Category Archives: Technology

Comcast Resists Call To Stop Its Misleading '10G Network' Claims

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Jon Brodkin reports via Ars Technica: An advertising industry group urged Comcast to stop its “10G” ads or modify them to state that 10G is an “aspirational” technology rather than something the company actually provides on its cable network today. The National Advertising Division (NAD), part of the advertising industry’s self-regulatory system run by BBB National Programs, ruled against Comcast after a challenge lodged by T-Mobile. In its decision announced Thursday, the NAD recommended that Comcast “discontinue its ’10G’ claims” or “modify its advertising to (a) make clear that it is implementing improvements that will enable it to achieve ’10G’ and that it is aspirational or (b) use ’10G’ in a manner that is not false or misleading, consistent with this decision.”

Comcast plans to appeal the decision, so it won’t make any changes to marketing immediately. If Comcast loses the appeal and agrees to change its practices, it would affect more than just a few ads because Comcast now calls its entire broadband network “10G.” “In February 2023, Comcast rebranded its fixed Internet network as ‘Xfinity 10G Network’ to signify technological upgrades to its network that are continuing to be implemented,” the NAD said. Comcast’s website claims that the “Xfinity 10G Network is already here! You’ll see continual increases in network speed and reliability. No action is required on your part to join the Xfinity 10G Network.” It also claims that 10G is “complementary” to the 5G mobile network.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Comcast Resists Call To Stop Its Misleading ’10G Network’ Claims

What to expect amid the bevy of conflicting iPad rumors

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The 2022 iPad Air.

Enlarge / The 2022 iPad Air. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Over the past few days, there have been many conflicting rumors and reports, some from usually reliable sources, about Apple’s plans for the next wave of iPad updates. But on close examination, the rumors may not be as contradictory as it seems.

First up was an email blast from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman on Sunday. Noting that he had written in July that we would see iPad refreshes before the end of the year, he appeared to walk that back, writing, “a new entry-level iPad, iPad Air and iPad mini are all in development with faster chips, but I don’t believe updates of any significance are imminent.”

He pointed to his prior reporting that Apple plans a major iPad Pro update with an OLED screen next year, but not before 2023’s end.

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Source: Ars Technica – What to expect amid the bevy of conflicting iPad rumors

Disney's Gargoyles Is Getting a Live-Action Show From Producer James Wan

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One of Disney’s darkest shows may soon get a live-action revival. James Wan, the man who helped reinvent horror with Saw and Insidious (and made the mega-blockbusters Furious 7 and Aquaman) is teaming up with frequent collaborator Gary Dauberman to turn the 1990s Disney cartoon Gargoyles into a live-action series for…

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Source: Gizmodo – Disney’s Gargoyles Is Getting a Live-Action Show From Producer James Wan

Apple Plans To Update iPhones In-Store Without Opening the Boxes

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Malcolm Owen reports via AppleInsider: Writing in his “Power On” newsletter for Bloomberg, Mark Gurman claims that Apple has a system that can update the operating system of iPhones before they get sold. Crucially, it can do so without opening the box. Consisting of a “pad-like device,” store employees place unopened iPhone boxes onto it to trigger an update. The pad wirelessly turns on the iPhone, runs the software update, then turns it off again. While only iPhones are mentioned in the report, it’s plausible that the idea could be extended to other products in Apple’s catalog. It is claimed that consumers may benefit from the system at Apple Stores before the end of 2023.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Apple Plans To Update iPhones In-Store Without Opening the Boxes

Google, DOJ still blocking public access to monopoly trial docs, NYT says

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The logo for the board game Monopoly, complete with Uncle Pennybags, has been transformed to say Google.

Enlarge / Let’s see, you landed on my “Google Ads” space, and with three houses… that will be $1,400. (credit: Ron Amadeo / Hasbro)

Dozens of exhibits from the Google antitrust trial are still being hidden from the public, The New York Times Company alleged in a court filing today.

According to The Times, there are several issues with access to public trial exhibits on both sides. The Department of Justice has failed to post at least 68 exhibits on its website that were shared in the trial, The Times alleged, and states have not provided access to 18 records despite reporters’ requests.

Google’s responses to document requests have also been spotty, The Times alleged. Sometimes Google “has not responded at all” to requests to review public exhibits. Other times, Google responds, but “often does not provide the exhibit in its entirety,” The Times claimed, including limiting public access to “particular page(s) of the exhibit shown to a given witness.”

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Source: Ars Technica – Google, DOJ still blocking public access to monopoly trial docs, NYT says

AI helps decipher first text of “unreadable” ancient Herculaneum scroll

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x-ray image of across fragment showing lettering, with some marked in purple

Enlarge / The first words have been deciphered on a charred ancient scroll: “πορφυρας” which means “purple dye” or “cloths of purple.” (credit: Vesuvius Challenge/University of Kentucky)

Hundreds of badly charred ancient Roman scrolls found in a Roman villa have long been believed to be unreadable, but a 21-year-old computer science student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has successfully read the first text hidden within one of the rolled-up scrolls using a machine learning model. The achievement snagged Luke Farritor a $40,000 First Letters prize from the Vesuvius Challenge, a collaboration between private entrepreneurs and academics offering a series of rewards for milestones in deciphering the scrolls.

A second contestant, Youssef Nader, received a smaller $10,000 First Ink prize for essentially being the second person to decipher letters in a scroll. The main prize of $700,000 will be awarded to the first person to read four or more passages from one of the scrolls by December 31, and the founders are optimistic that this goal is achievable in light of these most recent breakthroughs.

As previously reported, the ancient Roman resort town Pompeii wasn’t the only city destroyed in the catastrophic 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Several other cities in the area, including the wealthy enclave of Herculaneum, were fried by clouds of hot gas called pyroclastic pulses and flows. But still, some remnants of Roman wealth survived. One palatial residence in Herculaneum—believed to have once belonged to a man named Piso —contained hundreds of priceless written scrolls made from papyrus, singed into carbon by volcanic gas.

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Source: Ars Technica – AI helps decipher first text of “unreadable” ancient Herculaneum scroll

Critical Role's Cast Has a Friendly Competition for Voice Roles

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Critical Role’s panel at New York Comic Con was full of questions about the popular web series—including its guest stars, recurring villains, and Matt Mercer’s uncanny ability to bring NPCs back from the dead. Or out of the shadows, whatever suits the story at any given time.

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Source: Gizmodo – Critical Role’s Cast Has a Friendly Competition for Voice Roles

Netflix Games Are Inching Ever Closer to Your TV

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Back in August, Netflix announced it would be continuing to build out its gaming realm—introduced with 2021’s rollout of mobile games—by testing bringing games to any device where people watch Netflix, including TVs and computers. Now, that plan is inching closer to reality.

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Source: Gizmodo – Netflix Games Are Inching Ever Closer to Your TV

After ChatGPT disruption, Stack Overflow lays off 28 percent of staff

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After ChatGPT disruption, Stack Overflow lays off 28 percent of staff

Enlarge (credit: Stack Overflow)

Stack Overflow used to be every developer’s favorite site for coding help, but with the rise of generative AI like ChatGPT, chatbots can offer more specific help than a 5-year-old forum post ever could. You can get instant corrections to your exact code, optimization suggestions, and explanations of what each line of code is doing. While no chatbot is 100 percent reliable, code has the unique ability to be instantly verified by just testing it in your IDE (integrated development environment), which makes it an ideal use case for chatbots. Where exactly does that leave sites like Stack Overflow? Apparently, not in a great situation. Today, CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar announced Stack Overflow is laying off 28 percent of its staff.

In a post on the Stack Overflow blog, the CEO says the company is on a “path to profitability” and “continued product innovation.” You might think of Stack Overflow as “just a forum,” but the company is working on a direct answer to ChatGPT in the form of “Overflow AI,” which was announced in July. Stack Overflow’s profitability plan includes cutting costs, and that’s the justification for the layoffs. Stack Overflow doubled its headcount in 2022 with 525 people. ChatGPT launched at the end of 2022, making for unfortunate timing.

Of course, the great irony of ChatGPT hurting Stack Overflow is that a great deal of the chatbot’s development prowess comes from scraping sites like Stack Overflow. Chatbots have many questions to answer about the sustainability of the web. They vacuum up all this data and give nothing back, so what is supposed to happen when you drive all your data sources out of business?

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Source: Ars Technica – After ChatGPT disruption, Stack Overflow lays off 28 percent of staff

Analogue is Making a 4K Nintendo 64

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Analogue, the company best known for modern takes on retro hardware, is turning its attention to the 64-bit era with the Analogue 3D, a reimagining of the Nintendo 64. From a report: The company says the new console will have “100 percent compatibility” with N64 cartridges in every region and will even support 4K output. It will also include “Original Display Modes featuring reference quality recreations of specific model CRTs and PVMs” for the purists out there, along with Bluetooth support and four controller ports. Today’s announcement is mostly a tease. While we have some details, there’s no word on price or a specific release date beyond 2024. Analogue isn’t even showing the hardware yet — right now, we just have these brief glimpses of what appears to be the console, as well as the wireless 8BitDo controller that’s launching alongside it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Analogue is Making a 4K Nintendo 64

Goldman Sachs might be trying to offload Apple's credit card and savings accounts

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Goldman Sachs, Apple’s banking partner for its credit card and high-yield savings account, is seemingly having doubts about those products. According to The Wall Street Journal, Goldman is looking to get out of the consumer lending business, which could have implications for Apple Card and the associated savings account.

The report suggests that several senior Goldman executives want the company to ditch its remaining consumer lending products — those it offers with Apple as well as the General Motors credit card. No final decision is said to have been made, though the future of Goldman’s consumer products may become a little clearer when the finance company reports its quarterly earnings on Tuesday.

Consumer lending efforts such as Apple Card may have been a mistake for Goldman. The business unit that oversees those and GreenSky (a “buy now, pay later” company Goldman bought for around $2.2 billion last year and is selling at a loss) has lost billions of dollars.

Meanwhile, Goldman has run afoul of regulators. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has investigated Goldman’s handling of credit card billing errors and refunds. Unlike with other card programs, Apple Card bills go out at the beginning of each month. That’s said to put more pressure on Goldman customer service workers who deal with complaints and billing issues. Issuing bills on a rolling basis may alleviate that strain. However, Goldman has reportedly been unsuccessful in convincing Apple to move to a more typical billing cycle.

If Goldman isn’t able to reduce expenses for its credit cards, it may try to sell the Apple and GM partnerships, according to the report. That may prove a difficult prospect, given that customers have deposited billions of dollars into Apple savings accounts. If Goldman manages to get another bank to take over the Apple partnership (including those hefty savings accounts), the Journal noted that the finance company may have to raise expensive emergency funding to cover any shortfall.

Goldman is said to have had talks with American Express about taking over its consumer products. However, Amex reportedly has concerns regarding the Apple Card’s loss rates and other factors Goldman has been attempting to remedy. Amex leaders are also said to have bristled at the fact the Apple Card operates on the Mastercard network.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/goldman-sachs-might-be-trying-to-offload-apples-credit-card-and-savings-accounts-204014759.html?src=rss

Source: Engadget – Goldman Sachs might be trying to offload Apple’s credit card and savings accounts

LinkedIn Lays Off Nearly 700 Employees Worldwide

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LinkedIn, the business social networking platform owned by Microsoft, announced Monday it is laying off 668 employees, amounting to more than 3% of its staff, as part of its alleged organizational restructuring efforts. The decision marks the second round of mass layoffs at LinkedIn this year and will impact employee…

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Source: Gizmodo – LinkedIn Lays Off Nearly 700 Employees Worldwide

Actively exploited Cisco 0-day with maximum 10 severity gives full network control

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Cables run into a Cisco data switch.

Enlarge / Cables run into a Cisco data switch. (credit: Getty Images)

Cisco is urging customers to protect their devices following the discovery of a critical, actively exploited zero-day vulnerability that’s giving threat actors full administrative control of networks.

“Successful exploitation of this vulnerability allows an attacker to create an account on the affected device with privilege level 15 access, effectively granting them full control of the compromised device and allowing possible subsequent unauthorized activity,” members of Cisco’s Talos security team wrote Monday. “This is a critical vulnerability, and we strongly recommend affected entities immediately implement the steps outlined in Cisco’s PSIRT advisory.”

Under exploitation for 4 weeks

The previously unknown vulnerability, which is tracked as CVE-2023-20198, carries the maximum severity rating of 10. It resides in the Web User Interface of Cisco IOS XE software when exposed to the Internet or untrusted networks. Any switch, router, or wireless LAN controller running IOS XE that has the HTTP or HTTPS Server feature enabled and exposed to the Internet is vulnerable. At the time this post went live, the Shodan search engine showed that as many as 80,000 Internet-connected devices could be affected.

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Source: Ars Technica – Actively exploited Cisco 0-day with maximum 10 severity gives full network control

Signal Says It Has No Evidence Supporting Reports of a Zero-Day Bug

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Over the weekend, rumors circulated that Signal, one of the most trusted encrypted chat apps on the web, had a pretty bad zero-day vulnerability. The claims, which have now been all but debunked, swiftly caused a panic in the infosec community.

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Source: Gizmodo – Signal Says It Has No Evidence Supporting Reports of a Zero-Day Bug

Twitch Stories Will Allow Streamers to Share Quick Instagram-like Posts With Followers

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Twitch users may start receiving some potentially annoying push notifications from their Twitch subscriptions. Streamers on the streaming mobile app now have access to the Twitch Stories feature, letting creators share short content and promote their channels much like they can on Snapchat and Instagram.

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Source: Gizmodo – Twitch Stories Will Allow Streamers to Share Quick Instagram-like Posts With Followers

US Plans To Push Other Countries Not to Pay Hacker Ransoms

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The US is pushing a group of governments to publicly commit to not make ransom payments to hackers ahead of an annual meeting of more than 45 nations in Washington later this month. From a report: Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser, told Bloomberg News that she is “incredibly hopeful” about enlisting support for such a statement but acknowledged it’s a “hard policy decision.” If members can’t agree to the statement in advance of the meeting, then it will be included as a discussion point, she said. […] The aim of the statement is to change that calculus, Neuberger said. “Ransom payments are what’s driving ransomware,” she said. “That’s the reason we think it’s so needed.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – US Plans To Push Other Countries Not to Pay Hacker Ransoms