Glasfaser bis ins Haus (FTTH) ist die überlegene Technik. Doch in einer Gemeinde bei München lassen sich offenbar nicht genügend Anwohner davon und den Preisen der Deutschen Glasfaser überzeugen. (Glasfaser, DSL) Month: January 2017
Speicherhersteller: SK Hynix plant 72-Layer-Flash für Frühling 2017
Die Südkoeaner möchten ihren 3D-Flash-Speicher v4 mit 256 GBit ab dem zweiten Quartal ausliefern, später sollen 512-GBit-Bausteine folgen. Für Smartphones kommt der flotte LPDDR4X-4266, der HBM2-Speicher für Grafikkarten ist schon verfügbar. (Flash-Speicher, Hynix)
Die Südkoeaner möchten ihren 3D-Flash-Speicher v4 mit 256 GBit ab dem zweiten Quartal ausliefern, später sollen 512-GBit-Bausteine folgen. Für Smartphones kommt der flotte LPDDR4X-4266, der HBM2-Speicher für Grafikkarten ist schon verfügbar. (Flash-Speicher, Hynix) Elektroschrott: LEDs in Leuchten häufig fest eingebaut
LED-Lampen gelten als umweltfreundlich. Doch 70 Prozent der Produkte sind komplett Elektroschrott, sobald das fest eingebaute Leuchtmittel kaputtgeht. (LED-Lampe, Internet)
LED-Lampen gelten als umweltfreundlich. Doch 70 Prozent der Produkte sind komplett Elektroschrott, sobald das fest eingebaute Leuchtmittel kaputtgeht. (‘Nerd Judge’ Questions Evidence in KickassTorrents Case
The legal team of alleged KickassTorrents owner Artem Vaulin is trying to have the criminal case against him dismissed in the US. District Court Judge John Z. Lee has scheduled an oral hearing for next week to discuss the request, and he recently questioned whether the US Government’s evidence is sufficient for the court to have jurisdiction.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Last summer, Polish law enforcement officers arrested Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of KickassTorrents, who’s been in custory ever since.
While awaiting the start of extradition hearings, Vaulin’s defense team asked the Illinois federal court to dismiss the entire case.
Next week both parties will be allowed to argue their positions before the court during an oral argument, which District Court Judge John Z. Lee agreed to in a recent hearing.
During this hearing, Judge Lee, who describes himself as a “kind of a nerd judge,” asked both sides to shed light on the arguments and evidence provided in the US indictment.
Vaulin’s legal team stressed that the indictment fails to specify any copyrighted media that was downloaded or infringed in the United States. As such, the US Government’s claim of willful direct criminal copyright infringement for operating a torrent site fails.
During the hearing, Judge Lee tried to get a feeling for what kind of infringing action would be deemed criminal according to the defense, and what would not. Is it a criminal violation of the Copyright Act to offer a Rogue One torrent in exchange for $100, he asked as an example.
No, says Vaulin’s defense lawyer Ira Rothken, who noted that it would be a misdemeanor at best. The Judge then continued with a few more extreme examples, trying to find out what the threshold would be.
“I’m kind of a nerd judge, so I kind of like to think about things like: Where is that line?” Judge Lee said.
While the hypothetical situations were not directly applicable to the case, the Judge made it clear that he is not entirely certain whether the case presented in the indictment is sufficient for the court to have jurisdiction over the defendant.
“I understand the defendant’s argument that the government hasn’t met that level yet,” the Judge added, noting that these and other issues can be discussed in the upcoming oral hearing.
Although the indictment offers a detailed description of KickassTorrents’ operation, Judge Lee questioned whether the Department of Justice has any evidence about concrete copyright infringements that took place inside the United States.
“So, I agree that the indictment is detailed; but it’s detailed in certain respects, and it’s not in others. I mean, it’s detailed in the way the site works, in the way Mr. Vaulin and his co-conspirators kind of – what sites they owned and how they – how they administered these sites,” Judge Lee said.
“But it doesn’t provide much specific detail as to – because I was looking for it, and I was ticking it off as I went along – as to what particular acts, copyright violations, took place in the United States that would bring this within the jurisdiction of the Court,” he added.
Responding to this concern, United States Attorney William Ridgway assured the court that evidence of actual distribution of copyright infringing material would be presented at trial.
Defense lawyer Ira Rothken wasn’t so convinced, however. He pointed out that the copyright infringing material referenced in the indictment is limited to eleven torrents that were stored on foreign servers, which according to his standards is not enough to warrant a criminal case.
“They have not met that threshold in the four corners of the indictment, or more seriously, have pled themselves out of it by the way they articulated the 11 torrent files in this litigation, in this criminal case. They’ve pled themselves out of it,” Rothken noted.
The scheduled hearing on the motion to dismiss will take place next week. After both sides argue their position, Judge Lee must decide whether the case can go forward, or if it should be thrown out.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Weekly News Roundup (January 29, 2017)
From the coming of a new technology to PCs to the going of one in your home theater, read the news roundup for the week ending January 29, 2017
Continue reading …
From the coming of a new technology to PCs to the going of one in your home theater, read the news roundup for the week ending January 29, 2017
Sphero Robot Gets Two New Apps: Chromo and MacroLab
Do you remember Sphero Robot from Orbotix, a robot ball that you can control with your iPhone? This Sphero Robot has received a couple of new apps this week and it will be available sooner than we think. We’ve been expected to get this ball rolling in this Christmas holiday season, but the Orbotix is […]
Do you remember Sphero Robot from Orbotix, a robot ball that you can control with your iPhone? This Sphero Robot has received a couple of new apps this week and it will be available sooner than we think. We’ve been expected to get this ball rolling in this Christmas holiday season, but the Orbotix is […]
Majority of Android VPNs can’t be trusted to make users more secure
Study of nearly 300 apps finds shocking omissions, including a failure to encrypt.
(credit: Ron Amadeo)
Over the past half-decade, a growing number of ordinary people have come to regard virtual private networking software as an essential protection against all-too-easy attacks that intercept sensitive data or inject malicious code into incoming traffic. Now, a comprehensive study of almost 300 VPN apps downloaded by millions of Android users from Google's official Play Market finds that the vast majority of them can't be fully trusted. Some of them don't work at all.
According to a research paper that analyzed the source-code and network behavior of 283 VPN apps for Android:
- 18 percent didn't encrypt traffic at all, a failure that left users wide open to man-in-the-middle attacks when connected to Wi-Fi hotspots or other types of unsecured networks
- 16 percent injected code into users' Web traffic to accomplish a variety of objectives, such as image transcoding, which is often intended to make graphic files load more quickly. Two of the apps injected JavaScript code that delivered ads and tracked user behavior. JavaScript is a powerful programming language that can easily be used maliciously
- 84 percent leaked traffic based on the next-generation IPv6 internet protocol, and 66 percent don't stop the spilling of domain name system-related data, again leaving that data vulnerable to monitoring or manipulation
- Of the 67 percent of VPN products that specifically listed enhanced privacy as a benefit, 75 percent of them used third-party tracking libraries to monitor users' online activities. 82 percent required user permissions to sensitive resources such as user accounts and text messages
- 38 percent contained code that was classified as malicious by VirusTotal, a Google-owned service that aggregates the scanning capabilities of more than 100 antivirus tools
- Four of the apps installed digital certificates that caused the apps to intercept and decrypt transport layer security traffic sent between the phones and encrypted websites
The researchers—from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, the University of South Wales, and the University of California at Berkeley—wrote in their report:
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New antibody suppresses spread of HIV-1 in infected individuals
Several antibodies have now shown promise in preliminary clinical trials.
Enlarge / Scanning electron micrograph of HIV. Virions are the green spheres on the surface of blood cells. (credit: Getty | BSIP)
Since its discovery and rapid spread in the 1980s, scientists and physicians have desperately tried to understand the HIV virus and develop effective treatments. Unfortunately, HIV is a tricky virus that evades typical immune responses.
During a successful immune system response to a foreign body, white blood cells produce antibodies that target the invader. These antibodies then flag the foreign body for destruction by other immune cells. For the most part, HIV evades these immune defenses, but rare individuals develop antibodies that effectively block multiple strains of the virus. Researchers are now showing that these antibodies can also act as treatments in other HIV patients.
HIV has several ways of avoiding the immune response. Unlike most viruses, HIV specifically attacks a type of white blood cell that is critical to our immune system. During replication, the HIV virus also picks up many new mutations, which often change it enough that any antibodies produced earlier during the infection no longer recognize it. There are very few parts of the virus where changes due to mutations would cause it to be unable to enter cells; even fewer antibodies have been identified that bind to these locations.
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The US ‘Six Strikes’ Anti-Piracy Scheme is Dead
The “six-strikes” Copyright Alert System is no more. In a brief announcement, MPAA, RIAA, and several major US ISPs said that the effort to educate online pirates has stopped. It’s unclear why the parties ended their voluntary agreement, but the lack of progress reports in recent years indicates that it wasn’t as successful as they had hoped.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
In 2011, the MPAA and RIAA teamed up with several major U.S. Internet providers, announcing their plan to shift the norms and behavior of BitTorrent pirates.
The parties launched the Center for Copyright Information and agreed on a system through which Internet account holders are warned if their connections are used to download pirated content.
The program allowed ISPs to take a variety of repressive measures, including bandwidth throttling and temporary Internet disconnections.
The “voluntary” agreement was praised by the US Government and seen as an example for other countries, including the UK, where a similar system is about to start. At the same time, however, the Copyright Alert System members have just ended their efforts.
“After four years of extensive consumer education and engagement, the Copyright Alert System will conclude its work,” the members of the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) just announced.
“The program demonstrated that real progress is possible when content creators, Internet innovators and consumer advocates come together in a collaborative and consensus-driven process.”
It’s unclear what progress the members are referring to, as the system mostly excelled at its failure to share information with the public.
Since its inception, CCI has issued only a few press releases, and any recent data on the scope and effectiveness of the program is lacking. The only figures that were ever published cover the first ten months, ending December 2013.
Last summer we publicly questioned if the Copyright Alert System was doomed, but at the time CCI’s Executive Director Jim Kohlenberger was still hopeful.
“Going forward, we continue to look for opportunities to refine the system, and to advance our efforts and to elevate our consumer-focused mission in pragmatic ways,” Kohlenberger said.
However, it now appears that the parties couldn’t reach consensus on how to extend or update the existing agreement, to keep going for the years to come. Why they eventually chose to stop the program entirely is not clear from the announcement.
In their public-facing statement, copyright holders and ISPs remain positive, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if the mood behind the scenes is grimmer.
“We want to thank everyone who put in the hard work to develop this program and make it a success, including past and present members of our Advisory Board. While this particular program is ending, the parties remain committed to voluntary and cooperative efforts to address these issues,” CCI concludes.
The decision to end the “six strikes” scheme marks the end of an era. While it means that pirates no longer have to fear temporary Internet disconnections and other mitigation measures that were part of the program, MPAA and RIAA can still send takedown notifications of their own accord.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Withings Steel HR review: Classy on the outside, inconsistent on the inside
One of the most stylish smartwatches yet, but not without compromise.
Video shot/edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)
Fossil Group may call most of its wearables "hybrid" smartwatches, but it doesn't own that term. A number of companies design devices that look like traditional watches but have the internals of a mid- to high-end activity tracker. Withings has done this with its new $199 Steel HR, the smartwatch that replaced the Activité Pop in its wearable lineup. The Steel HR has all the activity tracking features of the Pop and even the original, luxury Activité, but it also has a built-in optical heart rate monitor to provide another level of data in your workout stats. With that extra piece of hardware, it's supposed to be easier to transition between everyday life and the gym with just one device. That convenience is undeniable, however the Steel HR has a few caveats that may limit it in the long run.
Design: A regular watch done right
We officially live in a world where companies make wearables that don't have to be ugly. Withings always had a knack for making attractive products, whether it was wearables or smart home devices. In some ways, you could say it was more of a watch company than a wearable company when it came out with the expensive Activité a few years back. The Steel HR is the evolution of that relatively basic activity tracker into a device that monitors more things than any other Withings wearable has monitored before—without losing the brand's timepiece design. It comes in either a 36mm or 40mm case, and the price depends on the size you get ($179 for the smaller of the two and $199 for the larger). Besides size, the two models are identical.
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