July 2017 – Page 78 – news.buyenne.com

Making Amazon’s Fire HD 8 (2017) more Googley (Play Store, third-party launchers)

Amazon’s tablets run an Android-based operating system called Fire OS. While Amazon has developed a custom user interface for the operating system, featuring tight integration with the Amazon Appstore, Kindle, Music, and Movies apps, it’s surprisingly easy to install the Google Play Store on Amazon’s most recent tablets. You may not be able to root […]

Making Amazon’s Fire HD 8 (2017) more Googley (Play Store, third-party launchers) is a post from: Liliputing

Bay Area: Join us tonight, 7/19, to discuss drone warfare

At Ars Live, whistleblower Lisa Ling will talk about troubles with military drones.

Drone strikes and surveillance are a major component of modern warfare, but few people outside the military understand how these programs work. That's why former military technician Lisa Ling became a whistleblower after 14 years in the National Guard. She wanted policymakers to know that drones are not reliable, and they can create more problems than they solve.

Lisa Ling joined the military in 1991, serving as an army medic and nurse before transferring to the Air National Guard (ANG). In the ANG, she became a communications technician working on various types of electronic equipment, including the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS). Besides her overseas deployments, Lisa was mobilized during a partial unit mobilization of the 234th intelligence Squadron to the 48th Intelligence Squadron at Beale Air Force Base from October 2007 to September 2009. The 48th Intelligence Squadron provides in-garrison and deployed communications, as well as logistics maintenance for the DCGS.

Lisa served six years on active duty and over 14 years as both active and inactive National Guard. She decided to speak out after traveling to Afghanistan and seeing for herself how what she participated in was not a war on terror, but a war of terror. She has testified about drones before the European Parliament, and she was profiled in the documentary film National Bird, directed by Sonia Kennebeck.

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Global Web standard for integrating DRM into browsers hits a snag

EFF: Protections needed to “engage in lawful activity that DRM gets in the way of.”

Days ago, Ars reported on a controversial decision by the industry trade group that oversees the global development of Web standards. The decision by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to back a standard for implementing digital rights management (DRM) for Web-based content is now under appeal, the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced Wednesday.

Cory Doctorow, the W3C Advisory Committee representative for the EFF, said the digital rights group's appeal is twofold:

1. That the supposed benefits of standardizing DRM at the W3C can't be realized unless there [are] protections for people who engage in lawful activity that DRM gets in the way of; and

2. That the W3C's membership were never polled on whether they wished to institute such protections as part of the W3C's DRM standardization project.

What is this all about?

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Six major US airports now scan Americans’ faces when they leave country

House testimony: “It is important to note that CBP is committed to privacy.”

The Department of Homeland Security has been pushing a plan that if enacted would require all Americans submit to a facial-recognition scan when departing the country. This step would be a way to expand a 2004 biometric-tracking law meant to target foreigners.

According to the Associated Press, which first reported the plan on Wednesday, facial-scanning pilot programs are already underway at six American airports—Boston, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, New York City, and Washington DC. More are set to expand next year.

In a recent privacy assessment, DHS noted that the "only way for an individual to ensure he or she is not subject to collection of biometric information when traveling internationally is to refrain from traveling."

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Usenet Provider Giganews Sues Perfect 10 For Fraud, Demands $20m

In a prolonged legal action over copyright, Usenet provider Giganews retaliated against adult publisher Perfect 10 and beat it through every step of the legal system. Now Perfect 10 owes Giganews $5.6m, but the publisher hasn’t paid up. That’s prompted a new $20 million lawsuit from Giganews which alleges serial acts of fraud.

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

For many years, Perfect 10 went about its business of publishing images of women in print and on the Internet. At some point along the way, however, the company decided that threatening to sue online service providers was more profitable.

Claiming copyright infringement, Perfect 10 took on a number of giants including Google, Amazon, Mastercard, and Visa, not to mention hosting providers such as LeaseWeb and OVH.

With court papers revealing that Perfect 10 owner Norman Zada worked 365 days a year on litigation and that the company acquired copyrights for use in lawsuits, it’s no surprise that around two dozen of Perfect 10’s lawsuits ended in cash settlements and defaults.

With dollar signs in mind, Perfect 10 went after another pretty big fish in 2011. The publisher claimed that Usenet provider Giganews was responsible when its users uploaded Perfect 10 images to the newsgroups. Things did not go well.

In November 2014, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California found that Giganews was not liable for the infringing activities of its users. Perfect 10 was ordered to pay Giganews $5.6m in attorney’s fees and costs. Perfect 10 lost again at the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

But even with all of these victories under its belt, Giganews just can’t catch a break.

The company is clearly owed millions but Perfect 10 is refusing to pay up. As a result, this week Giganews filed yet another suit, accusing Perfect 10 and Norman Zada of fraud aimed at depriving Giganews of the amounts laid out by the court.

The claims center around an alleged conspiracy in which Perfect 10 transferred its funds and assets to Zada.

“As of now (over two years since the judgment), Perfect 10 has not voluntarily paid any amount of the judgment,” the complaint begins.

“Instead, Perfect 10, through the unlawful acts of Zada and in conspiracy with him, has intentionally avoided satisfaction of the judgment through a series of fraudulent transfers of Perfect 10’s corporate assets to Zada’s personal possession.”

Giganews says these “illegal and fraudulent” transfers began back in 2014, when Perfect 10 began to realize that the fight against the Usenet provider was going bad.

For example, on November 20, 2014, around six days after the court granted summary judgment in favor of Giganews, Perfect 10 transferred $850,000 to Zada’s personal account. The Perfect 10 owner later told a Judgment Debtor’s Examination that the transfer was made due to the summary judgment orders, a statement that amounts to a confession of fraud, Giganews says.

“We had a settlement of $1.1 million in, I believe, June. I was entitled to that money,” Zada told the hearing. “And after the summary judgment orders were issued, I did not see any point in keeping more cash than we needed in the account.”

Giganews says that Perfect 10 transferred at least $1.75m in cash to Zada.

Then, within weeks of the court ordering Perfect 10 to pay $5.6m in attorneys fees and costs, Giganews says that Zada “fraudulently transferred substantially all
of Perfect 10’s physical assets” to himself for an amount that did not represent their true value.

Those assets included a car, furniture, and computer servers. When Zada was questioned why the transfers took place, he admitted that “it would have been
totally disruptive to have those [assets] seized” in satisfaction of the judgment. Indeed, the complaint alleges that the assets never moved physical location.

Perhaps surprisingly given the judgment, Giganews alleges that Zada continues to run Perfect 10’s business in much the same way as he did before. The company even has copyright infringement litigation underway against AOL in Germany, despite having few assets.

This is made possible, Giganews says, by Perfect 10 calling on assets it previously transferred to Zada. When required by the company, Zada simply “gives” them back.

In summary, Giganews says these transfers display the “badges of fraud” that indicate attempts to “hinder, delay or defraud” creditors, while leaving Perfect 10 practically insolvent.

“As a consequence, Plaintiffs are entitled to a judgment against Defendants, and each of them, in the sum of the unlawfully transferred amounts of at least $1,750,000, or in an amount to be proven at trial, together with interest on that amount at the legal rate of 10% per annum from and after March 24, 2015,” the complaint reads.

But the claim doesn’t stop there. Giganews asks the court to prevent Perfect 10 from transferring any more cash or assets out of Perfect 10 to Zada or anyone acting in concert with him or on his behalf. This is rounded off with a claim for punitive and exemplary damages of $20m to be considered during a jury trial.

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

Deals of the Day (7-12-2017)

After about six years of heavy use, my Logitech EX 100 wireless mouse and keyboard gave out on me a few months ago. So I picked up Logitech’s MK530 advanced wireless mouse and keyboard set for around $45 and I’ve been pretty happy with the purchase. But I would have been even happier if I’d […]

Deals of the Day (7-12-2017) is a post from: Liliputing

FDA abruptly drops request for more drug data after maker’s CEO meets Trump

The pharmaceutical industry is abuzz with hopes for easier FDA reviews.

In a rare and surprising reversal, the Food and Drug Administration gave Amicus Therapeutics Inc. the greenlight Tuesday to submit its rare-disease drug, Galafold, for an accelerated review process. That’s despite the agency previously saying that the drug maker needed to run another clinical trial to better evaluate side-effects—which it hasn’t—before the agency would consider reviewing the drug.

The reversal is raising eyebrows—and stocks—amid speculation that the FDA’s about-face on Galafold was political and a sign of easier times for the makers of lucrative rare-disease drugs.

Central to that speculation is a meeting back in February between President Trump and Amicus’ CEO, John Crowley, STAT reports. Crowley got the president’s ear following the FDA’s request for more data last year, which spurred Crowley to publicly campaign for the FDA to lower its standards for bringing drugs for rare diseases to market.

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Now you can control a Fire TV with an Echo (or any compatible Alexa device)

Amazon’s Echo device may have launched a few years before any real competitors hit the market. But up until now there’s been one nifty feature that Google Home had that Amazon’s devices did not: if you have a Chromecast-enabled TV you can control it with your voice by talking to a Google Home. Now Amazon […]

Now you can control a Fire TV with an Echo (or any compatible Alexa device) is a post from: Liliputing

As internet organizations fight for net neutrality, Virgin Media lets you check Twitter without hitting your data cap #ohwell

Net Neutrality is the idea that internet service providers (ISPs) and governments should treat all internet data equally. Customers shouldn’t be required to pay more for access to some websites than other, and ISPs shouldn’t be able to block you from visiting sites run by a competitor. Generally speaking, the thinking is that it would […]

As internet organizations fight for net neutrality, Virgin Media lets you check Twitter without hitting your data cap #ohwell is a post from: Liliputing

Miscreants have been pillaging credit cards from Trump Hotels’ booking system

Hacks across 14 properties began in July 2016 and were stopped in March 2017.

If you stayed at one of 14 Trump hotel properties between July 2016 and March 2017, there’s a chance your credit card data and other personal information may have been pilfered. (We have posted the full list of new hacks here.)

According to a Tuesday statement posted on the Trump Hotels website, a booking service called Sabre notified the Trump Organization that "an unauthorized party gained access to account credentials that permitted access to payment card data and certain reservation information for some of our hotel reservations…"

In short, they got hacked.

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