An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: ATT Inc. is considering stopping all sales of Samsung Electronics Co.'s flagship Galaxy Note 7 over concerns about the smartphone's safety, according to a person familiar with the situation. A final decision will likely come as soon as Friday, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. ATT spokesman Fletcher Cook declined to comment. Like many competitors, the second-largest U.S. wireless carrier is already offering alternative smartphones to people who return Note 7 devices. Samsung started replacing the Note 7 last month because of a flaw in its lithium battery that can lead to overheating and pose a burn hazard to customers. Airlines have banned customers from using the smartphones on flights, and the evacuation of a Southwest Airlines Co. plane earlier this week was blamed on smoke caused by a replacement device. ATT's move would be a further blow to Samsung. The wireless carrier is the third-biggest customer of the South Korean company, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Samsung is already facing a bill that analysts estimate stretching into the billions of dollars for the recall of 2.5 million Note 7 phones that it announced last month. A U.S.-based Samsung spokeswoman didn't immediately have a comment.

With the launch of the Google Pixel and Pixel XL yesterday, Google failed to mention the fact that vanilla Android is dead. The Pixel and Pixel XL run Android 7.1 Nougat, custom software made solely for the new Pixel devices and not for past Nexus smartphones. A changelog for Android 7.1 reveals that Nexus smartphones and tablets will not get Pixel-specific features. They won't get the Pixel Launcher or Google Assistant. BGR reports: Google is trying to set the Pixels apart by giving them special features, and it's not like that's an irrational business decision. But the Pixels might change the way Android fans buy devices. Before, you could go for Nexus to get the hottest Android features as soon as Google released Android updates, or you could buy anything else and hope for speedy software upgrade. Now, it seems that you'll have to buy Pixel to get a full Android experience as Google envisions it, or get anything else and never experience Android in its full glory. Some of the Pixel product-specific features, as mentioned in the changelog found by Android Police, include: Pixel Launcher, Google Assistant, unlimited original quality photo/video backup to Google Photos, phone/chat support, and various cosmetic changes.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nokia has signaled fresh commitment towards 5G infrastructure with the acquisition of Eta Devices -- a small U.S.-based startup that specializes in improving power efficiency at base stations. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based outfit has around 20 staff, some of whom work at its research and development site in Stockholm, Sweden. Nokia said it hoped the buyout, financial details of which weren't disclosed, allow it "to enhance base station energy efficiency, an increasingly important area for operators on the path to 4.9G and 5G." Eta claims its tech can "drastically" reduce "heat waste" via an "amplifier that works like an automated gearbox" by adjusting energy usage by need. It has tech which claims to improve smartphone battery life, too -- with supposed boosts of up to 50 percent. However, Nokia seems to have acquired it for the "significant" power savings it says it can make at base stations, both in readiness for the Internet of Things, and to improve its carbon footprint and help its "zero emission base station solution." The acquisition includes fixed assets, employees, intellectual property rights, and lease and supplier deals, Nokia said. Nokia said in a statement: "This translates to savings for operators that can be invested as 4.9G and 5G approach. Eta Devices' technology reduces the need for backup power, translating into smaller base station cabinets and reduced equipment breakdown rates, and supporting Nokia's target to continuously strengthen the base station power efficiency of its products."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Stack: Johnson and Johnson has revealed that its JJ Animas OneTouch Ping insulin pump is vulnerable to hackers, who could potentially force the device to overdose diabetic patients -- however, it declares that the risk of this happening is very low. Unnamed executives from the American multinational medical manufacturer said that they were taking the unprecedented step of warning customers about the vulnerability, particularly in light of recent controversies regarding attack vectors in cardiac equipment. In a letter to doctors and 114,000 patients, sent on Monday, the company wrote: "The probability of unauthorized access to the OneTouch Ping system is extremely low... It would require technical expertise, sophisticated equipment and proximity to the pump, as the OneTouch Ping system is not connected to the internet or to any external network." Even though the company's own technicians were able to hack the pump within a distance of 25 feet, Johnson and Johnson's chief medical officer Brian Levy observed that the hack would be extremely difficult to pull off, and said "We believe the OneTouch Ping system is safe and reliable. We urge patients to stay on the product."

Trailrunner7 quotes a report from On the Wire: Credential theft is one of the more persistent and troubling threats in security, and researchers have been trying to come up with answers to it for decades. A team at the University of Washington has developed a system that can prevent attackers from intercepting passwords and keys sent over the air by sending them through users' bodies instead. The human body is a good transmission mechanism for certain kinds of waves, and the UW researchers were looking for a way to take advantage of that fact to communicate authentication information from a user's phone directly to a target device, such as a door knob or medical device. In order to make that idea a reality, they needed to develop a system that could be in direct contact with the user's body, and could produce electromagnetic signals below 10 MHz. And to make the system usable for a mass audience, the team needed widely available hardware that could generate and transmit the signals. So the researchers settled on the fingerprint sensor on iPhones and the touchpad on Lenovo laptops, as well as a fingerprint scanner and a touchpad from Adafruit. The concept is deceptively simple: generate an electromagnetic signal from the fingerprint sensor or touchpad and transmit that through the user's body to the target device. The signal can carry a typical password or even an encryption key, the researchers said. "We show for the first time that commodity devices can be used to generate wireless data transmissions that are confined to the human body. Specifically, we show that commodity input devices such as fingerprint sensors and touchpads can be used to transmit information to only wireless receivers that are in contact with the body," the researchers, Mehrdad Hessar, Vikram Iyer, and Shyamnath Gollakota, of UW said in their paper, "Enabling On-Body Transmissions With Commodity Devices."

Samsung's next flagship smartphone, which may be released sooner than later due to the Note 7 fiasco, may not feature a 3.5mm headphone jack. In fact, Samsung may be one of many manufacturers to make the jump from the 3.5mm headphone jack to USB-C for audio. The USB Implementers Forum published the Audio Device Class 3.0 specification that brings USB Audio over USB Type-C. What this means is that "mobile devices including smartphones, tablets and ultraportable laptops could ditch the headphone jack in the very near future without worrying about having to bake audio support into USB-C or a new, proprietary port," writes Chris Smith via BGR. SamMobile adds: "Removing the dedicated audio plug will also allow OEMs to create smartphones that are slimmer and have better water resistance capabilities."

Microsoft's fitness-band line of devices have not be very well adopted over the years. Last month it was reported that Microsoft will be killing off the Lumia brand in favor of a new Surface Phone brand. Now, it appears the company is discontinuing its Band devices, as it has removed all references to them from its Microsoft Store listing online. Mary Jo Foley writes via ZDNet: A tipster who asked not to be named showed me a cached version of the Microsoft Online Store listing from yesterday, October 2, which included Band devices; today, October 3, references to the Band devices are gone from the company's Store sites. Microsoft also removed the Band software development kit (SDK) today, which isn't surprising given it's no longer selling Band 2 devices. Microsoft is believed to have disbanded the software team that was looking to bring Windows 10 to the Band a couple months ago. I've gotten various tips that at least some of the Band hardware team members have dispersed, too, with some moving to other Microsoft hardware teams inside the company. Even though sources of mine have said Microsoft is planning to phase out its fitness band devices and to have no plans to roll out a Band 3 device any time soon (or likely, ever), company officials still haven't completely conceded that it's the end of the line for Band. I asked again today and have yet to get an updated statement from the company regarding when and why Band devices were removed from Microsoft's online stores. A spokesperson sent me the following statement: "We have sold through our existing Band 2 inventory and have no plans to release another Band device this year. We remain committed to supporting our Microsoft Band 2 customers through Microsoft Stores and our customer support channels and will continue to invest in the Microsoft Health platform, which is open to all hardware and apps partners across Windows, iOS, and Android devices."

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes a report from Fox News: Immunity deals for two top Hillary Clinton aides included a side arrangement obliging the FBI to destroy their laptops after reviewing the devices, House Judiciary Committee sources told Fox News on Monday. Sources said the arrangement with former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills and ex-campaign staffer Heather Samuelson also limited the search to no later than Jan. 31, 2015. This meant investigators could not review documents for the period after the email server became public -- in turn preventing the bureau from discovering if there was any evidence of obstruction of justice, sources said. The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee fired off a letter Monday to Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking why the DOJ and FBI agreed to the restrictive terms, including that the FBI would destroy the laptops after finishing the search. The immunity deals for Mills and Samuelson, made as part of the FBI's probe into Clinton's use of a private email server when she served as secretary of state, apparently included a series of "side agreements" that were negotiated by Samuelson and Mills' attorney Beth Wilkinson. The side deals were agreed to on June 10, less than a month before FBI Director James Comey announced that the agency would recommend no charges be brought against Clinton or her staff. Judiciary Committee aids told FoxNews.com that the destruction of the laptops is particularly troubling as it means that the computers could not be used as evidence in future legal proceedings, should new information or circumstances arise.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Over the nine or so years that Mylan, Inc. has been selling -- and hiking the price -- of EpiPens, the drug company has been misclassifying the life-saving device and stiffing Medicaid out of full rebate payments, federal regulators told Ars. Under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program, drug manufacturers, such as Mylan, can get their products covered by Medicaid if they agree to offer rebates to the government to offset costs. With a brand-name drug such as the EpiPen, which currently has no generic versions and has patent protection, Mylan was supposed to classify the drug as a "single source," or brand name drug. That would mean Mylan is required to offer Medicaid a rebate of 23.1 percent of the costs, plus an "inflation rebate" any time Mylan raises the price of the brand-name drug at a rate higher than inflation. Mylan has opted for such price increases -- a lot. Since Mylan bought the rights to EpiPen in 2007, it has raised the price on 15 separate occasions, bringing the current list price to $608 for a two-pack up from about $50 a pen in 2007. That's an increase of more than 500 percent, which easily beats inflation. But instead of classifying EpiPen as a "single source" drug, Mylan told regulators that it's a "non-innovator multiple source," or generic drug. Under that classification, Mylan is only required to offer a rebate of 13 percent and no inflation rebates. It's unclear how much money Mylan has skipped out on paying in total to state and federal governments. But according to the state health department of Minnesota, as reported by CNBC, the misclassification cost that state $4.3 million this year alone.

Arguably one of the best password manager applications in the wild, LastPass, is making select services available to its mobile users for free. Under the new plan, LastPass's free services will now include two-factor authentication, password generation and sync, and access from unlimited devices. Previously, the browser extension was available for free but users had to pay a $12 annual free to take their passwords with them on mobile. There is still a subscription fee for the LastPass Premium service, which includes access to family password sharing, two-factor authentication methods like YubiKey and Sesame, encrypted file storage, fingerprint identification on desktop, priority customer support and an ad-free password vault. TechCrunch reports: Basically, LastPass is now charging only for enhanced features rather than convenient access. The company also earns revenue from its enterprise offerings. LastPass says that the change is motivated by a commitment to bringing password security to the masses. "Today's reality is that people's digital lives are increasingly in the cloud -- and inherently span countless personal and work devices. We believe that to truly benefit from the security and convenience of a password manager, it should be available whenever and wherever you need it," LastPass vice president Joe Siegrist said in a statement. "By offering LastPass for free across all your devices, we're making it that much easier for everyone to make good password habits the norm, while resetting the expectations of what a great password management experience should be in a multi-device world." But the pricing change might also be intended to lure users from other paid password management services. LogMeIn CEO Bill Wagner said on an earnings call last week that free users drive revenue for LastPass because they often convert to Premium services or serve as referrals for enterprise business opportunities.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from AnandTech: The USB Implementers Forum this week published the USB Audio Device Class 3.0 (direct download) specification, which standardizes audio over USB Type-C interface. The new spec enables hardware makers to eliminate traditional 3.5mm mini-jacks from their devices and use USB-C ports to connect headsets and other audio equipment. Makers of peripherals can also build their audio solutions, which use USB-C instead of traditional analog connectors. Developers of the standard hope that elimination of mini-jacks will help to make devices slimmer, smarter and less power hungry. As reported, the USB Audio Device Class 3.0 specification supports both analog and digital audio. Analog audio is easy to implement and it does not impact data transfers and other functionality of USB-C cables since it uses the two secondary bus (SBU) pins. The USB ADC 3.0 defines minimum interoperability across analog and digital devices in order to avoid confusion of end-users because of incompatibility. In fact, all ADC 3.0-compliant hosts should support the so-called headset adapter devices, which allow to connect analog headsets to USB-C. However, digital audio is one of the primary reasons why companies like Intel wanted to develop the USB-C audio tech on the first place, hence, expect them to promote it. According to the USB ADC 3.0 standard, digital USB-C headphones will feature special multi-function processing units (MPUs), which will, to a large degree, define the feature set and quality of headsets. The MPUs will handle host and sink synchronization (this is a key challenge for digital USB audio), digital-to-analog conversion, low-latency active noise cancellation, acoustic echo canceling, equalization, microphone automatic gain control, volume control and others. Such chips will also contain programmable amplifiers and pre-amplifiers, which are currently located inside devices. Besides, USB ADC 3.0-compatible MPUs will also support USB Audio Type-III and Type-IV formats (the latest compressed formats), but will retain compatibility with formats supported by ADC 1.0 and 2.0. Finally, among the mandated things set to be supported by USB-C Audio devices are new Power Domains (allows devices to put certain domains in sleep mode when not in use) as well as BADD (basic audio device definition) 3.0 features for saving power and simplified discovery and management of various audio equipment (each type of devices has its own BADD profile).

Apple removed the headphone jack in the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, forcing users to use either Bluetooth, the Lightning port or included Lightning to 3.5mm headphone jack adaptor in order to listen to music through headphones. However, one company took it upon themselves to create an iPhone 7 case with a built-in 3.5mm headphone jack. The company is called Fuze and they recently launched an Indiegogo campaign that promises to bring the audio port back to the iPhone 7. The Next Web reports: To achieve this, the company is taking Apple's Lightning to 3.5mm adapter and building it straight into a case, where you can plug your headphones with "no dongles, no adapters, no problems." In addition to the audio port, the Fuze Case will also serve as a battery pack as it adds 2,400mAh of extra battery life to the iPhone 7 and 3,600mAh to the 7 Plus. It will be available in five different colors including white, black, gold, rose gold and blue. The case is currently available for $49 to "super early bird" backers, but will increase to $59 once more people have chipped in and will eventually sell for $69 in retail. The company expects to start shipping the accessory in December later this year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: D-Wave, a Canadian company developing the first commercial "quantum computer," announced its next-generation quantum annealing computer with 2,000 qubits, which is twice as many as its previous generation had. One highly exciting aspect of quantum computers of all types is that beyond the seemingly Moore's Law-like increase in number of qubits every two years, their performance increases much more than just 2x, unlike with regular microprocessors. This is because qubits can hold a value of 0, 1, or a superposition of the two, making quantum systems able to deal with much more complex information. If D-Wave's 2,000-qubit computer is now 1,000 faster than the previous 1,000-qubit generation (D-Wave 2X), that would mean that, for the things Google tested last year, it should now be 100 billion times faster than a single-core CPU. The new generation also comes with control features, which allows users to modify how D-Wave's quantum system works to better optimize their solutions. These control features include the following capabilities: The ability to tune the rate of annealing of individual qubits to enhance application performance; The ability to sample the state of the quantum computer during the quantum annealing process to power hybrid quantum-classical machine learning algorithms that were not previously possible; The ability to combine quantum processing with classical processing to improve the quality of both optimization and sampling results returned from the system. D-Wave's CEO, Vern Brownell, also said that D-Wave's quantum computers could also be used for machine learning task in ways that wouldn't be possible on classical computers. The company is also training the first generation of programmers to develop applications for D-Wave quantum systems. Last year, Google said that D-Wave's 1,000 qubit computer proved to be 100 million times faster than a classical computer with a single core: "We found that for problem instances involving nearly 1,000 binary variables, quantum annealing significantly outperforms its classical counterpart, simulated annealing. It is more than 10^8 times faster than simulated annealing running on a single core," said Hartmut Neven, Google's Director of Engineering.

A former Verizon technician who worked in Alabama is being accused of selling customers' private call records and location data to an unnamed private investigator. Authorities said the data was sold for more than four years, from 2009 to 2014. The Associated Press reports: [Daniel Eugene Traeger] logged into one Verizon computer system to gain access to customers' call records, authorities said. He used another company system known as Real Time Tool to "ping" cellphones on Verizon's network to get locations of the devices, according to the plea agreement. He then compiled the data in spreadsheets, which he sent to the private investigator for years, the court records show. "Between April 2009 and January 2014, the defendant was paid more than $10,000 in exchange for his provision of confidential customer information and cellular location data to the PL, an unauthorized third party," court records state. Though Traeger was based in the Birmingham area, the court records do not indicate whether the information that was sold involved Verizon Wireless customers in Alabama or elsewhere. He faces up to five years in prison, but prosecutors are recommending a lesser sentence since he accepted responsibility, according to terms of the plea agreement.

jasonbrown writes from a report via PC Magazine: The Japanese automaker Nissan this week debuted what it's calling the ProPILOT Chair -- an autonomous chair that automatically queues for you while you sit back and relax. With its built-in cameras, the high-tech chair "detects and automatically follows the chair ahead of it, maintaining a fixed distance and traveling along a set path." Standing (or sitting) in line has never been so much fun. "Nissan drew inspiration for this new chair from its ProPILOT autonomous driving technology, which has been available in the company's Serena minivan in Japan since August," the report adds. "The ProPILOT technology allows the vehicle to maintain a safe distance between the car ahead, and ensures that it stays in the center of its lane." While the product appears to be a marketing stunt, Nissan is actively looking for restaurant partners in Japan who want to offer this technology to their customers. Japanese restaurants can tweet their name and website along with the hashtags #NissanProPilotChair #Wanted in an effort to be outfitted with the technology. You can watch the joyful and jazzy launch video here.

It didn't take long for DJI to respond to GoPro's voice-controlled Karma drone. Today, the company has unveiled the Mavic Pro, an ultra-portable drone that can fold up into roughly the "size of a standard water bottle," DJI says. Of course, it also features a high-resolution camera and several autonomous software tricks. PetaPixel reports: Despite its petite form factor, the drone packs a punch: there's a 4K camera on the front, a visual navigation system, a 4.3-mile (7km) range, and a 27-minute flight time. By comparison, the Karma has a range of 0.62 miles (1km) and a flight time of 20 minutes. The Mavic Pro can be operated with a remote controller for long-range uses, or simply with your smartphone if you're not planning to fly it far. For the latter, the drone can go from folded up to in flight in less than a minute. In the Mavic Pro is a new FlightAutonomy system, which uses 5 cameras, GPS and GLONASS navigation, 2 ultrasonic rangefinders, redundant sensors, and 24 computing cores to serve as the drone's "brain and nervous system." Using FlightAutonomy, the Mavic Pro can follow positions and routes while avoiding obstacles at 22mph (36kph), allowing you to create advanced flights with minimal input and flying skills. What's more, the drone can even be controlled with your physical gestures, making it easy to shoot an aerial selfie if you so desire. A new compact remote controller has been designed for the Mavic Pro, and it features an LCD screen with essential data, dedicated buttons (e.g. Return-to-Home, Intelligent Flight pause), and a OcuSync video link system that provides live view at 1080p resolution. DJI is also announcing DJI Goggles to go along with the Mavic Pro. Wearing the goggles allows you to fly the drone with an immersive 85-degree view in full 1080p, viewing the world through the eyes of the drone. The DJI Mavic Pro will be available starting October 15th, 2016, with a price tag of $749 for just the drone and $999 with a remote controller bundled in. The DJI Mavic introduction video can be viewed here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Mac Rumors: Insurance company Aetna today announced a major health initiative centered on the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, which will see Aetna subsidizing the cost of the Apple Watch for both large employers and individual customers. Starting this fall during open enrollment season, Aetna will subsidize "a significant portion" of the Apple Watch cost and will offer monthly payroll deductions to cover the remaining cost. Aetna also plans to provide Apple Watches at no cost to all of its nearly 50,000 employees as part of a wellness reimbursement program to encourage them to live healthier lives. Aetna plans to develop several iOS health initiatives with "support" from Apple, debuting "deeply integrated" health apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch that will be available to all Aetna customers. According to Aetna, these apps will "simplify the healthcare process" with features like care management to guide customers through a new diagnosis or a medication, medication reminders and tools for easy refills, quick contact with doctors, integration with Apple Wallet for paying bills and checking deductibles, and tools to help Aetna members get the most out of their insurance benefits. Aetna's health-related apps will be available starting in early 2017, but the Apple Watch initiative will begin in 2016. Aetna has not detailed how much of the cost will be subsidized or which Apple Watch models will be available to subscribers.

MojoKid writes: If you thought that the massive DDoS attack earlier this month on Brian Krebs' security blog was record-breaking, take a look at what just happened to France-based hosting provider OVH. OVH was the victim of a wide-scale DDoS attack that was carried via a network of over 152,000 IoT devices. According to OVH founder and CTO Octave Klaba, the DDoS attack reached nearly 1 Tbps at its peak. Of those IoT devices participating in the DDoS attack, they were primarily comprised of CCTV cameras and DVRs. Many of these devices have improperly configured network settings, which leaves them ripe for the picking for hackers that would love to use them to carry out destructive attacks.The DDoS peaked at 990 Gbps on September 20th thanks to two concurrent attacks, and according to Klaba, the original botnet was capable of a 1.5 Tbps DDoS attack if each IP topped out at 30 Mbps. This massive DDoS campaign was directed at Minecraft servers that OHV was hosting. Octave Klaba / Oles tweeted: "Last days, we got lot of huge DDoS. Here, the list of 'bigger that 100Gbps' only. You can the simultaneous DDoS are close to 1Tbps!"

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Stack: Japanese citizens will soon be able to pay their utility bills using bitcoin. The facility is being provided by Coincheck Denki, a new service offered by the Japanese bitcoin company, which will be available to users in November. Coincheck outlined the new plan on its website. Also called 'Coincheck Electricity,' it will allow users to pay their electricity bills directly from their Coincheck bitcoin wallet. It also offers a discount plan for heavy users of electricity, with 4-6% of the total bill discounted for heavy users of electricity who pay in bitcoin. Coincheck's parent company, Reju Press, initially partnered with Mitsuwa Inc., to create the bitcoin payment system. Coincheck now works with Mitsuwa subsidiary E-Net Inc., and has formed a partnership with Marubeni Power Retail Corporation, which operates power plants in 17 locations in central Japan. Marubeni has offices in 66 countries worldwide, although no plans have been announced to take the bitcoin payment option outside of Japan. While the initial bitcoin payment rollout is for electricity bills, Coincheck plans to expand its offerings to bitcoin payment for 'life infrastructure,' to include payment of gas, water and mobile phone bills. It may even partner with landlords to allow customers of Coincheck to pay rent using bitcoin. The bitcoin payment plan will be rolled out in Chubu, Kanto (including Tokyo) and Kansai regions to start, with additional areas to be added sequentially. The company hopes to offer bitcoin payment options to one million electric customers within the first year.

jenningsthecat writes: The Swedish government is putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to encouraging the repair of stuff that would otherwise be thrown away, according to both The Guardian and Fast Company. The country's Social Democrat and Green party coalition have submitted proposals to Parliament that would reduce the value-added-tax (VAT) on bicycle, clothing, and shoe repairs from 25% to 12%. Also proposed is an income tax deduction equalling half the labor cost of repairing household appliances. According to The Guardian, "the incentives are part of a shift in government focus from reducing carbon emissions produced domestically to reducing emissions tied to goods produced elsewhere." Per Bolund, Sweden's Minister for Financial Markets and Consumer Affairs, said the policy also tied in with international trends around reduced consumption and crafts, such as the "maker movement" and the sharing economy, both of which have strong followings in Sweden. The VAT cut may create more jobs for immigrants as it could spur the creation of a new home-repairs service industry. Also, from a science standpoint, the incentives could help cut the cost of carbon emissions on the planet as it should in theory reduce emissions linked to consumption. "I believe there is a shift in view in Sweden at the moment. There is an increased knowledge that we need to make our things last longer in order to reduce materials' consumption," Bolund said. The Guardian's report concludes: "The proposals will be presented in parliament as part of the government's budget proposals and if voted through in December will become law from January 1, 2017."