Month: December 2017

Enlarge / Then-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler with current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai testify before the House Judiciary Committee about Internet regulation on March 25, 2015 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla )

Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler took aim at his successor's plan to eliminate net neutrality rules today, saying that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is selling out consumers and entrepreneurs at the behest of major Internet service providers.

"ISP monopoly carriers have been trying for four years to get to this point," Wheeler said, pointing to a 2013 story in The Washington Post about how telecoms were trying to "shift regulation of their broadband businesses to other agencies that don't have nearly as much power as the FCC."

Pai's elimination of net neutrality rules, scheduled for a vote on December 14, will also shift consumer protection responsibility to the Federal Trade Commission and forbid state and local governments from writing their own net neutrality rules.

Enlarge (credit: Kari Greer/USFS Gila National Forest)

Tuesday evening, Columbia University's Earth Institute hosted a panel that was meant to focus on an issue we're likely to be facing with increasing frequency: the need to move entire communities that are no longer viable due to rising seas or altered weather. But the discussion ended up shifting to how people in at-risk locations aren't moving, and the entire governmental structure in the US is focused on keeping them right where they are.

As a result, the entire US population is already paying for climate change, whether we accept the science behind it or not. And things will almost certainly get worse.

Staying put

That's not to say that climate-driven migrations aren't an issue. They've happened in a number of countries, and the panel noted that China, in particular, has been fairly aggressive about moving communities that the government feels cost too much to support. It's also happening a bit in the US with coastal villages in Alaska and Louisiana. But the wildfires on the edge of urban areas in California provided the panel with a perfect backdrop: climate risks in areas we're not just going to walk away from.

Enlarge / Justice. (credit: iStock / Getty Images Plus)

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in favor of a Virginia man who, as a teen, was once ordered by a lower court to be photographed while masturbating in the presence of armed police officers.

That warrant was ostensibly part of an ongoing sexting investigation into the then-teen, Trey Sims, who had exchanged explicit messages with his then-15-year-old girlfriend. Her mother reported the incident to the Manassas City Police Department in January 2014.

Eventually, the detective assigned to the case, David Abbott, obtained a signed warrant to take photographs of Sims' naked body—including "the suspect’s erect penis"—so that he could compare them to Sims' explicit messages.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty)

When Valve first started accepting Bitcoin as an option for Steam purchases last April, the cryptocurrency was trading around $450. Today, with Bitcoin surging past $12,000 per coin, Valve has announced that "Steam will no longer support Bitcoin as a payment method on our platform due to high fees and volatility in the value of Bitcoin."

Transaction fees charged to customers using Bitcoin have surged throughout 2017, Valve says, peaking at $20 last week from a starting of about $0.20 when Steam first started using the currency. With Valve unable to control these blockchain-linked costs (passed on from third-party Bitpay), the company worried that it was leading to "unreasonably high costs for purchasing games when paying with Bitcoin" (though apparently these are costs Bitcoin users as a whole have been willing to shoulder of late).

Bitcoin's extremely volatile valuation has also gotten in the way of its usefulness for Steam users, Valve said. With Bitcoin values changing so rapidly, the amount of Bitcoin needed to cover a purchase can change significantly between the time a purchase is initiated and when it's completed. Fixing this situation with a quick refund or a request for additional payment incurs more of those high transaction fees, Valve says.

Enlarge / Intel's XMM 7560 modem is, like Qualcomm's X16 modem, capable of gigabit speeds. (credit: Intel)

Central to the promise of a new generation of Windows 10 on ARM PCs (the first two of which were announced yesterday) is the idea of being "Always Connected:" that your mobile PC, like your smartphone, is almost always online, using Wi-Fi where it's available or LTE where it isn't.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 ARM processors are a good match for this because they integrate Qualcomm's X16 LTE modem. Paired with the right mobile network and antenna hardware, the modem is capable of downloading at gigabit speeds. But Intel and AMD have both been keen to highlight that you don't need an ARM processor for this kind of connectivity—and you might not need one for the other claimed ARM advantages either.

AMD announced a collaboration with Qualcomm to produce machines using its new Ryzen Mobile processors along with Qualcomm LTE modems, offering the same LTE performance as you'd get with a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.

Enlarge (credit: Citizen Lab)

Researchers have uncovered a nefarious but comically incompetent spyware campaign that's targeting Ethiopian dissidents in the US, UK, and other countries.

A report published Wednesday morning by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab said the campaign, which has operated for at least 14 months, is carried out using hacking tools sold by Cyberbit, a wholly owned subsidiary of Elbit Systems, an Israeli company whose shares are sold on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Log files left unprotected on the Internet showed people inside Ethiopia using the spyware in an attempt to surreptitiously surveil journalists, researchers, and activists in 20 countries.

The report is the latest to expose the shady world of commercial spyware, which often sells potent hacking tools to countries with known human rights abuses. Previous companies caught selling surveillance wares to rogue nations include UK-based Gamma Group, Italy-based Hacking Team, and NSO Group of Israel. Use of Elbit-owned Cyberbit tools to spy on Ethiopian dissidents all but confirms the Israeli company does the same thing.

Enlarge / Picture of the US embassy in Havana, taken on October 3, 2017. (credit: Getty | YAMIL LAGE)

American victims of mysterious attacks in Cuba have abnormalities in their brains’ white matter, according to new medical testing reported by the Associated Press. But, so far, it’s unclear how or if the white-matter anomalies seen in the victims relate to their symptoms.

White matter is made up of dense nerve fibers that connect neurons in different areas of the brain, forming networks. It gets its name from the light-colored electrical insulation, myelin, that coats the fibers. Overall, the tissue is essential for rapidly transmitting brain signals critical for learning and cognitive function.

In August, US authorities first acknowledged that American diplomats and their spouses stationed in Havana, Cuba, had been the targets of puzzling attacks for months. The attacks were carried out by unknown agents and for unknown reasons, using a completely baffling weaponry. The attacks were sometimes marked by bizarrely targeted and piercing noises or vibrations, but other times they were completely imperceptible.