India puts the kibosh on Facebook’s ‘Free Basics’
India’s Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRA) has called on Reliance Communications, Facebook’s Indian telecom partner, to halt the company’s controversial “Free Basics” mobile Internet program (aka Internet.org) over concerns that it violates the tenets of net neutrality. Free Basics affords more than a billion people in India who would not otherwise have internet, access to select websites and services including online shopping and health sites, Wikipedia and, of course, Facebook. However, the regulatory agency has taken umbrance with Facebook’s “walled garden” approach — wherein access to the actual Internet comes through a Facebook-branded portal (a lot like AOL’s old America Online service).
“The question has arisen whether a telecom operator should be allowed to have differential pricing for different kinds of content. Unless that question is answered, it will not be appropriate for us to continue to make that happen,” an unsourced government official told the Times of India. As such, the Times reports that the TRA has asked that the program pause until it can get a handle on the net neutrality issue.
“We have asked them [Reliance Communications] to stop it and they have given us a compliance report that it has been stopped,” the source continued. What’s more, India’s parliament is also finalizing a set of national net neutrality standards that would specifically address zero-rating practices such as this. Facebook, for its part, has urged its users to voice their support for the program. There’s no word on when the service will be allowed to resume.
Via: FastCo
Source: Times of India
Judge says NVIDIA violated Samsung’s patents
NVIDIA’s attempt at suing its mobile chip rivals into oblivion isn’t really going according to plan. On top of losses in its own cases, the graphics pioneer is now facing the threat of a sales ban: a US International Trade Commission judge has ruled that NVIDIA is infringing on three Samsung patents. This isn’t a final decision, but the Tegra maker now has to hope that the full ITC has a change of heart when it reviews the case a few months from now. Its main consolation is that one of the patents expires in 2016 — any ban on products using that patent would only last for a few months at best.
NVIDIA unsurprisingly says it’s “disappointed” in the verdict, which rejects its claim that Samsung was dragging ancient, irrelevant patents out of the closet. Samsung hasn’t commented, but it clearly begs to differ — it insists that patents are vital to making systems on a chip. Whichever side is right, NVIDIA now doesn’t have much leverage against Samsung. While there’s no guarantee that it’ll settle, it may not have much choice if it wants to keep its high-powered processors headed your way.
[Image credit: AP Photo/Manu Fernandez]
Via: Bloomberg
Source: ITC (PDF)
Leaked ‘Hateful Eight’ DVD screener linked to Hollywood exec
Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight doesn’t officially hit theaters until Christmas, but a DVD-quality rip is already floating around the internet. This shouldn’t sound too surprising though — major holiday releases have been popping up online for the past decade, especially once award season screeners start shipping out. In this case, the FBI traced the leak to Andrew Kosove, co-CEO of Alcon Entertainment, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Apparently, a screener of The Hateful Eight was sent to his office and signed for by an office assistant. Kosove claims he’s “never touched” the disc, so there’s a good chance someone else at his office snagged it and uploaded the film. Reports claim The Hateful Eight was downloaded between 200,000 and 600,000 times in its first day, and naturally it’s already made its way to pirate DVD vendors in major markets.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
[TA Deals] Become an Amazon Web Services master with this bundle (87% off)
Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing platform, is being used by people and businesses around the world. There are services and tools within the platform that help develop, manage, and operate applications on a daily basis. Amazon is able to offer cloud computing with little hassle and almost no downtime. So it’s not very surprising that the amount of accounts switching over to Amazon Web Services is growing rapidly. Why not get certified in Amazon Web Services?
Talk Android Deals has a bundle that will get you to pass the exams to become a certified AWS Associate, Developer, and SysOps Administrator.
- Prep for all three exams w/ 26 hours of instruction
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- Dive into CloudWatch, the main monitoring solution offered by AWS
- Learn how to create fault-tolerant architectures in the cloud
- Explore data management
- Learn from video lessons, practice exam questions & discussion forums
- Get hands-on practice w/ an 80-minute mock exam at the end of each course
- Learn as quickly & efficiently as possible w/ quick lectures (only 5-20 minutes each)
The overall value of this bundle $237, but we’re able to bring it to you for just $29. And the courses are yours for a lifetime. Once you have an Amazon Web Services account, you can start using it on Windows, OS X, and Linux devices. You can even stream course contents to your phone or tablet. All of this versatility with a discount coming in at 87%. Sounds like a great deal to me, especially given the benefits of becoming familiar with Amazon Web Services let alone the certification.
Come comment on this article: [TA Deals] Become an Amazon Web Services master with this bundle (87% off)
Vodafone UK now rolling out Wi-Fi calling update for the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge
Vodafone UK has started pushing out a rather unexpected update to all its carrier-branded models of the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge located in the United Kingdom. This upgrade carries support for the operator’s fairly new Wi-Fi calling service, which authorizes users to place calls via the Internet when they have no cellular signal without incurring any extra charges.
Unfortunately, you will need to be a subscriber of either a Pay Monthly Red, Red Value, Red+ or Business Premier plan to use the Wi-Fi calling platform. You’ll also need to ensure that your device was bought directly from Vodafone because if you purchased it from a third-party company, it won’t bundle the correct drivers for the feature to work. Other than these two provisos, using the service couldn’t be easier. Simply install the upgrade, then text the word “CALLING” to 97888 to enable it.
Source: Vodafone
Come comment on this article: Vodafone UK now rolling out Wi-Fi calling update for the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge
How to automatically receive MMS picture messages
“Those dreaded MMS messages are so frustrating! I can’get them to automatically download, and even when I manually try to download it, sometimes it still doesn’t even work!” This is the problem that many smartphone users go through. MMS messages not automatically downloading is a widespread and extremely frustrating. There’s no telling as to why MMS messages just won’t work how they’re supposed to without any tinkering, but with just a few minutes of your time, you can get your favorite text messaging app retrieving and downloading MMS without a hitch.
It’s not a difficult process, and in most cases, it’s the same series of steps for any text messaging app. And without further ado, here’s how to get MMS messages to download automatically.
Setting up MMS auto-retrieval
Again, setting up MMS auto-retrieval is a quick and easy process. First, open up your text messaging app. Next, in the right hand corner, tap the three-dot menu button and select Settings. Finally, scroll down to auto-retrieve and make sure the box is checked.
While you’re at it, it’s also a good practice to have Group Messaging checked, allowing you to send a MMS message to multiple people and get responses back in one group message over multiple individual responses.
Doing this should encourage your MMS messages to automatically download. However, even after following the prior steps, some people still have trouble with getting MMS messages to download properly. Here are a couple of ways to fix that problem:
1. Shut down, power on
The problem could be that your smartphone just needs to be restarted. It’s normal for technology to get hung up and error out, and while it can happen quite frequently, it can be fixed by quickly restarting or powering your smartphone on and off. To do this, hold down the power button for a few seconds and select Power off. Once powered off, hold down the power button again for a few seconds and let it boot up. Alternatively, hold the power button down for a few seconds. When the menu appears, select Restart. Both of these messages should fix any errors or hang-ups your smartphone is having.
If that didn’t work, you may need to move onto the next step.
2. Out with the old
Sometimes you just have way too many messages saved on your Android device. This can easily clog up your smartphone and cause it to experience some hang-ups. Head on through your list of saved messages and start clearing out text and MMS messages that you no longer need. This will not only free up some space on your Android device, but could fix the problem of having some MMS messages refuse to download as well.
If this didn’t work, it might be time to take some more drastic measures.
3. Hard reset
If the above methods haven’t worked, it might be time to reset your smartphone. Before continuing with a factory reset, you’ll want to make sure all of your data is backed up first. Go ahead and read this handy step-by-step guide on how to backup to the cloud we put together. Alternatively, in most cases, much of your app data is backed up to Google’s servers. You might want to double check on that by going into Settings > Backup and Reset and making sure Back up my data is checked. If so, you can go ahead and follow the below steps.
Head into Settings > Backup and Reset and select Factory data reset. Follow the steps that the reset wizard takes you through, and then when initializing your smartphone again, make sure to select the option for restoring your device over starting fresh.
Closing
These steps should have fixed your woes with MMS messages. One thing to keep in mind is that some MMS issues have to deal with your carrier. For instance, sending an MMS message over 1MB on T-Mobile’s network just won’t work. Likewise, MMS messages sent to you over 1MB will have trouble downloading. If you have a particular picture or video you really want to share, it might be worth uploading it to Facebook or another social networking service and sharing it with your friends and family there.
If you’re still having trouble retrieving and sending MMS messages, it might be worth contacting your carrier to see if there are any deeper, underlying issues at hand. Otherwise, if we helped you fix your issue, be sure to leave us a comment below!
Come comment on this article: How to automatically receive MMS picture messages
ASUS teams up with AdBlock to block adverts on future smartphones and tablets
The Internet’s largest advertisement blocking service, AdBlock has announced that it has teamed up with ASUS in order to block adverts on all of the Taiwanese manufacturer’s future smartphones and tablets. The ads will only be restricted by default in the standard Android browser, which means they will still appear in third-party applications, like Chrome and Firefox.
Here’s what AdBlock co-founder and CEO Till Faida had to say about the collaboration:
“We’re extremely happy to team up with Asus, the first major hardware manufacturer to integrate ad blocking into their mobile devices. This is another call for innovation in the ad industry—a call getting louder by the day.”
So there you have it, folks. The ad-blocking revolution has started. I, for one, am not sure if this is a good or bad thing. I can see why it’s appealing to block all the adverts that clutter our device’s displays, but I can’t justify the lack of revenue that content producers will face as a result of ads not being displayed on their websites and Internet-based applications.
Source: Motherboard
Come comment on this article: ASUS teams up with AdBlock to block adverts on future smartphones and tablets
Explore a beachside desert in a new video for ‘The Witness’
The Witness‘ release date is coming in hot — the Myst-inspired exploration game is due to hit PlayStation 4 and PC on January 26th. That’s the launch date for digital distribution, though it’s “likely” that The Witness will be available as a physical boxed product, too, creator Jonathan Blow writes on his blog. Blow and his team have been in talks with a few companies about a boxed version, he says.
“We need all the time we can get up until the release date in order to get all the finishing touches into the game; but because of the lead-time involved in physical manufacturing and distribution, we would have to freeze the game right about now in order to have it on store shelves for the release date,” Blow writes. “Or we could delay the digital release date in order to wait for the physical. But I don’t see a good reason to do either of those things.”
Blow and company are using their final month to finish voiceovers and language support, alongside bug fixes and small gameplay tweaks. The Witness will feature an impressive list of languages supported at launch, including Hungarian, Arabic and Russian.
“Of all the languages, supporting Arabic took by far the most programming work, and as you can see from some gaps between the letters, and a couple of cases where letters are too close to each other, it’s not quite done yet,” Blow says. “I will be working on that as soon as I finish with this blog posting!”
Here are all of the languages The Witness will support at launch:
- English
- Italian
- French
- German
- Spanish (Spain)
- Spanish (Latin America)
- Portuguese (Portugal)
- Portuguese (Brazil)
- Arabic
- Russian
- Chinese (Simplified)
- Chinese (Traditional)
- Japanese
- Korean
- Polish
- Indonesian
- Hungarian
Source: The Witness
6 Star Wars technologies that exist today
By Cat DiStasio
The new Star Wars sequel had a record-breaking opening last week, proving once and for all the indelible mark the sci-fi saga has left on the world. On top of its social and cultural contributions, the film series has also inspired inventors and engineers to bring some of its futuristic technologies to life. When the first Star Wars installment hit the big screen, viewers ooh’d and aah’d over buzzing lightsabers, companion droids and all things hoverbike. Now, nearly four decades later, a slew of Star Wars-inspired technologies actually exist in real life. Although some were built just for fun (nobody really needs a lightsaber, do they?), others — like cybernetic appendages — are making a real difference in the world. Slideshow-350656
People have registered over 45,000 drones with the FAA
Now that the FAA’s mandatory drone registrations are open, how many people are rushing to sign up? Quite a few, actually. The administration reports taking over 45,000 registrations since the program opened up two days ago, on December 21st. In fact, the demand was sufficiently “overwhelming” that the FAA’s site has occasionally buckled under the load. It’s temporarily shutting down the site overnight (between the 23rd and 24th) to make sure that it can cope with the likely flood of registrations from people getting robotic flyers as gifts.
It’s too soon to say how effective the registry will be, since it’s likely that a lot of early sign-ups came from people who were well-aware of the requirement and eager to get it out of the way before the February 19th deadline. The real challenge is to catch both newcomers as well as those who don’t yet realize that they need to register existing drones — unless awareness spreads, the FAA could still see a lot of drones slipping through the cracks.
[Image credit: Phyo Hein Kyaw/AFP/Getty Images]
Source: FAA
AIVAnet 