Struggling with slow internet? Here’s proven methods to boost your bandwidth
Is your internet speed dying by degrees? Are your downloads and uploads just not meeting your expectations? Do you find yourself getting jealous of the internet speeds at work or a friend’s house? Then it’s time to speed up your internet! A lot of variables can affect internet speed, but we’re going to talk about the common culprits and the steps you can take to improve speed.
Find out what you’re paying for (and change it)
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First, it’s important to make sure that you are getting the internet speeds you’re paying for. Start by taking a speed test on your devices. Don’t take just one test; take several throughout the day (preferably on both weekends and weekdays, just to have a good sampling). Average them out and you should get a good Mb/s number to start with.
More: The best wireless routers you can buy
Now, head over to your ISP’s (internet service provider) website and check your specific internet plan package on the site. Almost every ISP has a listed internet speed for specific packages. This rate isn’t guaranteed—and there are a lot of caveats about it being the upper limit of what you can expect, etc.—but it is a good starting place. If your speed test results are wildly off from the stated speed, you have a problem. While you may want to try some of the other tips on our list first, this is a sign to give your ISP a call and try to improve your speed. Here are a few steps to try when you make contact.
Check data penalties: Some ISPs try what’s called bandwidth throttling, and while we don’t have time for a whole debate here, it basically slows down your internet so providers can save money, especially after you hit certain data use caps. Throttling is often invisible, so you may have no warning that it is happening. If your ISP has been known to slow down internet in the past, and you suspect that it’s happening here, it’s time to change providers.
Ask about any local issues: Maintenance and local problems may be causing internet issues in your area. Ask if anything is wrong, and when the problem will be resolved.
Buy a new package: If your internet speeds are in line with stated expectations, you can always consider bumping up to a better package and speed. Call in and explain your problem, and you could get a short-term discount out of it as well!
Switch to fiber: If you’re not already on fiber, see if you can make the switch for a vast improvement in internet speed. Most big ISPs offer some form of fiber connection, or packages that use certain fiber lines to improve speed. Verizon has FiOS. AT&T has U-Verse and Fiber. Google Fiber continues to spread through major cities, too. In other words, there are plenty of options out there, and fiber optic internet will almost definitely take care of any speed problems you have.
The best free books for Kindle (and other ebook stores)
It’s often tough to fathom that Amazon’s Kindle, the predominant e-reader of the decade thus far, has been around for more than eight years. It seems like yesterday my mother was unboxing the slick, white device from underneath the Christmas tree, her smug smile and giddy excitement in tow. She had never been one to welcome consumer technology with open arms, but the device’s portability, along with the sheer number of books it could hold, made book-loving aficionados everywhere rejoice. Never before was it so simple to cram thousands of books in your backpack, purse or travel luggage.
More: Looking to read your Kindle books on a non-Amazon device? Here’s how to convert them to PDF
The eBook marketplace is overwhelming, with more than a million books and publications available at your fingertips within a mere 60 seconds, ranging in cost from 99 cents up into the thousands of dollars. However, there’s also a myriad of titles available through Amazon, Google Play, and other sources that are available entirely free of charge. The bulk of the titles include those that have fallen into public domain over the years, but there’s also a healthy dose of self-published and over-the-counter titles you’d likely pick up on your way through the checkout line at your local supermarket. Below are a few of our favorites, from Secret Adversary to Sloppy Seconds.
Note: Google Play does not offer books using Kindle’s proprietary format in the way Amazon and Project Gutenberg do. Instead of AZW and KF8 files, users are going to want to directly download Google Play books as PDF files, thus rendering the books compatible with Kindle. To do so, navigate to your Google Play Book library, click the three squares in the upper-right corner of any title and select “Download PDF” from the resulting drop-down list. Afterward, select your desired save location and drag and drop the resulting file from your computer to your device once finished downloading.
Children’s Books
Peter Pan and Wendy by J.M. Barrie
Inspired by Barrie’s friendship with Llewelyn Davies family, Peter Pan Wendy is essentially the classic tale of Peter Pan, a boy who can fly and whisks a group of young children away to Neverland. All the usual suspects make their debut (Tiger Lily, Tinker Bell, the Lost Boys, Captain Hook, etc.), but it might not seem as blatantly offensive to Native Americans as the 1953 Disney film.
Download now from:
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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
There are very few people who are oblivious to Dorothy’s cyclone-fueled romps in Oz with Wicked Witch of the West, yet revisiting the Kansas native’s harrowing quest for the Emerald City is always somehow reassuring. The Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow all add to Baum’s descriptive and vivid world. Victor Fleming’s music doesn’t quite do the novel the justice it deserves.
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The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
A touchstone in the realm of children’s literature, Burnett’s classic has been adapted time and time again for both the stage and the big screen. It revolves around heroine Mary Lenno, an orphan who’s shipped off from her colonial India to live on a dingy county estate in Yorkshire. There she learns the healing power of friendship through plant cultivation in her, ahem, secret garden. So heartwarming, yet insightful.
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Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
The brothers Grimm wrote fairy tales that were aptly, rather grim, but many of the beloved tales have undergone edits and numerous alterations to the point where they’ve become suitable for children rather than the grotesque, violence-laden stories they once were. You know the tales — Rapunzel, Cinderella, Hansel, and Gretel — but there are also plenty of great standouts that weren’t made into animated films.
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Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
Swift’s classic tale is both a satire on human nature and simply one man’s fantastical voyages to uncharted lands. Among the many journeys along the way, Lemuel Gulliver meets a race of horses, an island inhabited by 6-inch people and the Emperor of Japan. It’s teeming with political undercurrents, albeit fictional, and has never gone out of print since making its initial debut in 1726. Talk about enduring.
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Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling
It should go without saying, kids love animals. Kipling’s tale, culled as a standalone story from The Jungle Book, follows a valiant mongoose who works to defend his adopted family of British colonials from a menacing pair of cobras upon their arrival in India. Sure, you may need to explain some of the subtle Victorianisms to younger audiences, but the harrowing story exhibits some of the most vibrant and sharp personification of any novel in existence.
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Amazon
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
As one of my favorite childhood books, it makes me all warm-and-fuzzy inside knowing Grahame’s classic is readily available free of charge. It’s about four anthropomorphised animals — Toad, Mole, Rat, and Badger — and their various escapades in the English countryside. It’s chalk-full of adventure, companionship, and moral reasoning, written by the former secretary of the Bank of England as bedtime stories for his son Alistair.
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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
English-born Lewis Carroll was known for coining a great deal of things, but his most well-known is undoubtedly Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It’s a familiar story, filled with witty wordplay and satire, about a young girl who follows a white rabbit down his hole into a world of absurd scenarios and memorable characters. Carroll may have been a pedophile in his personal life, but could weave one hell of a trip in his off time.
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Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
Pinocchio has tantalized audiences since the book was first published in 1883. Woodcarver Geppetto, carves the puppet, Pinocchio, and soon after his creation comes to life. Geppetto raises Pinocchio as his son, but Pinocchio is increasingly difficult to control, and routinely shows a penchant for finding mischief. We follow Pinocchio on a series of enchanting adventures, but will he change his beguiling ways?
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Amazon
The Ghost Files by Apryl Baker
Mattie Hathaway is a 16-year-old girl with a terrible secret. Ever since her mother tried to kill her when she was five, she’s been able to see dead people of the spectral variety. When the ghost of her foster sister turns up, Mattie enlists the help of a young policeman to investigate her disappearance, but they better tread carefully because there’s a serial killer at work. This is smart teen fiction with plenty of twists and turns.
Download now from:
Amazon
Uber has 10 days to pack up and get out of Italy, court ruling says
Why it matters to you
Uber is no stranger to battles with governments and their regulations, but now, the company is facing one of its tougher cases yet.
Uber is being unceremoniously thrown out of Italy. On Friday, a court in the European country decided to officially ban the ride-sharing app, noting that it results in unfair competition with traditional transportation offerings (like taxis). Although the ruling is subject to appeal, the immediate result for the time being is a 10-day timeframe for Uber to pack up and leave the country.
The decision upholds a complaint initially filed by taxi unions. As part of the decision, not only will Uber have to stop operating in Italy, but it’ll also have to stop advertising in the country. Should the company refuse to cooperate, it could be looking at a fine of 10,000 euros (which is to say, $10,600) for every day that it decides to stay active.
But unsurprisingly, Uber isn’t going away without a fight. In a statement, the company noted, “We are shocked by the Italian’s court decision and will appeal. Thousands of professional, licensed drivers use the Uber app to make money and provide reliable transportation at the push of a button for Italians.”
More: Uber puts the brakes on its self-driving fleet after Arizona car crash
This is not the first time Uber has been in trouble in Italy. Two years ago, a court in Milan decided to ban the UberPop application. At the time, it was determined that the app encouraged unlicensed drivers to offer taxi services. Despite an appeal, that decision was upheld at a later hearing in Turin.
Lawyers for Italy’s taxi unions are hopeful that the decision to ban Uber at large will also hold. “This is the fourth ruling by an Italian judge that ascertains Uber’s unfair competition, the latest battle in a legal war that began in 2015 to stop the most striking form of unfair competition ever registered on the Italian local public transportation market,” the lawyers told local newspaper Corriere della Sera. So if Uber wants to stay, it certainly looks to have its work cut out.
White House hires Lyft manager for a key transportation role
It’s tempting to oversimplify the ridesharing industry into an ideological battle: Lyft is the kinder, more generous outfit that donates to the ACLU, while Uber is a champion of hyper-capitalism that makes political compromises in the name of its bottom line. However, the truth is that both of these companies are complex beasts that reflect a wide range of views. Case in point: President Trump’s administration has unveiled plans to nominate Lyft’s General Manager for Southern California, Derek Kan, as the Under Secretary of Transportation for Policy. And it’s not as if he’s suddenly revealing his political stance, as this is really a logical next step given his career.
While Kan spent some time in the private sector before Lyft (he previously led strategy at the biotech startup GenapSys, for example), he was also a policy advisor to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, and the lead economist for the Senate Republicans’ Policy Committee. It would have been slightly surprising if he didn’t return to Republican politics at some point. His transportation background (he’s also on Amtrak’s board) just dictate the kind of position he takes, assuming he’s confirmed.
For its part, Lyft will only comment that it valued Kan and wishes him “luck in whatever path he chooses.” Like most companies, it’s not about to wade into the politics of its employees unless it becomes an issue for the larger organization (hi Facebook) — and that’s not happening here.
Via: LA Times
Source: White House
Gag ransomware forces you to play an anime shooter game
A typical ransomware takes your files hostage in exchange for money, but “Rensenware” asks for something else. It forces you to play an anime-type shooter game called Touhou Seirensen (Undefined Fantastic Object) and score 0.2 billion points in Lunatic mode. Based on what we’ve seen of the gameplay, some of you might wish your computers were infected with ransomware that ask for a reasonable amount of cash instead. Rensenware, which was first spotted by the Malware Hunter Team, was created as a joke.
It was made by Tvple Eraser on Twitter, who tweets primarily in Korean and had no intention of infecting other people’s PCs. Despite the lack of malice behind his actions, he still got a ton of flak since he released its source code on the internet — anybody can now use it to attack other people’s computers. To make up for it, Tvple Eraser replaced the gag malware’s code on GitHub with a tool that will let you bypass Rensenware’s encryption in case you get infected. While he said that working on the project was fun, he admitted that he made a mistake.
His apology on the GitHub page reads:
“I distributed source code except compiled binary on the web. However, at the point of the distribution, the tragedy was beginning.
Maybe It’s okay if I remove the encryption/decryption logic before I distribute the source code. then rensenWare can be treated kind of joke program. but I didn’t.
A number of people blamed me. It’s natural. because I made accident definitely wrong.
So I pulled down the source code of the rensenWare from the Github, and made this tool. I hope this tool can help the ones who are already affected by rensenWare.”
Since his apology doesn’t exactly erase Rensenware’s source code from the face of the internet, you may want to check out the tool he released. Make sure to watch Touhou’s gameplay, as well, so you at least have an idea what you’d be up against.
Found a surprising ransomware today: “rensenWare”.
Not asks for any money, but to play a game until you reach a score – and it’s not a joke. pic.twitter.com/Pu53WZFALA— MalwareHunterTeam (@malwrhunterteam) April 6, 2017
Via: Ars Technica
Source: Malware Hunter Team
These are our favorite wallpapers from the past year!
Wallpapers are underrated.
No matter how much theming and customization you do, you’ve got a wallpaper on your home screen. And a wallpaper is the easiest way to express your style, your passions, your substance on your phone. Which is why I implore you to please, PLEASE, ditch your dingy old wallpaper and get something new, something fun!
Over the past year of my weekly wallpaper articles, we’ve amassed quite a collection, and today, I’d like to share with you some of my favorites…
This is one of the first wallpapers I ever shared on this site, and it remains one of my favorites. Macchiato Mermaid is a theme I’ll find myself coming back to whenever I need to get another taste of Little Mermaid on my homescreen. It’s an easy theme, but I love the way the Trident pops on my dock. It’s sophistication that belies simplicity.
Macchiato Mermaid
Every twinkle! Every sparkle! It’s a sign of Christmas magic!
I’ve used this wallpaper two winters in a row, and I know I’ll be circling back to it again in a few months when the Christmas carols start playing again. I have the ever-charming Chateau de la Belle au Bois Dormant from Disneyland Paris shining in the distance, snow falling across the beautiful wintery scene, and a Santa boot left Cinderella-style on the steps (bet he’s missing that in this weather). This wallpaper is whimsical, yet refined, and the strong blue-white-red color scheme lends itself well to theming, with Glim red-variant icons for my dock and color-variable widgets when I get the whim.
Disneyland Paris Christmas
While our phones may be bringing the promise of the future to our homes, our pockets, and the rest of our lives, if you need a little more vintage futuristic-ness on your device, this wallpaper is here for you. This simple pattern is classic, elegant, and adds a subtle Disney flair to your home screen. Equally at home on a work phone or on your daily driver, this wallpaper plays well with most widgets, and the only icon pack that doesn’t go with it is Lines.
Spaceship Earth
Neuschwanstein Castle is one of the most picturesque castles in the world, nestled in the mountains of Germany. A poster of it hung above my bed in college, and probably hangs on a lot of walls because it is a beautiful castle — it was even the inspiration behind Sleeping Beauty’s castle at Disneyland. While most pictures show the castle draped in snow or summer splendor, this image of the castle surrounded by ruby red foliage is a certain kind of badass. Like a giant blood-red cape draped around the castles shoulders, that red hue also lends itself well to theming, with red search bars and red folder shortcuts.
Neuschwanstein Castle
Who hasn’t dreamed of soaring over the clouds? Of leaving the world and all its cares behind and seeing what the sky had to offer? Well, most of us wouldn’t fly off for too long (phone batteries are still only lasting a few days at most), but when we look at this wallpaper, we can daydream about it for a moment before going back to our Twitter feeds.
I’m also going to confess, this is a low-key Disney wallpaper for me because I turn it into a Soarin theme with red, yellow, and blue accents in addition to a Soarin logo app drawer icon.
Clouds Beyond Clouds II by FnKlinedinst
Looking up at the night sky for most of us treats us to a few brighter stars, maybe the moon, and a lot of darkness. But imagine if you looked at at night to a scene like this? Granted, some of the stars here are closer than any others will every be to Earth, but look at the color, the vibrancy, the activity. Look at all the stars, all the worlds there are out there! This wallpaper makes me wonder about the life, the wonder, the mysteries that are just waiting up in the sky, waiting to be found.
Stars
Some people say 3D animation isn’t as good as cel animation, and I’m here to jump up and down and scream ’til I’m in the Land of the Remembered that IT’S NOT TRUE! 3D animation can be vibrant, it can be beautiful, and it can be magical! The Book of Life is a 3D animation that used its digital medium with brilliance, giving otherworldly deities vibrance and mystical grace amongst the toy-like humans in our tale.
The museum guide tells us that La Muerte is made of sweet sugar candy, but she’s wrong: La Muerte is made out of goodness and sass. The dangerous gleam in her red-gold eyes when she discovers her husband’s treachery is raw, it is vivid, and it is real. She also delivers an undeniably strong message at the end of the film, one that we all need to be reminded of:
“Anyone can die. These kids, they will have the courage to live.”
La Muerte ba MooreD3
There’s a warmth to this place, and look at all the memos literally flying around! Who wouldn’t want to work there? Well, maybe not at the Department of Mysteries, but maybe we could find something with the Aurors, or maybe Mr. Scamander could use some aides after his shenanigans in New York… Oh, and this is a great wallpaper for theming, just add a golden search bar at the top and some green folder and app drawer accents. Sure, it’s a little on the Slytherin side of the color scheme, but damn it, it’s pretty!!
Ministry of Magic by Emmanuel-Oquendo
AIVAnet 