We all want faster downloads, and developments like graphene antennas promise a speedy future. There is an upper limit—the speed of light—but that should be fast enough, right? Well a new kind of hollow fiber optic cable promises to get us 99.7 percent of the way there. More »
Microsoft‘s Legal & Corporate Affairs Executive Vice President Brad Smith announced on Microsoft’s Tech Net blog that the company has released its first Law Enforcement Requests Report. The report details law enforcement data requests worldwide for information from the company’s cloud and online services, including how it responded to the requests.
According to the announcement, Microsoft’s first report includes information about data requests and responses for its various services, including Xbox LIVE, Outlook.com and Hotmail, Microsoft Account, and Office 365. It will continue to update this report twice a year (every six months) with new information. In addition, the company is also releasing data related to Skype, which it acquired a little over a year ago.
This move is to provide the public with information on consumer data requests and how they are responded to, providing transparency and contributing to the information on the topic already provided by other companies in the industry. The information is split by country, and shows how often the requests for each country are responded to with the data being handed over.
The report shows that Microsoft received 75,378 requests from various law enforcement agencies in 2012 concerning 137,424 accounts. Out of this large number, 2.1-percent of them resulted in Microsoft providing the requested information, a total of 1,558. Specifically, that 2.1-percent represents instances when the company provided content stored in/on the customer’s account, but not what it calls “non-consumer” data, which includes things like email addresses.
[via TechNet]
Microsoft publishes 2012 Law Enforcement Requests Report is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
We all see the occasional check-in on our social networks of choice, but Foursquare took a whole year of them, and crammed them into one glorious minute of glowing information. The whole mess of data is condensed down into a color-coded 24-hour span so you can see how people—Foursquarers at least—dart around their home cities almost ceaselessly, only stopping to rest in the most wee hours of the morning. More »
Remember last month when we showed you Facebook data of NFL fans across the US? It’s back again, only this time it’s all about the NCAA men’s basketball tournament that just started yesterday. The data is from over 1 million Facebook users who have “liked” a fan page of one of the 68 teams in the tournament.
Just like the NFL fan map from last month, the data from the NCAA tournament is quite interesting. One of the biggest things you’ll notice is that fans are very state-loyal, especially in the midwest, where almost all counties in a state are rooting for one team, even if that state has multiple teams in the tournament. Indiana, for example, is completely rooting for Indiana University, who is a number one seed this year. Other Indiana teams include Notre Dame and Butler, the latter of which made it to the championship game last year.
It’s interesting to see the states that have multiple teams in the tournament, such as Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Florida. Some states are split in the middle as far as what home team they’re rooting for, but some states are almost 100% loyal to a single team, including Michigan and North Carolina, both of which are rooting for the Michigan Wolverines and the North Carolina Tar Heels, respectively.
What’s perhaps more interesting, however, is that there are 17 teams in the field of 68 where zero counties were rooting for them (one of them being Indiana’s Notre Dame). Furthermore, there are regions of the US that are pretty much scattered as to who they’re ultimately rooting for, Texas being the most obvious, which is just one of the states that don’t have a home team in the tournament this year.
[via Deadspin]
Facebook data shows NCAA tournament fan statistics in the US is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
If you had an original iPhone with AT&T, the company’s new data plans will make you nostalgic for the old days of unlimited data without overages or extra charges. AT&T has unveiled three new data plans aimed at its most gluttonous consumers of mobile data. These plans all fall into the company’s Mobile Shared data packages.
In the past, the biggest plan you could opt for had 20 GB of data to share between devices and users. AT&T has unveiled plans with even more data, with one offering more than twice as much. The new AT&T data plans offer allotments of 30 GB, 40 GB, and 50 GB.
As you can imagine, these shared data plans are incredibly expensive. The 30 GB plan will cost you $300 per month. The 40 GB plan will set you back $400 per month, and the 50 GB option will cost you $500 per month.
These incredibly expensive data plans do include unlimited talk and text messaging. On top of those whopping monthly charges for the giant chunks of data, you will also have to pony up additional monthly charges for each device you add to the plan. Those monthly charges are $30 for each smartphone added. These plans could be good news for businesses since the 30 GB plan can have up to 15 devices, the 40 GB can support up to 20, and 50 GB can support up to 25 devices. That would give each of the devices on the big plan 2 GB of data each.
[via The Verge]
AT&T unveils new insanely expensive shared data plans is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Like it or not, Facebook is a pretty good barometer if what people like. So it’s fun when it gathers up its considerable data troves and spits out maps of stuff we like. Today it broke down the fans of teams in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. More »
A lot of people wrote T-Mobile off when its big merger with AT&T fell through last year. The pink carrier had no iPhone, no 4G. But with yesterday’s announcement of the company’s official LTE rollout, it may have just put itself in a position to offer something no one else can. More »
Data companies are scooping up enormous amounts of information about almost every American. They sell information about whether you’re pregnant or divorced or trying to lose weight, about how rich you are and what kinds of cars you have. More »
Here’s one for the morbid amongst you: this visualization reveals how everyone across the world died during the entire 20th century. It make for interesting—and surprising—reading. More »
A judge in California has ruled that National Security Letters, more commonly called NSLs, are in violation of the First Amendment. This is a significant ruling, and comes at a time when the FBI has come under fire for using them with false claims and other such issues. NSLs are said to be a vital part of combating terrorism.
National Security Letters allow the FBI to pull records on individuals without having to go through the courts, a surveillance method that involves a gag order on the fact that it even existed. Those who are the subjects of the NSLs (meaning individuals whose information has been obtained with them) are not notified that the NSL was ever used.
According to Northern District of California Judge Susan Illston, that aspect of the NSLs is in violation of the First Amendment. Her ruling earlier today has been stayed because the US government could appeal, but if it the ruling holds, NSLs will not be permitted because they are unconstitutional.
The way NSLs work is fairly straight forward. An official’s supervisor must state that the records to be pulled are related to or somehow relevant in an investigation in a national security issue. This allows the FBI to avoid the hassle of a warrant, something the agency claims is necessary in our post-911 world. Likewise, the agency has stated that problems cited with NSLs – abuse, namely – have been corrected.
[via Washington Post]
Judge: FBI surveillance method violates First Amendment is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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