Over the next few months, Comcast will begin trialing two new options for next-gen data tiers.

• Option 1: All lower tiers (Internet Essentials/Economy/Performance) will get a minimum of 300 GB of data usage per month while upper tiers (Blast/Extreme) will each have their own increased data usage amount (undisclosed as of right now) per tier.

• Option 2: All tiers from bottom to top will get 300 GB of data usage per month with overages costing $10 for each additional 50 GB chunk of data.

We’re actually quite impressed. Comcast has long been criticized relentlessly for overly restrictive data caps and pricing that most would label as “rip-off”. The revamped plans that will debut in the trials over the next few months are a step in the right direction but still not perfect.

For example, using Comcast’s own branded TV/digital streaming services and applications will not count towards your monthly data allotment. Using any other 3rd party will — a huge issue in our eyes. At the same time, it’s an easy way to consume way more than 300 GB a month and still be a-ok in Comcast’s eyes.

Source: Comcast | Via: Phoneboy

Super Hi-Vision is essentially like having four miniature HD TVs crammed into four equal parts of your TV. The resolution of 7680 x 4320 is exactly the same as 1920 x 1080 multiplied by four. We saw a Panasonic 8K Super Hi-Vision TV on display at CES back in January and were pretty much left in awe.

Today, that 8K technology is continuing its assault on the the world’s retinas. Japanese broadcaser and future chaser, NHK, claims to have transmitted the “world’s first” 8K Super Hi-Vision signal over terrestrial UHF TV bands. To achieve the feat, NHK says that a MIMO-like technology that crams multiple channels into a single, unified stream. The end result of course is pure, visual nirvana.

Public availability of 8K hardware is many years off as the hardware to even create said content is in extremely limited numbers on a global scale. Still, we’re hoping that 8K comes sooner rather than later as once you’ve seen it, it’s pretty hard to be content with anything less thereafter.

Via: The Verge

Exhibit A: The recently discovered Flashback Mac malware that infected some ~800,000+ machines. One might think that the relatively simple method in which Flashback gained access to and controlled machines meant financial gain was pretty small in scope. Not so, says security software company, Symantec.

According to Symantec, the creators behind the largest Mac malware/botnet of all time were allegedly pulling in somewhere in the neighborhood of ~$10,000 per day. The payday was relatively easy in nature, simply hijacking ad clicks and redirecting to the Flashback creators’ own advertising system.

“Flashback specifically targets search queries made on Google and, depending on the search query, may redirect users to another page of the attacker’s choosing, where they receive revenue from the click.

Flashback also uses a specially crafted user-agent string, which comprises information about a computer accessing a website, in an effort to thwart ‘unknown’ parties from investigating the URL with unrecognized user agents”

While the storm over Flashback malware has since died down following Apple’s release of a special tool designed to remove the Flashback malware and patch the Java-based security hole that allowed the malware to spread in the first place, there’s definitely a more serious look at OS X security moving forward. And as Apple continues to grow both in mobile and desktop spaces, look for malware creators to take a more serious approach to the once too-small-to-matter Mac user base.

Source: href="http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/osxflashbackk-motivation-behind-malware">Symantec | Via: Macworld UK
Image Source: The Hacker News

The only downsides include the high $200 asking price (early adopter never carried the “affordable” label) as well as lack of any real devices to actually make use of all that new-found speed quite yet. Still, owning the claimed “first” 802.11ac router is a pretty lust worthy title, is it not?

Via: Electronista

This morning, we filed suit in federal court in San Francisco against five of the most aggressive tool providers and spammers. With this suit, we’re going straight to the source. By shutting down tool providers, we will prevent other spammers from having these services at their disposal. Further, we hope the suit acts as a deterrent to other spammers, demonstrating the strength of our commitment to keep them off Twitter.

While this is an important step, our efforts to combat spam don’t stop here. Our engineering team continues to implement robust technical solutions that help us proactively reduce spam. For example, earlier this week, our engineers launched new anti-spam measures within Twitter to more aggressively suspend a new type of @mention spam. Additionally, we now use our link shortener (t.co) to analyze whether a tweeted link leads to malware or malicious content. This helps us prevent users from visiting malicious links and helps us shut down hundreds of thousands of abusive accounts. You can help out, too, by reporting and blocking spammers you encounter on Twitter.

We are committed to fighting spam on all fronts, by continuing to grow our anti-spam team and using every tool at our disposal to shut down spammers. Today marks an important step forward.

Victory!

More: Twitter Blog

Via: @Mathewi

AT&T’s website is showing the devices shipping on April 5th, most likely arriving before the April 8th launch day. And for those of you that are a new customer, you can use this online coupon to grab such a sexy phone absolutely free!

We were impressed during our time with the device at CES this past January, and are eagerly awaiting our review unit. Until then, all of you non-AT&T customers should hop on over to their website and pick yourself up an incredible new phone.

Source: AT&T Website | Via: The Verge

In our pursuit of new digital frontiers, we realized that we may have left behind a large number of users who couldn’t access Google Maps on their classic hardware. Surprisingly, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was unsupported, despite its tremendous popularity with over 60 million units sold worldwide.

Google is clearly behind on their attempt in the Nintendo realm. With the NES being released in the US around 27 years ago, they have some catching up to do. As of writing this, we still have no release in the Google Store, but there are rumors that we’ll be seeing a mobile version for the Game Boy soon after the NES release. With 8-bit technology and the power of dial up, Google really has something special on their hands

A beta version has gone live, all you’ll need to do is head on over to maps.google.com and click on the ‘Quest’ button at the top right and you will instantly be given an 8-bit rendering of the map.

Source: Google Lat Long Blog | Via: Google Maps

Take for example the two statements above, seemingly borrowed from Engadget.com. Following the links takes you to this article right here, where there are absolutely no traces of the quotes above supposedly linked to said publication and page. Outside of the clearly fabricated Engadget mentions, the other links to specific sites are less “word for word” and more paraphrased, with many of the sources citing “tweet”, “comment on Facebook” and other 3rd party services linked only to the main page. For example, there are a number of Facebook comments linked to, though only to Microsoft’s public Facebook Fan Page, making finding the comments in question all but impossible. Similarly, the various “tweet” sourced comments link to the user’s main twitter page and not the tweet. Why not link to the specific tweet/facebook post if it is worthy of boasting about on a site such as this? Our hunch: most of the comments are taken out of context, easily discernible as fake/paid, or simply made up altogether.

If Microsoft wants to really draw the public in with IE10 and simultaneously help improve their “cool”/hip image as well as launch IE10 into the forefront of internet users’ minds, fabricating positive comments (and probably buying a few to boot) isn’t the way to do it.

More: Browser You Loved To Hate

Source: iMattGreat (Twitter)

KT wants to charge the companies behind heavy data using services like YouTube, music streaming sites, and anything else that gulps data to use their network. Their philosophy is that if those companies and services are going to use so much data, they need to pay to access all of that bandwidth. We can’t begin to tell you how fundamentally flawed and utterly ridiculous this way of thinking is.

First of all, any company who uses a ton of data already pays an inane amount of money for hosting/bandwidth as well as keeping their own data farms operating. On the end users’ end, we pay for access to an ISP’s network either broken into tiers by speed or by data allotment. To charge the companies/services a second time is incredibly harmful and nothing more than a money grab.

What’s most alarming is KT’s statement regarding companies who are “free riding’ on ISPs who have to foot the bill for heavy infrastructure investment”. Um. News flash, KT. That’s your fucking job. It is not your job to double dip and charge companies/services whom area already paying to access the internet.

For now, KT is only looking at Smart TV’s which make use of data heavy apps, blocking them, and asking the manufacturer to pay to “access” their infrastructure. How other companies as well as ISP’s react (and any lawsuits that could come out of such a scheme) will set off a wave of potential change in the global internet world. One a foot is shoved in the door, the crowd usually comes in behind it.

Let’s hope KT’s “way of thinking” doesn’t poison the rest of the global community.

If you really cut through all the crap (government, lobbyists, etc.), you’ll see that it is once again the entertainment industry trying to cripple/reject evolving technologies and services so that they can keep sucking in record revenue year after year. Of course, making money isn’t bad. But how they do it, all why crying out that their industry is dying, is repulsive to say the least.

At every step along the way in the last ~100 years, the entertainment industry has fought tooth and nail to keep technology at bay. And time and time again, they’ve lost. Perfectly illustrating their repeated failures at stalling innovation is a handy infographic from AddictingInfo. Check it out after the break…

It’s big, graphic, and full of interesting stuff. Hop past for the read…

Crysis 2 topped the PC download list with almost 4 millions downloads. Gears of War 3 took the 360 list, which beat out Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. With MW3 hitting $1 billion in sales in just 16 days, it’s surprising that it was still downloaded over 800k times. Super Mario Galaxy 2 topped the Wii charts for the second year in a row. Do these results surprise any of you out there?

I know people pirate games because they probably can’t afford to buy them. That is why my cabinet isn’t as stocked as I’d like it, because of the price. So these people do like that game they downloaded, just couldn’t afford it. But then that game they just downloaded hits $1 billion in a hair over 2 weeks, and the developers sit and cry that they are losing money about the piracy.

It’s a double edged sword. I agree that these hard working developers need compensation for their work. I appreciate every minute they put into giving me hours and hours of entertainment. But the level of talk about loss in sales when they are sitting in a ivory tower is a laughing matter. I don’t support piracy, that isn’t what this is about. But I know how hard it is to buy things that you really want, and I can see the levels of these numbers as high as they are.

Jump past the break to see the rest of results…

PC Game Downloads on BitTorrent in 2011
as of December 30, 2011

1 Crysis 2 (3,920,000) (Mar. 2011)
2 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (3,650,000) (Nov. 2011)
3 Battlefield 3 (3,510,000) (Oct. 2011)
4 FIFA 12 (3,390,000) (Sept. 2011)
5 Portal 2 (3,240,000) (Apr. 2011)

Wii Game Downloads on BitTorrent in 2011
as of December 30, 2011

1 Super Mario Galaxy 2 (1,280,000) (May. 2010)
2 Mario Sports Mix (1,090,000) (Feb. 2011)
3 Xenoblade Chronicles (950,000) (Aug. 2011 EU)
4 Lego Pirates of the Caribbean (870,000) (May. 2011)
5 FIFA 12 (860,000) (Sept. 2011)

Xbox 360 Game Downloads on BitTorrent in 2011
as of December 30, 2011

1 Gears of War 3 (890,000) (Sep. 2011)
2 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (830,000) (Nov. 2011)
3 Battlefield 3 (760,000) (Oct. 2011)
4 Forza Motorsport 4 (720,000) (Oct. 2011)
5 Kinect Sports: Season Two (690,000) (Oct. 2011)

• Source TorrentFreak

If you were thinking it’s time to bury the hatchet, we’ll invite you to merely put it in the closet for now as the company’s tone in their official statement makes it sound like they’re only dropping SOPA to appease naysayers, and that ultimately some SOPA-like bill will be passed. With that said, GoDaddy says that if/when consumers support SOPA (or a similar bill), they too will get back on board.

As for those with plans to transfer domains away from GoDaddy, will you continue? We took Gadgetsteria.com and ran. While GoDaddy caved this time, their track record isn’t exactly a beacon of truth and honesty.

Disclaimer: We began the transfer process to move Gadgetsteria.com away from GoDaddy yesterday.

GoDaddy’s public image to the internet loving people is, understandably, tanking. The statement they gave to Ars Technica in response to questions regarding the December 29th boycott and their SOPA/ProtectIP support in which they blatantly brush off criticism doesn’t help either. In short: GoDaddy is saying they don’t give a fuck about you, the internet, or the idea of a free and open web. On top of it all, they’re laughing at everyone. Though, we’re pretty sure GoDaddy won’t be laughing if more people follow “I can has cheeseburger” (Fail Blog, etc.) CEO Ben Huh — Huh is moving over 1,000 domains off of GoDaddy if they don’t drop support for SOPA (via: Twitter).

If the boycott actually has as impact, big or small, it will be our turn to laugh back.

See ya, GoDaddy.

• GoDaddyBoycott.org

Update

Score one for the internet — GoDaddy has officially dropped support for SOPA.