Despite recent troubles, Netflix is a major force on the Internet, accounting for 32.7% of peak U.S. downstream traffic, according to a new report.

Sandvine Intelligent Broadband Networks’ report analyzed 200 Internet service providers in 80 countries and found that real-time entertainment apps take up 60% of peak downstream traffic, up from 50% last year. Netflix has more than half of that share. Sandvine considers the hours between 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. to be peak times.

Like others, Sandvine has also noticed a shift away from PCs to access such content. The company found 55% of traffic volume in North America is consumed on game consoles, set-top boxes, smart TVs and mobile devices. Only 45% is being accessed by laptops or PCs. Video makes up 32.6% of peak downstream mobile traffic, of which YouTube is the largest contributor.
Are Netflix’s best days behind it?

The report comes as Netflix recently lost 800,000 paid subscribers in its most-recent quarter. The company’s stock is now trading at less than a third of the amount it was in July.

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WASHINGTON (AP) – It seems as if violence is everywhere, but it’s really on the run.

Yes, thousands of people have died in bloody unrest from Africa to Pakistan, while terrorists plot bombings and kidnappings. Wars drag on in Iraq and Afghanistan. In peaceful Norway, a man massacred 69 youths in July. In Mexico, headless bodies turn up, victims of drug cartels. This month eight people died in a shooting in a California hair salon.

Yet, historically, we’ve never had it this peaceful.

That’s the thesis of three new books, including one by prominent Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. Statistics reveal dramatic reductions in war deaths, family violence, racism, rape, murder and all sorts of mayhem.

In his book, Pinker writes: ‘The decline of violence may be the most significant and least appreciated development in the history of our species.’

And it runs counter to what the mass media is reporting and essentially what we feel in our guts.

Pinker and other experts say the reality is not painted in bloody anecdotes, but demonstrated in the black and white of spreadsheets and historical documents. They tell a story of a world moving away from violence.

In his new book, ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has […]

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During the death throes of Herbert Hoover’s presidency in June 1932, desperate bands of men traveled to Washington and set up camp within view of the Capitol. The first contingent journeyed all the way from Portland, Oregon, but others soon converged from all over-alone, in groups, with families-until their main Hooverville on the Anacostia River’s fetid mudflats swelled to a population as high as 20,000. The men, World War I veterans who could not find jobs, became known as the Bonus Army-for the modest government bonus they were owed for their service. Under a law passed in 1924, they had been awarded roughly $1,000 each, to be collected in 1945 or at death, whichever came first. But they didn’t want to wait any longer for their pre-New Deal entitlement-especially given that Congress had bailed out big business with the creation of a Reconstruction Finance Corporation earlier in its session. Father Charles Coughlin, the populist ‘Radio Priest

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Widespread demonstrations in support of Occupy Wall Street have put the financial crisis back into the national spotlight lately.

So here’s a quick refresher on what’s happened to some of the main players, whose behavior, whether merely reckless or downright deliberate, helped cause or worsen the meltdown. This list isn’t exhaustive — feel welcome to add to it.
Mortgage originators

Mortgage lenders contributed to the financial crisis by issuing or underwriting loans to people who would have a difficult time paying them back, inflating a housing bubble that was bound to pop. Lax regulation allowed banks to stretch their mortgage lending standards and use aggressive tactics to rope borrowers into complex mortgages that were more expensive than they first appeared. Evidence has also surfaced that lenders were filing fraudulent documents to push some of these mortgages through, and, in some cases, had been doing so as early as the 1990s. A 2005 Los Angeles Times investigation of Ameriquest – then the nation’s largest subprime lender – found that ‘they forged documents, hyped customers’ creditworthiness and ‘juiced’ mortgages with hidden rates and fees.

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Glaciers are shrinking worldwide — some of them rapidly. Now Chinese researchers have sounded the alarm in their country too, where they say warmer weather and increased precipitation are reducing the size of glaciers. Water shortages and floods could result.
Info

Chinese scientists are not known for fearmongering, particularly when it comes to dangers that could affect large numbers of people. Officials frown upon news that could unsettle the masses — which makes this week’s publication by the Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing all the more stunning.

According to the paper published this week in the British scientific journal Environmental Research Letters, climate change has had devastating affects on glaciers in the mountains of southwestern China. The region includes the Himalayas and other ranges that are part of the Tibetan highlands.

The research team led by Zongxing Li has observed ‘significant’ annual and seasonal warming trends, along with the ‘drastic retreat’ and ‘large mass loss’ of glaciers, which has led to an increase in the size of glacial lakes in the area, the paper said.

Their data showed that between 1970 and 2001, the Pengqu basin’s 999 glaciers lost a combined surface area of 131 square kilometers (51 square […]

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