Month: July 2017

(credit: Free Press)

Are you ever frustrated about a lack of choice for home Internet providers? Well, worry no more. The nation's top cable lobby group is here to let you know that the US is simply overflowing in broadband competition.

In a new post titled, "America's competitive TV and Internet markets," NCTA-The Internet & Television Association says that Internet competition statistics are in great shape as long as you factor in slow DSL networks and smartphone access.

Competition isn’t just the rule in television, it defines broadband markets as well. In spite of living in one of the largest and most rural nations, 88 percent of American consumers can choose from at least two wired Internet service providers. When you include competition from mobile and satellite broadband providers, much of America is home to multiple competing ISPs leveraging different and ever-improving technologies. This competition has led to rapid progress in the quality of consumer internet connections with average peak speeds in America quadrupling over the last five years, from 23.4 Mbps to 86.5 Mbps and the average price per megabit dropping 90 percent in 10 years, from $9.01 per megabit per second to $0.89 per megabit per second.

Many Americans who feel that they have only one viable choice for home broadband might think that cable lobbyists are describing an alternate reality. But it's easy to see the difference between NCTA marketing and Internet users' actual experiences. Yes, if you factor in any wireline home Internet provider offering any speed, then US customers can generally choose between a fast cable network and a slow DSL one. But if one of your two options isn't fast enough to meet your needs, then there's really just one choice.

(credit: Chris Foresman)

You'll see no mention of the iPod nano or iPod shuffle on Apple's website anymore. Today, the company removed the two media players from its website, and reports suggest the company is discontinuing both devices. A report from Business Insider includes a statement from an Apple spokesperson citing the "simplifying" of the iPod lineup.

"Today, we are simplifying our iPod lineup with two models of iPod touch now with double the capacity starting at just $199 and we are discontinuing the iPod shuffle and iPod nano," reads the statement from an Apple spokesperson.

Some of the most affordable products in Apple's lineup, the iPod nano started at $149 and the iPod shuffle started at $49. Both devices have been sitting on the back burner for a while: Apple hasn't introduced a meaningful update to either device since 2012, only adding new colors options for both in 2015.

Enlarge / The LG G6.

Another year, another proclamation from LG that its flagship smartphone isn't selling as well as expected. Last year it was the LG G5, when the company blamed a bad quarter on "weak sales of [the] G5." The year before that, it was the LG G4, which had sales that "fell short of expectations." This year it's the LG G6—in its latest earnings report, LG blamed the "challenging" quarter on “weaker than expected premium smartphone sales and increase in component costs.”

A a whole, LG is doing fine, with the company reporting that "Three of the company’s four main business units reported higher revenues than a year ago." Home Appliances, Home Entertainment, and Vehicle components are the three seeing improvements, while the mobile division is lagging behind.

LG's strategy with the G6 never made a ton of sense, seeming like it was only aiming for "second place" behind Samsung. LG launched the G6 in 2017 but used Qualcomm's old 2016 SoC, the Snapdragon 821. At the launch event for the G6, LG said it shipped last year's SoC in this year's phone in a bid to get to market faster than the Snapdragon 835 devices. By the time LG finally got around to launching the G6 in the US, though, it was already one week after the Galaxy S8 launch event. If LG had planned to beat Samsung and other Snapdragon 835 devices to market, that lead seemed to have evaporated at some point. The G6 technically had a three-week head start on the S8, but by the time the G6 was available the S8 launch event already happened, the phone was unveiled, and Samsung was already taking preorders.

(credit: Zach Copley)

Yesterday morning we reported on the arrest of a Russian man suspected of running a $4 billion dollar money laundering scheme. Later in the day, US officials released the indictment against the suspect, Alexander Vinnik.

That indictment reveals that the alleged $4 billion money laundering operation was actually BTC-e, one of the internet's most popular Bitcoin exchanges. According to the feds, BTC-e didn't comply with anti-money laundering laws that require financial businesses to collect information about their customers and report suspicious activity to the authorities. As a result, it became popular with ransomware authors looking to cash in their ill-gotten bitcoins and drug traffickers and other criminals looking to move money around the world.

The feds also suggest that Vinnik was a central figure in the massive bitcoin theft that was a major factor in the downfall of Mt. Gox, the Japanese Bitcoin exchange that led the market in Bitcoin's early years. If those allegations are confirmed, it would lay to rest one of the biggest unsolved crimes in the Bitcoin world.

Enlarge (credit: Getty | BSIP)

Men’s spunk may be getting noticeably less spunky in some high-income countries, according to a meta-analysis of international swimmers.

Skimming and re-examining sperm data from 185 past independent studies, researchers estimated that sperm counts of men from select high-income regions—North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe—dropped about 52 percent between 1973 to 2011, from 99 million sperm per milliliter to about 47 million per milliliter. Likewise, estimates of total sperm count per batch dropped 59 percent, from 337.5 million in 1973 to 137.5 million in 2011.

The researchers, led by Hagai Levine of Hebrew University, also looked at data from what they referred to as “other” countries, including some in South America, Asia and Africa. They saw no trends in these places, but they also had relatively little data from them.