It’s twilight for Twitter on iOS. In a good way! The iPhone version of the app finally has an optional dark color scheme for your late night tweetstorms. I welcome the darkness.
Source: LifeHacker – Remains of the Day: Twitter for iOS Gets a Night Mode
Hillary Clinton’s email scandal is far from over. On Monday, a Federal District Court judge ordered the State Department to provide a timetable for the release of 14,900 new documents, most of which are believed to be emails sent to and from Hillary Clinton.
Source: Gizmodo – Hillary Clinton’s Email Scandal Just Got Scary Again
Overwatch’s new map, Eichenwalde, is now live on the game’s public test server. It’s set in a tiny German village next to a big ol’ German castle. The map, however, is smaller than it looks.
Source: Kotaku – Overwatch’s New Map Is Easy To Defend, Hard To Attack
Android’s release schedule has historically been all over the place, but for the last few years we’ve gotten roughly one major release per year, occasionally punctuated with medium-sized maintenance releases, minor feature updates, and monthly security patches. Now, the latest of Google’s blog posts about the Android Nougat release suggests things will become more predictable in the future.
We’re moving Nougat into a new regular maintenance schedule over the coming quarters. In fact, we’ve already started work on the first Nougat maintenance release that will bring continued refinements and polish, and we’re planning to bring that to you this fall as a developer preview. Stay tuned!
This strongly implies a quarterly-ish release schedule for new versions of Android rather than one big announcement followed by a major release a few months later (like we’ve seen with Lollipop, Marshmallow, and Nougat). And the public beta program that delivered new Nougat betas to interested Nexus users all summer is going to live on, delivering a steady drip of beta software all year long.
A regular release schedule would more closely track what Apple and Microsoft are doing—both companies still tend to save major changes for big updates that hit once or twice a year, but the Apple Beta Software Program and Windows Insider program both supply beta testers with new builds throughout the year. Google does itself this with Chrome OS, which offers stable, beta, and developer release channels that all get updated continuously and gradually rather than all at once.
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Source: Ars Technica – Android moving to a “regular maintenance schedule” with continued public betas
When mission crews lose contact with a spacecraft or lander for a significant amount of time, that’s usually a bad sign… ask the European Space Agency if you want to know why. However, NASA just showed why you shouldn’t always give up hope. It re…
Source: Engadget – NASA regains contact with spacecraft after a 2-year silence
It sure seems like everyone is running afoul of the Electronic Freedom Foundation lately. This time around it is T-Mobile’s new unlimited plan that is drawing the ire of the folks at the EFF.
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) senior staff technologist Jeremy Gillula told the Daily Dot the organization is still gathering information regarding T-Mobile’s unlimited data plan. But he noted, “From what we’ve read thus far it seems like T-Mobile’s new plan to charge its customers extra to not throttle video runs directly afoul of the principle of net neutrality.”
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Source: [H]ardOCP – EFF Concerned About T-Mobile’s New Unlimited Data Plan
The director of the Cincinnati Zoo, home of the dead gorilla Harambe, has made a plea to internet funnypeople to give it a rest already:
Source: Gizmodo – Leave The Cincinnati Zoo’s Twitter Account Alone
This is not what NSA’s TAO is doing right now.
A group called the Shadow Brokers made headlines this month by leaking a hacking tool belonging to the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) team. Now this week, several informed sources suggest an inside source may have been involved.
The leaked software—which can exploit weaknesses in a number of network hardware platforms and other devices—apparently may have come with the help of an NSA insider, according to the analysis of several information security experts, reports citing former NSA employees, and one journalist who had access to the files leaked by Edward Snowden. While the hacking tools were said not to have come from the Snowden documents cache, they may in fact be associated with another leaker who provided information to Jacob Appelbaum and Wikileaks, James Bamford suggests in a commentary published Monday by Reuters.
Details of the hacking tools also match with a training manual for NSA cyberespionage operations included in the Snowden document trove, released last week by The Intercept. Some of the tools also match with entries in the TAO’s ANT catalog—an NSA internal wishbook for hardware and software exploits. That document was published in part by Der Spiegel in collaboration with Appelbaum back in December of 2013.
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Source: Ars Technica – Hints suggest an insider helped the NSA “Equation Group” hacking tools leak
Cox Communications insists that it is not responsible for copyright infringements carried out by its subscribers, challenging the ruling by a Virginia federal jury late last year. The court had found Cox Communications guilty and had asked it to pay music publisher BMG Rights Management a sum of $25 in damages. TorrentFreak reports: The verdict was a massive victory for the music company and a disaster for Cox, but the case is not closed yet. After a failed motion for judgment as a matter of law earlier this month, the ISP has now informed the court that it will take the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Cox denies any wrongdoing and hopes to get a judgment in its favor at the appeals court. Considering the gravity of the case, Cox’s move is not surprising. The liability verdict has come as a shock to the Internet provider industry, as it suggests that providers have to actively disconnect repeat infringers. At the moment, many ISPs don’t have a solid policy in place where repeat copyright infringers lose their subscription. In fact, the law doesn’t prescribe when and based on what evidence an ISP has to terminate an account.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Cox Denies Liability for Pirating Subscribers, Appeals Million Verdict
Nobody likes someone who refuses to admit they’re wrong. It makes you look childish, stubborn, and unwilling to see other perspectives. You can make yourself a lot less hardheaded during a debate if you plan to say you’re wrong at least once.
Source: LifeHacker – Plan to Admit That You’re Wrong At Least Once In Every Argument
Generally, if scientists want to see how a living thing functions in high resolution, they need to slice it into tiny pieces first. Now, there’s scientists a powerful and bizarre new tool in researchers’ arsenal.
Source: Gizmodo – Transparent, Glow-in-the-Dark Mice Are a Scientist’s Wet Dream (Warning: Graphic)
Figuring out how to keep food fresh was a challenge seemingly met by plastics. But as it became clear that spooling out all that synthetic packaging was adversely affecting the environment, interest in greener methods of preservation has spiked. Whil…
Source: Engadget – Edible milk-based film preserves food better than plastic
Jalopnik Ex-BBC Boss Admits Firing Jeremy Clarkson Was A Dumb Mistake
| Lifehacker Why You Probably Shouldn’t Pick Your Nose
| io9 The Ultimate Guide to Every Science Fiction and Fantasy Show on TV This Fall
| Kotaku Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: The Kotaku Review
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Source: Gizmodo – Jalopnik Ex-BBC Boss Admits Firing Jeremy Clarkson Was A Dumb Mistake | Lifehacker Why You Probably
Foodspin Pop-Tarts Flavors, Ranked
| Jezebel Audrie & Daisy Is the Story of What Two Teen Girls Went Through After Reporting Their Assaults
| Gizmodo Why You Should Follow Your Roommate on Social Media (Hint: Murder)
| Gawker How Things Work
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Source: LifeHacker – Foodspin Pop-Tarts Flavors, Ranked | Jezebel Audrie & Daisy Is the Story of What Two Teen Girls
Politicians are people, too. And despite the often vitriolic backlash to Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, the latest dump shows how the presidential hopeful is also a caring mother who sometimes needs her daughter’s advice about the internet.
Source: Gizmodo – Chelsea Clinton Offers Her Mother Adorable Internet Advice
Gawker.com is shutting down today, Monday 22nd August, 2016, some 13 years after it began and two days before the end of my forties. It is the end of an era.
Source: Gizmodo – How Things Work
Each year the very best Pokémon video and trading card game players meet at the World Championships to determine who the top trainers are, and each year the Masters (oldest) Division looks really awkward on stage. This year did not disappoint.
Source: Kotaku – These Are Your 2016 Pokémon World Champions
Commentary about the U.S. general election is in vogue, especially, apparently, if said commentary is being told through morally ambiguous comic book protagonists.
Source: io9 – Because 2016 Wasn’t Weird Enough Already, Catwoman Is Getting an Election Special Comic
Picking your nose probably won’t kill you, but it’s not exactly a healthy habit either. Not only does picking your nose look gross, it could be leaving the door open for dangerous bacteria that want to call your nose home.
Source: LifeHacker – Why You Probably Shouldn’t Pick Your Nose
An anonymous reader writes from a report via DSL Reports: ATT CTO Andre Fuetsch said at a telecom conference last week that the company’s existing LTE network should be able to reach speeds of 1 Gbps before the standard ultimately gets overshadowed by faster 5G tech. The new 5G technology isn’t expected to arrive until 2020 at the earliest, so LTE has a lot of time left as the predominant wireless connectivity. “There’s a lot of focus on 5G — but don’t discount LTE,” Fuetsch said. “LTE is still here. And LTE will be around for a long time. And LTE has also enormous potential in that, you’ll be capable of supporting 1 gigabit speeds as well.” 5G will help move past 1 Gbps speeds, while also providing significantly lower latency. “You’ll see us sharing more about the trial activity we’re doing,” said Fuetsch. “Everything that’s being [tested] right now is not standard, it’s all sort of proprietary. But this is an important process to go through because this is how you learn and how it helps define standards.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – AT&T Says LTE Can Still Offer Speeds Up To 1 Gbps
