Tag Archive for: storm

Sonos sunsets several smart speakers’ software support, spurring storm

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Promotional image of record player in bohemian studio.

Enlarge / The Sonos Connect:Amp in what is soon to be its natural setting: a room filled with old stuff that may or may not work. (credit: Sonos)

Sonos has been slinging smart speakers—and tech for connecting them—to dedicated fans since 2005. This week, however, Sonos announced the end of software support for its older product lines, and many of those once-loyal customers are furious.

Software support for “legacy” product lines will end in May of this year, Sonos said Tuesday in a corporate blog post and an email sent to customers. The list of products being forced off into the tech sunset includes original Zone Players, Connect, and Connect:Amp (launched in 2006; includes versions sold until 2015), first-generation Play:5 (launched 2009), CR200 (launched 2009), and Bridge (launched 2007).

Owners of an affected product basically have two options. Either they can take advantage of Sonos’ “Trade Up” program to snag a discount on new Sonos stuff, or they can keep using their old product with the understanding that inevitably, certain functions will simply begin to fail over some long, unspecified period of time.

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Biz & IT – Ars Technica

News round-up: Cineflix expands ‘Storm Stories’; Showtime orders gossip docuseries; HBO preps cyber warfare doc – TBI Vision

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News round-up: Cineflix expands ‘Storm Stories’; Showtime orders gossip docuseries; HBO preps cyber warfare doc  TBI Vision
“cyber warfare news” – read more

Google Fiber outage leaves KC customers offline two weeks after storm

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Equipment boxes labeled with the words,

Enlarge / Google Fiber equipment boxes in a Kansas City home in 2012. (credit: Google Fiber | Bloomberg)

More than two weeks after a snowstorm hit Kansas City, Google Fiber still hasn’t restored Internet service to all customers. There were still dozens of Google Fiber customers without home Internet service, a KCUR article published yesterday said. The outage has continued since the storm on January 11 and 12.

Google told Ars on Friday afternoon that the storm affected “thousands” of its customers in the Kansas City area and that it hadn’t yet finished restoring service to all of them. “While we can’t share exact numbers, at its height, we had thousands of open tickets and are now down to double digits,” a Google spokesperson said. “Getting our KC customers back online has been our top priority since the storm hit. We added both crews and equipment to help with this in the city.”

Google said that the Kansas City storm was “one of the most significant weather events” to hit any Google Fiber city. “We have learned a lot from our response and will be incorporating those into every aspect of our planning for events like this in the future,” the company said.

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Biz & IT – Ars Technica

How Afraid Should You Be Of The ‘Perfect Storm’ Big Data Breach? – Forbes

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Forbes

How Afraid Should You Be Of The 'Perfect Storm' Big Data Breach?
Forbes
It seems like barely a day goes by without reports of yet another large scale loss or theft of personal data. In fact statistics are quite clear on the matter – data breaches are becoming bigger and more frequent. Perhaps this is inevitable. The total …

“data breach” – Google News