LATEST NEWS

This morning it appears a massive Distributed Denial of Service attack targeting DNS host Dyn has knocked a big chunk of the Internet offline Friday morning.

The Domain Name System (DNS) converts human-readable URLs (like “pcworld.com”) to their underlying numeric IP addresses. Dyn hasn’t confirmed that the outages and its DDoS attack are related, but given that these sites keep going down every time Dyn gets slammed, it seems highly likely.

Hacker News users report the following sites are down: ...

Unhealthy way of life. It's a typical supporter of our greatest health issues: stroke, heart sickness, diabetes, malignancy. What do the country's top doctors prescribe to keep your heart, brain, and body in ideally great health?
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Fourteen months after unveiling a $45.2 billion merger that would create a new Internet and cable giant, Comcast Corp. is planning to walk away from its proposed takeover of Time Warner Cable Inc., people with knowledge of the matter said. ...

Google's Sundar Pichai has essentially confirmed reports that the company will become a wireless provider of sorts in "the coming months." During his appearance at Mobile World Congress today, Pichai acknowledged that Google is working with "existing partners" to create its own MVNO, but stopped short of confirming that Sprint and T-Mobile are those partnering networks, as has been rumored. But he did reveal that Google has been in contact with Verizon Wireless and AT&T about its plans — likely to head off any potential ugly conflict between Mountain View and the largest, most powerful providers in the United States. "Carriers in the US are what powers most of our Android phones, and that model works really well for us," he said.
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A Federal Communications Commission proposal to preempt state laws that harm municipal broadband projects are being made official this week, with Chairman Tom Wheeler circulating a draft decision to his fellow commissioners, The Washington Post reported today. The commissioners are expected to vote on the matter on February 26, the same day they are likely to vote for new net neutrality rules.
Municipal broadband operators in Tennessee and North Carolina petitioned the FCC to preempt state laws that prevent them from expanding to nearby communities that want Internet service. Wheeler plans to invoke the FCC's authority to remove barriers that prevent broadband investment and competition.

The legal justification will likely have to face scrutiny in court. There is also the possibility of congressional action, with Republicans trying to gut the FCC's authority and Democrats trying to overturn the state laws through legislation. But if the FCC succeeds, it could ultimately override laws in 19 states that protect private Internet providers from municipal competition.

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Just when you thought the tales of Comcast's customer service couldn't get any worse... well, let's just show you this picture:

This is what appears to be an actual bill sent to a Comcast customer in Spokane, Washington. The customer's first name is "Ricardo," but it was misspelled as "Asshole."

A travel blog called BoardingArea has the story, and it appears to be genuine. Comcast confirmed to Ars that it has apologized to the customer and that the company is looking into technology solutions to prevent future problems of this nature. Comcast is also revisiting the training it provides to its representatives to make sure that customers are treated with respect, a company spokesperson told us.

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