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Your prayers have been finally answered – that is, if you asked for Google to come to New York City with free Wi-Fi for all. Because that’s totally happening this year, and it’s all part of Google’s grandiose plan to bring free Wi-Fi to the world. According to Bloomberg, Google has already set up a company that’ll handle the free Wi-Fi job in the Big Apple. Sidewalk Labs is the Google-backed startup that will turn 10,000 of New York’s old phone booths into ad-supported Wi-Fi pylons this September. View the full article

As SourceForge continues to take over projects in order to inject them with malware/adware to line their pockets, the latest victim is none other than Firefox. A bug report has been started by a redditor named TannerMoz to get the attention of Mozilla's legal team. With luck this will help stop SourceForge from doing these kinds of negative actions to the Firefox project and others as well. Sourceforge recently did this to some other major projects such as GIMP and nMap. This has also prompted Notepad++ to leave SourceForge. Hopefully we'll see other projects like VLC and others leave SourceForge too. We're hoping that Mozilla's legal team gets on Source…

The service prevents ads from appearing on websites unless it has given them permission to be displayed. German broadcasters RTL and ProSiebenSat.1 had argued that browser plug-in was anti-competitive and threatened their ability to offer users content for "free". However, a court in Munich ruled in favour of AdBlock's owner Eyeo. Ben Williams, a spokesman for the German company, told the BBC the dispute had been the biggest one it had faced to date "just by nature of the people involved and the amount of claims that they had". "This is the fourth time that massive publishers have brought legal proceedings against our start-up," he added in a follow-up email. View the ful…

If you're a casual tech consumer and you buy the Apple Watch this year, I’m going to laugh at you. Sure, it’s undeniably sexy, and the Apple marketing machine has totally succeeded in making the watch the next gotta-have-it gadget to complete your technologically sophisticated setup, but it’s an unwise expenditure for anyone looking for a long term reliable smartwatch. There are three reasons to steer clear of Apple’s latest miracle gadget (for now). It’s overpriced, the battery is underpowered, and you already know that the company will release a better one in only a year — just as it always has with its devices. Don’t buy it yet. Just don’t. View the full article

SourceForge, the code repository site owned by Slashdot Media, has apparently seized control of the account hosting GIMP for Windows on the service, according to e-mails and discussions amongst members of the GIMP community—locking out GIMP's lead Windows developer. And now anyone downloading the Windows version of the open source image editing tool from SourceForge gets the software wrapped in an installer replete with advertisements. Update: In a blog post issued shortly after this story posted, an unidentified member of SourceForge's community team wrote that, in fact, "this project was actually abandoned over 18 months ago, and SourceForge has stepped-in to keep this …

In 1983, when I started the free software movement, malware was so rare that each case was shocking and scandalous. Now it’s normal. To be sure, I am not talking about viruses. Malware is the name for a program designed to mistreat its users. Viruses typically are malicious, but software products and software preinstalled in products can also be malicious – and often are, when not free/libre. In 1983, the software field had become dominated by proprietary (ie nonfree) programs, and users were forbidden to change or redistribute them. I developed the GNU operating system, which is often called Linux, to escape and end that injustice. But proprietary developers in the 1980s…

Google knows that its Chrome browser is a serious consumer of RAM, but the development team is reportedly very aware of this, and are working on lowering Chrome's RAM consumption. Thanks to a Reddit AMA session, a Chrome for Android engineer said: "We are actively working on reducing battery usage and we are looking into when Chrome is in the foreground and in the background. Since its inception Chrome has been focusing on security and performance of the web across all supported platforms. Performance sometimes has come at the cost of resource usage, but given the importance of the mobile platform this is one of the top things we are looking into". View the full article

Facebook's Internet.org project, which offers people from developing countries free mobile access to selected websites, has been pitched as a philanthropic initiative to connect two thirds of the world who don’t yet have Internet access. We completely agree that the global digital divide should be closed. However, we question whether this is the right way to do it. As we and others have noted, there's a real risk that the few websites that Facebook and its partners select for Internet.org (including, of course, Facebook itself) could end up becoming a ghetto for poor users instead of a stepping stone to the larger Internet. Mark Zuckerberg's announcement of the expansion …

Notepad++ is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment. This project, based on the Scintilla edit component, written in C++ with pure... Read more about Notepad++ 6.7.8 on Lunarsoft. View the full article

Notepad++ is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment. This project, based on the Scintilla edit component, written in C++ with pure win32 api and STL that ensures the higher execution speed and smaller size of the program. Notepad++ supports the following languages: C, C++, Java, C#, XML, HTML, PHP, javascript, RC resource file, makefile, ASCII art file, doxygen, ini file, batch file, ASP, VB/VBS source files, SQL, Objective-C, CSS, Pascal, Perl, Python and Lua. Download: Notepad++ 6.7.8 Homepage: Notepad++ View the full article

According to a recent survey (.pdf) conducted by Wakefield Research for Citrix, approximately 51 percent of the respondents believe that a few rain clouds in the sky will directly interfere with Internet-connected electronics when attempting to upload or download data through cloud computing. Of the 1,004 people surveyed, the majority thought the term “the cloud” was related to actual clouds in the sky and 29 percent thought it had to do with weather conditions. Only 16 percent recognized the cloud as the common term when referring to a computer network that stores data for Internet-connected devices like laptops, tablets and smartphones. Approximately 54 percent of the r…

Google is requiring more Windows-based Chrome extensions to be installed from its Web Store and will enforce the same requirement on Mac users in a few months in an attempt to prevent users from inadvertently installing malicious titles. The move comes a year after Google first required Windows users to download extensions from the Chrome Web Store, a mandate that resulted in a 75-percent drop in user support requests seeking help uninstalling unwanted extensions. The policy wasn't enforced on the Windows developer channel, so developers of malicious extensions have increasingly embraced it as a medium for distributing their wares. View the full article

Facebook's been taking a lot of heat lately for failing to understand (or pretending to fail to understand) how its Internet.org initiative spells trouble for net neutrality. As noted previously, Facebook's vision has been to deploy a "free" walled-garden service like AOL to developing nations. Critics have been dropping out of Internet.org, stating they don't like Facebook picking which companies get included in the walled garden. Things have gotten particularly heated in India, where neutrality advocates have made it very clear they think Facebook's vision hurts the open Internet long term. Zuckerberg's response so far? You're hurting the poor if you don't like the way …

DSLReports has received information confirming that Cox Communications will be testing overage fees this summer ahead of a potential nationwide deployment. A Cox insider familiar with the cable operator's network management practices says that customers in the company's Cleveland, Ohio market will be informed on May 19 that they'll soon be facing overage fees of $10 for every 50 GB over their usage cap they travel. From June to September, Cox customers in Cleveland will have their "overage" usage tallied on their bills, but users initially won't be charged. Instead, they'll see the estimated overage fee and an accompanying credit. They'll face the real charges starting in…

Through years of dev kits, prototypes, and trade show demos of the Oculus Rift, we've been stuck guessing at just how much hardware power the eventual consumer version of the device would require. Now, with that consumer launch officially slated for early 2016, Oculus has announced what PC hardware it recommends for a quality VR experience. According to Oculus, those recommended hardware specs are: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greaterIntel i5-4590 equivalent or greater8GB+ RAMCompatible HDMI 1.3 video output2x USB 3.0 portsWindows 7 SP1 or newerThat's a relatively beefy system, all things considered. A quick price check on Newegg suggests that the listed CPU, RA…

A well-placed source in Washington, D.C. with knowledge of the matter tells Stop the Cap! the Federal Communications Commission is prepared to take a hard look at the issue of Internet data caps and usage-based billing if a major cable operator like Comcast imposes usage allowances on its broadband customers nationwide. Comcast introduced its usage cap market trial in Nashville, Tenn. in 2012 but gradually expanded it to include Huntsville and Mobile, Alabama; Atlanta, Augusta and Savannah, Georgia; Central Kentucky; Maine; Jackson, Mississippi; Knoxville and Memphis, Tennessee; Charleston, South Carolina; and Tucson, Arizona. "Two and a half-years is exceptionally long f…

Mobile networks in Europe plan to start blocking online ads to target Google’s stranglehold on digital ad revenue, according to a report in the Financial Times. The newspaper says that “several” carriers have installed ad-blocking software — developed by an Israeli company called Shine — in their data centers, and plans are afoot to switch the technology on by the end of the year. The software stops most ads from loading, though “in-feed” ads like the ones you find on Twitter or Facebook aren’t affected. Citing a source at one European carrier, the report suggests that the network will introduce an opt-in ad-free service initially, but is also considering extending it to …

It's no secret that AMD has had a tough time over the last few years. While the company managed to post a profit at the start of 2014—largely thanks to its chips being used in the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One—more often than not its reliance on a declining PC market has seen its profits plunge and turn into losses since the Athlon 64 glory days. Millions (if not billions) of dollars of losses were common throughout the 2000s. $61 million was lost in 2001, followed by $1.3 billion in 2002, $274 million in 2003, and an astonishing $3.3 billion in 2007. As Ars noted in its look at the rise and subsequent fall of the company, poor management decisions, including the building of…

Microsoft stopped actively developing Windows Media Center in 2009, but the company still shipped an unmodified version in an upgrade pack for Windows 8. The software giant is planning to kill off Media Center in Windows 10, meaning any PCs upgraded from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 will lose the feature. Microsoft confirmed the plan to ZDNet’s Ed Bott in a recent interview. It’s not a surprise move, but Windows Media Center has a passionate and loyal following which will undoubtedly mourn the loss of the feature. Microsoft first introduced Windows Media Center in 2001 as a separate Windows XP version. It was designed to run fullscreen as a media player, and support tele…

Android 5.0 "Lollipop" was released about half a year ago, and while its adoption rate was much slower in the beginning, it has now spiked to almost 10 percent of the Android market, according to the latest platform distribution numbers from Google. Google usually releases a major platform, to which it gives a dessert-themed name, and then iterates on it with bug fixes and a few minor feature additions. In this case, we have "Lollipop," which includes Android 5.0 and the recently released Android 5.1. There may or may not be an Android 5.2 as well, depending how big of a change Google plans for Android 6.0 and whether it needs to delay it in order to implement those major…

Streaming music service Grooveshark has shut down as of April 30, 2015 as part of a settlement from copyright infringement lawsuits. This came as a settlement due to potential copyright infringements. The company could have been liable for up to $736 million in damages. As part of the shutdown, ownership of the Grooveshark service, website, and all of its associated intellectual property had been transferred to the labels Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group. There's still hope for recovering your playlists, however. A redditor named effstops has posted a link to a service called GrooveBackup where you can attempt to back up your Grooves…

During its Build 2015 keynote, Microsoft just unveiled a new Windows 10 feature it's calling Continuum for Phones. It allows smartphones running Microsoft's latest OS to transform into desktop PCs — or at least an experience that's very close — when connected to larger screens. We've already seen Continuum help ease the transition for users switching between tablet and PC modes, and this is an even better example of what's possible when developers go along with Microsoft's universal apps plan. View the full article

At its Build developer conference, Microsoft today announced the launch of Visual Studio Code, a lightweight cross-platform code editor for writing modern web and cloud applications that will run on OS X, Linux and Windows. The application is still officially in preview, but you can now download it here. This marks the first time that Microsoft offers developers a true cross-platform code editor. The full Visual Studio is still Windows-only, but today’s announcement shows the company’s commitment to supporting other platforms. View the full article

Microsoft announced a four-pronged effort to bring developers and their apps to Windows at its build conference today. One of these prongs—a way for Web developers to present their sites as apps—was already announced at Mobile World Congress earlier in the year. The second prong is logical but not altogether surprising. In Windows 10, developers will be able to specially prepare existing Windows apps, whether Win32, .NET WinForms, .NET WPF, or any other Windows development technology, and sell them through the Windows Store. Unlike the "traditional" Windows application installation experience, these apps will be guaranteed to install, update, and uninstall cleanly—one of …

As you may have heard in the technical press, Microsoft is a more open-source friendly place these days, and has embraced GitHub for a number of high-profile projects. As a result of this shift and an internal push to move to git generally, I've updated my existing CodePlex projects so that I can easily mirror them to GitHub. For the immediate future, I plan to maintain both sites equally with the bulk of the documentation still residing on CodePlex, but you can get full source and releases from either location thanks to the magic of distributed VCS. In addition, all six of these projects is now licensed under MIT rather than MS-PL. The terms of both licenses are basicall…