Month: January 2017

VentureBeat

Over at VentureBeat, Evan Blass has what is supposedly the first-ever live picture of the Samsung Galaxy S8. At first glance it looks like every other Samsung phone—the long edges on the front and back are still curved, the back is still glass, there is still a single bottom-firing speaker, and there's still a heart rate sensor on the back. Look closer, though, and there are a few key differences.

First, there's no home button. Samsung has been rumored to finally ditch physical buttons with the Galaxy S8, and this picture seems to line up with that expectation. The rumors say that Samsung will use on-screen software buttons on the S8, five years after Google started on-screen Android buttons with the Galaxy Nexus. There's also no Samsung logo on the front, resulting in a very clean looking device.

Texas police on Thursday dropped resisting arrest and other charges levied against a mother and two daughters, ages 19 and 15, the same day leaked bodycam footage of the incident surfaced. The video shows a Fort Worth police officer manhandling children, questioning the mother's parenting skills, and not taking any action against a man the mother accused of assaulting her 7-year-old son.

The video, leaked to the Associated Press by the family's attorney who declined to say where he got it, shows Officer William Martin responding to mother Jacqueline Craig's call to police. The woman had accused her neighbor, Itamar Vardi, of assaulting her son because he threw some trash on the ground by his residence.

The officer, according to the video, grills the mother on her parenting skills, and she erupts in anger. That set the stage for the officer to pull a Taser, order her and others in the area to the ground, and to use force to quell the situation. The development is the latest example of how the publication of body cam footage or cell phone video is altering the criminal justice system at a time when more and more police agencies are deploying these video recorders.

(credit: Comcast)

Comcast said it plans to offer a mobile phone service this year with an emphasis on selling bundles of wireless and cable service.

Launching the wireless product is a priority in 2017, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said in an earnings call today. Comcast will be able to offer wireless service nationwide because of a reselling agreement with Verizon, but the company is expecting particularly good sales with existing customers in its cable territory.

"We plan to include wireless in our multi-product bundles in a way that is designed to add value to our customers, improve retention, and ultimately benefit lifetime customer economics for us," Roberts said. "Our offering will give customers access to a world-class wireless network, benefiting from our Wi-Fi [hotspots], with the best mobile devices and a simple, transparent experience, all for a great value."

Enlarge

LeakedSource, a legally and ethically questionable website that sold access to a database of more than 3.1 billion compromised account passwords, has disappeared amid an unconfirmed report its operator was raided by law enforcement officers.

"Leakedsource is down forever and won't be coming back," a person using the handle LTD wrote Thursday in an online forum. "Owner raided early this morning. Wasn't arrested, but all [solid state drives] got taken, and Leakedsource servers got subpoenaed and placed under federal investigation. If somehow he recovers from this and launches LS again, then I'll be wrong. But I am not wrong."

Attempts to reach LeakedSource operators for comment weren't successful.

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Joe Raedle )

Amid epidemics of obesity and all the problems that come with it, health experts have been sounding the alarm to cut way back on sugary drinks, particularly for kids. Pediatricians recommend kids drink no more than one 8-ounce sugary drink a week.

But that message, somehow, isn’t getting through.

Enlarge / President Trump's official Twitter account—and those of other key administration members—are not as secure as they could be. And Trump may be breaking the law every time he deletes a tweet for a typo. (credit: Saul Loeb/Getty Images)

If you’ve followed Ars over the last year, you’re likely aware of the potential for scandal with government officials misusing outside e-mail systems. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was politically damaged by inquiries into her use of a private e-mail server and a personal BlackBerry device for official business. And President George W. Bush’s Chief of Staff Karl Rove resigned partly because of a scandal that arose over the deletion of over two million White House e-mails on a private server run by the Republican Party.

With that sort of history—and particularly after President Donald Trump’s campaign frequently used Clinton’s e-mail woes against her last fall—one might imagine that the White House and Republican Party would be eager to show that it knows how to do IT security properly. But early on, it seems like such assumptions may be quite wrong.

In addition to a New York Times report saying that President Trump is still using his unsecured Android phone to continue posting missives to Twitter, Newsweek claims that members of the White House staff are using e-mail accounts hosted by the Republican National Committee through its rnchq.org mail server. And it appears that Press Secretary Sean Spicer has at least twice so far posted his password to his official White House Twitter account.