December 2016 – Page 36 – news.buyenne.com

iFixit tears the AirPods apart, doesn’t like what it finds

You aren’t getting inside without a knife, a saw, or both.

If you're looking for a way to kill some time while you wait for your Apple AirPods to arrive on your doorstep this month (or next month, or the month after that), iFixit has just posted a teardown of the $159 wireless earbuds and their battery-charging cradle. The news is not good for people who like to do their own repairs.

Once you open the AirPods, there's really no going back; iFixit had to first apply heat to loosen up the glue and then use a knife and guitar pick to pry the things open. Unlike Apple's wired EarPods, which are mostly empty space on the inside, the AirPods are densely packed with circuit boards, chips, and batteries.

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Kabel: Vodafone erreicht 1 Million Haushalte mehr mit 400 MBit/s

Vodafone bietet erneut sehr viel mehr Haushalten bis zu 400 MBit/s. Doch die tatsächlich ermittelte Datenrate ist im Kabelnetz nur etwa halb so hoch wie beworben. (Cebit 2016, Vodafone)

Nature Picks ‘Pirate’ in This Year’s Top People in Science

Over the past year science’s pirate portal Sci-Hub has become the center of an academic debate about copyright’s ‘stranglehold’ on science. The site was sued by one of the largest academic publishers but also received praise from researchers. This controversy makes its founder, Alexandra Elbakyan, one of the top ten people that mattered in science this year, according to Nature.

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

alexandra Last year, academic publisher Elsevier filed a complaint against Sci-Hub and several related “pirate” sites.

It accused the websites of making academic papers widely available to the public, without permission.

While Sci-Hub is nothing like the average pirate site, it is just as illegal according to Elsevier’s legal team, which obtained a preliminary injunction from a New York District Court last fall.

The injunction ordered Sci-Hub’s founder Alexandra Elbakyan to quit offering access to any Elsevier content. However, this didn’t happen.

Instead of taking Sci-Hub down, the lawsuit and the associated media attention only helped the site grow. Just a few months ago we reported that its users were downloading hundreds of thousands of papers per day.

Elbakyan put her finger on one of the biggest frustrations of scientists; the fact that so much fundamental research is hidden behind a paywall, where only an elite group can access them.

While piracy is ‘not done’ for most academics, at least until after they graduate, Sci-Hub has received a lot of support. This week the prestigious publication Nature even picked the site’s founder as one of the ten people that mattered in 2016.

“Few people support the fact that she acted illegally, but many see Sci-Hub as advancing the cause of the open-access movement, which holds that papers should be made (legally) free to read and reuse,” Nature writes.

One of the open access supporters who praises Sci-Hub’s founder is Michael Eisen, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley

“What she did is nothing short of awesome,” he tells Nature. “Lack of access to the scientific literature is a massive injustice, and she fixed it with one fell swoop.”

For now, Elbakyan doesn’t see any reason to stop what she’s doing. When Elsevier shut down Sci-Hub’s domain name, the site simply moved to a new one, continuing business as usual.

This stance is welcomed by many researchers, especially in developing countries where universities often don’t have the funds to pay for access to these papers. As such, Elbakyan believes she’s doing the right thing.

“Is there anything wrong or shameful in running a research-access website such as Sci-Hub? I think no, therefore I can be open about my activities,” she says.

At the same time, the pushback against Elsevier continues to grow. Just recently, Taiwanese Universities decided to cancel subscriptions to its journals, stating that the costs are unreasonably high.

On the legal front, progress in the case between Sci-Hub and Elsevier has been slow. There’s a pre-trial conference scheduled for February next year, so it will take a few more months at least before that concludes.

Meanwhile, the download counter at Sci-Hub keeps on spinning. Thus far, the site has served up 75 million downloads this year, which by one estimate is good for three percent of all science publisher downloads worldwide.

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_{Credit: Alexandra’s photo}

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

Deals of the Day (12-20-2016)

Google’s Chromecast is one of the simplest gadgets for streaming internet video to a TV. Just plug it in, fire up Netflix, YouTube, or most other streaming video apps on your phone, tablet, or computer and with the tap of a button the’ll begin playing on the big screen.

Priced at $35, the Chromecast is also one of the cheapest media streamers around… but it faces competition from the $40 Amazon Fire TV Stick and $50 Roku Streaming Stick, both of which come with remote controls (and both of which support Amazon Video, which the Chromecast does not).

Continue reading Deals of the Day (12-20-2016) at Liliputing.

Uber is losing money hand-over-fist

The ride-sharing company is disrupting the notion of profit.

Things aren't going so well for Uber these days. California wants the company to stop testing its self-driving vehicles without the state's permission, and on Monday Bloomberg reported that the company lost $800 million in Q3 2016 on revenues of $1.7 billion. To make things worse, that number doesn't include anything the company lost in China, a market in which Uber has been spending heavily of late. All told, the poster child for "disruption" looks set to lose more than $3 billion this year.

We imagine this news will engender much Schadenfreude. Just this year the company settled a lawsuit with drivers from Massachusetts and California, settled a second lawsuit from customers alleging sexual assault by their drivers, settled a third lawsuit over misleading claims about background checks for drivers, lost a legal battle in the UK to prevent its drivers from being classified as employees, got fined by the French courts for operating an illegal taxi service, and told California where it could stick its self-driving permits. It even hired people to pretend to be journalists to aid another lawsuit.

But if regulations and laws are there for the company to ignore, so too it seems are basic economic principles like "turning a profit." Despite plenty of criticism that it pays drivers too little, it also evidently isn't charging its customers enough. 2016's losses may well wipe out almost all of the gigantic cash injection Uber received from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund back in June.

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Elektromobilität: Eon will sich am Aufbau von Ladesäulen beteiligen

Wenn RWE dabei ist, will Eon nicht draußen bleiben: Der Energieversorger hat eine Geschäftseinheit für Elektromobilität eingerichtet und will sich am Ladeinfrastruktur-Projekt der Autohersteller beteiligen. (Elektroauto, Auto)

Düsseldorf: 1&1 Versatel erweitert Glasfasernetz um 100 Kilometer

1&1 Versatel übernimmt 100 Kilometer Leerrohr, um sein Glasfasernetz auszubauen. Damit könne Düsseldorf schnell mit Glasfaser erschlossen werden. (Versatel, Server)

The LG ProBeam is a laser projector in a new, skinny form factor

This 2000 lumen, 1080p projector won’t hog your entire table.

It looks like the flood of CES devices is already starting. LG is showing off a new projector for a CES unveiling, and it's trying to shake the impression that projectors have to be heavy, fat table hogs. The LG ProBeam is a laser projector in a tall-and-skinny form factor, and, at only 4.6 pounds, it's small and light enough to be carried in one hand.

LG still hasn't given up on WebOS, either. The ProBeam uses Palm's old smartphone OS as a smart TV platform allowing owners to beam Internet content onto the walls, issue voice commands, and use gyroscopic mouse controls. With a brightness of 2000 Lumens, this isn't the brightest projector in the world, but that's a tradeoff you make for the compactness. LG says it's got enough power to work "even in a bright room."

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Soylent’s supplier is angry, withholds ingredients for 2.0 and Coffiest

TerraVia, maker of algal flour, claims Soylent threw the company under the bus.

All Soylent may want this holiday season is a new supplier.

After a burst of online reports this year linked Soylent snack bars to bouts of “violent” gastrointestinal issues, the famous meal-replacement maker pinned the problems on supplier TerraVia’s whole algal flour. TerraVia cried foul at the time. But things took a turn from awkward to hostile today.

TerraVia is suspending all ingredient shipments to Soylent “effective immediately,” the company said in an early morning announcement. The halted supplies include ingredients used in Soylent's 2.0 ready-to-drink meal and its new Coffiest beverage.

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Datenabgleich: EU-Kommission wirft Facebook Lügen bei Whatsapp-Kauf vor

Facebook droht in der EU eine Strafe von einem Prozent des Umsatzes, falls der Konzern bei der Übernahme von Whatsapp gelogen hat. Es geht um den automatischen Datenabgleich zwischen den Benutzerkonten der beiden Dienste. (Whatsapp, Soziales Netz)