Sprint’s new benefit lets subscribers pay for a loved one’s plan in Latin America

Why it matters to you

If you’re a Sprint subscriber and have a friend or relative in Latin America, you’ll soon be able to play for their plan.

Sprint is making it easier for U.S. subscriber to stay in touch with loved ones in Latin America.

On Thursday, the company announced a new program that will discount data, text, and calls for relatives of Sprint customers living abroad. It is partnered with Telefónica-owned Movistar Mexico and El Salvador to let subscribers pay for a family member’s plan in Mexico and El Salvador.

More: Sprint is back — the fourth largest carrier posted strong growth, beating AT&T

It’s available through Sprint’s World Top-Up app. Starting Th, subscribers can add money to prepaid Plan Conectados accounts in 23 Latin American and Caribbean countries “irrespective of their in-country plan.”

Customers with family and friends in Mexico and El Salvador can add Plan Conectados to their Sprint account for $25 per month. Those with family in Latin America and Caribbean countries can dispatch funds directly to a prepaid account from within the Top-Up app.

The new benefit is aimed at addressing the growing number of immigrants who send money to their home country. U.S. immigrants sent $133.5 billion in 2015 and remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean grew nearly eight percent from 2015 to 2016. Mexico received more than $26 billion, and El Salvador close to $5 billion.

More: Sprint will demonstrate super-fast wireless at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

Plan benefits vary by country. Customers in Mexico receive unlimited calls and texts, 5GB of browsing data, and 2GB of social/WhatsApp data. Folks in El Salvador, meanwhile, get unlimited calls and texts within Movistar’s network, up to 400 minutes to call to U.S., and 300 national minutes for calls on Salvadoran carriers other than Moviestar along with 4GB of browsing/social data.

“Sprint and Movistar are both deeply rooted in the Hispanic community and we know that family ties are the center of everything,” Marcelo Claure, Sprint CEO and president, said in a statement. “We recognize that many families assume responsibility for supporting their loved ones abroad, and Sprint wants to make it easier for them to do so. By offering a way for our customers to provide their relatives with the best wireless plan available in their country we have created a unique and practical way to empower our customers.”

In many ways, the new plan is an extension of a limited-time Unlimited Freedom promotion Sprint launched in December. Unlimited Freedom Open World includes free, high-speed LTE data in 25 locations across the Caribbean, and expires March 31.

More: Sprint buys a stake in Tidal, which will now produce exclusive content for the carrier

The telecommunications company has worked to improve its unlimited offerings. International Value Roaming, which is bundled into Sprint’s Unlimited Plus Plan, provides customers unlimited text and data in 15 countries across Latin America, Europe, and Asia.

Upcoming AMD Radeon RX 500 Series cards appear in photos as engineering samples

Why it matters to you

Here’s visual proof that AMD is gearing up to release a family of Radeon RX 500 Series cards based on a refreshed Polaris GPU design.

After recently appearing in the Radeon Crimson 17.3.2 beta driver files, AMD’s unannounced Radeon RX 500 Series of graphics cards now show up as purported engineering samples in several images published online. The images supposedly show someone holding the Radeon RX 570 and RX 580 cards. Keep in mind, though, that these are refreshes of the RX 470 and RX 480 cards currently on the market, and will serve as affordable mainstream alternatives to AMD’s upcoming Radeon RX Vega family of GPUs targeting the enthusiast PC gaming market.

Based on the provided photographs, the RX 570 engineering sample is based on the same printed circuit board used with the RX 470 and RX 480 cards. The photos also show that the sample does not include a DVI port, but the RX 570 will reportedly be made available with custom printed circuit boards enabling third-party manufacturers to tack on additional features. And like the RX 470 before it, the RX 570 will rely on a single 6-pin power connector.

More: AMD is refreshing its Radeon RX 400 Series with improved speed in April

On the RX 580 front, the pictured engineering sample sports a new board design (C940) backed by a new 8-pin power connector. The included engineering label shows that AMD manufactured the card on March 3, 2017, and it does rely on AMD’s Polaris graphics chip design architecture. The 8-pin connector indicates that the upcoming card can be overclocked at the expense of a higher power requirement.

Again, here is what we know about all three RX 500 Series cards so far:

Radeon RX 580
Radeon RX 570
Radeon RX 560
Process node:
14nm FinFET LPP
14nm FinFET LPP
14nm FinFET LPP
Graphics chip:
Polaris 20 XTX
Polaris 20 XL
Polaris 11
Stream processors:
2,304
2,048
896
Compute units:
36
32
14
Texture mapping units:
144
128
56
Render output units:
32
32
16
Boost speed:
~1,340MHz
~1,244MHz
~1,287MHz
Performance gain:
74MHz
38MHz
87MHz
Compute performance:
6.17 TFLOPS
5.10 TFLOPS
2.63 TFLOPS
Memory size:
Up to 8GB GDDR5
Up to 8GB GDDR5
4GB GDDR5
Memory interface:
256-bit
256-bit
128-bit
Memory speed:
8GHz
7GHz
7GHz
Memory bandwidth:
256GB/s
224GB/s
112GB/s
Power connector:
1x 8-pin
1x 6-pin
1x 6-pin

All three Radeon RX 500 Series cards are expected to go retail sometime around April 18, which is when Nvidia will reportedly make OC versions of its GTX 1060 and GTX 1080 graphics cards available on the market. AMD’s family of Radeon RX Vega graphics cards, which are based on its newer Vega GPU design, will likely arrive shortly thereafter. Rumors point to the Computex convention starting May 30, but AMD may wait to launch the Radeon RX Vega line at a special event prior to E3 2017 starting June 13.

The big deal with AMD’s Radeon RX 500 Series cards in relation to the older RX 400 units is improved performance based on a tweaked Polaris architecture and better 14nm FinFET processing. Here are the performance differences based on the leaked specs of the Radeon RX 500 cards:

RX 580
RX 480
RX 570
RX 470
RX 560
RX 460
FP32 compute:
6.17
TFLOPS
5.83
TFLOPS
5.10
TFLOPS
4.94
TFLOPS
2.93
TFLOPS
2.15
TFLOPS

How can I protect my browsing history from my ISP?

There’s no foolproof way to be 100% anonymous, but you don’t have to just give away your data without a fight.

You ISP has been given free reign to record 100% of what you do online and sell that information to the highest bidder. An FCC rule designed to at least get your permission was voted away by the people elected to represent us, and an existing FTC suggestion to allow us all to opt out will continue to be ignored.

Your personal information and data is no longer yours or personal once your ISP gets ahold of it.

There just isn’t anything you or I can do to change the fact that we pay for a service and the people who collect our money every month can sell everything they know about us and they have no obligation to anonymize any of it. To the companies that provide internet access, we are cattle. Moo moo buckaroo.

We don’t have to give them any useful information, though, and there are a few things you can do to make some of the data about where, when and how you use the internet nothing more than wasted hard drive space if you’d rather decide for yourself how it gets spread around.

Not all data collection is terrible

First, let’s be clear on a couple things. Your ISP, whether it’s Comcast or Time Warner or AT&T or whoever (including the people you pay for data on your phone every month) collecting data isn’t always a bad thing and that’s not what has a lot of people upset about the recent changes. Any company that provides a service can provide a better service when they know how people are using it, and there’s probably not someone in a basement office watching you use the internet. Trading data for a better service is something most of us do all the time, even if we don’t know it.

A service can become a better service if the people offering it know how we use it, but selling it off is a different matter.

Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and plenty of other companies also offer services that use your data as currency instead of charging actual cash. What they collect is every bit as intrusive as what your ISP is collecting and we all need to remember that. The difference is that we aren’t paying every month and we can say no and not use their services. We’re also told up front what is being collected and what is being done with it all and even your Android phone gives you the option to just say nope and not use anything from one of these data-thirsty companies. Incidentally, the companies who make the phones we love to buy don’t have a similar opt-out. You either say yes to letting Samsung or HTC or whoever collect your data or you put your brand new phone back in the box and sell it on Swappa because it’s now used. Another post for another time.

So if you need internet service — and we think internet service is now a need the same way electricity and potable water are — you have no option other than paying someone who will handle your personal information with zero regards to your privacy.

Your best protection

We can’t stop them from harvesting our data then using it in a way that raises security and privacy concerns, but we can try and make the data worthless as possible by changing how you use the internet. There are two ways to go about this, and luckily both are pretty easy to use with our Androids. Both involve intercepting the web traffic to and from your phone.

Use a VPN

Most people are familiar with the term VPN, but not everyone knows what exactly a VPN is. Think of it as a computer on the internet that lets you connect and use its connection to send and receive web traffic. It’s more complicated than that, and if you’re curious how they work and why Cisco’s Internet Protocol Journal will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about them and then some.

Using a VPN means a look at the data collected by your ISP will show when you connected to your VPN, what VPN you used and where you were when you used it. That sounds like the easy fix, right? Not really. There are some issues with relying on a VPN to keep you completely anonymous, and they can’t be ignored.

• Using a VPN only changes the “area of attack.” You need to make sure the VPN you are using doesn’t keep any records and is in a location where they aren’t required to do anything extra to fulfill a request for user data. There is nothing keeping a VPN company from selling your data back to your ISP other than their own policies.
• A VPN won’t block data collection from apps and services that are probably already installed on your phone. If you bought your phone from a carrier, they probably have something in the software to tell them exactly how you are using it. They can now sell that data.
• Not everything can use a VPN and those fancy internet-of-things gadgets can create a nice little profile about you for your ISP to sell to someone with enough cash to afford it. Many of those gadgets have an app that can collect extra data from your phone itself.
• A VPN can’t stop an evil company from injecting evil data packets to track your every move while you’re online. Yes, this is what Verizon got caught doing. But don’t think Verizon is any eviler than anyone else.

You can find companies who sell VPN service and provide an Android app to make using it on your phone easy. I hesitate to list the best of them because that depends on your needs. Look for a company that doesn’t collect data, is in a country that doesn’t require them to enable collection when asked, and has no censor in place. Right now I’m using Privateinternetaccess’ VPN Tunnel service and have also had great results with BlackVPN. But am always on the lookout for something better.

You can also get super hardcore and set up your own VPN on a remote server as well as run a tunnel through your router. Those are outside of the scope of this “easy” talk, though.

Use TOR

The TOR project is a volunteer-based group of people and companies who maintain servers that route encrypted internet traffic through a randomized and complex path of tunnels. From a user perspective, it’s a proxy that we point our network traffic at, and the software used by folks who keep it up and running handles the rest.

TOR is recommended by organizations like Indymedia and the EFF to help keep anonymous and safe while online. U.S. Naval intelligence, as well as hundreds of law enforcement offices, use it when they need to hide their tracks online and so do millions of people like you and me. Using TOR means your ISP will see a connection to one of a pool of random servers instead of a connection to a particular website. But it also has some drawbacks that keep it from being the perfect solution.

• TOR won’t block data collection from apps and services that are probably already installed on your phone. If you bought your phone from a carrier, they probably have something in the software to tell them exactly how you are using it. They can now sell that data.
• Not everything can use a TOR client and those fancy internet-of-things gadgets can create a nice little profile about you for your ISP to sell to someone with enough cash to afford it. Many of those gadgets have an app that can collect extra data from your phone itself.
• Your ISP will see a connection to a random TOR node and know you’re connected to a TOR node. Unfortunately, that can be a red flag. The U.S. Government is highly suspicious of everyone who uses TOR and considers users as a foreign national and a “cause of concern” by default. People and companies hosting exit relays are always at risk of being shut down and having equipment seized. Feel that freedom wash over you.
• TOR can be slow. As in very slow.

On the plus side, TOR is easy to set up on Android. FireOnion is a preconfigured TOR proxy and browser you can get from Google Play that just works. OrBot is a preconfigured TOR proxy for Android that can be used with any app that allows you to use a proxy service. The OrFox Browser pairs well with OrBot, and both are official products from the TOR project themselves. They too are available from Google Play.

Every little bit counts

Neither of these options is foolproof. Outside of leeching from someone else’s Wi-Fi and having your browser history connected to them (don’t you dare) nothing is a 100% way to hide from a greedy ISP. But every little bit counts and this is what can be done in the now while people work on better ways to protect yourself in the future.

Stay safe.

Nougat is officially rolling out for the Verizon HTC 10

Big Red finally joins the rest of ’em in updating last year’s HTC flagship.

Verizon HTC 10 users, feeling a little left out? Everyone else, including T-Mobile and Sprint, have received their update to Nougat. The good news is that today is your day, as Verizon has started rolling out the update to Android 7.1.

Here’s the changelog, straight from the source:

Software Version: Build Number: 2.41.605.12

Verizon Wireless is pleased to announce a new software update for your HTC 10. Android™ 7.0 Nougat improves your mobile experience with new battery-smart features and multitasking enhancements. This update also includes the latest Android security updates and bug fixes.


You should be receiving the update automatically in the next few days. If not, Verizon suggests using its software upgrade assistant tool, though you could also check under the About Phone option in the settings panel for an official update.

HTC 10

• HTC 10 review
• HTC 10 specs
• All HTC 10 news
• These are the HTC 10 colors
• Join our HTC 10 forums

HTC
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There’s a good reason your smartwatch doesn’t have Android Wear 2.0 yet

Eagerly awaiting the Android Wear 2.0 update? You’re going to have to hang tight.

Delays happen all the time, but if you’ve been waiting for the update to Android Wear 2.0, you’re likely going to be a little bummed by this news. Particularly if you consider that Android Wear 2.0 has already hit a few currently-available watches.

In a statement to 9to5Google, Google confirmed the update to Android Wear 2.0 will be delayed because of a bug found in the final testing. The Fossil Q Founder, Casio Smart Outdoor Watch WSD-F10, and Tag Heuer Connected are not affected by this delay, however, and will receive their updates as planned starting April 4.

Google will push the software update to the remaining Android Wear devices as soon as the bug is resolved. Hang tight – Android Wear 2.0 will be here soon.

Android Wear

• Everything you need to know about Android Wear 2.0
• LG Watch Sport review
• LG Watch Style review
• These watches will get Android Wear 2.0
• Discuss Android Wear in the forums!

Six Flags is doing VR roller coasters right

Shoot down your enemies, and try to survive the Galactic Attack on the Mind Eraser.

I’ve been a roller coaster junkie for well over a decade now. When I go to theme parks it isn’t for special events, or for the water parks. Nope, I go to spend a day riding roller coasters. So when I got the chance to take a ride on the new Galactic Attack VR experience at Six Flags America here in Maryland, I jumped at the opportunity. This wasn’t my first ride on a VR coaster so I had a vague idea of what I was getting myself into. This was so much better than I could have hoped though.

Read more at VRHeads.com

Finally – Game of Thrones’ first season 7 trailer is here

OMG. OMG. It’s here.

HBO has released the first trailer for the seventh season of Game of Thrones, the hit series that is due to return this summer. Called Long Walk, the 90-second trailer features characters like Cersei Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, and Jon Snow taking a long walk to the Iron Throne. The clip ends with Cersei taking a deep breath on the throne, and then it abruptly ends with an up-close shot of the Night King.

Jon’s chair appears to be in Winterfell, while Cersei’s is the actual Iron Throne. Dany’s chair is at Dragonstone, and it looks made of driftwood, which may be a nod to her new ally Yara Greyjoy. Oh, and we can’t help but point out that Cersei’s deep breath is visible. Has winter arrived? And finally, we also hear a song called “Sit Down” throughout the entire promo, because it seems to be about them all sitting. (Get it?)

7.16.17#GoTS7 pic.twitter.com/0QyWbFBukt

— HBO (@HBO) March 30, 2017

Season 7 is set to premiere on 16 July. Check out Pocket-lint’s guide for more information about when and where you can stream it.

‘Destiny 2’ brings the interstellar MMO grind to PC in September

Destiny 2 will hit PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on September 8th, much to the delight of wannabe space hunters worldwide. The original Destiny was console-only, leaving PC players in the lurch, but pre-orders for the sequel went live today and confirmed the new game is coming to desktop.

Destiny 2 is a completely new title, meaning any progress that players made in the original game will not carry over to the sequel. This is good news for newcomers, PC players or otherwise, as it places every person on equal footing from the get-go. However, it’s a bit of a blow to anyone who’s spent the past three years grinding with their Guardian (not like that, you pervs).

Note that PS4 folks will have a bit of an advantage over players on other platforms: The console is getting “exclusive content” that won’t show up on Xbox One or PC until fall 2018 at the earliest.

Destiny 2 comes in a variety of flavors, including the Collector’s Edition (which features a convertible backpack capable of carrying a 15 inch laptop), the Limited Edition (access to the first two expansion packs and a fancy display box), and the Digital Deluxe Edition (the expansion pass and extra in-game content).

Nathan Fillion once again stars as the Hunter Vanguard Cayde-6 in the latest trailer for Destiny 2, but this time around he’s sharing the screen with the more composed character, Commander Zavala.

Spotify’s latest show is basically ‘Carpool Karaoke’

Apple already locked down a season’s worth of James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke, but Spotify isn’t letting that stop it from developing a similar show of its own. The streaming service announced this week and it teamed up with Russell Simmons on Traffic Jams, a show that pairs a hip-hop artist and a producer who haven’t worked together to create something new before they arrive at their destination. Oh yeah, they have to do so while sitting in rush-hour traffic in Los Angeles.

The final stop in each episode is the Spotify-All Def Stage where each pair has to perform their newly written song for hundreds of fans. All Def Digital, which Simmons co-founded, is handling production for the 8-episode series with comedian DoBoy handing the hosting/driving duties. The first installment matches up T-Pain with Atlanta-based producer Southside while other episodes star D.R.A.M, Joey Bada$$, E-40 and more. Traffic Jams debuts on Spotify April 4th with new episodes every Tuesday through May 23rd. For a look at what you can expect from the show, watch the trailer below.

Source: Spotify

Dear Donald Trump: ‘Clean coal’ doesn’t exist

“Clean coal” is an oxymoron. Even if you took a hunk of coal, doused it in bleach and scrubbed it for six hours with a soapy horsehair brush, it would still cause lung cancer and fill the air with carbon emissions when you burned it. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

However, the phrase “clean coal” is ridiculously tenacious in public discourse. Just this week, President Donald Trump used it: As he signed an executive order rolling back a bevvy of environmental protections laid out under the Clean Power Plan, he turned to the coal miners staged around his desk and promised to “end the war on coal and have clean coal, really clean coal.”

The president of the United States is lying.

Unfortunately, he isn’t alone. “Clean coal” has been used as a euphemistic tool by advertisers, lobbyists and politicians for nearly a decade. The phrase was created in 2008 by the advertising agency R&R Partners — the same folks who invented the Las Vegas slogan, “What happens here, stays here” — and it’s been weaponized in debates and ad campaigns ever since. The initial “clean coal” ads were bankrolled to the tune of $35 million by the world’s largest mining company, the largest US coal mining company and a handful of other energy-industry giants.

The coal industry was facing a crisis in 2008, as the public and states began discussing humanity’s impact on global warming, and the federal government began floating plans for new carbon-emissions regulations. So, “clean coal” was born.

The term isn’t completely baseless (though it is still nonsensical). Plenty of companies in the industry were — and still are — working on ways to reduce the amount of carbon emitted by the coal-burning process. One method favored by US companies is carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), which would separate out the carbon dioxide in the air and store it in a secure location such as an oil, gas or deep saline reservoir.

The Department of Energy has historically been interested in two methods of CCS: pre- and post-combustion capture. Pre-combustion is the more efficient method, allowing operators to remove carbon dioxide from the coal as it is being transformed into a gas. Unfortunately, this requires the construction of new coal-burning power plants, which is a costly endeavor. On the other hand, post-combustion systems can be retrofitted onto existing power plants and extract carbon dioxide directly from the boiler.

CCS sounds like a practical solution, and it might be — if the technology actually existed.

President George W. Bush attempted to break into the CCS game in 2003 with FutureGen, a project that initially hoped to build a pre-combustion coal-fired power plant in Mattoon, Illinois. Over four years, the plant would sequester and pump 4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into a deep saline reservoir 8,000 feet underground, demonstrating the viability of CCS.

FutureGen was expected to cost $1.65 billion, with $1 billion coming directly from the federal government. Runaway costs and lawsuits kept the project at bay, and it was officially canceled in 2015.

Today, here’s how the Office of Fossil Energy explains the state of CCS technology:

“Today’s capture technologies are not cost-effective when considered in the context of storing CO2 from existing power plants. DOE/NETL analyses suggest that today’s commercially available post-combustion capture technologies may increase the cost of electricity for a new pulverized coal plant by up to 80 percent and result in a 20 to 30 percent decrease in efficiency due to parasitic energy requirements. Additionally, many of today’s commercially available post-combustion capture technologies have not been demonstrated at scales large enough for power-plant applications.”

There are a handful of experimental CCS projects scattered around the world, but a working coal-burning power plant that sequesters and secures carbon dioxide simply does not exist.

That’s right: “Clean coal” does not exist.

Coal is a powerful tool in every sense of the word. Coal power sparked the US’ Industrial Revolution and it heats homes, runs businesses and energizes gadgets across the nation. In 2015, coal accounted for 21 percent of the US’ energy production, behind only natural gas and petroleum.

It also has the power to kill: The toxins emitted by coal-burning power plants contribute to thousands of premature deaths and diseases every year, and man-made carbon emissions are the leading cause of global warming (despite any doubts the head of the EPA might have on that topic)

It’s not surprising that coal production has been falling steadily since 2008. The US industry’s output in 2015 was roughly the same as it was in 1981 as industries and individuals switched to more-efficient energy systems. Meanwhile, the renewable-energy market is growing: The solar industry employed 260,000 people in the US as of May 2015, while the coal industry employed 70,000. And in 2016, the number of people working in the solar-energy industry rose by 25 percent. Wind-energy employment spiked 32 percent.

This is the real meaning of “clean coal.” Peel away the layers of dishonest advertising and behavioral science cues, and “clean coal” looks a lot like a desperate slogan for a dying industry. It looks a lot like a lie.

Images: Carlos Barria / Reuters (Trump); Shutterstock / Danicek (Smokestacks)