FBI chief Comey: “We have never had absolute privacy”

650 phones are “a brick to us… Those are cases unmade, evidence unfound.”

(credit: Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO—FBI Director James Comey has some phones—650 of them, to be exact—that he'd really, really like to take a look at.

Right now, the FBI can't read the data on those phones, because it's encrypted. For Comey, that's a problem. In remarks to the American Bar Association on Friday, he made it clear this is an issue he intends to bring up before Congress next year.

While nothing other than the election will get politicians' attention during the next few months, Comey told the audience that he intends to gather data about how the problem of encryption, which he calls "going dark," is affecting his agents' work. Then, he'll present the findings to Congress.

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Dealmaster: Save 30 percent on Lenovo ThinkPad notebooks

Plus additional deals on desktops, monitors, No Man’s Sky, and more.

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our partners at TechBargains, we have a big list of deals to share. One of the highlights lets you save big on a number of Lenovo devices: now you can get 30 percent off ThinkPad laptops, including the X1 Carbon and T460 notebooks. Considering Lenovo only offers the occasional 15 percent off, this deal is worth taking advantage of if you've had your eye on a particular laptop for a while.

Check out the rest of the deals below.

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Facebook plans to show ads even if you’re using an ad blocker

Facebook plans to show ads even if you’re using an ad blocker

There’s a lot of free, ad-supported content on the internet. You can search the web, read the news, and watch cat videos for free. And even though Hulu is moving to a subscription-only service, you can still (legally) watch plenty of TV shows and movies without paying a penny.

But according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, more than a quarter of folks surfing the web in the US are using ad-blocking software, and while plenty of people are willing to pay for some content (like Netflix or maybe the Wall Street Journal), there are a lot of people who aren’t paying for news… which has led some newsrooms to scale back operations, some popular blogs to close up shop, and other internet sites to take different approaches toward the challenge of trying to pay for the services they offer.

Continue reading Facebook plans to show ads even if you’re using an ad blocker at Liliputing.

Facebook plans to show ads even if you’re using an ad blocker

There’s a lot of free, ad-supported content on the internet. You can search the web, read the news, and watch cat videos for free. And even though Hulu is moving to a subscription-only service, you can still (legally) watch plenty of TV shows and movies without paying a penny.

But according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, more than a quarter of folks surfing the web in the US are using ad-blocking software, and while plenty of people are willing to pay for some content (like Netflix or maybe the Wall Street Journal), there are a lot of people who aren’t paying for news… which has led some newsrooms to scale back operations, some popular blogs to close up shop, and other internet sites to take different approaches toward the challenge of trying to pay for the services they offer.

Continue reading Facebook plans to show ads even if you’re using an ad blocker at Liliputing.

Adblocker: Facebook will Werbeblocker aushebeln

Werbung auf Facebook soll künftig nicht mehr durch Werbeblocker unterdrückt werden können. Gleichzeitig sollen Nutzer die angezeigte Werbung besser auf ihre Interessen einstellen können. (Facebook, Soziales Netz)

Werbung auf Facebook soll künftig nicht mehr durch Werbeblocker unterdrückt werden können. Gleichzeitig sollen Nutzer die angezeigte Werbung besser auf ihre Interessen einstellen können. (Facebook, Soziales Netz)

Soylent Coffee: Nootropics, fat, carbs, protein—but will it give you the toots?

Soylent makes a break for the breakfast table with “Coffiest” and “Soylent Bar.”

It’s been two years since we took our first sip of Soylent (which means it’s been two years since a few thousand people started following me on Twitter because I talked about farts). The liquid food product has been through a bunch of iterations since, including a premixed variant, but it’s remained essentially the same product: a beige liquid of indeterminate taste that purports to give your body everything it needs to survive. But today, Soylent founder Rob Rhinehart announced that the company is moving in a new direction: breakfast.

This morning’s announcement marks the release of Coffiest, Soylent’s first spin-off product. The new offering has the same ingredient makeup, nutritional mix, and 47/33/20 percent fat/carb/protein calorie distribution as the 2.0 premixed version, but it also adds coffee flavoring, 150mg of caffeine per serving, and 75mg of the nootropic L-theanine. According to Rhinehart, a bottle of Coffiest supplies the drinker with about 400 kilocalories and about 20 percent of the daily recommended values for "all essential vitamins and minerals." Soylent provided us with a copy of the drink's nutritional information sheet for folks who want to take a peek.

"A lot of people are skipping breakfast," Rhinehart told Ars in a phone interview. "We wanted to provide a convenient and also really tasty option for them to enjoy in the morning."

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Micron unveils 3D NAND flash storage for smartphones

In an effort to squeeze more storage capacity into flash storage, companies have been developing 3D NAND technology which stacks memory cells on top of one another to increase storage densities.
Now Micron has introduced its first 3D NAND memory optimi…

Micron unveils 3D NAND flash storage for smartphones

In an effort to squeeze more storage capacity into flash storage, companies have been developing 3D NAND technology which stacks memory cells on top of one another to increase storage densities.

Now Micron has introduced its first 3D NAND memory optimized for mobile devices, which means we could start seeing the technology used in smartphones.

There are already some solid state disks on the market that use 3D NAND, but most are aimed at desktop, notebooks, or servers.

Continue reading Micron unveils 3D NAND flash storage for smartphones at Liliputing.

Wow cable promises gigabit Internet service in five cities by year-end

ISP promises “competitive” price, will compete against Google Fiber, AT&T.

(credit: Virginia Tech)

Wow, a cable company, is the latest ISP to announce gigabit Internet plans. By the end of this year, Wow promises to offer gigabit speeds to "thousands of residential and business customers" in Huntsville and Auburn, Alabama; Evansville, Indiana; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan.

Wow will offer symmetrical gigabit using fiber-to-the-home in Grosse Point, but the other cities may end up with cable. Using newer DOCSIS technology, Wow can offer gigabit download speeds over cable. But cable upload speeds will be just 50Mbps, a Wow spokesperson told Ars today.

The spokesperson declined to provide specific launch dates and prices, saying, "As we turn up each market later this year we will be announcing our very competitive pricing." Pricing may have to be as low as $70 a month for gigabit service to be competitive against Google Fiber and AT&T. Google hasn't turned on service in any of Wow's announced markets, but it has plans for Huntsville, Alabama. AT&T also plans to launch gigabit Internet in Huntsville by the end of 2016.

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IPv6 router bug: Juniper spins out hotfix to thwart DDoS attacks

Vulnerability common to devices routing IPv6; Cisco offered partial fix in July.

Juniper Networks has found and mostly patched a flaw in the way the firmware on its routers process IPv6 traffic, which allowed malicious users to simulate Direct Denial of Service attacks.

The vulnerability, which seems to be common to all devices processing IPv6 address, meant that purposely crafted neighbour discovery packets could be used to flood the routing engine from a remote or unauthenticated source, causing it to stop processing legitimate traffic, and leading to a DDoS condition.

According to Juniper's advisory report:

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Powerup Backpack: Rucksack überwacht Temperaturen und lädt HP-Notebooks

Rucksäcke gibt es von HP schon lange – meist Werbegeschenke oder einfaches Zubehör ohne besondere Funktion. Der Powerup Backpack ist direkt für den technisch interessierten Nutzer gedacht, der beim Tragen damit seine Geräte aufladen kann. Aber nicht jedes Notebook kann versorgt werden. (HP, Notebook)

Rucksäcke gibt es von HP schon lange - meist Werbegeschenke oder einfaches Zubehör ohne besondere Funktion. Der Powerup Backpack ist direkt für den technisch interessierten Nutzer gedacht, der beim Tragen damit seine Geräte aufladen kann. Aber nicht jedes Notebook kann versorgt werden. (HP, Notebook)

Olympics fan claims Twitter killed his account after he posted Rio videos

Venezuelan tweeter says short clips were legal under local laws—Twitter disagrees.

Venezuelan free software activist Luigino Bracci Roa has claimed that his Twitter account was closed down permanently by the US company without any prior warning, after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) complained about videos he had posted on the micro-blogging service.

The @Lubrio account was popular: Bracci says that he tweeted 133,000 times since he created the account in 2008, and had garnered nearly 43,000 followers in that time.

On his blog, Bracci shared the letters of complaint sent by the IOC to Twitter, which show that the committee did not demand that his account be shut down, but instead asked Twitter to "immediately and permanently remove the material" from its website. That's hardly surprising given the IOC's attempts to impose strict controls on all media outlets and how they use material connected with the Olympics.

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