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Comcast makes more money in one quarter off of the company's modem rental fees than it did for the entire Sochi Olympics, notes an analysis of Comcast's books. The company's $8 per month modem rental fee has slowly but surely been jacked up over the years, and now nets the company an estimated $300 million per quarter -- income that doesn't correspond with Comcast really doing much of anything (not entirely unlike the bevy of new below the line fees Comcast and others use to pad a user's bill).

Comcast seems to enjoy pushing their luck on the rental fee as hard as possible, and I've seen rumblings in our forums that Comcast is looking to bump the rental fee to $10 per month Customers in Portland were the first to be notified of the new $10 modem rental fee earlier this month, a hike that arrived even with the specter of possible added competition from Google Fiber:

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Rates for other services and equipment are rising by varying amounts, with big percentage increases in the cost of high-definition video service, a DVR and the cost of renting a cable modem. The changes come as Google Fiber and CenturyLink prepare to offer new cable and Internet services in the Portland area, though both Comcast and local cable regulators say the modest size of this year's increases is unrelated to the prospective competition.

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You can help avoid contributing to the Comcast executive retirement fund by buying a compatible modem of your own. Still, it's worth noting that Comcast has a nasty habit of accidentally charging people who own their own modems rental fees anyway.
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Argentinian music fan Juan Betancourt aka Jbetcom posts gifs of famous album covers he animates as a hobby.





More - after the jump







Jbetcom | via

Italian portrait artist Lucia Pittalis posts some photos of the process of herself putting on make-up to look like Breaking Bad's Walter White (Bryan Cranston).


Here are all the celebrities that Lucia has become: (via)


via

Battery life is one of the most important elements of any mobile device -- it can make or break it, in some cases. And while the majority of Samsung products aren't known to be terrible at that, a little help never hurts. As such, the South Korean...

A day after "Bendgate" took over the internet, Unbox Therapy is back with an extensive "bend test" for the iPhone's biggest competitors.

Unbox Therapy tests a whole lineup of smartphones: the iPhone 6, the HTC One M8, and Motorola's Moto X, with a Nokia Lumia phone to round out the group.

Here's how they did:

First, they tested the iPhone 6. It bent a little, but not nearly as much as the iPhone 6 Plus did.

Then it was the HTC One's turn. It didn't bend, but the screen popped out a little.

The Moto X passed the bend test with flying colors. It didn't budge at all.

The Nokia Lumia seemed to crack a bit, but it wouldn't bend either.

If you're buying a phone on durability alone, the Moto X is your best bet.

If you've already bought an iPhone 6, you can rest easy: it won't bend under normal use.

Check out the full bend test:

NOW WATCH: Inside The Giant iPhone 6 Plus

SEE ALSO: Eric Schmidt's Take On The iPhone 6 Makes No Sense

Join the conversation about this story »

Apparently, the internet has more deep-seated security bugs to worry about than Heartbleed. Researchers have discovered a longstanding flaw in a common Unix command shell (bash) for Linux and Macs that lets attackers run any code they want as soon as...

Someone had the genius idea of editing out all the bullshit from an episode of Wheel of Fortune and leave only the parts where something actually happens. The result is three minutes of intense and frenetic Wheel of Fortune action. I wish there was a channel with no-bullshit versions of all TV shows.

Read more...

Water isn't supposed to float on top of water because well, water is water. So how are these droplets of water suspended on the surface of the water? Sound. The water is actually on top of a speaker and the acoustic vibrations allows the water drops to stay as drops on top of water.

Read more...

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has started mass producing 3.2-terabyte (TB) NVMe* PCIe solid state drives (SSDs) based on its 3D V-NAND (Vertical NAND) flash memory technology, for use in high-end enterprise server systems. The new NVMe PCIe SSD, SM1715, utilizes Samsung's proprietary 3D V-NAND in an HHHL (half-height, half-length) card-type form factor, to offer 3.2TB of storage capacity -- doubling Samsung's previous highest NVMe SSD density of 1.6TB.

"Beginning with mass production of this new V-NAND-based NVMe SSD, which delivers the highest level of performance and density available today, we expect to greatly expand the high-density SSD market," said Jeeho Baek, Vice President, Memory Marketing, Samsung Electronics. "Samsung plans to actively introduce V-NAND-based SSDs with even higher performance, density and reliability in the future, to keep its global customers ahead of their competition."

Valve's game distribution service has been going through a lot of small changes recently: not only has Steam been given a fresh coat of paint and a completely redesigned storefront, but now it plays music, too. This isn't a total surprise, of course...

PayPal cofounder and billionaire investor Peter Thiel has a new book "Zero to One: Notes on Startups or How to Build the Future," but he also gave us insight into a company that could just be the next big thing.

Produced by Alana Kakoyiannis

Follow BI Video: On Facebook

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HughPickens.com writes Jana Kasperkevic writes at The Guardian that it's not every day that you get to buy an iPhone from an ex-NSA officer. Yet Thomas Drake, former senior executive at National Security Agency, is well known in the national security circles for leaking information about the NSA's Trailblazer project to Baltimore Sun. In 2010, the government dropped all 10 felony charges against him and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for unauthorized use of a computer and lost his livelihood. "You have to mortgage your house, you have to empty your bank account. I went from making well over $150,000 a year to a quarter of that," says Drake. "The cost alone, financially — never mind the personal cost — is approaching million dollars in terms of lost income, expenses and other costs I incurred." John Kiriakou became the first former government official to confirm the use of waterboarding against al-Qaida suspects in 2009. "I have applied for every job I can think of – everything from grocery stores to Toys R Us to Starbucks. You name it, I've applied there. Haven't gotten even an email or a call back," says Kiriakou. According to Kasperkevic, this is what most whistleblowers can expect. The potential threat of prosecution, the mounting legal bills and the lack of future job opportunities all contribute to a hesitation among many to rock the boat. "Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, declared a war on whistleblowers virtually as soon as they assumed office," says Kiriakou. "Washington has always needed an "ism" to fight against, an idea against which it could rally its citizens like lemmings. First, it was anarchism, then socialism, then communism. Now, it's terrorism. Any whistleblower who goes public in the name of protecting human rights or civil liberties is accused of helping the terrorists."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Fresh off its 3-D printing experiment with a measly 6 stores last year, UPS is now offering 3-D printing at 100 stores nationwide. If you've ever wanted your very own tiny thing made out of plastic, your hour is here.

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