Category: Techie

Sure, you can run Speedtest.net or max out your BitTorrent download, but as we found out last month, it’s hard to get a good gauge of how fast and consistent an ISP is using real-world, high-bandwidth applications.

But Netflix, as one of those high-bandwidth services, is taking matters into its own hands and has published its first monthly ranking of major ISPs, “based upon their actual performance across all Netflix streams.”

On Tuesday, Netflix wrote that Google Fiber, which is limited to a few hundred users in Kansas City (Kansas), “is now the most consistently fast ISP in America.”

Enlarge / Administration panel for Dexter, a malicious application that steals credit card data from point-of-sale systems. The malware was recently found on hundreds of computers around the world.

Seculert

A researcher has uncovered new malware that steals payment card data from point-of-sale terminals used by stores, hotels, and other businesses.

Dexter, as the malware is called, has infected hundreds of point-of-sale computers at big-name retailers, hotels, restaurants, and other businesses, according to a report issued by Aviv Raff, chief technology officer of Israel-based security firm Seculert. Businesses infected in the past three months are located in 40 different countries, with 30 percent of those compromised located in the US, 19 percent in the UK, and nine percent in Canada. Malware that infects point-of-sale terminals can be one of the most efficient ways to carry out payment card fraud because it targets machines with access to large amounts of the required data.

“Instead of going through the trouble of infecting tens of thousands of PCs or physically installing a skimmer, an attacker can achieve the same results by targeting just a few POS systems with specially crafted malware,” Raff wrote. “Dexter is one example of such malware.”

The edge of Murray-Sunset National Park on the border of South Australia and Victoria.

Vicki

We had a good run mocking iOS 6 maps for its wrong turns and bizarre aerial shots, but that’s all over now that Australian police have actually deemed the app a danger to the public.

A statement on the Victoria police website has officially decreed Apple’s contribution to the navigation world untrustworthy, after several users ended up 70km (about 43.4mi) off-course stranded in the wilderness and had to be rescued by police.

“Local police have been called to assist distressed motorists who have become stranded within the Murray-Sunset National Park after following directions on their Apple iPhone,” reads the statement from the Mildura police department.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued a first Office action declaring all twenty claims of one of Apple’s key multitouch patents invalid. The decision that was filed Monday isn’t final, but Apple will have its work cut out for it in order to overturn the initial ruling before it’s set in stone.

US Patent #7,479,949, claiming a “[t]ouch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics,” essentially covers iOS’s ability to respond when a user is trying to scroll vertically in a document, or trying to move around within the document in multiple directions. It also covers iOS’s ability to discern the difference between swiping among images in a gallery, or panning or zooming within the image.

The patent is sometimes referred to as the “Steve Jobs patent,” as Jobs’ name is listed first among the many Apple engineers cited as inventors of the patented claims.