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The GPD Win 2 is first and foremost designed to be a mobile gaming PC. It has a 6 inch, 1280 x 720 pixel touchscreen display and physical gaming buttons that make it possible to play all sorts of games on the go, including Batman: Arkham City, Grim Fan…
The GPD Win 2 is first and foremost designed to be a mobile gaming PC. It has a 6 inch, 1280 x 720 pixel touchscreen display and physical gaming buttons that make it possible to play all sorts of games on the go, including Batman: Arkham City, Grim Fandango Remastered, and even StarCraft II (although […]
GPD Win 2 keyboard overview (and typing test) is a post from: Liliputing
In which we explore what happened to the narrative arc of this show.
Enlarge / There is so much side-eye in this episode. For good reason. (credit: CBS)
The first season of Star Trek: Discovery is drawing to a close, and after Sunday night's penultimate episode, it's time for us to start assessing the season arc as a whole. In many ways, this season will ultimately be defined by the long detour we took through the Mirror Universe. All the many subplots and character transformations come back to that or function as echoes of it.
For now, let's set aside the question of whether the Mirror Universe episodes were good and focus instead on narrative mechanics. What does the presence of the Mirror Universe do to our story? How does it change the stakes?
Spoilers ahead. If you read further, your eyeballs will boil with plot reveals for every episode that has aired this season. Don't do it unless you are ready.
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Google plans to “combine hardware, software, and services” between the two companies.
(credit: Nest)
There's a shakeup at Nest today. Following previous rumors back in November, Google just announced Nest will no longer be a standalone Alphabet company; instead, it will merge with the Google hardware team. The current Nest CEO, Marwan Fawaz, will report to Google Hardware SVP Rick Osterloh.
Nest has struggled since it was purchased by Google/Alphabet in 2014. Under Google, Nest was given a huge influx of resources, which it used to quadruple its employee headcount and purchase Dropcam. But none of these extra resources resulted in new or improved products. Nest's CEO and co-founder, Tony Fadell, left the company two years after the acquisition, at which point Nest's only "new" product under Google was a rebranded Dropcam.
Once the current Nest CEO Marwan Fawaz took over, Nest finally started to push new products out the door. It launched the very expensive $300 Nest Cam IQ and the even more expensive Nest Secure home security system, which runs $500 for a starter pack. And their cost doesn't end there: both work best with a monthly subscription fee.
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Dual cameras are all the rage in high-end smartphones these days, but you don’t see them all that often in mid-range devices (with a few noteworthy exceptions). Samsung wants to change that. The company has unveiled a new dual camera solution that it s…
Dual cameras are all the rage in high-end smartphones these days, but you don’t see them all that often in mid-range devices (with a few noteworthy exceptions). Samsung wants to change that. The company has unveiled a new dual camera solution that it says will bring features like bokeh-style depth refocusing and low-light shooting to […]
Samsung wants to bring dual camera features to lower-cost phones is a post from: Liliputing
The D-Type is the latest hand-built “continuation” from its back catalog.
Jaguar
Back in the mid-1950s, the Jaguar D-Type was what passed for a hypercar. It bristled with cutting-edge technology, and D-Types won Le Mans every year between 1955 and 1957. Today, the company revealed it is putting the racecar back into production, with a run of 25 new D-Types. The cars will be hand built at the Jaguar Land Rover Classic Works in Warwickshire in the UK using the original drawings and documents from the time.
The 1950s is when Jaguar cemented its reputation as a company on the cutting edge of automotive technology. Design chief Malcolm Sayer had already borrowed a couple of ideas from the aerospace industry for the C-Type racer, and the car maker introduced disc brakes and aerodynamics. But the D-Type was even more revolutionary.
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Internet Provider Grande Communications can be held liable for contributing copyright infringement, the RIAA argued at a Texas federal court this week. Responding to the ISP’s motion to dismiss, the music industry group submits last week’s Fourth Circuit ruling in the Cox case as additional evidence that the ISP failed to meet its obligations.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons
Regular Internet providers are being put under increasing pressure for not doing enough to curb copyright infringement.
Last year several major record labels, represented by the RIAA, filed a lawsuit in a Texas District Court, accusing ISP Grande Communications of turning a blind eye on its pirating subscribers.
“Despite their knowledge of repeat infringements, Defendants have permitted repeat infringers to use the Grande service to continue to infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights without consequence,” the RIAA’s complaint read.
Grande disagreed with this assertion and filed a motion to dismiss the case. The ISP argued that it doesn’t encourage any of its customers to download copyrighted works, and that it has no control over the content subscribers access.
The Internet provider didn’t deny that it received millions of takedown notices through the piracy tracking company Rightscorp. However, it believed that these notices are flawed and not worthy of acting upon.
The case shows a lot of similarities with the legal battle between BMG and Cox Communications, in which the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an important verdict last week.
The appeals court overturned the $25 million piracy damages verdict against Cox due to an erroneous jury instruction but held that the ISP lost its safe harbor protection because it failed to implement a meaningful repeat infringer policy.
This week, the RIAA used the Fourth Circuit ruling as further evidence that Grande’s motion to dismiss should be denied.
The RIAA points out that both Cox and Grande used similar arguments in their defense, some of which were denied by the appeals court. The Fourth Circuit held, for example, that an ISP’s substantial non-infringing uses does not immunize it from liability for contributory copyright infringement.
In addition, the appeals court also clarified that if an ISP wilfully blinds itself to copyright infringements, that is sufficient to satisfy the knowledge requirement for contributory copyright infringement.
According to the RIAA’s filing at a Texas District Court this week, Grande has already admitted that it willingly ‘ignored’ takedown notices that were submitted on behalf of third-party copyright holders.
“Grande has already admitted that it received notices from Rightscorp and, to use Grande’s own phrase, did not ‘meaningfully investigate’ them,” the RIAA writes.
“Thus, even if this Court were to apply the Fourth Circuit’s ‘willful blindness’ standard, the level of knowledge that Grande has effectively admitted exceeds the level of knowledge that the Fourth Circuit held was ‘powerful evidence’ sufficient to establish liability for contributory infringement.”
As such, the motion to dismiss the case should be denied, the RIAA argues.
What’s not mentioned in the RIAA’s filing, however, is why Grande chose not to act upon these takedown notices. In its defense, the ISP previously explained that Rightcorp’s notices lacked specificity and were incapable of detecting actual infringements.
Grande argued that if they acted on these notices without additional proof, its subscribers could lose their Internet access even though they are using it for legal purposes. The ISP may, therefore, counter that it wasn’t willfully blind, as it saw no solid proof for the alleged infringements to begin with.
“To merely treat these allegations as true without investigation would be a disservice to Grande’s subscribers, who would run the risk of having their Internet service permanently terminated despite using Grande’s services for completely legitimate purposes,” Grande previously wrote.
This brings up a tricky issue. The Fourth Circuit made it clear last week that ISPs require a meaningful policy against repeat infringers in respond to takedown notices from copyright holders. But what are the requirements for a proper takedown notice? Do any and all notices count?
Grande clearly has no faith in the accuracy of Rightscorp’s technology but if their case goes in the same direction as Cox’s, that might not make much of a difference.
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A copy of the RIAA’s summary of supplemental authority is available here (pdf).
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons
Decouple economic growth from energy consumption: Tell your boss you want to work from home.
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
Working from home was not really a thing my parents enjoyed when I was growing up. You were either in the office, or you took a sick day.
Today, I work for a publication that doesn't even have an office (well, unless you count the Ars Technica Orbiting HQ). My friends and family who work in offices are often able to work remotely if they need to every once in a while. In fact, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) notes that in 2016, 22 percent of employed Americans did some or all of their work at home. Although there are good things and bad things about this new reality (who among us hasn't checked work email right before going to bed), all those hours not spent getting to and from offices is adding up.
According to researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, a difference is noticeable as recently as this decade. In a paper published in Joule, the researchers compared data from 2003 and 2012 gleaned from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which is conducted by the BLS. They then tried to estimate how time spent in different buildings and vehicles translated to energy use based on average residential, commercial, and transportation energy use figures from both years.
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UK-based startup Wileyfox made a small splash in the smartphone space in 2015 when the company launched a line of mid-range phones that shipped with Cyanogen OS. Now it looks like Wileyfox is about as dead as the software that ran on its first phones (…
UK-based startup Wileyfox made a small splash in the smartphone space in 2015 when the company launched a line of mid-range phones that shipped with Cyanogen OS. Now it looks like Wileyfox is about as dead as the software that ran on its first phones (although Wileyfox switched to its own custom build of Android in […]
UK smartphone maker Wileyfox goes into administration (bankruptcy) is a post from: Liliputing
“How many others are there like me?”
Enlarge (credit: Netflix)
Netflix released the second trailer for season two of Jessica Jones today. Unlike the teaser we saw back in December, this is a full-length trailer loaded with strong hints about where the series is headed.
Netflix is spending copious amounts of money on new content, and we've seen some great shows come out of it—Stranger Things, The Crown, and the return of the beloved Mystery Science Theater 3000. But Jessica Jones stands out in some ways; it was one of the earlier hits, for one thing. It takes a decidedly different approach to the pervasive superhero genre, too. And the first season resonated in part because it took topics like abuse and externalized them in the story, granting a lot of insight to viewers.
After season one, Jessica went on to co-star with the other Netflix Marvel superheroes in The Defenders, and while that was interesting, it wasn't the same as more stories focused entirely on her. The second season was announced what seems like two years ago—oh wait, that's exactly how long ago it was—but we'll finally get those dedicated stories when the episodes start streaming on March 8.
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Levandowski texted Kalanick the speech from Wall Street—which was then shown in court.
Enlarge / Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick leaves the Philip Burton Federal Building after testifying on day two of the trial between Waymo and Uber Technologies on February 6, 2018 in San Francisco, California. (credit: Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO—During his second day of testimony, Travis Kalanick, who co-founded Uber and served as its CEO until mid-2017, submitted to further questioning by Waymo's top lawyer, Charles Verhoeven. Kalanick responded briefly and curtly to Waymo's questions, but he gave much fuller answers when under cross-examination questioning from Uber.
Waymo pressed Kalanick, using various emails and text messages trying to paint the picture that he was trying overtake Waymo at all costs while knowing that his own company faced an existential threat.
By contrast, Uber attempted to show that Kalanick didn't orchestrate the misappropriation of trade secrets in any way. When given the chance to explain more fully, Kalanick essentially said that in 2015, when he believed that Google was going ahead with its own rideshare service, Uber had to act. That, in turn, lead the company to pursue autonomous driving much more quickly, which enraged Google co-founder Larry Page.
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