Month: March 2017

Enlarge / Fire martial texting a message on his cell phone. (credit: Getty Images | yougottalove)

AT&T has won a lucrative contract to build and manage a nationwide public safety network for America's police, firefighters, and emergency medical services.

The First Responder Network Authority, or FirstNet, was authorized by the federal government in 2012 and operates as an independent authority within the US Department of Commerce. AT&T has just been selected by FirstNet to build the wireless network and said that construction will begin later this year.

"FirstNet will provide 20MHz of high-value, telecommunications spectrum and success-based payments of $6.5 billion over the next five years to support the network buildout," AT&T said in its announcement. FirstNet's spectrum is located in the 700MHz band often used for consumer LTE networks.

After this week, this quality portable port of The Oregon Trail will only be available to those who have previously bought and downloaded it.

That's because Nintendo will be shutting down the DSiWare shop on Friday, March 31. That will also be the last day to re-download games you've previously purchased on any old Nintendo DSi or DSi XL systems you have lying around. Games you've already downloaded should work just fine until the hardware fails.

Points you don't want to use right now can be transferred to be used on the 3DS eShop, and downloaded games can even be transferred to a newer 3DS system for future-proofing. Most DSiWare games are also still available on new hardware through the 3DS eShop, though a few will be lost for good after Friday (and the older downloadable games can look a bit funky on the 3DS' newer screen, too).

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Jack Clark)

Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, announced late Wednesday that a widely used pesticide will remain available to farmers, despite agency scientists recommending last year that it be banned due to neurotoxicity risks to farm workers and children.

The pesticide, chlorpyrifos, made by Dow Chemical, is used on tens of thousands of farms in the country to protect dozens of different crops from a variety of insects. However, decades of research following its 1965 debut has found that the pesticide can harm the human respiratory, cardiovascular, and nervous systems. Animal and human studies have linked exposure to declines in learning and memory. When chlorpyrifos was commonly used in household bug sprays, babies exposed prenatally via cord blood showed structural abnormalities in brain regions linked to attention, memory, language, and impulse control.

In 2000, the EPA banned its use from most household products. The agency also began tightening restrictions on its use on farms. In 2007, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Pesticide Action Network North America filed a petition to have chlorpyrifos banned all together. After more research and some debate from an expert scientific review panel of academic scientists, EPA scientists concluded that chlorpyrifos was causing significant health risks, particularly to farm workers and children, and should be banned.

Enlarge (credit: The Washington Post / Getty Images News)

Three legal advocacy organizations have published a new guide for criminal defense attorneys who are defending more than 200 people who are accused of accessing Playpen, a now-shuttered notorious child porn site that was only available as a Tor-hidden service.

The Playpen prosecutions, which are unfolding nationwide, have raised significant questions as to what the limits of government surveillance should be—and how much judicial and legislative oversight exists for authorized government hacking.

In order to find the suspects, federal authorities seized and operated the site for 13 days before closing it down in 2015. During that period, the FBI deployed a Tor exploit that allowed them to find out those users’ real IP addresses. The use of Tor, which obscures and anonymizes IP addresses and browser user agents, makes it significantly more difficult for individuals to be tracked online. With the exploit, it became extremely easy for suspects to be identified and located. The Department of Justice has called this exploit a "network investigative technique," (NIT) while many security experts have dubbed it as "malware."