AT&T is at it again! In an attempt to make more money, the carrier has upped many of the fees associated with getting a new device and plan. The current $40 activation fee on the old contract plans will be raised to $45 starting August 1, making it the highest activation fee of any US carrier.
Of course, that’s somewhat understandable. Raise activation fees, tell customers that there are no activation fees with AT&T Next plans, and you get more Next customers. It’s what the carrier wants, right? Apparently not, as AT&T has also imposed a $15 activation fee on Next plans.
All of this madness starts August 1, so get your upgrade done soon (or, you know, leave AT&T if you can). It’s just more money that you have to give to the carrier so that they get your service.
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In the middle of a gender discrimination lawsuit, Twitter hosted a frat-themed staff party
In recent years, referring to a tech company’s culture as “fratty” has become easy shorthand to describe Silicon Valley’s gender disparities, and bemoan the male-dominated culture that results. On Tuesday, Twitter made the metaphor literal, hosting a frat-themed party for one team’s internal happy hour in San Francisco.
July 22, 2015 at 09:33AM
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The hidden lab where bankcards are hacked
Decoding PIN numbers and credit cards can bring criminal groups vast wealth. Paul Marks visits a secret facility where one financial giant is fighting back — by trying to hack their own products.
July 22, 2015 at 09:33AM
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Pimm’s Lavamancer: In an ice-filled collins glass, mix Pimm’s No. 1, cinnamon whiskey, lemon juice, and ginger beer, top with a cucumber garnish. Your mouth may be watering even if you don’t know where this cocktail’s unusual title has come from, but about 20 million people might see the pun and crack a smile.
It’s a concoction from amateur mixologist and software engineer Natalie Weizenbaum. When the 24-year-old was looking for cocktail inspiration for a party, she turned to her favorite game, Magic: The Gathering.
Magic: The Gathering is a card game from Hasbro-owned Wizards of the Coast in which players summon creatures and cast spells. The ages-12-and-up game’s fantasy premise may sound childish, but it actually requires intense strategy and critical thinking. About 20 million people play it worldwide, including me.
I found myself looking over Weizenbaum’s cocktails on Imgur after I attempted cocktails inspired by the game myself. In Magic, players cast spells based on five different colors: white, blue, black, red and green—leaving endless possibilities for themed drinks. Weizenbaum’s menu is designed to resemble the actual cards, and each one is a pun on a card that exists in the game.
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Few things are more motivating for quality salespeople than giving qualified reps a seat at the decision-making table. Especially when they’ve only been exposed to the “coin-operated” salesperson mindset, where their role is highlighted when they hit their numbers but otherwise marginalized. Yet when it comes to incentivizing team members, there’s no single thing a founder could do that significantly correlates with success (r2 almost equals 1!) than a compensation plan done well.
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It may seem strange that eSports have specific events for women. After all, unlike traditional sports, there are no physical factors that play into potential separation, so why bother at all?
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When two experts on modern warfare get together to write fiction I get in line to read it. Peter Singer’s Wired For War, which tracks the rise of drones and robots for war fighting, was a primary resource for me as I attended classes at King’s College. In all of my research Singer was the only one to hint that maybe all of this automation and networking was introducing worrisome vulnerabilities. Singer’s co-author, August Cole, was a defense industry reporter for the Wall Street Journal. He is non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council where the Cyber Statecraft Initiative addresses the future of the Internet and its impact on nation state interactions.
I’ll admit that, like many cybersecurity writers I have been tempted to write the “Tom Clancy” for cyber (see Richard Clark’s Sting of the Drone) I even worked with a couple of journalists to write a cyber thriller, which I will not link to. (It is currently ranked #7,851,049 on Amazon.)
For a first novel Singer and Cole have succeeded in creating a summer block buster. War on the Rocks compared it to Clancy’s Red Storm Rising.
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Xbox head Phil Spencer confirmed yesterday that Microsoft will continue its plan of slowly transforming the Xbox One into a literal living room PC by adding native mouse and keyboard support. On Twitter, he was responding to a query about PC to Xbox One streaming for games (currently only Xbox One to PC works in Windows 10). He said that it would need mouse support to be viable, then went on to say that native mouse and keyboard support are being worked on for the Xbox One.
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