As the Internet of Things becomes more pervasive and it becomes easier and simpler to realize the benefits of the connected home, old-school service providers such as ADT are working to protect their turf by touting the benefits of professional 24/7 monitoring. “It’s unfortunate that some people are mistaking the convenience of ‘looking in’ for the true safety of professionally monitored security,” reads an ADT press release. That indeed is the number-one benefit that companies such as ADT,
Fasetto’s Link is easily the ugliest wearable at CES, but it’s the only one that puts a solid state drive around your wrist. The Link carries up to 1TB of storage and serves your files to nearby devices over Wi-Fi. Users will have access to their files through a Web-based client or through native apps for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux. Fasetto promises read-write speeds of 530 Mbps and 470 Mbps, respectively. Oh, and the Link also includes fitness-tracking features—because why not?—and is waterproof up to 15 meters in case want to take your precious files for a dip. Given the drive’s portable nature, Fasetto is putting an emphasis on security. Users will have to authenticate through email or text whenever they connect a new device to the Link, and any files they access are stored in the device’s RAM, so there’s no trace of them left on local storage. The idea is that users could access their entire file collection on a public or shared computer without compromising their data.
A bipartisan group of five U.S. lawmakers has introduced legislation that would permanently ban Internet access taxes, with sponsors saying the bill will help keep the Internet affordable while encouraging innovation. The Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act [PITFA], introduced in the House of Representatives on Friday, would make permanent a moratorium on Internet access taxes in place in the U.S. since 1998. Late last year, Congress Congress has temporarily extended the Internet access tax moratorium five times in the last 16 years, but sponsors argue it’s time to make the ban permanent. Without an extension, U.S. residents could face a substantial increase in the cost of Internet access, with some states likely to levy taxes of 10 percent or more, sponsors said.
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Users around the world are getting faster mobile broadband as LTE-Advanced and smartphones that can take advantage of the technology finally start to take off. A year ago, LTE-Advanced was only available in South Korea, but it’s now available in 31 countries (including Australia, France, Germany, U.K. and the U.S.) and more are on the way, according to industry organization GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association). “There is a lot of activity at the moment,” said Alan Hadden, president at GSA. LTE-Advanced is a collection of different technologies, but the one mobile operators are implementing first is called carrier aggregation. It lets operators treat up to three radio channels in different frequency bands as if they were one and send data to users at higher speeds.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is going Android-only with its new app, saying it can’t get on board with the Apple Developer Agreement. The organization is one of the top groups in pushing for user privacy and free expression online. Its new app, which you can The EFF outlines its objections to Apple’s rules
A vulnerability in Asuswrt, the firmware running on many wireless router models from Asustek Computer, allows attackers to completely compromise the affected devices. Malicious hackers, however, need to launch their attacks from within the local networks served by the vulnerable routers. The flaw is located in a service called infosvr, which runs on Asuswrt-powered routers by default. The service, which is used by a tool called the Asus Wireless Router Device Discovery Utility, listens to packets sent to the router’s LAN (local area network) interface over UDP broadcast port 9999. “This service runs with root privileges and contains an unauthenticated command execution vulnerability,” security researcher Joshua Drake, who found the vulnerability,
Uber wants to get you out of hibernation and back on the streets. The ride-sharing service says it will cut ride rates in 48 U.S. cities for the winter season. Uber is restricting the price cuts to cities where the service most recently rolled out, though the company didn't say whether the price cuts will also extend to so-called "surge pricing" when the cost of an Uber ride goes up during peak demand. Uber made a similar move in early 2014, when the company lowered prices in select cities to get users requesting rides during the winter slump.
We've already heard that Microsoft plans to Cortana is slated to play a supporting role in