Netflix subscribers around the world watch more than 90 minutes of video from the streaming service every single day on average, according to new estimates from The Diffusion Group, which also reported that the overall amount of Netflix streaming has increased 350 percent over the last ten quarters.
DirecTV shareholders approved the satellite-television provider's proposed acquisition by AT&T. The company said votes represented 77% of all shares outstanding, with 99% of votes cast in favor of the deal. The deal, which still requires US regulatory approval, is expected to close in the first half of next year.
Schools send thousands of teenagers to the outskirts of Chongqing, a southwestern Chinese city, to put together electronic devices for some of the world's largest brands. Many students say they are given no choice. Chinese law limits student interns to eight work hours a day with no night shifts, and states that schools should place students in internships related to their majors. These rules are widely disregarded by factories. Student interns have become increasingly entrenched in China's labor force, especially among major electronics makers. At some factories, interns say they outnumber regular workers.
The Federal Trade Commission is the agency that was created as a bulwark against monopoly but has grown into a powerful consumer watchdog.
These days, it has gone after the likes of T-Mobile for putting spammy third-party charges on Americans' phone bills. It has chastised Google for inappropriately tracking users' Web habits. The FTC has even staked out new roles for itself on hacking and the bulk use of digital data. "The Federal Trade Commission is becoming, for better or for worse, the Federal Technology Commission," said Geoffrey Manne, executive director of the International Center for Law and Economics. On Sept 26, the FTC turns 100 years old. Here's the story of how it became Washington's go-to technology fixer.
A major flaw in a piece of open source code that affects Mac OS X and Linux users has cybersecurity professionals scrambling to identify and patch vulnerable machines -- but embedded devices making up the so-called "Internet of Things" could be among the worst hit by the bug.
Dubbed "Shellshock" by some members of the IT security community, the issue affects "bash" -- an open source code used in Unix-based systems used since the 1980s. Bash is a type of shell code for user commands, meaning it serves as a sort of direct route to controlling systems that is built in at the operating system level. The National Institute of Standards and Technology's National Vulnerability Database scored the vulnerability as a "10," on a scale from one to 1o, on both impacts and exploitability. US-CERT also issued an advisory, saying "exploitation of this vulnerability may allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on an affected system."
Data from two hard drives locked up in the San Francisco federal courthouse may make or break an effort to hold Google to account for what privacy advocates call an unprecedented corporate wiretapping case. If 22 people who sued the company can pinpoint their personal data in a massive cache of communications that Google’s Street View cars captured from private Wi-Fi networks, their lawyers may be able to seek billions of dollars of damages from Google. If they come up empty-handed, an outcome the company is betting on, the case will join a stack of failed privacy lawsuits accusing technology companies of tracking, capturing or sharing personal information.
All inventors -- everywhere -- deserve to have their inventions protected and promoted through intellectual property (IP) law everywhere. That is why the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) international IP focus -- both in terms of policymaking and in IP processing -- specifically advances us toward a world of global IP promotion and protection. And that is why USPTO’s senior leadership, led by Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the USPTO Michelle K. Lee, has spent the last week leading the United States’ delegation at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) General Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland. Working with their colleagues from other major IP offices across the globe, the USPTO remains focused on Building a Better Patent System both at home and abroad.
Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications have all told the Federal Communications Commission they object to disclosing confidential deal information to the political director of the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW), suggesting that could open the floodgates and dilute the protection of their sensitive business information.
Snow days may soon be a thing of the past in Pennsylvania. In the event of inclement weather and other unusual circumstances, the state's 501 school districts will now have the option to use "nontraditional educational delivery methods," such as cyber school, in order to keep kids learning.
T-Mobile US indicated it plans to discontinue its support for the federal Lifeline phone program, which provides subsidized phone service to low-income Americans, as of the end of 2014. The carrier said the move will impact its operations in Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, New Hampshire, New York and Tennessee and Washington (DC).
In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission, T-Mobile said it is relinquishing its "eligible telecommunications carrier (ETC) designation for the purpose of providing Lifeline services," effective Dec. 31, 2014. The company said that "upon reviewing its on-going business plans, T-Mobile has decided that it will not continue operating as a Lifeline ETC" in the states it is exiting from service. The FCC designated T-Mobile as an ETC to provide Lifeline services in the states on Aug. 16, 2012. The shutdown comes after AT&T Mobility's Cricket prepaid brand said in June that it is planning to phase out its support for the government's Lifeline service. Cricket said it will continue to support its existing Lifeline customers on CDMA phones for the next 18 months or so, and that it will not sign up any new Lifeline customers on Cricket GSM phones.
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