Month: June 2016

(credit: Aurich / Getty)

Usually, when a new game console is nine months away from launch, the console maker has already softened the ground for the upcoming debut with trade show announcements, hints at exclusive games, and at least some public discussion of its technical specifications. Yet Nintendo's NX is currently nine months away from launch (if the company's current March 2017 launch roadmap is to be believed), and we still know next to nothing about "the new hardware system with a brand-new concept" that was first mentioned publicly roughly 15 months ago.

That state of affairs has left us flailing at wild, patent-based guesses about the console's design and grasping at extremely small crumbs of concrete information when they rarely appear.

Nintendo does at least have a public excuse for keeping details of the NX so secret for so long. Speaking at a Japanese investor meeting this week (as translated by Twitter user Cheesemeister), legendary Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto said the company is "worried about imitators" if it shows off the console's new ideas too early. Miyamoto also talked about protecting those new ideas in a recent interview with the AP. "In terms of NX, there's an idea that we're working on. That's why we can't share anything at this point... If it was just a matter of following advancements in technology, things would be coming out a lot quicker."

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Google will launch the next version of Android this summer, and for the past few months the company has been referring to it as Android N. Now we know what the N will stand for: Nougat.

The company has been using “tasty treat” themed code names for each version of Android. So while we still don’t know if the upcoming version of Android will be version 6.1 or 7.0, at least we know that Android 6.0 Marshmallow will be followed by Nougat.

Continue reading Android Nougat is coming this summer at Liliputing.

Flip phones largely fell out of fashion as smartphone supplanted old-school handsets. But over the past few years we’ve seen a few phones that split the difference: they’re smartphones and flip phones.

Samsung’s been producing this sort of device since 2013, and LG introduced one as recently as last summer.

Now it looks like Samsung has a new model on the way, and like most Android-powered flip phones it will most likely be sold primarily in Asia.

Continue reading Samsung is still making flip phone-style smartphones at Liliputing.

In recent years various entertainment industry groups have switched their efforts away from legislation, towards voluntary cooperation with various stakeholders.

This has resulted in several agreements with Internet providers, advertising agencies and payment processors, which are all designed to help prevent piracy.

A few months ago this strategy was expanded to cover key players in the domain name industry. In February, the MPAA and the Donuts registry signed a landmark agreement under which the movie industry group acts as “trusted notifier” of “pirate” domains.

Traditionally, it has been very hard for rightsholders to get domain names suspended without a court order, but through voluntary agreements this process is simplified.

A few months have passed since the initial announcement and according to the domain registry the first results are positive.

The MPAA referred the first three domain names to Donuts in March. After a careful inspection, the registry agreed that the associated sites were indeed linked to illegal downloading or streaming.

“We concluded that the first two were identical to well-known pirated content websites, which were subjects of prior court orders and were illegally streaming and providing downloads of movies, including those still in theaters. The third was dedicated to illegally downloading and live streaming television series,” Donuts notes.

In response, Donuts alerted the responsible domain name registrars about the infringing conduct, paired with a request to inform the persons who registered the domains.

This eventually resulted in two domain name suspensions on the registrar level. In the third case the site’s hosting provider took the site offline.

Neither Donuts nor the MPAA have published the targeted domain names. However, additional research reveals that the Donuts domain Primewire.guru was suspended recently, which fits the profile.

A few weeks after the first reports, MPAA submitted another set of three “allegedly infringing” domain names. In two of these cases Donuts agreed that the sites were violating their abuse policies, and after the registrants failed to reply, the domains were suspended.

The third domain name, which remains unnamed, is dedicated to streaming TV series. However, after discussions with the registrar and the owner of the domain, no direct action was taken. The domain owner apparently argued that the site complies with takedown requests, so Donuts says that further investigation is needed to make a final decision.

While the MPAA’s efforts have resulted in some suspensions, there are still several “pirate” sites online with Donuts managed domains. This includes domains with the prominent .movie TLD, so there’s still plenty of policing to do.

From the registry point of view Donuts is satisfied with the progress so far. They are happy to contribute in the “continuing battle against pervasive illegal online piracy” but stress that they aren’t suspending domains names on a whim.

“Donuts has been extremely careful in balancing the rights of its end-user customers along with those of copyright holders. We continue to believe this is a useful and efficient manner for addressing blatant online piracy, and we encourage others in the domain name community to follow suit with similar programs,” the registry concludes.

The MPAA’s Chief of Global Content Protection, Dean Marks, agrees and hopes that more domain name registries will come onboard in the near future.

In addition to the deal with Donuts, the MPAA also signed a similar agreement with Radix, Asia’s largest new gTLD applicant. Whether more registries will follow in the future has yet to be seen.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

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The HP Elite x3 is a smartphone that you can also use as a desktop computer. It runs Windows 10 Mobile software and supports Microsoft’s Continuum for phone software that lets you connect a keyboard, mouse, and external display to run some apps in desktop mode.

But HP is targeting enterprise users: in addition to Universal Windows apps, you’ll be able to run full-fledged Win32 apps in desktop mode… sort of.

HP unveiled the Elite x3 in February and it recently passed through the FCC website, which could be a sign that the phone will be available for purchase soon.

Continue reading HP Elite x3 Windows phone/desktop hits the FCC at Liliputing.

Cable landing at Minami-boso city, Chiba, Japan (credit: NEC)

The Faster Cable System. (credit: NEC)

Google and five Asian telecoms have begun using an undersea cable connecting Oregon and Japan. At 60Tbps, "this is the highest-capacity undersea cable ever built," and Google will have access to 10Tbps of that, the company said in an announcement yesterday.

"We'll use this capacity to support our users, including Google Apps and Cloud Platform customers," the announcement said. "This is especially exciting, as we prepare to launch a new Google Cloud Platform East Asia region in Tokyo later this year. Dedicated bandwidth to this region results in faster data transfers and reduced latency as GCP customers deliver their applications and information to customers around the globe."

NEC is the supplier that built the $300 million "Faster Cable System" for Google, China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, KDDI, and Singtel. It won't be the highest-capacity cable for very long, as Microsoft and Facebook recently announced a 160Tbps undersea cable from the US to Europe, to be completed in October 2017.

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Many Android phones are loaded with ads and crapware, which can hurt the user experience. In exchange for using your phone as a billboard, though, the OEM gets cold, hard cash from advertisers. Amazon is now joining in on this action by loading unlocked Android phones with ads and offering them to users at a discount.

The program is called "Prime Exclusive Phones," and at launch it offers the unlocked Moto G4 for $149.99 with lock screen ads or the BLU R1 HD for $49.99 with ads, both $50 off. Amazon's announcement calls this "breakthrough pricing" that is enabled by "personalized offers and ads, including deals and product recommendations, displayed on the phone's lock screen. When a customer sees an offer, they can tap to learn more about it or simply unlock their phone to dismiss." Besides preloaded Amazon apps, there are full-screen lock screen ads and ads in the lock screen notification panel.

The good news is that the feature is optional. On the Amazon listing page, the phones are available with and without ads, listed as "Prime Exclusive - With Offers & Ads" and "Standard Version - Without Offers & Ads." This hardware offer mirrors a similar strategy Amazon took with its Kindle line, which was also available at a discount in exchange for an ad-based experience.

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