Month: August 2017

Data cap cash. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

A company that tracks ISPs and data caps in the US has identified 196 home Internet providers that impose monthly caps on Internet users. Not all of them are enforced, but customers of many ISPs must pay overage fees when they use too much data.

BroadbandNow, a broadband provider search site that gets referral fees from some ISPs, has more than 2,500 home Internet providers in its database. This list includes telecommunications providers that are registered to provide service under the government's Lifeline program, which subsidizes access for poor people. BroadbandNow's team looked through the ISPs' websites to generate a list of those with data caps.

The data cap information was "pulled directly from ISP websites," BroadbandNow Director of Content Jameson Zimmer told Ars. "For those that have multiple caps, we include the lowest one and an asterisk to show that they have regional variation."

Enlarge (credit: Instagram, Apple)

Apple isn't the most social tech company in the sense that it doesn't use Facebook, Twitter, or other social media much. But that's going to change now, at least a bit, with the launch of @Apple on Instagram. The company recently created this new account on the photo sharing app (which is owned by Facebook), and it appears to be a way for Apple to show off iPhone photography for now.

There are currently nine posts on the new Instagram account, all of which are slideshows of iPhone photographers' work. In the "hello" introduction post, Apple describes the slideshows and short videos as looks "through the lens of iPhone users around the world." Each post has a caption that details the photographers of each picture, including their Instagram handles, and a description of each photograph written by the photographers themselves. All the posts also include the #ShotoniPhone hashtag, which Apple also encourages users to tag their photos with if they want to be considered for inclusion in a new photo montage.

Apple uses the "Shot on iPhone" tagline in many of its advertisements, so it's a natural fit for such a photo-centric social media outlet. The company already has a few Instagram accounts for some of its other services including Apple Music, iTunes, and the Beats 1 radio station, and it makes sense for the company to create one almost as an extension of the "Shot on iPhone" ad campaign.

An example of a lysianassid amphipod. (credit: Hans Hillewaert)

After an intense football match Saturday in Australia, 16-year-old Sam Kanizay dipped his legs into the chilly waters off Melbourne’s coast, hoping to soothe his sore muscles. Half-an-hour later he stepped out, bleeding profusely from countless tiny bites.

The gory and bizarre scenario is now making international headlines. The images of his feet and ankles (here and here) really are quite disturbing (you’ve been warned). But the incident left medical professionals initially confused and media reports garbled. Some blamed the vicious attack on wee crustaceans called isopods, or “sea lice,” but experts are trying to clear up that error.

In a press statement Monday, local authorities reported that marine scientists had identified the flesh-eaters as lysianassid amphipods, a type of scavenging crustacean sometimes called “sea fleas.” They’re not known for swarming and attacking people. But scientists have long studied their affinity for flesh and ability to sniff it out in warm, cool, deep, and shallow waters around the world. Typically, they descend upon carcasses of marine animals and munch away the meat, tiny-bite by tiny-bite.