Months after Comcast upgraded its subscribers' Netflix performance, AT&T and Verizon have finally followed suit.

The average Netflix stream on Verizon FiOS hit 2.41Mbps in August, up from 1.61Mbps in July, Netflix said today in its monthly speed test update. AT&T's U-verse service offered average Netflix performance of 2.61Mbps in August, up from 1.44Mbps in July.

Netflix recommends 5Mbps for high-definition quality, but there is a lot of lower quality Netflix content that requires less throughput. The boost in the averages indicates that customers are getting high-quality streams more often.

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Paramount Pictures / Aurich Lawson

Today eBay subsidiary Braintree, which provides a platform for companies like Uber and Airbnb to accept payments, confirmed that it would be partnering with Bitcoin payment processor Coinbase to let users pay for things in Bitcoin from a Coinbase wallet. The news is big for Bitcoin supporters who have been looking to large retailers and service providers to give the virtual currency mass-market appeal.

Braintree, which was purchased by eBay subsidiary PayPal last year for $800 million, builds the software that a handful of big companies use to offer online and mobile payments to customers. In a blog post, CEO Bill Ready said that “in the coming months” Braintree's customers would be able to “add bitcoin to their existing payment methods and provide an elegant, adaptive user interface for consumers to pay in bitcoin with their Coinbase wallet.”

It's unclear which, if any, merchants have decided to incorporate Bitcoin into their accepted payment methods with Braintree. Still, the development shows that PayPal is thinking about bringing alternative forms of payment into its fold. “This is PayPal making a move to embrace Bitcoin,” Ready told TechCrunch today.

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Recently, we covered a bill that was introduced in Ohio to deemphasize teaching the scientific process and open the door for people to object to scientific instruction on political grounds. While under consideration, the text of the bill has been modified considerably. Gone is the language about politics, and in its place is a provision that uses language promoted by a think tank that supports intelligent design.

(The Cleveland Plain Dealer is hosting a change log prepared by the Ohio Legislative Service Commission.)

First, the good news: initially, the bill would prohibit "political or religious interpretation of scientific facts in favor of another" while directing teachers to "focus on academic and scientific knowledge rather than scientific processes." The problem there is that many people consider subjects like climate change and evolution to be little more than political indoctrination. In addition, knowing how science operates can be far more important and engaging than simply memorizing a list of what it's discovered.

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An area of crustal spreading, similar to a mid-ocean ridge, is at the center of this image. If the crust spreads there, it must compress elsewhere. NASA/JPL

The Solar System is ancient. Many of the bodies in it show their age with impacts that date back to the violent early days of the Late Heavy Bombardment and craters embedded in craters. Earth is different in that plate tectonics and other geological processes constantly remake its surface. But even the Earth looks pretty old compared to Jupiter's moon Europa. Based on the number of impacts present, Europa looks to be less than 100 million years old.

A variety of evidence indicates that Europa's dynamic surface comes from the fact that the moon has a thin crust of ice above a large sub-surface ocean. Geysers and other features also suggest that the moon is geologically active. But the precise mechanism that drive the surface remodeling have remained uncertain. Now, two researchers are proposing that the mechanism is the same as it is on Earth: plate tectonics.

The proposal is put forth by the University of Idaho's Simon Kattenhorn and Johns Hopkins' Louise Prockter, and it was released by Nature Geoscience yesterday. The authors note the clear evidence of remodeling and point out that we've already identified a source of new ice reaching the surface: some features on the moon's surface appear to be sites of spreading, analogous to a mid-ocean ridge. But assuming the moon hasn't been growing larger, there must be some process that removes old ice from the surface.

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Despite widespread support, a bill that would put limits on widespread surveillance is unlikely to get a vote before the elections—or even after them.

According to National Journal, the USA Freedom Act, which would essentially stop the government's bulk collection of telephone call data, is flailing. The bill is struggling despite the fact that it won a stunning new supporter last week: Director of Intelligence James Clapper, one of the top defenders of the surveillance programs.

A Senate staffer told NJ that it was "extremely unlikely" the bill would be considered in September. It was originally introduced in July by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and it has co-sponsors ranging from liberal senators like Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) to Tea Party favorite Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

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Amateur prospectors in California are using the long-running drought to their advantage, panning for gold in newly exposed riverbeds.

MSN—known to millions as "the site that Internet Explorer insists on going to after a fresh install"—is getting a new look as part of a broader rebranding effort.

The venerable portal site is Internet Explorer's default homepage and boasts millions of visitors. Its new, stylish makeover brings back memories of iGoogle and so many other portal-type sites before it. The different news sections can be personalized to favor your interests, and there's also integration with Outlook.com, Facebook, and Twitter.

The site aggregates news from a wide range of sources spanning wire services, online publications, and local news outlets. The news partnerships will vary on a country-by-country basis: in the US, partners include The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. The Guardian and Telegraph are those chosen in the UK.

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Activision's MMO-styled shooter Destiny is the kind of release that would usually see a wave of launch-day reviews when it hits stores and download services on all major consoles tomorrow, especially given the interest over whether the Halo creators at Bungie have any life left in them after parting ways with Microsoft four years ago.

That interest won't be met with much critical reaction tomorrow, however. Bungie has decided to let reviewers wait to experience the game with the public this time around.

"Typically, games receive their report cards before they become available to the public," Bungie community manager David "DeeJ" Dague wrote at the company's official blog on Friday, before adding that Destiny is not "a typical shooter." After listing some of the in-game activities that could be accomplished by a group of two-to-four players (a standard group size for a review), Dague described those activities as merely "a foundation for so much more."

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Nokia has once again refreshed its Windows Phone lineup with the release of the Lumia 930, which is the spiritual successor to the Lumia 920 which first launched with Windows Phone 8.0 way back in November 2012. But like the Lumia 630, it takes cues from more than just the Lumia with the closest model number. The Lumia 930 is an interesting combination of many of the other Nokia Windows Phone designs from over the years all wrapped up into a striking package that certainly gives it a new take on the polycarbonate bodies of all of the higher end Lumia devices over the years.

If you're anything like me, your nightstand is full of electronic devices that need to be charged regularly. Every night I have:

• Nexus 7 tablet.

• Cell phone.

• Kindle Paperwhite.

• iPad Air.

• Fitbit. more>>

No thanks, 4Mbps is fast enough for me. Comcast

AT&T and Verizon have asked the Federal Communications Commission not to change its definition of broadband from 4Mbps to 10Mbps, saying many Internet users get by just fine at the lower speeds.

"Given the pace at which the industry is investing in advanced capabilities, there is no present need to redefine 'advanced' capabilities," AT&T wrote in a filing made public Friday after the FCC’s comment deadline (see FCC proceeding 14-126). "Consumer behavior strongly reinforces the conclusion that a 10Mbps service exceeds what many Americans need today to enable basic, high-quality transmissions," AT&T wrote later in its filing. Verizon made similar arguments.

Individual cable companies did not submit comments to the FCC, but their representative, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), agrees with AT&T and Verizon.

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When the Fire Phone came out, it was criticized for its poor app ecosystem, high price, and not-very-good 3D feature. Amazon usually undercuts the competition on pricing, but the Fire Phone was $200 on contract, the same price as much better smartphones from other companies. Now that the Fire Phone is out in the market and apparently not doing very well, Amazon is fixing the one thing it can fix: the price.

Amazon has announced that the (still) AT&T-exclusive device will now be going for 99 cents on a two-year contract. The off-contract price got a $200 price cut, too, going from $649.99 to $449.99 for the 32GB version. Buying a Fire Phone also gets you 12 months of Amazon Prime.

$449.99 off-contract is a little closer to competitive, but it's still a tough sell compared to the 32GB Nexus 5, which is $399.99. Google's device has a much better (and bigger) screen and the full suite of Google Play apps. On-contract, it has to fight other under-a-dollar devices, like the one cent AT&T Moto X.

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Abby Sletten, 20. Police Handout A 20-year-old North Dakota woman is being charged with negligent homicide after the car she allegedly was driving at 85 mph slammed into another vehicle, killing an 89-year-old Minnesota woman.

Prosecutors say the incident took place on May 27 in daylight on Interstate 29 outside Grand Forks, North Dakota. Police said Sletten was surfing photos on Facebook and texting before she plowed into a SUV, killing its front-seat passenger, Phyllis Gordon, 89.

"Sletten had also sent and received several text messages since she departed from Fargo," the complaint read, according to the Star-Tribune. Witnesses said the vehicle Gordon was traveling in had slowed to make an unauthorized U-turn before the collision. The criminal complaint said that "several people" unsuccessfully tried to revive Gordon at the scene.

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The iPhone 5S (left) compared to what is allegedly the front glass from the next iPhone. Marques Brownlee

After a year of minimalistic updates and the resurrection of old products, Apple is finally ready to make its first big hardware announcements of 2014 tomorrow at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts in Cupertino, CA.

The event is laden with symbolic significance, not least because Apple used the Flint Center to introduce the original Macintosh over 30 years ago (it normally holds events on its campus in Cupertino or in downtown San Francisco). We're all but certain to hear about new iPhones tomorrow, along with a new version of the operating system that powers them.

But while iPhone sales continue to grow and now account for well over half of Apple's revenue, in the eyes of certain analysts and investors it's old news. The last decade-plus of Apple's growth has been fueled not just by maintaining existing product lines but by introducing new ones. A brand-new product type is what those Apple watchers want to see, and by all reports they'll be getting one tomorrow.

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We had the big consumer Haswell-E CPU launch just over a week ago, and today marks the release of the Xeon counterparts. Johan’s large deep-dive into what makes Haswell-EP tick is well worth a read. Alongside the CPUs come the motherboards, and the GIGABYTE Server division sent us over some info regarding their entrants into this category.  As GIGABYTE Server now sells direct to the end-user via retailers like Newegg, their hardware and packaging is coming under more scrutiny and we are getting one or two of these models in for review.

The two main features GIGABYTE is promoting with its launch starts with DDR4-2133 support in 1 DIMM per channel, 2 DPC and 3 DPC configurations.  This makes sense given that the CPUs have DDR4-2133 support, however GIGABYTE is claiming that other motherboards will have reduced limits at higher DPC counts.  The second aspect is almost a transfer of IP from the consumer group – updating the BIOS without a CPU or DRAM installed. This can be done over the IPMI 2.0 management interface or via the command line over the network.

Unfortunately I have no clue how to decipher the motherboard names, but on release will be a single workstation motherboard, the MW50-SV0:

Perhaps surprisingly we still see an mSATA here rather than an M.2 port. Also, the TPM header is slap bang in the middle of the first two PCIe slots, making any GPU + TPM user lose that first PCIe slot.

The server motherboards are all 2P, and GIGABYTE Server’s rep indicated to me that this generation is going to have extensive use of the mezzanine type-T slot for the add-in cards. Due to the ATX dimensions of this MD30-RS0, we are limited to 1 DPC in a stacked arrangement, but all 10 SATA 6 Gbps ports are here. Note that if a user wants to equip both SAS drives and a double slot PCIe device here, they will be out of luck.

The MU70-SU0 is a single socket workstation motherboard, using the ATX standard but also a narrow LGA2011-3 socket to allow for 3DPC. The arrangement should allow two large PCIe devices along with mSATA and full storage capabilities. This motherboard also has four GbE ports based on Intel’s I210 line of controllers.

The MD50-LS0 aims more to be a storage board unless riser cables are used, because in this configuration of CPUs and PCIe slots it will be impossible to add in large compute cards.  We move up to the larger SSI EEB form factor here, with onboard ports for the Type-T slot. Note there are no extra power connectors for the PCIe slots, perhaps suggesting a non-compute nature.

We actually have the MD60-SC0 in for testing, showing a dual narrow socket combined with 2 DPC memory. The CPU sockets are inline rather than staggered, and the board comes with a 10GbE QSFP+ port supporting dual output via a splitter cable. When setting up this board the other day the power connector placement is a little odd, and the PCIe arrangement again is not conducive to large PCIe devices, but the arrangement does allow for directed airflow in a server over the hot components (including that chipset and QSFP+).

The MD70-HB0 is a bit more of a rearrangement of the MD60-SC0, with the larger version of the LGA2011-3 sockets now inline top to bottom and 2 DPC channel support. The networking is provided by an Intel X540 instead, giving two 10GbE Base-T LAN ports. I have been wondering about the consumer adoption of 10GbE Base-T on motherboards and given the heatsink here to cool it, I am not surprised that it has not made it over yet.

The last motherboard in the list, aside from supporting 3DPC and 10GbE Base-T, breaks the pattern by supporting an M.2 slot. It looks here that only 2280 type devices are supported, and it is unclear if this is PCIe 2.0 x2, x4, or PCIe 3.0 x4.  The MD80-TM0 is also an odd size, using a proprietary 305x395mm form factor.

We have no official confirmation on pricing and exact release dates as of yet, although GIGABYTE is sampling to review. We have the MD60-SC0 on hand with some Xeons, so keep your eyes for that article.

Intel's new Xeon is here, and once again it has impressive specs. The 662 mm² die supports up to eighteen cores, contains two integrated memory controllers, and comes with up to 45MB of L3 cache. We have four different SKUs to test and compare, with each other as well as with the previous generation. We've also added some new real world application testing, so join us for one of our biggest server CPU reviews ever.

The Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant with her second child, and the story has been making headlines around the world.

Soldiers in Indian-administered Kashmir build a temporary bridge across the Tawi River after the region's worst floods for 50 years snapped a number of key crossings.

TiVo

This morning, great-grand-daddy DVR manufacturer TiVo announced that the company is aiming big with its next DVR, the TiVo Mega. With a release date currently scheduled for the first quarter of 2015, the Mega will come in a 10-bay, 19" rack-mount enclosure that appears to be 4U tall, judging from the PR images. The Mega's bays will be filled with hard drives in a RAID5 array, yielding 24TB of storage.

The press release doesn’t say what drive types or capacities are used, but some quick RAID math shows that if all 10 bays are populated, the Mega likely uses 3TB drives, which would give it roughly 25TB of usable space before TiVo’s software is loaded.

The Mega does everything TiVo’s flagship Roamio DVR does—it just does a lot more of it. The device has six tuners and can send content to TiVo Mini devices to send content to multiple rooms; it also comes with a lifetime subscription to TiVo’s service.

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Rescue teams are battling to retrieve hundreds of thousands of people stranded by damaging floods in India and Pakistan.