen. So werden Routen jetzt nicht mehr nur für Autos, Fahrräder oder den öffentlichen Nahverkehr berechnet, auch Carsharing-Anbieter finden sich unter den Optionen - inklusive Kosten und Tankanzeige. (Here, Android)

Massive genome analysis suggests life began in hot springs

The first cells may have been anaerobic, heat tolerant, and hydrogen-fed.

Features of how DNA, RNA, and proteins are built and metabolized are common to every living thing we've looked at, suggesting they were inherited through common descent. While life may have arisen more than once, it appears that only one lineage has survived down to the present day.

If you could trace living lineages back far enough, you'd arrive at an organism that's the ancestor to every living thing: the last universal common ancestor, or LUCA. This idea has naturally led to a lot of speculation about what LUCA might have looked like. In the latest effort to offer some informed opinion, scientists have performed a clever genomic analysis to identify some of the genes that were probably in LUCA. Those genes, in turn, allow us to infer something about how LUCA lived and what environments it inhabited.

Building trees

Various analyses have indicated that organisms with complex cells (eukaryotes) are a relatively recent development on Earth—assuming you're willing to call something over two billion years old "recent." Two other lineages, bacteria and archaea, go back much further. LUCA sits at the point where bacteria and archaea started to diverge. So if you can identify genes that have been inherited by both of these lineages, they probably were present in LUCA's genome as well.

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