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(credit: Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock)

A year after the Federal Communications Commission changed the definition of broadband Internet to include only faster speeds, Republicans in Congress are still mad about the decision.

Using the new broadband minimum speed of 25Mbps download and 3Mbps upload, the FCC's annual review of deployment this month said that broadband isn't being offered to about 34 million Americans. ISPs immediately criticized that assessment; yesterday their friends in Congress piled on.

Six Republican Senators—Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Roger Wicker (R-Mich.), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.)—outlined their concerns in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler yesterday. (The Hill reported on the letter and posted a copy.) "We are concerned that this arbitrary 25/3 Mbps benchmark fails to accurately capture what most Americans consider broadband... Looking at the market for broadband applications, we are aware of few applications that require download speeds of 25Mbps," the senators wrote. "Netflix, for example, recommends a download speed of 5Mbps to receive high-definition streaming video, and Amazon recommends a speed of 3.5Mbps. In addition, according to the FCC's own data, the majority of Americans who can purchase 25Mbps service choose not to."

Enlarge / KrebsOnSecurity published this photo in July 2013 after foiling a plot to frame him for purchasing heroin. (credit: KrebsOnSecurity)

A Ukrainian hacker accused of trying to frame security reporter Brian Krebs for heroin possession has pleaded guilty to credit card fraud and illegally accessing more than 13,000 computers.

Sergey Vovnenko, 29, entered guilty pleas earlier this week to charges of aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He was accused of operating a botnet of more than 13,000 computers, which he used to harvest users' credit card data and other sensitive information. He used aliases including "Flycracker," "Centurion," and "Darklife."

In a blog post, KrebsOnSecurity's namesake wrote:

A fossilized lycopsid—a tree-sized relative of club moss—buried by Carboniferous sediment. (credit: Wikimedia)

It made for a neat story:

Question: Why did so much of the world’s coal form during the geologic period we now call the Carboniferous?

Answer: Large tree-like plants evolved before fungi evolved the ability to break down the fibrous lignin that helped give the plants structure. With nothing to make them decay, their remains were free to pile up and yield thick coal deposits.

It’s a neat story, but, a new study led by Stanford’s Matthew Nelsen argues, it’s not true.

While coal deposits formed both before and after the Carboniferous, this period provided the mother lode. It occurred a bit over 300 million years ago and was a funky time that saw relatives of club mosses grow to the size of trees while insects also reached comparatively gigantic proportions due to the higher-than-modern oxygen concentration.

Those following virtual reality developments woke up to some surprising news this morning, with headlines blaring that Frontier's high-profile space sim Elite: Dangerous was dropping Oculus Rift support in favor of the SteamVR-powered HTC Vive. Those headlines were especially surprising considering that Elite: Dangerous had been one of the best showcases for the Oculus Rift development kits so far (just ask our own Lee Hutchinson).

It turns out that those initial headlines were wrong—or at the very least misleading. Elite: Dangerous is still planned for the Oculus Rift, as it has been all along. "This is not true. I wish people would check their facts," Elite CEO David Braben tweeted in response to one of those early headlines.

The source of the confusion seems to be a statement Frontier gave to Eurogamer, saying that "right now, we've chosen to focus on SteamVR. We haven't cut an exclusivity deal with any VR manufacturer, and we're still working with Oculus on Rift support."