May 14, 2018 – Page 2 – Peter's Quasi-Daily Blah-g

May 14, 2018

Verizon’s ‘Visible’ Startup Offers Unlimited Plan for $40/Month, Doesn’t Support Android (Updated)

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Visible Logo

Verizon quietly launched a startup earlier this year, a carrier to be exact, called Visible. What’s funny about the name is that Visible has been hardly visible to consumers, and maybe to the shock of some, the carrier doesn’t even support Android devices at the moment.

How Visible works is pretty cool, though. Much like Project Fi, everything a customers needs from the service can be handled via the Visible app, available only to iOS users. You can sign up for the service (but only if you have an invite code from an existing Visible customer), pay your bill, receive your new SIM, as well as do everything else you may need to from within the app. According to Visible, this is how they keep their pricing so low.

As noted on Visible’s website, $40/month will get unlimited data, text and calls, all on Verizon’s 4G LTE network. However, don’t let that unlimited word fool you. While the amount you can consume may be unlimited, that’s not the case for the speeds and video quality you’ll see while streaming. In big bold letters on its Coverage page, Visible says you’ll be capped at 5Mbps while on its network, as well as 480p quality when streaming video. As they put it, “We’re built for life on the go, so instead of giving you extra speed you don’t need (and making you pay for it), you get unlimited data at a speed that’s perfect for streaming.”

Now, mind you, $40/month for unlimited (even when limited to 5Mbps) isn’t bad at all. We sure wouldn’t mind seeing Android support come, but Visible says we’ll need to “stay tuned” for that.

If you have an iOS device and want to look into Visible, follow the link below and be sure to grab the Visible app from Apple’s store.

Update: To clarify, Visible is not a prepaid carrier. Instead, Visible only offers one option to customers: a month-to-month contract for $40/month. Hope that clears up any potential confusion.

Visible Link

// TechCrunch

Verizon’s ‘Visible’ Startup Offers Unlimited Plan for $40/Month, Doesn’t Support Android (Updated) is a post from: Droid Life

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via Droid Life: A Droid Community Blog https://ift.tt/2dLq79c

May 11, 2018 at 01:31PM

May 14, 2018

Syfy has canceled The Expanse, but its producers want to find it a new home

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Enlarge /

Grace Lynn Kung as Doris (L), Terry Chen as Praxidike Meng (R).

Season three of the acclaimed sci-fi drama The Expanse is well underway, but unfortunately, it will be the last season to air on Syfy. The final episode will be the season finale slated for early July, Deadline reports. The Los Angeles-based production company behind the show says it will try to shop the series to other potential broadcasters or streaming platforms around town.

The Expanse, based on a series of popular novels by a duo of authors who write under the pen name James S.A. Corey, was critically acclaimed and beloved by fans, but it was expensive to produce, it delivered poor on-air ratings, and critically, Syfy had only first-run linear rights. In other words, the network did not have the OTT (over-the-top: streaming and other digital distribution as opposed to broadcast air) rights. For a show like The Expanse, OTT viewing is key for long-term revenue. The show was only made available on cable television or by purchasing episodes or season passes on digital storefronts like iTunes and Amazon.

In many ways, The Expanse was not a good fit for Syfy. It was introduced alongside other series like The Magicians in an effort by Syfy to recapture the passionate audience it had for Battlestar Galactica some years ago. But after a rash of ambitious series canceled after only a few episodes, viewers may have looked on Syfy’s commitment skeptically. The target audience of The Expanse is heavily inclined toward digital consumption. Since Syfy ties much of its streaming to cable providers, it had no chance to entice cord cutters—and the network didn’t have the streaming rights anyway.

The mismatch was evidenced by the fact that the show has lately managed only a paltry 400,000 linear viewers in the critical 18-49 demo, despite widespread acclaim. The series’ production company, Alcon Entertainment, clearly believes it has something of value that might be a better fit elsewhere, as its co-founders suggested in a public statement that it will attempt take the intellectual property elsewhere.

Here’s the statement from NBCUniversal entertainment networks president Chris McCumber about the Syfy’s decision not to renew the series for another season:

The Expanse transported us across the solar system for three brilliant seasons of television. Everyone at Syfy is a massive fan of the series, and this was an incredibly difficult decision. We want to sincerely thank The Expanse‘s amazing cast, crew, and all the dedicated creatives who helped bring James S.A. Corey’s story to life. And to the series’ loyal fans, we thank you most of all.

And here’s the statement from the co-founders of production company Alcon Entertainment, Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson:

We are very disappointed the show will not be returning to Syfy. We respect Syfy’s decision to end this partnership, but given the commercial and critical success of the show, we fully plan to pursue other opportunities for this terrific and original IP.

Finding the right partner could be difficult. Most of the digital networks—the most natural homes for a series like this—already have several high-production-value sci-fi and fantasy series in the works. Netflix has Altered Carbon, Lost in Space, and more; Amazon is working on an adaptation of a William Gibson novel and a follow-up to the Lord of the Rings movies; Apple will produce a series based on Asimov’s Foundation books; and so on.

Tech

via Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com

May 11, 2018 at 06:38PM

May 14, 2018

Icy Moon Of Jupiter Spews Water Plumes Into Space

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Icy Moon Of Jupiter Spews Water Plumes Into Space : NPR

This is an artist’s concept of a plume of water vapor thought to be ejected off of the frigid, icy surface of the Jovian moon Europa, located 500 million miles from the sun.

NASA, ESA, and K. Retherford

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NASA, ESA, and K. Retherford

This is an artist’s concept of a plume of water vapor thought to be ejected off of the frigid, icy surface of the Jovian moon Europa, located 500 million miles from the sun.

NASA, ESA, and K. Retherford

Scientists have new evidence that there are plumes of water erupting from the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa — plumes that could, maybe, possibly contain signs of life.

The evidence comes from data collected by the now-defunct Galileo spacecraft. Although the data has been available since it was collected in 1997, it’s only now that an analysis confirms the existence of water plumes.

For more than two decades, scientists have been convinced Europa has a liquid water ocean sloshing around beneath its icy outer crust. In the past six years, two teams of researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope reported the possible existence of plumes. But as powerful as Hubble is, seeing something as small as a plume on a moon more than 380-million miles away is difficult.

“We’re looking for effects that are relatively small, and are pushing the spatial resolution of the telescope,” says astrophysicist Susana Deutsua of the Space Telescope Science Institute.

Nonetheless, it made sense that Europa had plumes, since the Cassini spacecraft had definitely seen water plumes from Enceladus, an icy moon orbiting Saturn that’s similar to Europa.

“When we first saw those images, I think a lot of us in the community were very excited,” says planetary scientists Xianzhe Jia from the University of Michigan. Jia did his graduate work at the University of California Los Angeles where he focused on data collected by Galileo.

A year ago, Jia heard a scientific talk about the plumes. He learned that they were near the equator of Europa, a region Galileo had flown directly over in 1997.

“That’s the moment where we realized that we might have something in the old Galileo data that we never paid much attention to,” Jia says.

Galileo recorded tons of data in the seven plus years it orbiting Jupiter. Jia was particularly familiar with data from an instrument known as a magnetometer that measures magnetic fields.

Turns out plumes give off a distinctive signal that a magnetometer can measure.

“When we look at those data carefully, what we found is there’s some strange magnetic signals in those data that have never been explained before,” Jai says.

As Jia and his colleagues report in the journal, Nature Astronomy, the best explanation was the signals were indeed generated by plumes of water coming from Europa. This means future missions to Jupiter could fly through these plumes and look directly for signs of life.

So why hadn’t scientists figured this out when these data were recorded back in the 1997?

Margaret Kivelson was principle investigator of the magnetometer on Galileo. She remembers puzzling over the magnetometer signals.

She says her team had already made the outlandish but ultimately accurate suggestion that there was a liquid ocean under Europa’s icy crust. “To go from there to also there are geysers coming up from that ocean, we just weren’t ready for that,” Kivelson says.

Kivelson has been studying Jupiter and its moons for a long time. She’s looking forward to NASA’s next mission to the giant planet.

“I hate to tell you how old I’ll be when the mission gets to Europa, but that’s OK,” she says.

Kivelseon is 89 now. The mission may not arrive until 2028. You can do the math.

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May 14, 2018 at 10:08AM

May 14, 2018

Accused robocall ‘kingpin’ fined a record $120 million

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FCC fines accused robocall 'kingpin' record $120 million

The Federal Communications Commission has imposed a record fine on a Florida man who is accused of placing nearly 100 million robocalls.

The FCC said on Thursday that it was fining Adrian Abramovich of Miami $120 million for posing a threat to public safety with the “illegal” calls. The FCC, in a citation from June 22, 2017, said the robocalls went to “critical emergency phone lines” used by hospitals and medical providers, as well as cell phones and residential phones, without the recipients’ consent.

“The evidence indicates that Abramovich is the perpetrator of one of the largest—and most dangerous—illegal robocalling campaigns that the Commission has ever investigated,” said the FCC in its complaint.

Robocalls are automated telemarketing calls that the FCC considers illegal, unless the recipient agrees to be called.

The complaint says that Abramovich made 96 million robocalls during a three-month period in 2016 as a part of “telemarketing scheme.” In the 2017 complaint, he’s accused of using “neighbor spoofing” to get people to answer the calls, by falsely presenting the calls as coming from a local number.

The robocalls offered discounted travel services to Mexico, the Caribbean and Florida, from Expedia (EXPE), Marriott (MAR), Hilton (HLT) and TripAdvisor (TRIP), according to the complaint. The FCC said these “spoofed” calls had nothing to do with these companies, and are considered wire fraud.

“Abramovich tarnished the good will of these companies,” the FCC said in the complaint. The fine on Abramovich is the largest ever imposed by the FCC, the agency said.

A spokesperson for TripAdvisor told CNNMoney that it became aware in 2015 that some US consumers were receiving fake recorded calls “that illegally claimed to be associated with our brand” and the company had been working with the FCC to stop it.

“The list of brands impersonated by these fraudsters goes well beyond TripAdvisor and reads like a who’s who of well-known airlines, hoteliers and online travel agents,” said TripAdvisor in a statement.

Related: FCC cracks down on robocalling

Abramovich, whose lawyer did not immediately return messages from CNNMoney, has denied the accusations of fraud.

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation called Abramovich to testify last month in a hearing called “abusive robocalls and how we can stop them.”

“The extent of my activities has been significantly overstated,” he said in his testimony. “I am not the kingpin of robocalling that is alleged.”

He also maintained that the offers were real. “The resorts associated with my telemarketing activities were indeed real resorts, offering real vacation packages,” he said.

Last year, the FCC voted for new rules allowing the phone companies to block robocall spoofing.

The FCC also said the number one complaint it receives from consumers are about robocalls.

“But it’s still happening and we’re still getting them,” said Michael Inouye, analyst for ABI Research. “The laws don’t appear to be particularly effective.”

But Inouye said that it might be possible to cut back on robocalling, with proper coordination between the FCC and communications companies.

Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) joined a “strike force” in 2016 to try and reduce robocalls, at the direction of the FCC.

“I don’t know if it’s possible to make it go away completely, but you can definitely do things to reduce the number of calls you get today,” he said.

CNNMoney (New York) First published May 11, 2018: 2:27 PM ET

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May 11, 2018 at 02:15PM