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DolarToday wins motion to dismiss, but Caracas fires back with a new filing.
(credit: JR Ferrer Paris)
On Friday, lawyers for the Central Bank of Venezuela (CBV) filed a new amended civil complaint against DolarToday, the US-based website that publishes a daily unofficial exchange rate between American dollars and Venezuelan bolivares.
The Venezuelan government has made it a crime to publish the street trading rate as it countermands the "official" exchange rates, which are far more favorable to the government. The recent collapse of the price of oil has exacerbated Venezuela's economic woes; the country is widely expected to default on its international debts later this year.
Late last month, US District Judge Gregory Sleet ruled in favor of DolarToday’s earlier motion to dismiss. In his two-page ruling, Judge Sleet found that the CBV lacked standing and dismissed the case. However, he allowed the CBV to file an amended complaint within seven days, which it has now done.
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Vor allem Kleidung und Schuhe, aber auch Bücher und Games werden gerne bei Internet-Händlern im Ausland gekauft. Es locken günstigere Preise und Produkte, die in Deutschland sonst nicht zu haben sind. (Onlineshop, Studie) 
Vor allem Kleidung und Schuhe, aber auch Bücher und Games werden gerne bei Internet-Händlern im Ausland gekauft. Es locken günstigere Preise und Produkte, die in Deutschland sonst nicht zu haben sind. (Onlineshop, Studie) 
RuTracker says it is trying to purchase a new domain from a similarly-named rival site in order to protect users from scammers. Interestingly, RuTracker owner DreamTorrent actually owns the RuTracker trademark so that has the potential to affect negotiations. Meanwhile, blocking of the site has unintended consequences.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
As copyright holders try to slow the spread of copyrighted content, torrent and streaming sites are being blocked by ISPs across Europe and Russia at an alarming rate.
On the one hand this is an annoyance to site operators, who are having to adapt their operations in order to mitigate the effects of blockades. On the other, music and movie companies feel justified in taking any measures they can to protect their rights.
Somewhere in the middle lies the ordinary users who, in an effort to circumvent blockades, are ending up on copycat, clone and just plain scammy sites that are cynically cashing in on all the confusion. One site attempting to do something about this problem is Russian torrent giant RuTracker.org.
Blocked by local ISPs following escalating disputes with copyright holders, the site says that its users are falling foul to clone sites carrying out phishing and extortion-like attacks. RuTracker believes that if it obtained a recognizable URL ending in .RU, local users would be more reassured that they’re visiting the correct site.
To that end RuTracker.org has been trying to obtain RuTracker.ru, a domain currently owned by a rival torrent site.
“Blocks are not much for us to care about. Much more important for us is that users can accidentally fall on phishing sites that steal passwords,” an RuTracker representative told Izvestia.
Unlike its much larger namesake, RuTracker.ru is not currently blocked by court order and since RuTracker.org really wants an .RU domain, RuTracker.ru is the natural choice. However, the site also has aspirations of keeping the price realistic and that appears to be a stumbling block.
Izvestia managed to track down RuTracker.ru owner Oleg Volkov who told the publication he isn’t happy with the price being offered.
“From 100,000 rubles, you can start a conversation. But I’m not eager to sell it,” he said.
Indeed, less than $1,400 seems like a giveaway price, especially for a site with as many visitors as RuTracker.org. However, another issue has the potential to further complicate matters.
RuTracker.org is owned by a company called DreamTorrent Corp. and in 2012 the outfit applied for two trademarks – RuTracker and RuTrackerorg. A year later the site acquired the rights to the names.
So, in theory at least, DreamTorrent could use its grip on its trademarks to attempt to gain control of RuTracker.ru by force. However, the site has said that it does not wish to go down that route and would prefer to negotiate a fair price instead.
But while the details are being thrashed out it seems that RuTracker.org has been experiencing yet more blocking problems, this time from an unexpected direction.
According to a post by an administrator on the site’s forum, RuTracker recently began receiving reports that the site was no longer accessible to users from outside Russia from countries including Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Israel.
It transpired that RuTracker had engaged the services of an anti-DDoS company based in Russia, who had begun passing foreign traffic destined for the site through the Russian Federation. Since RuTracker is blocked by Russian ISPs, this foreign traffic also became blocked.
The problem was eventually solved but it does show how blockades can overreach and cause unintended consequences, in this case a locally-focused block extending internationally.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Wir haben die Zahlen nachrecherchiert, mit denen bei vernetztem Fahren Politik gemacht wird – und dahinter keine harten Fakten gefunden. Wir haben uns per VR Illusionen hingegeben und hastig den neuen Raspberry getestet. Sieben Tage und viele Meldungen im Überblick. (Golem-Wochenrückblick, Server) 
Wir haben die Zahlen nachrecherchiert, mit denen bei vernetztem Fahren Politik gemacht wird - und dahinter keine harten Fakten gefunden. Wir haben uns per VR Illusionen hingegeben und hastig den neuen Raspberry getestet. Sieben Tage und viele Meldungen im Überblick. (Golem-Wochenrückblick, Server) 
Fire OS 5 dropped the feature, but a new update will bring it back.
Amazon will restore optional full disk encryption to Fire OS 5 in a software update "coming this spring," according to a statement released by the company on Friday evening.
The company originally removed disk encryption support in FireOS 5, which was introduced on Fire tablets last fall. It only made headlines yesterday after that update started to roll out for older devices—those tablets shipped with encryption support which was removed by the update, and users complained. The topic of device encryption is also on everyone's mind thanks to Apple's high-profile fight with the FBI over a locked iPhone 5C.
Amazon originally said that it removed encryption support from the Android-based Fire OS because it was an "enterprise feature" that "consumers weren't using." The complaints and news reports were apparently enough to get the company to reverse course.
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Computer security and forensics experts have never heard of this type of threat.
(credit: pmquan)
One day after the San Bernardino County district attorney said that an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters might contain a "lying-dormant cyber pathogen," the county's top prosecutor went on the offense again. DA Michael Ramos said Apple must assist the FBI in unlocking the phone because an alleged security threat might have been "introduced by its product and concealed by its operating system."
Ramos, however, has been tight-lipped on exactly what security threat may be on the passcode-protected phone of Syed Farook, a county worker who was one of two shooters in the Dec. 2 massacre that killed 14 and wounded scores of others. The prosecutor suggested in a court filing yesterday that the iPhone—a county phone used by Farook and recovered after the shooting—might be some type of trigger to release a "lying-dormant cyber pathogen" into the county's computer infrastructure. On Friday, the district attorney again demanded that a federal magistrate presiding over the dispute command Apple to help decrypt the phone.
Apple has not advanced a single argument to indicating [sic] why the identification and prosecution of any outstanding coconspirators, or to detect and eliminate cyber security threats to San Bernardino County's infrastructure introduced by its product and concealed by its operating system, and Apple's refusal to assist in acquiring that information, is not a compelling governmental interest.
To the extent that Apple states in its brief at page 33 that there is no compelling state interest because the government "has produced nothing more than speculation that this iPhone might contain potentially relevant information," Apple completely forgets that a United States Magistrate has issued a search warrant based on a finding of probable cause that the iPhone does contain evidence of criminal activity. The reason we search is to find out if the device contains evidence or is an instrumentality of the crime. Such authority is granted by the United States Constitution.
But what exactly is a "lying-dormant cyber pathogen?" As the chatter on Twitter and elsewhere could attest, security and forensics experts have never heard of this type of threat. Online commenters called it everything from a "magical unicorn" to a make-believe plot that we might see on the broadcast TV show CSI: Cyber.
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Die Serienfertigung soll im Spätsommer 2016 starten: SK Hynix plant HBM2 mit 4 GByte ab dem dritten und mit 8 GByte ab dem vierten Quartal. Der Stapelspeicher soll bei AMDs Polaris- und Nvidias Pascal-Grafikkarten und bei Mittelklasse-Chips verwendet werden. (RAM, Nvidia Pascal) 
Die Serienfertigung soll im Spätsommer 2016 starten: SK Hynix plant HBM2 mit 4 GByte ab dem dritten und mit 8 GByte ab dem vierten Quartal. Der Stapelspeicher soll bei AMDs Polaris- und Nvidias Pascal-Grafikkarten und bei Mittelklasse-Chips verwendet werden. (RAM, Nvidia Pascal) 
Sore muscles aside, Kelly feels good—but we won’t see twin study results for a year.
Scott Kelly, left, and his brother Mark Kelly share a laugh at the Johnson Space Center on Friday. (credit: Eric Berger)
HOUSTON—Less than three days after falling back to Earth in a fireball from space, Scott Kelly told a group of reporters gathered at Johnson Space Center that he hadn’t expected to feel quite so sore upon returning from space. But overall,Kelly said, he could have gone longer in space if the mission demanded it.
Immediately after exiting the Soyuz capsule, Kelly said he felt stronger than he did in 2011, after he had spent 159 days in space. “This time I felt better coming out of the capsule, but at some point those two lines must have crossed,” he said. Now he has a lot of muscle fatigue and soreness. When asked which muscle groups were sore Kelly replied, “Most of them.”
Another unexpected issue came with his skin. In space, in microgravity, not much touched his skin in the free floating environment. Back on Earth he’s found it to be very sensitive to the touch. “There’s almost a burning feeling whenever I sit or lay down,” he said. Kelly had put on dress shoes for the news conference, but he had more comfortable sneakers at hand for afterward.
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Donald Trump und Hillary Clinton können schon, alle anderen (noch) nicht: Google hat eine neue Funktion namens Posts vorgestellt, mit der künftige Präsidenten und andere Prominente besonders deutlich in der Suchliste hervorgehoben werden. (
Mit der Universal Windows Platform will Microsoft ein Monopol beim Vertrieb von Spielen aufbauen und damit Steam und Gog.com aus dem Markt drängen. Das sagt Tim Sweeney, Chef von Epic Games - und fordert die Branche zum Kampf auf. (
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