April 2018 – Page 111 – news.buyenne.com

Republican governor forced to stop blocking Facebook users who criticize him

Maryland gov. settled free speech lawsuit—Trump is still fighting a similar suit.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan allegedly had a habit of blocking Facebook users and deleting comments when people criticized him, but a lawsuit has forced him to adopt a more open social media policy.

Four Maryland residents sued the Republican governor in a US District Court in August 2017, with help from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maryland. The ACLU announced yesterday that a settlement has been finalized, requiring Hogan to implement a new social media policy within two weeks. The state is also required to pay $65,000 to the plaintiffs.

"The ACLU lawsuit is one in a wave of high-profile cases across the country against elected officials charged with trying to silence constituents on social media—including one case brought against President Donald Trump for blocking constituents on Twitter," the ACLU of Maryland said.

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Deals of the Day (4-03-2018)

Motorola is running an anniversary sale today… not the anniversary of Motorola or its phones, but the 45th anniversary of the first mobile phone call, which took place on April 3rd, 1973. Anyway, whatever the reason, today the company is offering deep …

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Intel bumps up mobile chips to 6 cores in expanded 8th-generation line-up

There’s also a wider range of desktop chips and 8th-generation Iris Plus graphics.

Intel first launched its 8th-generation branding last year. In the mobile space, we had the U-series Kaby Lake-R: four-core, eight-thread chips running in a 15W power envelope. On the desktop, we had Coffee Lake: six-core, 12-thread chips. In both cases, the processor lineup was limited: six different chips for the desktop, four for mobile.

Those mobile processors were joined earlier this year by Kaby Lake-G: four-core, eight-thread processors with a discrete AMD GPU on the same package as the processor.

Today, Intel has vastly expanded the 8th generation lineup, with 11 new mobile chips and nine new desktop processors, along with new 300-series chipsets.

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Datenschutz: Adressverkauf der Post an CDU und FDP wird geprüft

Zwar hat eine Post-Tochter nur anonymisierte Daten für die Bundestagswahl 2017 verkauft. Datenschützer sehen durch die Verknüpfung vieler Daten dennoch Manipulationsgefahren. (Facebook, Datenschutz)

Panera Bread: Café-Kette exponiert Millionen Kundendaten im Netz

Sicherheitsexperten zufolge sollen die persönlichen Daten von bis zu 37 Millionen Kunden einer großen Kette von Bäckerei-Cafés in den USA frei zugänglich gewesen sein – und das seit mindestens acht Monaten. Bei seiner Reaktion macht das Unternehmen off…

Sicherheitsexperten zufolge sollen die persönlichen Daten von bis zu 37 Millionen Kunden einer großen Kette von Bäckerei-Cafés in den USA frei zugänglich gewesen sein - und das seit mindestens acht Monaten. Bei seiner Reaktion macht das Unternehmen offenbar fast alles falsch. (Datenschutz, Security)

Samsung launches Notebook Odyssey Z gaming laptop

Samsung isn’t the first name that springs to mind when I think of gaming laptops, but the company is trying to change that. After launching its first notebook designed for gamers in early 2017, the company is following up this year with the new Samsung…

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Asus launches crazy-powerful (and pricey) ROG Zephyrus gaming laptops

Asus is refreshing its Republic of Gamers (ROG) lineup with a whole bunch of new models, including two relatively compact 15.6 inch models: the Zephyrus (GX501GI) and the Zephyrus M (GM501). They’re both thin and light (by gaming laptop standards, anyway), and they’re also pretty powerful. Both feature NVIDIA GeForce 10-series graphics, 6-core Intel Coffee […]

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Developer removes randomized loot boxes from Middle-Earth: Shadow of War

Monolith says paid market “compromises” the game “even if you don’t buy anything.”

The widespread backlash against paying real money for randomized loot boxes full of in-game items has claimed another high-profile victim. Last night, developer Monolith announced that it will be "permanently removing Gold, War Chests, and the Market" from Shadow of War in the coming months, effectively ending the game's paid microtransaction system.

Currently, Shadow of War lets players purchase in-game Gold with real money, then use that Gold to purchase Golden War Chests which contain randomized, high-level Orc followers to fight alongside them. After listening to fan feedback, though, Monolith now says, "the core promise of the Nemesis System is the ability to build relationships with your personal allies and enemies in a dynamic open world. While purchasing Orcs in the Market is more immediate and provides additional player options, we have come to realize that providing this choice risked undermining the heart of our game, the Nemesis System."

Furthermore, the developer acknowledges that the mere existence of this paid, randomized marketplace "compromises those same stories even if you don’t buy anything. Simply being aware that they are available for purchase reduces the immersion in the world and takes away from the challenge of building your personal army and your fortresses." That's some major pushback to the standard industry counterargument that players who don't like loot boxes should just ignore them.

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Canadian BitTorrent Traffic Tanked, But Video Piracy is Still Hot

New data published by broadband management company Sandvine reveals that while BitTorrent traffic is dropping off in Canada, video piracy remains a significant problem. The data was released as part of the ongoing debate around website blocking, something Sandvine is familiar with.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Piracy has become a hot topic in Canada now that there are calls to implement the first website blocking scheme in North America.

One outfit that’s kept a close eye on piracy-related developments in recent years is Ontario-based broadband management company Sandvine.

For years, Sandvine has monitored Internet traffic trends throughout the world. Some of these developments are, at least partially, linked to piracy. This includes the market share of BitTorrent traffic.

In recent years the percentage of BitTorrent-related Internet traffic has dropped significantly and newly released data by Sandvine shows that this is no different in Canada.

Between 2014 and 2017 the aggregate daily traffic share of BitTorrent dropped from 15.1% to a measly 1.6% on fixed networks. This suggests that absolute traffic also took a significant hit.

BitTorrent aggregate daily traffc share (Sandvine)

While Sandvine believes that most torrent traffic was infringement related, the drop doesn’t mean that video piracy is no longer an issue. A lot of this activity has moved to streaming sites and dedicated streaming boxes.

In its report, the company specifically highlights the issue of fully-loaded Kodi boxes. While the Kodi media player itself is perfectly legal, when paired with pirate add-ons it causes problems for copyright holders.

In Canada, it is estimated that nearly 10% of all households have access to a Kodi-powered device. More than two-thirds of these (71%) have their devices configured to access pirated content.

This brings the total of Canadian households with access to ‘pirate’ Kodi addons to 7%, which is slightly higher than the 6% in the US. This figure should not be underestimated, according to Sandvine.

“Sandvine believes that emergent forms of piracy such as the ‘Fully-Loaded’ Kodi ecosystem and subscription television piracy represent a real threat to the revenue streams of network operators,” the company says.

“Not only because the content is being stolen, but because in some instance subscribers are paying to pirate these services, with no money going into the pockets of the content creators or rights holders.”

It is worth noting that Sandvine doesn’t measure the traffic that’s generated by regular pirate streaming sites or other devices. So the total percentage of streaming pirates is much higher.

Finally, we have to mention that the Canadian company is not a neutral party in the blocking debate. As a company that sells blocking solutions, it could possibly benefit from the website blocking plans that triggered the release of these data.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Soziale Netzwerke: Datenschlampereien mit HIV-Status und Videodateien

Die Liste wird länger: Beim US-Datingportal Grindr und bei Facebook sind besonders krasse Fälle von nicht korrektem Umgang mit Daten von Nutzern bekanntgeworden. Vermutlich steckt hinter beiden Fällen schlicht Schlamperei. (Datenschutz, Film)