Category: Featured

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Netflix cable box deal won’t be exempt from data caps

Netflix and Comcast will be available on the same cable box later this year, but Netflix video will still count against Comcast data caps. Netflix’s deal to get its online video on Comcast’s X1 set-top boxes alongside traditional cable TV channels was reported earlier this month by Recode, with the companies saying they “have much work to do before the service will be available to consumers later...

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Google Maps is getting a new look

It’s been a busy week for the Google Maps team. As we reported earlier today, the Google Maps apps are getting a Wi-Fi-only mode and the team is also bringing more crowdsourcing tools to the mobile apps. The company kept the biggest announcement for today, though: Google Maps on iOS, Android and the web is getting a new and cleaner look with a more subtle color scheme....

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White Hat hacker finds and downloads all of Vine’s source code

Thanks to some digging around in the inner workings of Twitter’s video website Vine, white hat hacker avicoder was able to download the entire source code to the popular service. As he was looking at various ways to breach the website’s security, he found an interesting domain that could recreate a local version of Vine. There are a lot of things hidden in a website’s source code that...

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Wifi Only mode coming to Google Maps

Cellular data can be expensive and Wi-Fi is often free. Thankfully it seems Google Maps will soon work on just Wi-Fi, using a method called Wifi only mode. Google has yet to announce this option. Users are reporting the additional mode is found in the settings of Google Maps and replaces the “Offline areas” option. Once activated, Google Maps will load the majority of...

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Facebook admits blocking Wikileaks urls

Facebook admitted it briefly blocked links to Wikileaks files containing internal Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails. The block seems to be the result of another algorithm accident that may have incorrectly determined the links to be malicious or spam. Facebook Chief Security Officer says the company has fixed the error, after receiving heavy criticism from WikiLeaks. This isn’t the first time Facebook has accidentally...

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Verizon is establishing a deal to acquire Yahoo

After months of leaks and speculation, Verizon Communications Inc. has emerged as the most likely buyer of Yahoo! Inc. The deal, which may be announced in the next few days according to people familiar with the matter, will likely bring to an end the tumultuous reign of Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer, who tried and failed to re-invent Yahoo as an independent company. If finalized,...

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Firefox 64-bit for Windows can take advantage of more memory

By default, on Windows, Firefox is a 32-bit application. This means that it is limited to using at most 4 GiB of memory, even on machines that have more than 4 GiB of physical memory (RAM). In fact, depending on the OS configuration, the limit may be as low as 2 GiB. Now, 2–4 GiB might sound like a lot of memory, but it’s...

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European Commission to audit Apache HTTP Server and Keepass

The European Commission is preparing a software source code security audit on two software solutions, Apache HTTP server and Keepass, a password manager. The source code will be analysed and tested for potential security problems, and the results will be shared with the software developers. The audits will start in the coming weeks. The security audit test is the next phase in the pilot...

Nancy Pelosi stands up for users and opposes the TPP

Nancy Pelosi stands up for users and opposes the TPP

Today, EFF joined a broad coalition of other public interest groups at Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office in San Francisco, to present her with a petition carrying an incredible 209,419 signatures with a request to oppose the introduction of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) during the post-election “lame duck” session of Congress. And with your help, we succeeded! In a letter that she handed us...

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FCC to Phone Companies: Offer free Robocall Blockers to customers

Even though the Federal Communications Commission has repeatedly said that wireless and landline phone providers are allowed to offer robocall-blocking services to their customers, some carriers have continued to incorrectly insist — and provide misinformation to consumers — that they simply don’t have the authority to deploy this technology. In an effort to make things clear once and for all, FCC Chair Tom Wheeler...