Wer einen 32-Bit-Computer besitzt, kann ab dem Sommer kein Tails in der aktuellen Version mehr verwenden. Die 32-Bit-Version wird aus Kompatibilitäts- und Sicherheitsgründen ersatzlos gestrichen. (tails, Linux) Month: February 2017
Apple, Google, and 95 other tech firms join forces to fight Trump travel ban
Companies say executive order is “overbroad…lacks any basis in precedent.”
Enlarge / Donald Trump, Peter Thiel (center) met with and Apple CEO Tim Cook (right) and other leaders in December 2016. (credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Nearly 100 tech companies, including Facebook, Github, Uber, and Lyft, signed on to a court filing submitted to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals late Sunday night, Pacific Time.
The firms are now adding their support to a fast-moving lawsuit, State of Washington v. Trump, to halt the recent executive order that placed new immigration restrictions on people from seven Muslim-majority nations. That list includes Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, and Libya.
On Friday in federal court in Seattle, US District Judge James L. Robart ruled against the government, finding that a temporary restraining order was warranted and that the president overstepped his bounds. For now, the Seattle judge’s nationwide ruling stands. Late Saturday night, the 9th Circuit rejected the government’s attempt to get an emergency stay of the order.
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Lkw: Rundumkameras sollen bei Lastwagen Pflicht werden
Der tote Winkel ist bei Lastwagen ungleich größer als bei Autos und führt regelmäßig zu Unfällen. Diese seien vermeidbar, wenn die Fahrzeuge rundum mit Kameras ausgerüstet wären, fordert Österreichs Verkehrsminister. Acht Länder, darunter Deutschland, sind seiner Initiative beigetreten. (Autonomes Fahren, Technologie)
Der tote Winkel ist bei Lastwagen ungleich größer als bei Autos und führt regelmäßig zu Unfällen. Diese seien vermeidbar, wenn die Fahrzeuge rundum mit Kameras ausgerüstet wären, fordert Österreichs Verkehrsminister. Acht Länder, darunter Deutschland, sind seiner Initiative beigetreten. (Autonomes Fahren, Technologie) Freedom Hosting II: Ein Fünftel des Darknets ist verschwunden
Es sollte nur ein kleiner Ausflug ins Darknet werden, doch dann nahm ein Hacker rund 20 Prozent der Onion-Seiten vom Netz. Viele davon sollen Kindesmissbrauchsdarstellungen verbreitet haben. Der Hacker sagt: “Es war mein erster Hack, jemals. Ich hatte …
Es sollte nur ein kleiner Ausflug ins Darknet werden, doch dann nahm ein Hacker rund 20 Prozent der Onion-Seiten vom Netz. Viele davon sollen Kindesmissbrauchsdarstellungen verbreitet haben. Der Hacker sagt: "Es war mein erster Hack, jemals. Ich hatte einfach die richtige Idee." (Pearl Automation: Ex-Mitarbeiter gründen Firma als Gegenentwurf zu Apple
Pearl Automation hat bisher nur einen Kennzeichenhalter mit Weitwinkelkameras vorgestellt, doch etwas anderes lässt das Startup auffallen: 50 von 80 Mitarbeitern kommen von Apple. Sie wollen in einem offenen und innovativen Unternehmen arbeiten. (
Amazon tells Super Bowl viewers to look for Prime Air drone delivery “soon”
Branded drone seen floating through window; fine print in ad tempers expectations.
Enlarge (credit: Amazon)
Amazon's trend of running multiple, super-short commercials for its voice-activated Echo device continued during Sunday's broadcast of Super Bowl LI. The last of the company's three Echo spots included a surprise cameo: an Amazon delivery drone, described to viewers as a "Prime Air" delivery. A suggestive statement, spoken in its devices' "Alexa" voice, played as the drone appeared: "Look for delivery soon."
The ad shows a woman frowning at a man who is eating branded tortilla chips, then using her voice to place an order for her snacks of choice—and clarifying that she wants the order "from Prime Air." Soon afterward, a branded drone is seen hovering just outside a home's window. At the bottom of the screen, Amazon offers a fine-print disclaimer: "Prime Air is not available in some states (or any really). Yet."
Amazon's only publicly announced commercial trial for its drone-delivery service began this past December utilizing a single distribution center in Cambridge, England. How soon those may start in the USA is unclear, however, though the high-profile placement of the hardware in a Super Bowl ad, and its real-world example of how shoppers could easily request it, suggest Amazon is ramping up its efforts. The Federal Aviation Administration approved rules for commercial drone flights in June, but those rules only include approval for "line-of-sight' drone operation, as opposed to the kind of automated or centralized drone-flight operations required by a shipping center such as Prime Air.
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Quadro GP100: Nvidia steckt schnellsten Chip in eine Workstation-Karte
Gleich sechs neue Quadro-Modelle mit Pascal-Technik: Nvidia hat seine Profi-Grafikkarten-Reihe aktualisiert, darunter die Quadro GP100 mit HBM2-Speicher und ungewöhnliche Varianten wie die Quadro P2000 mit krummen 5 GByte Videospeicher. (Nvidia Pascal, Grafikhardware)
Gleich sechs neue Quadro-Modelle mit Pascal-Technik: Nvidia hat seine Profi-Grafikkarten-Reihe aktualisiert, darunter die Quadro GP100 mit HBM2-Speicher und ungewöhnliche Varianten wie die Quadro P2000 mit krummen 5 GByte Videospeicher. (Nvidia Pascal, Grafikhardware) Patent troll sues Netflix over offline downloads
Patent for “CD-Rs by mail” service—perhaps inspired by old-school Netflix—used to sue.
(credit: flickr / Garrett Miller)
It's been barely two months since Netflix added its long-awaited download feature, and the online streaming company has already been sued over it. The plaintiff is a company few have heard of: Blackbird Technologies, a company with no products or assets other than patents. Blackbird's business is to buy up patent rights and file lawsuits over them, a business known colloquially as "patent trolling."
Blackbird was founded by two former big-firm patent attorneys, Wendy Verlander and Chris Freeman. The organization owns US Patent No. 7,174,362, which it hopes will result in payouts from a internet video companies with offline-viewing features. On Wednesday, Blackbird (who publicly brags about being "able to litigate at reduced costs and achieve results") filed lawsuits against Netflix (PDF), Soundcloud (PDF), Vimeo, Starz, Mubi, and Studio 3 Partners, which owns the Epix TV channel. All of the companies have some type of app that allows for downloading streamable content and watching it offline.
The patent-holding company, which filed the lawsuits in Delaware federal court, has good reason to hope for success. The '362 patent already has a track record of squeezing settlement cash out of big companies. The patent was originally issued in 2000 to Sungil Lee, a San Jose entrepreneur and business instructor. In 2011, Lee sold his patent to Innovative Automation LLC, a patent troll that filed dozens of lawsuits in East Texas and California. Innovative Automation said that the '362 patent covered various "methods and systems of digital data duplication" and used it to sue services like "Target Ticket" and "DirecTV Everywhere." Court records suggest most of those cases settled within months.
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Denuvo forgets to secure server, leaks years of messages from game makers
Massive log file includes user complaints, apparently legitimate developer requests.
The developers at Denuvo have been in the news thanks to cracks against their notoriously tough digital rights management (DRM) tools, which are normally used to lock down video games from leaking online. On Sunday, the company faced a different kind of crack—not against a high-profile video game, however, but of its depository of private web-form messages. A significant number of these appear to come from game makers, with many requesting information about applying Denuvo's DRM to upcoming games.
The first proof of this leak appears to come from imageboard site 4chan, where an anonymous user posted a link to a log file hosted at the denuvo.com domain. This 11MB file (still online as of press time) apparently contains messages submitted via Denuvo's public contact form dating back to April 25, 2014. In fact, much of Denuvo's web database content appears to be entirely unsecured, with root directories for "fileadmin" and "logs" sitting in the open right now.
Combing the log file brings up countless spam messages, along with complaints, confused "why won't this game work" queries from apparent pirates, and even threats (an example: "for what you did to arkham knight I will find you and I will kill you and all of your loved ones, this I promise you CEO of this SHIT drm"). But since Denuvo's contact page does not contain a link to a private e-mail address—only a contact form and a phone number to the company's Austrian headquarters—the form appears to also have been used by many game developers and publishers.
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Hosting Provider Steadfast Denies Liability for ‘Pirate’ Site
Chicago-based hosting company Steadfast has asked a federal court to dismiss a broad copyright complaint filed by adult publisher ALS Scan. The hosting provider denies responsibility for the actions of its client ImageBam, arguing that it’s protected by the DMCA’s safe harbor.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Copyright holders are increasingly urging third-party Internet services to cut their ties with pirate sites.
Hosting providers, search engines, ISPs, domain name registrars, and advertisers should all do more to counter online piracy, the argument goes.
Last year, adult entertainment publisher ALS Scan took things up a notch by dragging several third-party intermediaries to court. The company targeted CDN provider CloudFlare, advertising network JuicyAds, and several hosting providers, including Chicago-based Steadfast.
Steadfast is not happy with the allegations and has asked the court to dismiss the case. Among other things, the company argues that it’s protected by the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions.
“Steadfast does not operate or manage the Imagebam website. Steadfast does not in any way communicate with or interact with Imagebam’s individual users. Steadfast only provides computer storage,” the company informed the court in its motion to dismiss.
ALS Scan clearly disagrees with this reasoning. According to the adult company, Steadfast should have stopped the infringements on the website of their client.
In addition, the company says that the hosting provider can’t hide behind “safe harbor” protection as it failed to implement a repeat infringer policy, branding ImageBam a frequent offender.
“Steadfast could remove the infringements on imagebam.com, or the site itself, from the Internet. Steadfast financially benefited from the draw of infringement on imagebam.com,” ALS Scan wrote in its opposition brief (pdf) last week.
“Steadfast’s safe harbor defenses are intensely factual, not susceptible of resolution on demurrer. Steadfast failed to reasonably implement a policy of terminating account holders who are repeat infringers, and thus cannot claim DMCA safe harbors,” they add.
Earlier this week Steadfast responded to these and other claims by the adult publisher, arguing that the company is misrepresenting case-law.
The hosting provider maintains that the DMCA law shields it from liability. The repeat infringer argument doesn’t apply here, as they company doesn’t have the ability to control the actions of ImageBam users, among other things.
“In its Opposition, ALS states that in order to avoid liability for contributory infringement, a service provider must terminate services to repeat infringers. This is simply not the law. The service provider must have more power to influence the activity,” Steadfast argues in its reply (pdf).
It is now up to the California District Court to decide which side is right. In addition to Steadfast, several other defendants including CloudFlare are still trying to turn the case in their favor as well.
While ALS Scan is not an internationally known rightsholder, the case may prove to be vital for many Internet-based services in the United States. As we’ve seen with the case between Cox Communication and BMG, an entire industry is put at risk when a service provider loses its safe harbor protection.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
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