data

Yesterday, Facebook released some data in honor of Spirit Day and National Coming Out Day revealing that the social network has seen more Americans than ever coming out on the site. The company determined this using information about U.S Facebook users, using things like users’ specifying a custom gender on a profile, or using the profile to “express a same-gender attraction.” When looked at, the data then shows three large trends taking place.

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Sprint's "Unlimited" data plans are about to become ever-so-slightly limited. The company has initiated a new "Quality of Service" practice that'll throttle data once you've used a certain amount in a month. This is not unheard of - throttling of data (making data speeds go slower after you've used a certain amount) - is something that most major data networks have been guilty of in the past. Sprint's newest effort to make this practice OK with consumers is to cut back on data speed in the name of protecting those that don't use more than an average amount.

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Like any other major iOS release, iOS 9 brought a new set of features to delight users and make their lives more comfortable. Or at least that's the goal. We've seen multi-window multitasking on iPads and the space saving app slicing, for example. But like any other release as well, there are some features that may not always work to the user's benefit, depending on how you see it. One of those is the Wi-Fi Assist feature, and Apple has now put up a support page to clarify what it does and does not do.

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The first company to bring 4G LTE to the United States - Verizon - is now testing 5G. This is a name for a faster sort of mobile internet. That's wireless internet that brings data to your smartphone. What's the difference between 4G and 5G? Speed, mostly. Verizon suggests that though "by nearly all accounts, 5G technology should be introduced in the U.S. sometime after 2020," they'll be starting field technology trials next year. The mobile internet will get faster, and this new wave of faster internet will be brought to market faster than expected thanks to Verizon.

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T-Mobile CEO John Legere has been known never to mince words when it came to the company's rivals. Now he is using that same aggressive attitude towards not rivals but "customers" that are gaming and hacking the system in order to abuse the carrier's network. To be more specific, he will be going after a small subset of individuals whom he describes as "stealing" data from T-Mobile by finding ways to go around set limits to LTE tethering, raking in terabytes of data per month.

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Not too long ago we wrote a bit about how Windows 10 is claimed to phone home and give your private data to Microsoft even if you set all the share data options to off. These claims go so far as to say that Windows 10 has a keylogger that captures your passwords and even images from your camera. As you can imagine people were angry, the comments weren't flattering.

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One of Google's data centers located in Belgium has lost some data after being pummeled with four lightning strikes. Unfortunately, this is said to have resulted in some Google users permanently losing access to some of their data, though Google has since managed to access some of the discs that were damaged. This affects the Google Computer Engine (GCE) service, but at this time it isn’t known which clients lost data as a result, nor the nature of the data that was nuked. Google has reassured users that while serious, the data loss was also very minimal, permanently affecting only 0.000001% of the disk space.

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Opera has pushed out an update for its Opera Max Android app, and with it comes much-awaited support for both Netflix and YouTube. Opera Max is an app that compresses content and manages data usage to maximize how much browsing you can do with your carrier's monthly data allotment. According to Opera, the app will save data across 3G/4G /LTE and Wi-Fi networks by up to 50 percent. One of its big bragging points is that its compression comes with minor quality loss, so much so that users aren’t likely to notice any changes in the content’s quality.

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Today T-Mobile announced its new Mobile without Borders feature, which allows its Simple Choice customers to get coverage in Mexico and Canada without any extra charges. This means subscribers who are traveling in Canada or Mexico will be able to access 4G LTE data, as well as make and receive calls and send and receive text messages. Says the wireless carrier, with this upgrade the Simple Choice plan becomes the only wireless subscription option that spans an entire continent.

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The New York Stock Exchange shuts down entirely as a "technical issue" bogs the system. While it's been suggested by the NYSE that this is not due to any sort of malicious attack, no definitive answer has yet been given for what the technical bug could be. Word from the chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission Mary Jo White says "We are in contact with N.Y.S.E. and are closely monitoring the situation and trading in N.Y.S.E.-listed stocks." This is the second of two issues today, the first having been announced as resolved at 9:37 AM Eastern Standard Time.

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Republic Wireless has decided it was time to do away with unlimited data, and instead go with a new refund-based data setup where users buy the amount of data they think they need and then either pay more if they go over or get a refund for unused data at the end of the month. The new arrangement hurts for those who took full advantage of the unlimited data arrangement, but for users with more modest data demands it will still prove more budget-friendly than alternatives on some of the bigger name wireless carriers.

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This week Mark Zuckerberg showed off several photographs of lasers he suggested would be sending internet signals all around the world. These lasers will be used with Facebook's Internet.org project, beaming information "from a plane flying overhead or a satellite flying way overhead," according to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. "They'll communicate down to earth using very accurate lasers to transfer data." This isn't the first experiment in the world to use lasers to send data. In fact several organizations - like the ESA and NASA - have already begun real-world testing for data transfer between craft in space and labs on our planet's surface. Data transfer with lasers is super reliable and fast, too!

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