Serial over-promiser Peter Molyneux promises to stop over-promising

Designer breaks a year of self-imposed press exile with reflective interview.

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Nearly a year after promising to "completely stop talking to the press," famed game designer Peter Molyneux is... talking to the press. Specifically, he's breaking his silence in a wide-ranging and reflective interview with Eurogamer to promote Godus Wars, a new real-time strategy twist on the faltering god game.

To be fair, a year is a long time for a serial over-promiser like Molyneux to keep publicly quiet about what he's working on. The direct cause of the long silence, as Molyneux himself admits directly to Eurogamer, was a February 2015 Rock Paper Shotgun interview that led off with the blunt question "Do you think that you're a pathological liar?"

"It was one of the most bruising moments of my life," Molyneux told Eurogamer. "My world changed after that interview. ... That was the point where I said, this is just not going to work. To be called a pathological liar, which he said at the start... it's just not going to work, because how do you ever gain people's trust and belief after a journalist says that?"

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Comcast shrugs off years of cord-cutting losses, adds 89K TV customers

Though broadband has more customers, Comcast’s cable TV is a bigger money-maker.

(credit: Lynn Friedman)

Comcast has been steadily losing cable TV subscribers for years, but it turned things around in the most recent quarter by adding 89,000 video customers.

The 89,000 net additions in Q4 2015 was Comcast's best result on the video subscriber front in eight years, according to today's earnings release. Comcast did lose 36,000 video customers over the entire year, but even that was "the best result in nine years," Comcast said.

The broadband business continued to boom, meanwhile, with net additions of 460,000 in the quarter and 1.4 million for the year. Overall, Comcast now has 22.3 million video customers, 23.3 million Internet customers, and 11.5 million phone customers. The phone business added 139,000 subscribers in the quarter and 282,000 during the full year. Many of the additions came from existing customers adding a service. Comcast's total customer base increased by 281,000 in the quarter and 666,000 in 2015 for a new total of 27.7 million.

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eBay has no plans to fix “severe” bug that allows malware distribution [Updated]

Clever “JSF**K” technique allows hackers to bypass eBay block of JavaScript.

eBay has no plans to fix a "severe" vulnerability that allows attackers to use the company's trusted website to distribute malicious code and phishing pages, researchers from security firm Check Point Software said.

The vulnerability allows attackers to bypass a key restriction that prevents user posts from hosting JavaScript code that gets executed on end-user devices. eBay has long enforced the limitation to prevent scammers from creating auction pages that execute dangerous code or content when they're viewed by unsuspecting users. Using a highly specialized coding technique known as JSFUCK, hackers can work around this safeguard. The technique allows eBay users to insert JavaScript into their posts that will call a variety of different payloads that can be tailored to the specific browser and device of the visitor.

"An attacker could target eBay users by sending them a legitimate page that contains malicious code," Check Point researcher Oded Vanunu wrote in a blog post published Tuesday. "Customers can be tricked into opening the page, and the code will then be executed by the user's browser or mobile app, leading to multiple ominous scenarios that range from phishing to binary download."

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Fitbit’s new Alta fitness tracker is all about that bling

Fitbit’s new Alta fitness tracker is all about that bling

Fitbit’s latest fitness tracker is one that the company hopes you won’t be embarrassed to be seen wearing as an accessory. Instead of being ugly and stuffed with exercise-based bells and whistles, the Fitbit Alta is limited in its abilities. But it’s arguably the best-looking Fitbit wristband so far. That’s not to say the Alta isn’t […]

Fitbit’s new Alta fitness tracker is all about that bling is a post from: Liliputing

Fitbit’s new Alta fitness tracker is all about that bling

Fitbit’s latest fitness tracker is one that the company hopes you won’t be embarrassed to be seen wearing as an accessory. Instead of being ugly and stuffed with exercise-based bells and whistles, the Fitbit Alta is limited in its abilities. But it’s arguably the best-looking Fitbit wristband so far. That’s not to say the Alta isn’t […]

Fitbit’s new Alta fitness tracker is all about that bling is a post from: Liliputing

Xitore NVM-X: NVDIMMs mit TByte-Kapazität und RAM-Geschwindigkeit geplant

Das Start-up Xitore hat NVDIMMs angekündigt, die so schnell wie RAM und so groß wie eine SSD sein sollen. Konkret spricht der Hersteller von satten 26 GByte pro Sekunde und immerhin 4 TByte Kapazität. (NVDIMM, Speichermedien)

Das Start-up Xitore hat NVDIMMs angekündigt, die so schnell wie RAM und so groß wie eine SSD sein sollen. Konkret spricht der Hersteller von satten 26 GByte pro Sekunde und immerhin 4 TByte Kapazität. (NVDIMM, Speichermedien)

Phishing-Angriff: Nutzer sollen Amazon-Zertifikat installieren

Phishing-Angriffe gehören zu den nervigen Alltäglichkeiten von Internetnutzern. Eine spezielle Masche versucht jetzt, Android-Nutzer zur Installation eines angeblichen Sicherheitszertifikates zu bewegen. Komisch, dass das Zertifikat die Endung .apk aufweist. (Phishing, Amazon)

Phishing-Angriffe gehören zu den nervigen Alltäglichkeiten von Internetnutzern. Eine spezielle Masche versucht jetzt, Android-Nutzer zur Installation eines angeblichen Sicherheitszertifikates zu bewegen. Komisch, dass das Zertifikat die Endung .apk aufweist. (Phishing, Amazon)

North Korea plans to try again to orbit satellite (and test ICBM tech)

Launch planned for later this month prompts calls for more sanctions by US.

The Unha-3 rocket, the platform for North Korea's (sort of) successful satellite launch in 2012. Another launch has been announced for February.

Watch the skies. In an alert filed with the United Nations' International Maritime Organization, the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (otherwise known as North Korea) announced plans to launch a satellite sometime in February. The nation also provided warnings for the areas where its boost stages might plummet back to the surface. Japan's Ministry of Defense has since announced that Japan will shoot down the rocket if it flies toward Japan.

The launch, from North Korea's western coast near its border with China, will likely be the latest version of North Korea's Kwangmyŏngsŏng ("Bright Star") satellite series, aboard the latest version of the Unha ("Galaxy") rocket. The splash locations given by North Korea for the launch—the first stage landing in the Yellow Sea between South Korea and China and the second in the Philippine Sea east of the Philippines—are nearly identical to those of North Korea's last orbital effort.

The launch announcement comes just a month after a surprise nuclear weapons test in which the regime of Kim Jong-un claimed to have detonated a thermonuclear bomb. North Korea also claims to have developed a miniaturized nuclear warhead that could be placed atop a ballistic missile, though US intelligence officials have downplayed those reports.

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Counter-Strike: Spieler treibt mehr als 3.000 Cheater in Sperre

Mit manipulierten Multihacks will ein Spieler mehr als 3.000 andere Spieler von Counter-Strike in die Fänge von Valve Anti Cheat getrieben haben – also in eine Sperre. Ein Teil der Community schimpft, aber viele andere zeigen sich dankbar. (Counter-Strike, Valve)

Mit manipulierten Multihacks will ein Spieler mehr als 3.000 andere Spieler von Counter-Strike in die Fänge von Valve Anti Cheat getrieben haben - also in eine Sperre. Ein Teil der Community schimpft, aber viele andere zeigen sich dankbar. (Counter-Strike, Valve)

Fitbit attempts to win over fashionistas with new Alta wristband

The $129 tracker is customizable with metal, leather, and plastic bands.

(credit: Fitbit)

Fitbit isn't starting off 2016 slowly. The company announced the new Blaze fitness watch at CES last month, and another device is coming from the king of the activity-tracker world. Today Fitbit announced the $129 Alta, a slender activity tracker with customizable bands meant to appeal to those who don't want to be identified as "that person wearing a tracker on their wrist."

Let's examine the Alta in comparison to its price twin, the $129 Fitbit Charge. First and most important is the difference in design. While the Charge's plastic band comes in various bright colors, the Alta comes with a few colored plastic options, but you can buy $99 metal and $59 leather accessories as well. The Charge has a small digital display and companion button for scrolling through time, activity progress, and call alerts. The Alta is Fitbit's first lower-cost tracker with a full OLED touchscreen that you can tap to see similar information. The Alta will also show you a few more notifications, including text and calendar alerts, which are synced from your smartphone.

In terms of what they track, the Alta and the Charge are nearly identical. They both monitor steps, workouts, and sleep, although the Alta will send you inactivity alerts. The Alta also has the Smart Track feature, which will automatically recognize when you're doing a specific activity like running, cycling, playing soccer or basketball, and more. Interestingly, the Charge lists an altimeter in its spec list, which helps it track stairs climbed, while the Alta does not. Also, the Alta has a slightly shorter battery life compared to the Charge—just five days compared to seven to 10 days—but that can likely be attributed to its full touchscreen.

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