Das bekannte Analystenhaus Bernstein hat aus einer Pflichtanalyse von IBM berechnet, dass der Konzern mehr als 14.000 Stellen abbaut. Es könnten dem Analysten zufolge sogar weit mehr sein. (IBM)
Das bekannte Analystenhaus Bernstein hat aus einer Pflichtanalyse von IBM berechnet, dass der Konzern mehr als 14.000 Stellen abbaut. Es könnten dem Analysten zufolge sogar weit mehr sein. (IBM)
Die neuen Oculus Social Features ermöglichen es Nutzern von Samsungs Gear VR, gemeinsam Quizfragen zu lösen, zusammen Spiele zu spielen oder Twitch zu schauen. Zudem kann der eigene Facebook-Account für 360-Grad-Videos verknüpft werden. (Gear VR, Soziales Netz)
Die neuen Oculus Social Features ermöglichen es Nutzern von Samsungs Gear VR, gemeinsam Quizfragen zu lösen, zusammen Spiele zu spielen oder Twitch zu schauen. Zudem kann der eigene Facebook-Account für 360-Grad-Videos verknüpft werden. (Gear VR, Soziales Netz)
A new service gathering steam on Kickstarter is set to immediately attract Hollywood’s lawyers should it get off the ground. MusicSwap says it will receive millions of DVDs from its members, rip them, and serve them remotely from the cloud to any device, anywhere. “You think we’re crazy?” their promo video asks. Absolutely.
While some great things happen on the platform, Kickstarters aren’t widely covered here on TF. There are an awful lot of them and most in our niche rarely grow into anything noteworthy.
Today, however, we’re going to make an exception because if this particular project takes off, it’s going to blow up – probably in the most spectacular way.
“What if you had an unlimited access to the LARGEST ONLINE MOVIE LIBRARY EVER? A community based library, where you could watch any movie online. A library where you could swap films with contributors all over the world and discover an infinite number of stories. This is the revolutionary idea behind MovieSwap,” the Kickstarter begins.
MovieSwap, should it get off the ground, will be a subscription service, presumably a little like Netflix. However, instead of teaming up with studios and distributors to offer content, MovieSwap intends to take the idea of swapping a physical DVD with friends to its logical, Internet-powered conclusion.
Noting that more than 25 billion DVDs have been sold in the past 15 years, MovieSwap wants to take this dying format and breathe new life into it.
“Because people already PAID for them, we invented a fair way to give [DVDs] a brilliant second life,” the promo material reads. But how? Well, this is where it gets interesting.
MovieSwap says it will collect millions of genuine DVDs from all over the world and register them with the service on behalf of their owners. The team claims to already have 200,000 in its warehouse.
Once in their possession, MovieSwap will digitize/rip the DVDs and place them in the cloud for members to play on any device, anywhere. But that’s not all.
“Then, just like you can legally lend, swap, or offer a DVD to a friend, MovieSwap works in the same way, but on a much larger scale thanks to its remote playback technology,” the team says.
“Additionally, users can get the full DVD experience including bonuses, deleted scenes, director’s commentaries, and other unique features not available when streaming videos online.”
According to the MovieSwap team, the service will be available on PC, Mac, Android tablets and even on a Firestick-style HDMI Android dongle. Interestingly the PC version will utilize VLC Media Player to read DVDs “over the Internet”, with VLC’s president Jean-Baptiste Kempf already on record as financially backing the project.
Hats off to the MovieSwap team for having the guts to put together something as innovative as this. It’s not only a brilliant use for a dying format but also an excellent way to make use of already-paid-for content that people have lying around their homes. There’s no doubt that the public will absolutely love this service.
Trouble is, Hollywood will hate MovieSwap in similar measures and at the first opportunity will begin torching it to the ground.
Somehow, however, MovieSwap insist they’re on solid ground. They have an intellectual property graduate on board and they believe that their business model is entirely legal.
“MovieSwap is also strongly advised and based its approach on a fully legal basis, combining two legal concepts known as ‘first sale doctrine’ and ‘fair use’,” they state.
At the moment MovieSwap has a 35,000 euro funding goal and at the time of writing they’re only 5,000 euros short. While that might be enough to get them off the ground, it won’t be enough to fight an even moderately bitter fight with Hollywood, even if they were to spend all of it on lawyers.
This seems like a classic case of brilliant minds running wild in order to create a service that everyone will love, but also one that’s a prime candidate for a messy legal battle that enriches only the lawyers. This is definitely one to watch, in every sense of the word.
Kommt der Hyperloop in die Slowakei? Die Regierung des kleinen Landes und Hyperloop Transportation Technologies wollen dort eine Röhre bauen. Der europäische Hyperloop könnte in wenigen Jahren starten. (Hyperloop, Verkehr)
Kommt der Hyperloop in die Slowakei? Die Regierung des kleinen Landes und Hyperloop Transportation Technologies wollen dort eine Röhre bauen. Der europäische Hyperloop könnte in wenigen Jahren starten. (Hyperloop, Verkehr)
Die Telekom-Konkurrenz hat empört auf ein Papier der Bundesregierung an die EU-Kommission reagiert. Von einem “Lobby-Papier der Telekom” und der “Bundesregierung als verlängerte Werkbank der Telekom” ist die Rede. (Vectoring, DSL)
Die Telekom-Konkurrenz hat empört auf ein Papier der Bundesregierung an die EU-Kommission reagiert. Von einem "Lobby-Papier der Telekom" und der "Bundesregierung als verlängerte Werkbank der Telekom" ist die Rede. (Vectoring, DSL)
Apple hat die offiziellen Einladungen für seine Keynote am 21. März 2016 verschickt. Bei dem Presse-Event wird vermutlich neben einem iPhone SE im 4-Zoll-Format auch das iPad Pro mit 9,7-Zoll-Bildschirmdiagonale präsentiert. (Apple Keynote, Apple)
Apple hat die offiziellen Einladungen für seine Keynote am 21. März 2016 verschickt. Bei dem Presse-Event wird vermutlich neben einem iPhone SE im 4-Zoll-Format auch das iPad Pro mit 9,7-Zoll-Bildschirmdiagonale präsentiert. (Apple Keynote, Apple)
Die Sitznachbarn unterhalten sich, vorne kann jemand nicht vom Smartphone lassen, das Bier ist teuer, und die Chips schmecken nicht: Kino macht nicht jedem Spaß. Das US-Startup The Screening Room will aktuelle Kinofilme für 50 US-Dollar nach Hause holen. (Heimkino, Digitalkino)
Die Sitznachbarn unterhalten sich, vorne kann jemand nicht vom Smartphone lassen, das Bier ist teuer, und die Chips schmecken nicht: Kino macht nicht jedem Spaß. Das US-Startup The Screening Room will aktuelle Kinofilme für 50 US-Dollar nach Hause holen. (Heimkino, Digitalkino)
In a recent phone survey, 42 percent of Americans reported thinking that people infected with the Zika virus were likely to die from the infection.
The survey, conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC), of the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that despite massive news coverage of the ongoing outbreaks, critical information about the virus is not being clearly conveyed.
For the record, infections with the Zika virus, which are mainly transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, typically result in mild to no illness. In fact, health experts estimate that around 80 percent of those infected will show no symptoms at all. For the remaining 20 percent-or-so that do, the symptoms are generally mild and include fever, aches, rashes, and pink eye.
The story behind the Nefertiti Hack just got a lot stranger. But is it a hoax?
An image taken from the Nefertiti Hack 3-D scan, whose provenance is now more mysterious than ever. (credit: Nefertiti Hack)
Last month, two artists grabbed headlines across the world by announcing that they had snuck a hacked Kinect Sensor into the Neues Museum in Berlin and done a guerrilla 3D scan of the bust of Queen Nefertiti, a precious artwork from ancient Egypt. Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles called their work The Other Nefertiti and released their data file to world. Now anyone can have an incredibly high-quality reproduction of the sculpture, or remix it to make new artworks. But immediately, experts raised questions about the scan—it was just too high quality for a Kinect. Al-Badri and Nelles inflamed speculation when they refused to share more details about their scanning techniques.
A 4K render of the Nefertiti Hack data.
The bust of Nefertiti has long been a bone of contention in the art world. Arguably, it belongs in Egypt, but German archaeologists took it from Amarna, Egypt over a century ago and have never given it back. Nefertiti holds a special place in ancient Egyptian history. In the 1350s BCE, her husband Pharaoh Akhenaten moved the royal palace from Thebes to the newly built city of Akhetaten (now Amarna). Together, Nefertiti and Akhenaten radically changed the structure of the state religion—some call it an early version of monotheism—and ushered in an era of unusually realistic art.
Al-Badri and Nelles displayed a 3D printed reproduction of Nefertiti's bust in Cairo as part of their project, suggesting that only a high-tech heist allowed them bring this part of Egyptian history back to its rightful place. Their message, and the intriguing story of a covert museum scan, captured the public's imagination.
2013 breach of Rye, NY dam facility part of wider Iranian probing of US networks.
The gate to the Bowman Avenue Dam facility in Rye Brook, NY is locked, but the cellular modem used for its controls wasn't. (credit: Google)
In 2013, someone gained access to the operations center for the Bowman Avenue Dam, a small flood control dam on Blind Brook in Rye Brook, New York. The attackers were later identified in a classified Department of Homeland Security report as being the same Iranian group alleged to have been responsible for attacks on PNC Financial Services Group, SunTrust, and Capital One Financial.
The attack was first made public in December 2015 by a Wall Street Journal report. Now, according to a CNN report, the US Department of Justice is preparing to file an indictment against those believed to be behind the intrusion—individuals believed to have been operating at the direction of the Iranian government.
Calling the intrusion an "attack" may be a bit of an overstatement—the controls of the dam were not accessed, according to government officials cited anonymously by CNN, and only "back office systems" were penetrated. The intrusion was made possible by a broadband cellular modem used to connect the small facility to the Internet, and the Bowman Avenue facility was targeted by a network scan for industrial control systems exposed to the Internet.
Das bekannte Analystenhaus Bernstein hat aus einer Pflichtanalyse von IBM berechnet, dass der Konzern mehr als 14.000 Stellen abbaut. Es könnten dem Analysten zufolge sogar weit mehr sein. (IBM) 
Die neuen Oculus Social Features ermöglichen es Nutzern von Samsungs Gear VR, gemeinsam Quizfragen zu lösen, zusammen Spiele zu spielen oder Twitch zu schauen. Zudem kann der eigene Facebook-Account für 360-Grad-Videos verknüpft werden. (
Kommt der Hyperloop in die Slowakei? Die Regierung des kleinen Landes und Hyperloop Transportation Technologies wollen dort eine Röhre bauen. Der europäische Hyperloop könnte in wenigen Jahren starten. (
Die Telekom-Konkurrenz hat empört auf ein Papier der Bundesregierung an die EU-Kommission reagiert. Von einem "Lobby-Papier der Telekom" und der "Bundesregierung als verlängerte Werkbank der Telekom" ist die Rede. (
Apple hat die offiziellen Einladungen für seine Keynote am 21. März 2016 verschickt. Bei dem Presse-Event wird vermutlich neben einem iPhone SE im 4-Zoll-Format auch das iPad Pro mit 9,7-Zoll-Bildschirmdiagonale präsentiert. (
Die Sitznachbarn unterhalten sich, vorne kann jemand nicht vom Smartphone lassen, das Bier ist teuer, und die Chips schmecken nicht: Kino macht nicht jedem Spaß. Das US-Startup The Screening Room will aktuelle Kinofilme für 50 US-Dollar nach Hause holen. (
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