Free Republic

Christmas is traditionally the biggest day of the year for new smart-device activations and app downloads, and 2015 was no exception, with new device activations and app installs shattering record after record. As we do every year, Flurry examined what was waiting under the Christmas tree last week, based on the 780,000 apps we track. Increasing by a Factor of Two: 27% of New Devices Were Phablets More and more, consumers are gravitating toward the large screen of phablets and it looks like this once-derided (even by us!) form factor appears here to stay. The chart above plots new device...

It is difficult to compare 1840 to 2015, so much of what we have today didn’t exist then.  But, they had to move people and goods from place to place as we do now.  They had farms then as we do now. They used wagons pulled by horses, mules or oxen.  We use cars and airplanes. They used muscle power to farm, we use tractors, combines, grain carts, and trucks powered by petroleum fuels. In 1840 crude oil and natural gas production and use were rare. Coal was used in manufacturing, but steam engines were still in their infancy. So...

The Python Programming Language is rising in popularity in Tiobe's monthly language index, reaching an all-time high of fourth place this month, up from fifth place last month. The language now has a rating of 4.429 percent, an increase of more than 2 percent from a year ago, when it was ranked eighth. "[Python is] easy to learn, available everywhere, and embraced by industry. Python is the current standard in scripting," a report accompanying the index said. Tiobe uses a formula involving searches on popular search engines to gauge language popularity. In an email, Paul Jansen, managing director at Tiobe,...

Some of Bitcoin's core developers have left the project and are now starting their separate digital currency called Decred, promoting an open governance model, which they say is missing in Bitcoin. Few people know how Bitcoin works, and even fewer know who are the men and companies behind the cryptocurrency, and who takes the decisions. According to a press release put out by Company 0 LLC, formed by former Bitcoin developers, there are a few external entities that fund the actual development of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, forming a power-group that is in sole command of the direction the currency takes.

The upgrade from Windows 7 or 8.1 to Windows 10 was impacted by several significant app or hardware compatibility issues, and in some cases, Microsoft even recommended users to delay the move for a little bit longer until all these problems were fixed. One of the hardware compatibility bugs that were experienced by a big number of users concerns the Broadcom Virtual Wireless Adapter, which was unable to work with Windows 10, and that, according to a prompt showing up before the upgrade, could block users from connecting to wireless networks. The message was first displayed in June, soon after...

I saw this internet streaming box being advertised on the Next News Network and wondered if anyone has heard about it and what your opinions might be. It is supposed to supplant cable, Roku, and many others.

US online retail giant Amazon said Sunday it plans to produce 16 feature films a year, throwing down the gauntlet to Netflix, whose African war drama "Beasts of No Nation" may be headed for Oscar glory in February. "We want to win an Oscar," Amazon boss Jeff Bezos told Sunday's edition of the German daily Die Welt. With its Prime subscription service, Amazon has invested heavily in boosting its video content, and like Netflix has gone into original production, both in TV series and now in cinema. Amazon won five Emmys for the TV comedy series "Transparent" this year. The...

We are just at the edge of DSL service. The internet service is at times very slow and video streaming can be a real pain. There are no plans for upgrading to higher speeds for several years. We are considering either Time Warner cable for internet service only. It looks like the fee is about $35.00 per month for the standard package or about $65.00 a month for an even faster service. We don't intend to purchase any TV packages just internet. Any suggestions from fellow FREEPERS will be appreciated. We would prefer not to use Dish but would consider...

AFTER a year of big Apple releases, analysts are predicting a flat 2016 where the world's biggest tech company refines product lines rather than produces the next big thing. Apple's share price has taken a battering in the past six months, with more than $220 billion slashed from the company's value as analysts look towards an era of smartphone saturation. Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty recently predicted that 2016 would be first time that iPhone sales would shrink, dropping by up to three per cent.

(This is a follow up to an earlier thread http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3374828/posts) WMF 5.0 has 'bug which resets the PowerShell module environment during installation' The revolution has been postponed: the long-awaited update to PowerShell that yesterday we reported as having launched, has now been pulled by Microsoft. Redmond says its reversal is due to “a bug which resets the PowerShell module environment during installation” that “can have a serious impact on our customers” because it “resets the PSModulePath environment variable to default values, losing any changes made prior to the WMF 5.0 RTM installation.” Windows Management Framework (WMF) 5.0 has therefore been...

When it comes to competitive gaming, some players will go to any lengths to make sure that their names remain in the top tier of a game’s history. In the case of Rock Band 4 from Harmonix, it looks as though some players have managed to use exploits to reach otherwise impossible scores for the game’s online leaderboards. The developer has gone to somewhat extreme lengths to address the issue, however, as it has wiped the Rock Band 4 leaderboards It turns out that the game was released with a number of bugs, including one particular issue that has proved...

Italian security researchers from VoidSec have come across a botnet structure that was using vulnerable Aethra Internet routers and modems to launch brute-force attacks on WordPress websites. This particular incident was uncovered after one of the VoidSec researchers was sifting through his WordPress log file and found a brute-force attack coming from the same IP range. After further investigation, all the IPs came from six Internet Service Providers (ISP): Fastweb, Albacom (BT-Italia), Clouditalia, Qcom, WIND, and BSI Assurance UK, four of which are from Italy. What all these networks had in common were Aethra routers. VoidSec researchers narrowed down most...

AFTER a year of big Apple releases, analysts are predicting a flat 2016 where the world's biggest tech company refines product lines rather than produces the next big thing.Apple’s share price has taken a battering in the past six months, with more than $220 billion slashed from the company’s value as analysts look towards an era of smartphone saturation.Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty recently predicted that 2016 would be first time that iPhone sales would shrink, dropping by up to three per cent.Given the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus sold 13 million in their opening weekend, a jump from the...

I received a Sony DSC-W830 camera as a gift. Nice. Unfortunately it will not connect nor download pix to my PC running XP. Can anyone help? Thanks.

What do you do if Facebook account is being used by a hacker?

Purchases from big companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft are always popular, but what happens when you pit three smartphones from those companies against one another in a straight up speed test? Carry on reading to find out.As you might have guessed, this latest speed test video showcases three popular smartphones available on the market today. The nearly three minute long video takes the iPhone 6s Plus, the new Nexus 6P, and Microsoft’s Lumia 950 XL and thrusts them together over a series of challenges to see exactly how performant each is in comparison to the rest across a set of...

Apple requests another $179 million in supplemental damages from Samsung By Daniel Eran DilgerThursday, December 24, 2015, 03:50 pm PT (06:50 pm ET)Three weeks after finally receiving $548,176,477 from Samsung over the South Korean company's infringement of Apple's design and technology patents dating back to a 2012 jury verdict, the iPhone maker has filed for another $178,659,870 in supplemental damages and $1,192,490 in interest payments. The supplemental damages and interest come on top of the the original $548 million Samsung finally agreed to pay earlier this month. The supplemental damages, compiled on Apple's behalf by CPA Julie Davis, relate to...

Liz Upton, the Director of Communications for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, has tweeted out a screenshot of an email where an unknown person has proposed that the Foundation install malware on all of its devices. In the email, a person named Linda, is proposing Mrs. Upton an agreement where their company would provide an EXE file that installs a desktop shortcut, that when clicked redirects users to a specific website. (Raspberry Pi devices can run Windows as well, not just Linux variants.) Linda from company Q[edited] is also inquiring Mrs. Upton about the Foundation's PPI (Price per Install). Judging from...

Ad blocking is something of a contentious issue, but it's one that has been brought to prominence in 2015. The adblockalypse arrived this year as the debate about whether disabling ad blockers was preferable to paying for content. Adblock Plus -- one of the best known ad blockers out there -- recently updated its acceptable ads policy which gives people the option of permitting certain ads to appear in their browser. But a new deal struck with ASUS means that anyone buying a phone or tablet from the Taiwanese company in 2016 will find that ad blocking is baked in...

Former Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde has always been very outspoken about people's inherent drive to copy things. Last year he paid the ultimate price of sacrificing his freedom for his involvement in TPB, but that hasn't changed his core 'kopimi' values. One of Peter's major frustrations is how the entertainment industries handles the idea of copying. When calculating the losses piracy costs, they often put too much value on pirated copies. This is something Peter knows all too well, as he still owes various movie and music companies millions in damages. However, this hasn't stopped him from continuing to...