Samsung files to block Nvidia chips from entering the US, a judge unseals 500+ Stingray records potentially by mistake. Plus Comcast’s big plans to get you to use the Internet less.

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Samsung Files Complaint to Block Nvidia Chips From U.S. – Bloomberg

Samsung filed a complaint yesterday against Nvidia with the
U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington, according to
a notice on the agency’s website. A copy of the complaint wasn’t
immediately available.

The legal battle began in September when Nvidia filed its
own ITC complaint against Qualcomm Inc. and Samsung over
patented ways to improve graphics. It’s asking the agency to
block imports of the latest Galaxy phones and tablets that use
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon graphics processing units or Samsung’s
Exynos processors.

Samsung retaliated Nov. 4 with a patent-infringement suit
in federal court in Richmond, Virginia. In that case, Suwon,
South Korea-based Samsung claims Nvidia and one of its customers
infringe as many as eight patents. That lawsuit targets Nvidia’s
Shield tablet computers.

Each company has denied using the other’s technology. In a
Nov. 11 statement, Nvidia called Samsung’s lawsuit “a
predictable tactic.”

‘We have not seen the complaint so can’t comment, but we
look forward to pursuing our earlier filed ITC action against
Samsung products,” Hector Marinez, a spokesman for Santa Clara,
California-based Nvidia, said in an e-mailed statement.

Judge Unseals 500+ Stingray Records

A judge in Charlotte, North Carolina, has unsealed a set of 529 court documents in hundreds of criminal cases detailing the use of a stingray, or cell-site simulator, by local police. This move, which took place earlier this week, marks a rare example of a court opening up a vast trove of applications made by police to a judge, who authorized each use of the powerful and potentially invasive device

According to the Charlotte Observer, the records seem to suggest that judges likely did not fully understand what they were authorizing. Law enforcement agencies nationwide have taken extraordinary steps to preserve stingray secrecy. As recently as this week, prosecutors in a Baltimore robbery case dropped key evidence that stemmed from stingray use rather than fully disclose how the device was used.

Eyes-on with Streaming Photoshop: Adobe’s plan to bring PS to the cloud | Ars Technica

“Streaming Photoshop” is Adobe and Google’s plan to bring the incomparable photo editor to Chrome OS and the Chrome Browser.

“Streaming Photoshop” is a Chrome App that you download from the Chrome store (provided you are whitelisted). The app opens in a window that looks just like a local version of Photoshop—there’s no browser UI of any kind. Photoshop lives on a computer in the cloud, and a video feed of it is streamed to the Chrome app. The app captures clicks and sends them to the server. It sounds like using it would be a clunky mess, but the whole process looked indistinguishable from a local install of Photoshop.

Chrome OS has taken off as a competitor to Windows—the NPD’s last estimate put it at 35% of commercial notebook sales—but it lacks a few killer apps like Photoshop. The other benefit is that you can now run Photoshop on just about any computer without having to worry about RAM and CPU usage, since all the computer has to display is a video stream. Adobe says even the $200 Chromebooks on the market today should be fast enough to handle Streaming Photoshop.

Three to 4MB/s will get you the best results, and Adobe says Streaming Photoshop should still be usable on connections as slow as 1MB/s. There’s no offline support, of course.

Streaming Photoshop runs version 15.2.1 (the latest version) on a Windows box from Google Compute Engine.

That means you’ll be getting the Windows title bar and menus regardless of what your host OS is. The app will remap hotkeys, though, so other than a few minor visual differences, it shouldn’t feel too weird. Right now there’s no GPU support, so things like 3D functions are currently off-limits—the whole menu was grayed-out. There’s also no way to print directly from Photoshop.

Storage used Google Drive—it does not currently work with Creative Cloud—and if your file is in Google’s cloud, it opens instantly, no uploading required. We’d imagine most people have their Photoshop files backed up 24/7 in Creative Cloud, Dropbox, or Google Drive, so this shouldn’t be a big change for most people. Adobe says Creative Cloud support is coming, but for now, on Google’s platform, Drive support comes free.

What XFINITY Internet Data Usage Plans will Comcast be Launching?

In the Tucson, Arizona market, we announced in 2012 that the data amount included with Economy Plus through Performance XFINITY Internet tiers would increase from 250 GB to 300 GB. Those customers subscribed to the Blast! Internet tier, have received an increase in their data usage plan to 350 GB; Extreme 50 customers have received an increase to 450 GB; Extreme 105 customers have received an increase to 600 GB. As in our other trial market areas, we offer additional gigabytes in increments/blocks of 50 GB for $10.00 each in the event the customer exceeds their included data amount.

In Huntsville and Mobile, Alabama; Atlanta, Augusta and Savannah, Georgia; Central Kentucky;Maine;Jackson,Mississippi;Knoxville and Memphis, Tennessee and Charleston,South Carolina, we have begun a trial which will increase our data usage plan for all XFINITY Internet tiers to 300 GB per month and will offer additional gigabytes in increments/blocks (e.g., $10.00 per 50 GB). In this trial, XFINITY Internet Economy Plus customers can choose to enroll in the Flexible-Data Option to receive a $5.00 credit on their monthly bill and reduce their data usage plan from 300 GB to 5 GB. If customers choose this option and use more than 5 GB of data in any given month, they will not receive the $5.00 credit and will be charged an additional $1.00 for each gigabyte of data used over the 5 GB included in the Flexible-Data Option.