Walk into any Starbucks and you'll see the usual Internet leeches sipping on $5 cups of coffee, but not all of them are shopping for designer handbags on eBay or checking the scores from last night's game--sometimes you'll see a student working on homework because his or her family can't afford broadband Internet access at home.
For these individuals, Comcast is offering discounted monthly Internet plans for $9.95 a month with its new Internet Essentials Program. Participating families of three must quality for the national free lunch program and make less than $24,000 a year, which also allows access to discounted computers from Microsoft, Dell, and Acer for just $159.
On today's episode of The 404 Podcast, we'll also tell you about a first-person shooter game coming out of Australia that does away with firearms and instead puts you in the eyes of a photojournalist embedded in a war zone.
The game is called Warco, which stands for "war correspondent," and the object of the game is to film conflicts and create a story from start to finish alongside other journalists covering the same story.
It's up to you to choose which side should be framed as evil and good since there's no obvious protagonist, but we're doubtful that mainstream gamers are willing to forego a gun for a camera, especially since part of the game involves editing the footage you shot earlier.
Next, we'll chat about a gang that used 3D printers to produce their own ATM skimmers. For those unaware, skimmers consist of a plastic card acceptance slot that fits over the ATM machine and can read the data stored on any card's magnetic stripe, while a pinhole camera next to the ATM key pad records the associating code.
Making clever use of a 3D printer in action, a group of four men from South Texas are currently serving time in Houston for stealing over $400,000 between August 2009 and June of this year. It's unclear whether the men built their own 3D printer or bought one online, but KrebsonSecurity.com speculates that a high end device costing anywhere between $10,000 and $20,000 would do the job. Don't get any ideas.
We've got a handful of voice mails to play after the break, and Mickey Mouse pays us another visit, so if you want to be heard on the show, phone us up at 1-866-404-CNET and tell us what's up!
The 404 Digest for Episode 909
Warco: an FPS where you
hold a camera instead of a gun. Comcast offers
cheap broadband to poor families. Facebook employee
leaks music service details on Twitter. Gang used
3D printers for ATM skimmers.
Episode 909
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