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AnonTechie writes:

AT&T is promising to offer cheaper Internet service to poor people if it's allowed to buy DirecTV. This is similar to a promise that helped Comcast gain government approval of its 2011 acquisition of NBCUniversal.

Qualifying residents in areas where AT&T's top speeds are below 5 Mbps (that's not a typo) will be offered DSL service of "up to 1.5 Mbps, where available" for $10 a month, AT&T said in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission last week. It'll be $5 a month for the first year before rising to $10 for the next three years. AT&T is proposing a four-year commitment in total.

In areas where AT&T's top speeds are higher, the company said it "will offer a broadband wireline DSL service at speeds up to 5 Mbps to households in AT&T's wireline footprint for $10 per month for the first 12 months of service (rising to $20 per month for the remainder of the term of the commitment)."

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/07/att-will-give-poor-people-1-5mbps-dsl-for-10-if-us-allows-directv-merger/

Subsentient writes:

I'm wondering what Linux distros my fellow soylentils use, and why.

I myself have loved Fedora since version 7, and never cared much for Debian systems. My desktops either run Fedora or a source-built XFCE system. What distros do you use, what architectures, and why do you use them? Are there any distros you wish were still around?

SGT CAPSLOCK writes:

Finland-based Jolla Oy, developer of the Linux-based Sailfish OS for mobile devices as well as the creator of their namesake Jolla Phone and the soon-to-be-released Jolla Tablet, have announced that it will be restructuring the company. As per their official press release [pdf], the company has placed former Chairman of Board Dr. Antti Saarnio as its new leader, while former CEO Tomi Pienimäki has been appointed to a position outside of the company.

The press release states that a new company will be created to continue their hardware business while Jolla Oy (referred to as Jolla Ltd. in the press release) will be focusing its attention solely toward developing and licensing Sailfish OS itself.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The Guardian gives us an article about one woman fighting back against the ever more invasive robocall.

The article doesn't say if Luiz Perez paid his bill yet.

Phoenix666 writes:

Microsoft plans to announce a major new round of layoffs as early as Wednesday, as the company seeks to further cut costs in a shifting technology landscape.

The layoffs are in addition to the about 18,000 employees that Microsoft said it planned to let go a year ago, according to people briefed on the plans, who asked for anonymity because the details were confidential. The new job cuts are expected to affect people in Microsoft's hardware group, among other parts of the company, including the struggling smartphone business that it acquired from Nokia last year in a $7.2 billion deal.
...
In June, Microsoft said it was selling its online display advertising business to AOL, as the company exited a business for which it once had high hopes.

Another area in which Microsoft is stumbling is smartphones, a market in which it has continued to lose market share since acquiring Nokia's handset business. Microsoft has so far failed to turn the Windows Phone operating system, which runs on its handsets, into a vibrant alternative to the two leading mobile platforms, iOS from Apple and Android from Google.

How do you read the tea leaves, Soylent? What does the future hold for Microsoft?

takyon writes:

Mozilla is planning to speed up Firefox's current 18-week release cycle, code in multiprocess support, and phase out the XUL and XBL languages currently used to build the Firefox UI (a change that may eventually break extensions):

Mozilla is planning big changes in how it builds its Firefox web browser, including speeding up its release schedule and – in the long term – getting rid of some of the Mozilla-specific technologies that have traditionally been used to build the browser's UI and add-ons. The decisions were discussed at Moz's "Coincidental Work Week" meetup in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada during the last week of June and were made public in a pair of forum posts by Mozilla engineering director Dave Camp on Monday. For starters, Mozilla plans to ditch its current 18-week release cycle in favor of something more agile. "We think there are big wins to be had in shortening the time that new features reaches users," Camp wrote. "Critical fixes should ship to users in minutes, not days. Individual features rolling out to small audiences for focused and multi-variate testing."

Firefox 39 was released on Monday. Changes include vsync (smooth scrolling) on Mac OS X, the addition of Unicode 8.0 skin tone emoji, removal of SSLv3, improving IPv6 fallback to IPv4, and support for the ECMAScript 2015 Proxy object. Mozilla has also unveiled a "Games Technology Roadmap," which sets out goals of further improving HTML5 + JavaScript performance relative to native applications, shipping the unfinished WebGL 2.0, and minimizing common issues like audio/graphics latency and "jitter".

Google says TurboFan, a new optimizing JavaScript compiler that will replace Crankshaft, will speed up various aspects of JavaScript performance (it currently shows a "29% increase on the zlib score of the Octane benchmark"). It has been shipping since Chrome 41, but will be improved and switched on in more code scenarios over time until it completely replaces the Crankshaft compiler.

Microsoft's new Edge browser will not include ActiveX and Silverlight support, and will instead use HTML5's Media Source and Encrypted Media Extensions for "premium media", as well as MPEG-DASH and Common Encryption (CENC). Internet Explorer 11 will retain Silverlight support.

Phoenix666 writes:

Researchers at Rice University have used computer models to demonstrate that graphene's flexibility can be exploited in another way: by twisting it to alter its electrical properties.

In research published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, the Rice researchers, in collaboration with a scientist in Moscow, used computer models to show how to produce in graphene the so-called flexoelectric effect in which a material exhibits a spontaneous electrical polarization brought on by a strain.

It is well known that graphene is a great conductor when it is laid flat on a plane so that all of its atoms have a balanced electrical charge. However, if you put a curve in that plane of graphene, the electron clouds of the bonds on the concave side compress while on the convex side they stretch. This changes the electric dipole moment, which is a measure of the overall polarity and determines how polarized atoms interact with external electric fields.

The amazing material gets even amazinger...

mendax writes:

At last, some of those who know more than most have publicly entered the fray regarding the establishment of governmental backdoors to encryption technologies. The New York Times published an article today which says:

An elite group of code makers and code breakers is taking American and British intelligence and law enforcement agencies to task in a new paper that evaluates government proposals to maintain special access to encrypted digital communications.

On Tuesday, the group — 13 of the world's pre-eminent cryptographers, computer scientists and security specialists — released the paper, which concludes there is no viable technical solution that would allow the American and British governments to gain "exceptional access" to encrypted communications without putting the world's most confidential data and critical infrastructure in danger. [...]

The authors of the report said such fears did not justify putting the world's digital communications at risk. Given the inherent vulnerabilities of the Internet, they argued, reducing encryption is not an option. Handing governments a key to encrypted communications would also require an extraordinary degree of trust.

One interesting issue they brought up relates to recent disturbing news:

With government agency breaches now the norm — most recently at the United States Office of Personnel Management, the State Department and the White House — the security specialists said authorities cannot be trusted to keep such keys safe from hackers and criminals.

Additional link of interest: the 34-page paper written by Harold Abelson, Ross Anderson, Steven M. Bellovin, Josh Benaloh, Matthew Blaze, Whitfield Diffie, John Gilmore, Matthew Green, Peter G. Neumann, Susan Landau, Ronald L. Rivest, Jeffrey I. Schiller, Bruce Schneier, Michael Specter, and Daniel J. Weitzner.

takyon: Security gurus deliver coup de grace to US govt's encryption backdoor demands

HughPickens.com writes:

Mark Scott writes in the NYT that Google will start testing a carpooling service where drivers will be able to use a smartphone app called RideWith to pick up passengers during rush hours, allowing them to split the cost of their rides to work. Unlike similar services offered by the likes of Uber, Google's carpooling service will allow drivers to recoup only the cost of gas and wear and tear to their vehicles. Drivers will not be able to use the app to offer traditional taxi services. "Carpooling can be a hassle and difficult to manage," said Waze, the Israeli social mapping start-up that the company bought in 2013 for $1 billion. "Waze has developed RideWith to serve Israeli commuters at their greatest time of need: rush hour. We hope to learn a lot from this pilot and will let you know how it goes."

The service, which is currently available only in Israel, is part of Google's increasing moves into the territory of Uber which has started its own carpooling service in the United States, which allows users to divide the cost of a ride when traveling in the same direction. This is the latest sign that Google and Uber are more likely to be ferocious competitors than allies. Google is preparing to offer its own ride-hailing service, most likely in conjunction with its long-in-development driverless car project while Uber is also teaming up with Carnegie Mellon University for a research facility in Pittsburgh, Pa., to develop its own autonomous vehicle technology.

BBC creates micro:bit pocket computer for British schoolchildren

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

One big "WTF" here is web-based IDE programming tools. There's no specifics about loading programs in the article, but there is a USB port on the micro:bit which will presumably be used to transfer programs into the device - so why send the code out to the web to be programmed instead of including a compiler that runs locally? (For this kind of tiny computer, with a minuscule display, I'm sure something that runs even an a relatively underpowered tablet could be written.)

BBC Finalizes Design For Their New Micro

slash2phar writes:

The BBC has revealed the final design of the Micro Bit, a pocket-sized computer set to be given to about one million UK-based children in October. The device - which features a programmable array of red LED lights - includes two buttons and a built-in motion sensor that were not included in a prototype shown off in March.

The BBC's director general Tony Hall said the device should help tackle the fact children were leaving school knowing how to use computers but not how to program them. "We all know there's a critical and growing digital skills gap in this country and that's why it's so important that we come together and do something about it," he said at a launch event in London.

The Micro Bit is being given away to every 11- and 12-year-old child in Year 7 or equivalent at school.

More on the BBC website.

Gravis writes:

A client of mine does the payroll for his small business and has thus far used various versions of Intuit's Quickbooks. While he can manage to muddle around with programs and do things, computers are still very much magic boxes to him and he had the malware to prove it. I'm doing everything remotely, so I would like to switch him to a simple Linux desktop but the problem is Quickbooks doesn't have a Linux client and the web version of their app is unusable. I've looked into Linux financial software (e.g. gnucash) but I can't seem to find anything that does payroll and accounts for U.S. state and federal payroll taxes. Does anyone use payroll software for Linux that they can recommend?

takyon writes:

Microsoft is giving HoloLens prototypes and funding to academic institutions in order to create applications for the augmented reality device:

The so-called Academic Research Request for Proposals will award five universities or institutions with $100,000 each, as well as two HoloLens kits. Although the goal is to see how the device will help research of all types, the company is looking at how it will impact studies in a few specific areas.

In order to be considered for one of the five prizes, applicants (restricted to U.S. residents only) must submit a one- to three-page proposal paper by 11:30pm PDT on September 5, 2015. Information includes an abstract of the proposal as well as a detailed description, the approach to research, use of funds and an overall schedule of the entire project. After submission, the application will be considered using a few criteria such as its overall impact in terms of scholarly papers and presentations, how feasible is the project for completion, and the overall qualifications of the main investigator. Microsoft noted that the $100,000 funding will end after one year, as it is only meant to kickstart projects. Researchers should also look into finding multiple avenues of funding during and after Microsoft's investment.

The academic research is but one of the many paths that Microsoft will pursue to test the use of HoloLens. Last month, it collaborated with NASA for Project Sidekick, which would use two HoloLens devices in the International Space Station to enhance Skype communication with a NASA operator on Earth, as well as a standalone procedure that involves using its augmented reality software on top of real-world items in order to train astronauts while in the station. However, the devices never made it to the International Space Station, as the SpaceX shuttle carrying them exploded early in the flight.

This terrestrial HoloLens giveaway seems a lot safer. Microsoft is looking for industrial/medical/research/educational motivations for using augmented reality, just as Google was with Glass. A recent FCC filing suggests that Google Glass may be quietly resurrected.

"exec" writes:

SuperFlash is SST's patented and proprietary NOR flash technology. Toshiba has developed a flash memory embedded process based on 65nm logic process that uses less power than current mainstream technology, and a single-poly non-volatile memory (NVM) process based on 130nm logic and analogue power process.

Applying the optimal process to diverse applications will allow Toshiba to expand its product line-up in such areas as microcontrollers, wireless communication ICs, motor controller drivers and power supply ICs, the company said. Toshiba has adopted Silicon Storage Technology's third-generation SuperFlash cell technology, in combination with its own 65nm logic process technology.

The company aims to lower power consumption for entire systems, targeting 50μA/MHz operation, and to develop innovative products for IoT.

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/toshiba-develops-flash-memory-embedded-process-2015-07/

Phoenix666 writes:

Rypinski is the leader of Aezon, one of the teams participating in the Qualcomm Tricorder XPrize. The competition launched in 2012, when the XPrize Foundation and U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm challenged innovators from around the world to develop a portable, consumer-friendly device capable of diagnosing a comprehensive set of medical conditions. More than 300 teams registered, and after a series of reviews, the organizers selected 10 finalists, announced last August.

This month, the final phase of the competition starts. Each finalist team was expected to deliver 30 working prototypes, which will now undergo a battery of tests with real patients. Prizes totaling US $10 million will go to the winner and two runners-up, to be announced early next year, when "Star Trek" will be celebrating its 50th anniversary.
...
Their tricorders won't be all-powerful portable scanners like those in "Star Trek," but they still must demonstrate some impressive capabilities. They'll have to diagnose 13 medical conditions, including anemia, diabetes, hepatitis A, leukocytosis, pneumonia, stroke, tuberculosis, and urinary tract infections. In addition, teams choose three additional conditions from a list that includes food-borne illness, melanoma, osteoporosis, whooping cough, shingles, mononucleosis, strep throat, and HIV. And their systems must be able to monitor vital signs like temperature, blood pressure and oxygen saturation, heart rate, and respiratory rate—not only in real time but for periods of several days as well.

Smartphones already seem pretty close to tricorders.

HughPickens.com writes:

Ever notice at your high school reunions how some classmates look ten years older than everybody else - and some look ten years younger. Now BBC reports that a study of people born within a year of each other has uncovered a huge gulf in the speed at which human bodies bodies age. The report tracked traits such as weight, kidney function and gum health and found that some of the 38-year-olds in the study were aging so badly that their "biological age" was on the cusp of retirement. "They look rough, they look lacking in vitality," says Prof Terrie Moffitt. The study says some people had almost stopped aging during the period of the study, while others were gaining nearly three years of biological age for every twelve months that passed. "Any area of life where we currently use chronological age is faulty, if we knew more about biological age we could be more fair and egalitarian," says Moffitt.

The researchers studied aging in 954 young humans, the Dunedin Study birth cohort, tracking multiple biomarkers across three time points spanning their third and fourth decades of life. They developed and validated two methods by which aging can be measured in young adults, one cross-sectional and one longitudinal. According to Moffit the science of healthspan extension may be focused on the wrong end of the lifespan; rather than only studying old humans, geroscience should also study the young. "Eventually if we really want to slow the process of aging to prevent the onset of disease we're going to have to intervene with young people."