Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:why? (Score 5, Interesting) 32

by oh-dark-thirty (#63530813) Attached to: Verizon's New Plans Make Sense To Nobody Except Verizon

Yes and no. I switched from the usurious 3-figure plan I was on with VZW to their own "Visible" MVNO, porting the same number to them.

Same network, they said. Same great coverage and speeds, they said. Well, not so much.

I started with their $45 "Unlimited everything* (except the exceptions) plan and they could never get my VM notifications working and it broke the connection I had with Google Voice. Customer service is text-based and outsourced to the low bidder - they can do fuck-all to help with anything. So I stepped down to the $30 plan that said "you may be throttled after X usage or in congested areas". LOL ok whatever, it can't be worse. Narrator: "It was".

It seems desperation is kicking in, because I just got an offer to 'upgrayydd' to the old $45 plan for a mere $5 more. The catch is the price is no longer locked, and it can be increased whenever the CFO says "we need more revenue".

Fuck these parasites.

Submission + - 79,000 students who attended Westwood College are getting their loans discharged (nbcnews.com)

Submitted by Joe_Dragon
Joe_Dragon writes: The U.S. Department of Education announced Tuesday it is discharging the loans taken out by 79,000 students who attended Westwood College.

The for-profit Westwood and its parent company Alta Colleges Inc. first settled fraud charges in 2009. In 2016, Westwood officially shut down. The department had already approved $130 million in debt discharges for approximately 4,000 former students prior to Tuesday's announcement.

The latest discharges stem from findings reached by the department in the last two years about Westwood’s conduct, including that it "routinely misled prospective students by grossly misrepresenting that its credentials would benefit their career prospects and earning potential," the department said.

Westwood falsely promising prospective students that they would be employed in their field "within six months after graduation and that a Westwood degree would make them 'employable for the rest of [their lives],'" the department said.

Faced with an unknown number of applications for loan discharges under the federal borrower-defense rule, which states students can seek debt forgiveness if they believe they were defrauded by their school, the department concluded that anyone with a loan taken out to attend Westwood College was entitled to a full discharge.

Submission + - Google Play To Ban Android VPN Apps From Interfering With Ads (theregister.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google in November will prohibit Android VPN apps in its Play store from interfering with or blocking advertising, a change that may pose problems for some privacy applications. The updated Google Play policy, announced last month, will take effect on November 1. It states that only apps using the Android VPNService base class, and that function primarily as VPNs, can open a secure device-level tunnel to a remote service. Such VPNs, however, cannot "manipulate ads that can impact apps monetization."

The rules appear to be intended to deter data-grabbing VPN services, such as Facebook's discontinued Onavo, and to prevent ad fraud. The T&Cs spell out that developers must declare the use of VPNservice in their apps' Google Play listing, must encrypt data from the device to the VPN endpoint, and must comply with Developer Program Policies, particularly those related to ad fraud, permissions, and malware.

Submission + - Webb telescope captures new detail of Phantom Galaxy (phys.org)

Submitted by Taker14
Taker14 writes: The James Webb space telescope has revealed dazzling new detail of a previously known slice of the cosmos 32 million light-years away, in a new picture released by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

The infrared technology of the telescope, launched in December 2021, has allowed for an even clearer view of the so-called Phantom Galaxy than astronomers had ever seen before.

"Webb's sharp vision has revealed delicate filaments of gas and dust in the grandiose spiral arms which wind outwards from the center of this image," NASA and the ESA said Monday.

"A lack of gas in the nuclear region also provides an unobscured view of the nuclear star cluster at the galaxy's center," the agencies said in a statement.

The whirling celestial form, officially called M74, is located in the Pisces constellation 32 million light-years away from Earth.

The Webb image shows the galaxy's brilliant white, red, pink and light blue appendages of dust and stars swirling around a bright blue center, all set against the dark backdrop of deep space.

M74 was previously photographed by the Hubble telescope, which captured the galaxy's spiraling blue and pink arms, but instead showed its glowing center as a soft yellow.

The Phantom Galaxy is a "favorite target for astronomers studying the origin and structure of galactic spirals," NASA and the ESA said. The picture taken by Webb will help them "learn more about the earliest phases of star formation in the local Universe," and record more information about 19 star-forming galaxies close to our own Milky Way.

Astronomers will also use the picture to "pinpoint star-forming regions in the galaxies, accurately measure the masses and ages of star clusters, and gain insights into the nature of the small grains of dust drifting in interstellar space," the statement said.

Webb's new pictures have thrilled the space community as the telescope orbits the Sun at a distance of a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth, in a region of space called the second Lagrange point.

The telescope, which has a primary mirror more than 21 feet (6.5 meters) wide, is an international collaboration between NASA, the ESA and the Canadian Space Agency. It is expected to operate for approximately 20 years.

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close