Month: July 2016

Amazon Prime Day may be over, but that doesn’t mean fake holidays designed to sell you stuff are over. Dell is running a “Black Friday in July” sale today, with deep discounts on laptops, convertibles, desktops, and more.

The company is also offering deep discounts on products purchased from the Dell Outlet Store.

Here are some of the day’s best deals.

Dell laptops

• Dell Inspiron 11 3000 Series w/Core m3/4GB/500GB for $400 – Dell
• Dell Inspiron 11 3000 Series w/Celeron N3050/2GB/32GB for $150 – Dell
• Save $250 on any Dell XPS 12 2-in-1 priced at $900 and up – Dell Outlet (coupon: wo250XPS12)
• Dell Chromebook 11 for 35% off (starting at $129) – Dell Outlet (coupon: wo35Cb113120)

Dell convertibles and tablets

• Dell Inspiron 13 convertible notebook w/Core i7/8GB/256GB for $699 – Microsoft Store
• Save 45% on any Dell Latitude 12 rugged tablet – Dell Outlet (coupon: wo45Lat12Rug)

Alienware gaming PCs

• Alienware Steam Machine mini-desktop w/Core i3-4170T/NVIDIA/4GB/500GB for $350 – Dell
• Alienware Alpha mini PC w/Windows 10/Core i3-4170T/4GB/500GB/NVIDIA for $400 – Dell
• Alienware 13 laptop w/Core i7-6500u/NVIDIA GTX 965M/16GB/512GB for $1450 and up – Dell

Other computers

• Refurb Acer Aspire Switch 11 V 2-in-1 w/Core M/4GB/128GB for $300 – NeweggFlash
• Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 12 convertible notebook w/Core i5/8GB/516GB for $600 – Woot
• Lenovo ThinkCentre M73 Tiny desktop for $200 and up – Woot

Microsoft Surface products

• Refurb Microsoft Surface 3 w/64GB for $310 – Geekdeal (via eBay)
• Microsoft Surface Pro 4 w/Core M3/4GB/128GB for $650 – Northwest Outdoor (via eBay)
• Students save up to $449 on Surface Pro 4 + Xbox One bundles – Microsoft Store

Other

• Google Nexus 5X w/32GB for $235 – NeweggFlash
• Seiki Pro 4K monitors for $260 and up – Woot
• Refurb UE Boom wireless speakers for $54 – AMazon
• Cambridge SoundWorks OontZ 3XL Bluetooth speaker for $80 – Amazon
• Aukey 10,000 mAH portable battery with Quick Charge 2.0 for $15 – Amazon (coupon: PBT17133)
• Name your price for 10 Japanese Sci-Fi eBooks – StoryBundle

You can find more bargains in our daily deals section.

Continue reading Deals of the Day (7-13-2016) at Liliputing.

Ein Fehler in der Druckerverwaltung von Windows ermöglicht es, Schadcode im Netzwerk zu verteilen und mit Systemberechtigung auszuführen. Diese und andere Lücken hat Microsoft heute gepatcht. (Security, Microsoft)

Ein paar Tage vor dem Start der Geforce GTX 1060 legt AMD nach: Die Radeon Software 16.7.2 steigert die Leistung der Polaris-Grafikkarte RX 480 in einigen Spielen. Grund ist ein behobener Fehler. (Polaris, Grafikhardware)

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Ein bayrisches Unternehmen baut Small-Cell-Technik in Wartehäuschen und Litfaßsäulen ein. Deren Partner arbeitet mit Vodafone zusammen. (Kathrein, Vodafone)

Mehr als zwei Jahre nach dem letzten Update steht eine neue Version von Skype für Linux bereit. Die Anwendung läuft mit WebRTC und dem Chrome-Browser, hat aber noch Alpha-Status. (Skype, Microsoft)

Over the past few years the entertainment industries have repeatedly asked Google to step up its game when it comes to its anti-piracy efforts.

These calls haven’t fallen on deaf ears and Google has slowly implemented various new anti-piracy measures in response.

Today, Google released an updated version of its “How Google Fights Piracy” report. The company provides an overview of all the efforts it makes to combat piracy while countering some of the entertainment industry complaints.

One of the steps Google has taken in recent years aims to downrank the most egregious “pirate” sites.

To accomplish this, Google made changes to its core algorithms which punish clear offenders. Using the number of accurate DMCA requests as an indicator, these sites are now demoted in search results for certain key phrases.

Despite continuing critique from rightsholders, Google notes that this change has been very effective.

“This process has proven extremely effective. Immediately upon launching improvements to our demotion signal in 2014, one major torrent site acknowledged traffic from search engines had dropped by 50% within the first week,” Google writes, citing one of our articles.

More recently, Google’s own findings confirmed this trend. As a result of the demotion policy, pirate sites lose the vast majority of their Google Search traffic.

“In May 2016, we found that demoted sites lost an average of 89% of their traffic from Google Search. These successes spur us to continue improving and refining the DMCA demotion signal.”

Despite this success, entertainment industry groups have recently called for a more rigorous response. Ideally, they would like Google to remove the results from pirate sites entirely, and make sure that infringing links don’t reappear under a different URL.

However, Google doesn’t want to go this far. The company warns that removing entire sites is dangerous as it may lead to censorship of content that’s perfectly legal.

“Whole-site removal is ineffective and can easily result in the censorship of lawful material,” Google writes.

“Blogging sites, for example, contain millions of pages from hundreds of thousands of users, as do social networking sites, e-commerce sites, and cloud computing services. All can inadvertently contain material that is infringing.”

Similarly, Google doesn’t believe in a “takedown and staydown” approach, where the company would proactively filter search results for pirated content. This would be unfeasible and unnecessary, the company states.

“One problem is that there is no way to know whether something identified as infringing in one place and at one time is also unlawful when it appears at a different place and at a different time,” Google notes.

Instead, the company says that copyright holders should use the existing takedown procedure, and target new sites when they appear so these can be downranked as well.

Finally, Google stresses that search is not a major driver of traffic to pirate sites to begin with. Only a small fraction of users reach these sites through search engines.

While the company is willing to help alleviate the problem, search engines are not the only way to eradicate piracy.

“Search engines do not control what content is on the Web. There are more than 60 trillion web addresses on the internet, and there will always be new sites dedicated to making copyrighted works available as long as there is money to be made doing so.”

Instead of focusing on search, copyright holders should take a “follow the money” approach and make sure that pirate sites are cut off from their revenue sources, Google argues.

In addition, they shouldn’t forget to offer consumers plenty of legal alternatives to piracy.

Convincing the entertainment industries of its good intentions is easier said than done though. “This report looks a lot like “greenwash”,” says Geoff Taylor, Chief Executive of the music industry group BPI.

“Although we welcome the measures Google has taken so far, it is still one of the key enablers of piracy on the planet. Google has the resources and the tech expertise to do much more to get rid of the illegal content on its services,” he adds.

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

ZTE’s Axon 7 smartphone has the kind of specs you’d expect from a $600 smartphone, but it has a much lower price. First announced in May, the ZTE Axon 7 is available for pre-order today for $400.

I won’t go so far as to say that it’s a top-tier phone with a mid-range price. But that certainly seems like a very good price for a phone with a Snapdragon 820 processor, at least 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, and a a 2560 x 1440 pixel display.

Continue reading ZTE Axon 7 up for pre-order for $400 at Liliputing.

Mit einem Update für Samsungs Smartwatch Gear S2 sollen sich Apps direkt von der Uhr aus installieren lassen - ein verbundenes Smartphone soll unnötig werden. Das soll nicht die einzige Verbesserung sein. (Gear S2, Samsung)

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