Month: August 2016

When Comcast brought its gigabit download cable service to Chicago last week, there was plenty of confusion about the price. Comcast initially said it would cost $140 a month, even though a $70 monthly price is available in other cities where Comcast has to compete against Google Fiber.

But after we published a story Friday, a Comcast spokesperson said the $70 offer was available in Chicago after all, contrary to what the company had said earlier that day. But there’s a difference between Comcast telling the media that a great deal is available and customers actually being able to sign up for it.

Comcast told us that customers interested in the offer should sign up at xfinity.com/gig. But when you follow the links, the only pricing listed is $300 a month for 2Gbps fiber Internet and $140 a month for 1Gbps download speeds (with 35Mbps uploads).

Samsung is apparently working on an Amazon Echo clone. A circular Bluetooth-speaker-and-microphone combo called the "Samsung Scoop" was spotted in the FCC database by Android fan site Ausdroid.

The Scoop looks a lot like a mini Amazon Echo—it's a squat little cylinder about 80mm in diameter. There's a speaker on top with Play/Pause and volume controls around the perimeter. On the side is a power button and a flap hiding a USB plug (it looks like Type C?) and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The Scoop is so compact that it's apparently going to be portable. Samsung gave it a big leathery carrying handle and—if the circuit board labeled "battery board" is any indication—a rechargeable battery.

What Samsung plans to do with the software on the Scoop is a bit of a mystery. The majority of the functionality in Samsung's smartphones comes from Android, but there's no established operating system for these Bluetooth voice command speakers. Will the Scoop run Samsung's Tizen OS? Like "S-Voice" on a Galaxy smartphone, we'll expect a Nuance-powered voice command system, but with Samsung shutting down its Milk Music service, we aren't expecting too many home-grown services on the Scoop. It will be starting from scratch in the app ecosystem, too. There's also the possibility that the Scoop is a "dumb" device and would rely on a tethered smartphone for the voice commands to work.

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Recently released code that exploits Cisco System firewalls and has been linked to the National Security Agency can work against a much larger number of models than many security experts previously thought.

An exploit dubbed ExtraBacon contains code that prevents it from working on newer versions of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA), a line of firewalls that's widely used by corporations, government agencies, and other large organizations. When the exploit encounters 8.4(5) or newer versions of ASA, it returns an error message that prevents it from working. Now researchers say that with a nominal amount of work, they were able to modify ExtraBacon to make it work on a much newer version. The finding means that ExtraBacon poses a bigger threat than many security experts may have believed.

(credit: SilentSignal)

The newly modified exploit is the work of SilentSignal, a penetration testing firm located in Budapest, Hungary. In an e-mail, SilentSignal researcher Balint Varga-Perke wrote:

Enlarge / WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange prepares to speak from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy on February 5, 2016 in London, England. (credit: Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

Even as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sits trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, the WikiLeaks website continues to publish the secrets of various governments worldwide.

But that's not all it's publishing. A report today by the Associated Press highlights citizens who had "sensitive family, financial or identity records" published by the site.

"They published everything: my phone, address, name, details," said one Saudi man whose paternity dispute was revealed on documents published by the site. "If the family of my wife saw this... Publishing personal stuff like that could destroy people."

(credit: Iain Farrell)

We've seen some pretty strange intellectual property litigation in our day. We can now check off one of the dumbest IP lawsuits we've seen in a while. That's because Citigroup and AT&T resolved a trademark dispute Monday concerning how they each said thanks to their customers.

Banking behemoth Citigroup had trademarked "THANKYOU" and then sued AT&T over how the technology giant thanked its own loyal customers. Citigroup called it trademark infringement, amounting to "unlawful conduct" in a federal lawsuit lodged against AT&T this summer.

A federal judge ruled she wouldn't block (PDF) AT&T from thanking its customers pending a trial. US District Judge Katherine Forrest of New York also ruled that Citigroup likely wouldn't win at a trial. It's essentially a dispute in which AT&T is being accused of creating consumer confusion because it says "THANKYOU" in a manner similar to how Citigroup says "THANKYOU" to its customers.

PlayStation Now, Sony's two-year-old game-streaming service, will soon come to Windows PCs, if an incorrect image tag on a Sony blog post is meant to be believed.

Game-news sleuth Wario64 posted the discovery on Tuesday after mousing over an image promoting the upcoming PlayStation VR Worlds game. Upon doing so, a caption for something entirely different popped up: "PS Now on PC Announce Post by PlayStation Europe, on Flickr." Ars confirmed the caption was still live as of press time, though a peek at the blog post's metadata didn't point to any links to such a news post.

The news follows a report from French gaming news site Gamekult earlier in August that suggested PS Now would first be announced for Windows PCs in Europe on August 23, with American users getting a crack one week later. Amazon France may have also let the streaming cat out of the bag on Tuesday by launching a product page for a "DualShock USB adapter for PlayStation 4," which could be used to more easily connect the PS4's DualShock 4 controller to Windows PCs—though thanks to an empty product description, that's only speculation.