Month: December 2016

President Obama announces the nomination of Rep. Melvin Watt, left, as Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and Tom Wheeler, right, as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), on May 1, 2013. (credit: White House)

Tom Wheeler today presided over his final public meeting as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, a three-year stretch that he called the highlight of his career.

Wheeler was sworn into the FCC in November 2013, and he knew the industry well because he was a former lobbyist. From 1979 to 1984, he led the cable industry's top lobby group, and from 1992 to 2004 he was the chief lobbyist for the mobile phone industry.

Looking back, Wheeler says it was easier being a lobbyist.

An image sent by DNC staffer Alexandra Chalupa shows a warning message she received from Yahoo Mail. She may have been targeted using data from one of the Yahoo breaches or a forged cookie based on stolen Yahoo code. (credit: Alexandra Chalupa)

In October of 2013, as a result of documents leaked by Edward Snowden, we learned the National Security Agency tapped straight into the connections between data centers at Yahoo and Google as part of a program called MUSCULAR. A month later, Yahoo announced it would encrypt all of its internal networks between data centers and add Secure Socket Layer encryption and secure (HTTPS) Web connections to all its services.

That move, however, failed to prevent two major breaches of user data: a breach affecting user data from more than 500 million user accounts late in 2014 (revealed in September) and the breach revealed yesterday involving data from more than 1 billion accounts. The recent break took place in August of 2013—before the barn door was closed. In addition, Yahoo's chief information security officer, Bob Lord, said that the parties behind the 2014 breach had stolen some of Yahoo's code and used it to forge Web "cookies" that gave access to users' accounts without the need to use login credentials.

Evidence of the August 2013 breach was given to Yahoo by "law enforcement officials," according to Lord, but it was likely discovered by a security researcher watching for data on underground markets. That suggests the data was in circulation in underground marketplaces in one form or another and actively in use by Internet criminal rings for a variety of purposes. If that's the case, then practically all of Yahoo's users who set up accounts prior to 2013 may have had details from their accounts used in targeted attacks, attempts to gain access to other Web accounts and cloud services, or any number of other scams.

I used to wonder what it was like to be a Bullet Bill, pushed ceaselessly forward in one direction. Now I know.

After playing the first few levels of Super Mario Run at an Apple Store last week, I worried that the game took too many liberties with a series that I'd loved as a certified, website-creating megafan for decades. After spending the better part of a day playing the game in the comfort of my own home, I feel like I've been able to enjoy Super Mario Run more on its own terms, even if I feel it's missing a lot of what makes other Mario games (and even other mobile games) special.

Thinking about Super Mario Run as a platform game (or even as the platform game's simple mobile cousin, the "endless runner") isn't quite right. In practice, it plays more like a freeform rhythm game with platform game clothing. Instead of seeing an encroaching red note and strumming in time on a plastic guitar, you see a sequence of pits, coins, and enemies and have to plan when and how to jump as Mario runs forward ceaselessly.

This can make the first time through any level downright annoying. You'll miss items you had no chance of seeing and run into enemies that you didn't have time to anticipate (with the phone held in portrait mode, you can't see very far in front of you to plan ahead). But the levels are short, each with a strict timer of one to two minutes. Just like in a rhythm game, a few repeat plays help give you a feel for the patterns and paths you want to follow and make it easier to recall what's coming as soon as you see it.

Enlarge / A screen grab taken from an AFP TV video on March 24, 2015 shows debris of the Germanwings Airbus A320 at the crash site in the French Alps above the southeastern town of Seyne. The plane, which had taken off from Barcelona in Spain and was headed for Dusseldorf in Germany, crashed earlier in the day with 150 people onboard. (credit: Getty | DENIS BOIS )

Last year, an investigation into a deliberate plane crash in the French Alps that killed 150 made the startling revelation that the aircraft’s pilot suffered from depression and unnoticed suicide attempts. The tragedy prompted researchers to reexamine mental health issues among commercial airline pilots, and, sadly, what they found was that the case was not a one-off.

In an anonymous survey given to nearly 3,500 pilots by Harvard researchers, only 1,848 were willing to answer mental health questions. But of those that did, 233 pilots, or 12.6 percent, met the criteria for clinical depression and 75, or four percent, reported having suicidal thoughts, that is "having thoughts of being better off dead or self-harm," within the past two weeks. Of the 1,430 pilots that filled out mental health questions and flew a plane in the last seven days, 193, or 13.5 percent, met the criteria for depression.

The findings appear Thursday in the journal Environmental Health.

Enlarge (credit: Alan Levine/Flickr)

There's a new Wi-Fi standard in town, and it takes speed to another level. 802.11ad Wi-Fi is rated for data throughput up to 4,600Mbps, or four times faster than the current speed champ 802.11ac. That's much faster than standard gigabit Ethernet and most home broadband speeds, although—as any Wi-Fi user knows—there's a big difference between theoretical speed and what's possible in practice. Still, want to stream high-bitrate 4K, HDR films over Wi-Fi? That won't be a problem with 802.11ad. Even the best triple-layer UHD Blu-rays top out at 128Mbps bitrates. There's even a chance it could make high-end wireless virtual reality headsets more practical.

802.11ad will at first be available via a new wave of home routers, a couple of which have already hit the shelves: the Netgear Nighthawk X10 and the TP-Link Talon AD7200. As ever with brand-new tech, the routers demand a hefty premium, with the AD7200 costing an eye-watering £350/$360—that's as much as even sophisticated mesh-based systems like the Ubiquiti Amplifi. Is 802.11ad Wi-Fi worth the cost? Is there anything you can even reasonably use it for right now? Or should you hold out for the inevitable price drops? Let's find out.

How does 802.11ad Wi-Fi work?

Like previous versions of Wi-Fi, 802.11ad is an official standard ratified by the Wi-Fi Alliance. Unlike previous versions, however, the tech behind it didn't come from the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). Instead, it's based on tech created by the WiGig (Wireless Gigabit) Alliance, which was officially announced back in 2009, entered draft stage with the IEEE in 2011, and finally emerged as the standard it is today when the WiGig Alliance merged with Wi-Fi Alliance in 2013.