Month: April 2018

There’s one setpiece-and-superhero packed flick to watch this week—Batman Ninja

Sometimes, you just want over-the-top superhero stories that don’t strain for substance.

WB / DC Animation

Box-office figures and passionate Internet comment threads be damned. If you want dizzying and varied action set-pieces, a laundry list of beloved characters within a single adventure, and everything from time travel to quips about miso to giant robots juxtaposed against feudal Japan... well, there's only one recently released blockbuster superhero flick for you.

Batman Ninja—the first theatrically released (in Japan at least), full-length anime film in the Dark Knight's repertoire—finally hit streaming and VOD services (Amazon, iTunes, Google Play) in the US this week. The new title from DC Animation and Warner Bros. comes available in Japanese with English subtitles or as a straightforward English-language anime. And while its combination of highly stylized art, over-the-top story, and anime's-greatest-hits touches won't be for everyone, those with an affection for at least part of that recipe will be extremely pleased with what they've ordered.

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Einstweilige Verfügung: Gericht stoppt Übernahme von Xerox durch Fujifilm

Zwei Großinvestoren haben die Übernahme von Xerox durch Fujifilm vorerst blockiert. Xerox-Firmenchef Jeffrey Jacobson sei nicht autorisiert gewesen, den Verkauf des Traditionskonzerns nach Japan zu verhandeln. (Xerox, Drucker)

Zwei Großinvestoren haben die Übernahme von Xerox durch Fujifilm vorerst blockiert. Xerox-Firmenchef Jeffrey Jacobson sei nicht autorisiert gewesen, den Verkauf des Traditionskonzerns nach Japan zu verhandeln. (Xerox, Drucker)

Eigenes Netz: Bahn will Mobilfunk-Ausleuchtung unbedingt verbessern

Die Bahn ringt weiter mit den Mobilfunk-Betreibern um ein besseres Netz. Es geht um eine eigene Mobilfunkversorgung der Bahn in Kooperation mit den Netzbetreibern, denen die Frequenzen gehören. (Deutsche Bahn, UMTS)

Die Bahn ringt weiter mit den Mobilfunk-Betreibern um ein besseres Netz. Es geht um eine eigene Mobilfunkversorgung der Bahn in Kooperation mit den Netzbetreibern, denen die Frequenzen gehören. (Deutsche Bahn, UMTS)

Former Judge Accuses IP Court of Using ‘Pirate’ Microsoft Software

A law firm has filed a complaint with the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Intellectual Property Rights Court in Russia with an extraordinary claim. According to its client, who is a former assistant judge, the IP-focused court has been running Microsoft software for years without an appropriate license.

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

While piracy of movies, TV shows, and music grabs most of the headlines, software piracy is a huge issue, from both consumer and commercial perspectives.

For many years, software such as Photoshop has been pirated on a grand scale and around the world, millions of computers rely on cracked and unlicensed copies of Microsoft’s Windows software.

One of the key drivers of this kind of piracy is the relative expense of software. Open source variants are nearly always available but big brand names always seem more popular due to their market penetration and perceived ease of use.

While using pirated software very rarely gets individuals into trouble, the same cannot be said of unlicensed commercial operators. That appears to be the case in Russia where somewhat ironically the Court for Intellectual Property Rights stands accused of copyright infringement.

A complaint filed by the Paragon law firm at the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Court for Intellectual Property Rights (CIP) alleges that the Court is illegally using Microsoft software, something which has the potential to affect the outcome of court cases involving the US-based software giant.

Paragon is representing Alexander Shmuratov, who is a former Assistant Judge at the Court for Intellectual Property Rights. Shmuratov worked at the Court for several years and claims that the computers there were being operated with expired licenses.

Shmuratov himself told Kommersant that he “saw the notice of an activation failure every day when using MS Office products” in intellectual property court.

A representative of the Prosecutor General’s Office confirmed that a complaint had been received but said it had been forwarded to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

In respect of the counterfeit software claims, CIP categorically denies the allegations. CIP says that licenses for all Russian courts were purchased back in 2008 and remained in force until 2011. In 2013, Microsoft agreed to an extension.

Only adding more intrigue to the story, CIP Assistant chairman Catherine Ulyanova said that the initator of the complaint, former judge Alexander Shmuratov, was dismissed from the CIP because he provided false information about income. He later mounted a challenge against his dismissal but was unsuccessful.

Ulyanova said that Microsoft licensed all courts from 2006 for use of Windows and MS Office. The licenses were acquired through a third-party company and more licenses than necessary were purchased, with some licenses being redistributed for use by CIP in later years with the consent of Microsoft.

Kommersant was unable to confirm how licenses were paid for beyond December 2011 but apparently an “official confirmation letter from the Irish headquarters of Microsoft, which does not object to the transfer of CIP licenses” had been sent to the Court.

Responding to Shmuratov’s allegations that software he used hadn’t been activated, Ulyanova said that technical problems had no relationship with the existence of software licenses.

The question of whether the Court is properly licensed will be determined at a later date but observers are already raising questions concerning CIP’s historical dealings with Microsoft not only in terms of licensing, but in cases it handled.

In the period 2014-2017, the Court for Intellectual Property Rights handled around 80 cases involving Microsoft and claims of between 50 thousand ($800) and several million rubles.

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

iPhone’s weirdest glitch yet: Ask Siri to define “mother” twice, learn a bad word

Hint: four syllables, rhymes with “other shucker.”

Enlarge / "Siri, define the word "surprising.'" "Okay. Ask me to define the word 'mother' twice, then." (credit: Apple)

On Saturday, iPhone users around the world began testing and confirming what is arguably Siri's most bizarre response to a question yet. Before grabbing your own phone to test this out, however, be mindful of anybody else around.

The randy robo-response was apparently first reported on Reddit's Apple community, where a user by the name "thatwasabaddecision" suggested that people ask Siri to "define the word mother," wait for the assistant to ask for an additional definition, and say "yes." What the Reddit user didn't point out, which readers learned by doing the test themselves, was that the second definition Siri offers is succinct and inaccurate.

"As a noun," the computer-generated voice says as of press time, "it means, short for 'motherfucker.'"

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

BitTorrent Piracy Lawuit Morphs into Attack on Dragon Box and Resellers

A Hawaiian copyright lawsuit against several accused BitTorrent pirates has evolved into something entirely different. One of the defendants used the Kodi-powered Dragon box, which is now the main target of the case, along with two local resellers of the streaming device.

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

In recent years the movie industry’s enforcement efforts have switched from torrent sites to streaming devices, which are now seen as the main culprit.

While not entirely intentional, this shift is also visible in a federal lawsuit filed in a federal court in Hawaii.

In the initial complaint, rightsholders of the films “Mechanic: Resurrection” (ME2) and “Once Upon a Time in Venice” (Venice) sued twenty unknown defendants who allegedly shared pirated copies via BitTorrent.

These cases are quite common in the US and are regularly referred to as “copyright trolling,” but in recent months this particular case took a drastic turn.

It all started when the sister of one of the defendants indicated that her brother used a streaming box to watch movies. This turned out to be a Dragon Box which was allegedly used to stream pirated films.

Typically these type of streaming boxes rely on external video hosting sites, but they can be configured to use torrents. It is not clear if that was the case here, but it was enough for the copyright holder to take a closer look at the device.

As the case progressed, all the original BitTorrent defendants were dismissed, and the filmmakers focused their efforts on Dragon Box and two local resellers instead. In fact, the latest version of the complaint doesn’t even mention BitTorrent anymore.

The case now targets Dragon Box and its owner Paul Christoforo, as well as the resellers Naino Bettencourt and Jason Barnhart, who run “The Dragon Box Hawaii” and “JB Dragon Box-Hawaii Kai” respectively. All are accused of contributory copyright infringement.

The complaint describes how the Dragon Box can be used to access copyrighted material, including the works of ME2 and Venice. The defendants were well aware of this, it’s argued, adding that the defendants promoted the box with terms hinting at infringing uses.

In addition, Dragon Box’s Paul Christoforo reportedly made statements such as “It is legal to stream content on the internet,” and “We can’t be held liable for the movies and TV channels online that people are watching, because all the software is doing is accessing content that is readily available online.”

“Particularly, the Dragon Box Defendants have brazenly marketed the Dragon Box as giving ‘you every movie, every tv show, every sports game and payperview all in HD with no monthly fee’, and falsely stating to the public that streaming copyright protected motion pictures such as Plaintiffs’ is legal,” the plaintiffs write.

With the lawsuit, the copyright holders hope to recoup some of the damages they claim to have suffered. To prevent any further harm, they have moved for a preliminary injunction this week, to halt Dragon Box sales as soon as possible.

“Simply put, Dragon Box is intentionally inducing infringement. Plaintiffs respectfully request that the Court enter a preliminary injunction that requires the Dragon Box Defendants to halt their flagrantly illegal conduct immediately,” ME2 and Venice write.

Interestingly, this isn’t the first lawsuit Dragon Box has been dragged into this year. The company was previously sued by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which represents several Hollywood studios, Netflix, and Amazon. This case is still ongoing.

Dragon Box has yet to respond to the allegations made by ME2 and Venice. The company initially opposed the latest complaint because the original BitTorrent claims were no longer part of it, but the court denied this request.

—

A copy of the request for a preliminary injunction against Dragon Box is available here (pdf).

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

Researchers embiggen quantum systems

Where’s the border with the quantum world? We’re entangling thousands of atoms.

Enlarge / A Bose-Einstein condensate of rubidium atoms forms. Similar clouds of atoms were used to study entanglement. (credit: NIST/JILA/CU-Boulder)

To say the quantum world is unintuitive is a staggering understatement. Particles end up in more than one place at a time, and the instances interact with each other. Decisions made after a photon has traversed an obstacle course determine the path it took through it. Entangled quantum objects can be in separate galaxies, yet measuring one will instantly set the fate of the second. Obviously, things like this don't take place in the world of our common experience.

So where's the boundary that separates the quantum world from ours? While the experiments above were first demonstrated with individual particles, researchers have revisited some of them with ever-larger objects, showing that entire molecules will act just like an electron does. Now, the limit's been pushed back even further, as a collection of papers describes the entanglement of objects that consist of thousands of atoms.

A quantum cloud

Three of the papers grace the pages of Science, and all rely on a similar material: clouds of ultra-cold atoms, up to 20,000 of them. These rely on yet another quantum quirk: if two particles become physically indistinguishable, they start to behave like a single system of entangled particles. (As one of the more lucid teams of researchers write, "The entanglement generation relies on the fundamental particle-exchange symmetry in ensembles of identical particles.") Conveniently, if you pick the right atoms to make a cloud, they'll naturally form a Bose-Einstein condensate, in which all of them adopt the same state.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Unannounced Ryzen Mobile, Desktop, and Threadripper chips show up in AMD product list

AMD recently launched the first of its 2nd-gen Ryzen processors for desktops, promising that the new chips would bring better performance, higher clock speeds, and reduced cache and memory latency, among other things. At launch, the company is shipping…

AMD recently launched the first of its 2nd-gen Ryzen processors for desktops, promising that the new chips would bring better performance, higher clock speeds, and reduced cache and memory latency, among other things. At launch, the company is shipping 4 new processors, two hexa-core chips and two octa-core variants. But the folks at VideoCardz were looking […]

The post Unannounced Ryzen Mobile, Desktop, and Threadripper chips show up in AMD product list appeared first on Liliputing.

Life in (virtual) pit lane: The war stories of video game car design

Opting for DIY physics engines, begging for an exec’s ride, and ample Internet snooping.

Enlarge / Variety is the spice of life, and Forza Motorsport 7 has a lot of variety. Early racing games, though? Phew... (credit: Turn 10 Studios)

Like it or not, there’s no denying that the entire history of video games as a popular medium can be told through the steady evolution of three simple acts: shooting a pistol, jumping from platform to platform, and redlining a car’s engine. Even as gaming has democratized over the past decade—with eased access to development tools like Unity ensuring that more offbeat or intellectual fare has the chance to find an audience—the traditional big-budget core of the market has become even more monolithic. Today, only a handful of so-called triple-A developers churns out a steady stream of military-taupe shooters like Call of Duty or sun-spangled racers like Turn 10 Studio’s Forza series.

For that last category of gaming fans, this thinning at the top has devastated the once-diverse racing genre, largely due to the ever-increasing technological standards and demands of today. Players continue to thirst for the feeling of gliding a Lamborghini around a gentle curve rendered as accurately as possible, and only a handful of studios currently has the budget or the infrastructure to keep up.

But if you talk with veteran artists who put hours and hours into these games over the years, this technological arms race has always whirred beneath the shining surface of the pristine racing sims that players know and love. Today, Turn 10 and others continue to push the boundaries of photorealism past the “uncanny valley,” but 25 years ago it took a similar amount of dedication and know-how simply to make any car appear 3D rather than 2D.

Read 24 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Sergey Brin: Google-Gründer fordert Diskussion über Technologie

In seinem jährlichen Rundbrief fordert Google-Gründer Sergey Brin eine umfangreiche Diskussion über die Fortschritte in der Technologie. Zwar sei er zuversichtlich, dass die Neuentwicklungen bei den aktuellen Problemen helfen werden, der Weg müsse aber…

In seinem jährlichen Rundbrief fordert Google-Gründer Sergey Brin eine umfangreiche Diskussion über die Fortschritte in der Technologie. Zwar sei er zuversichtlich, dass die Neuentwicklungen bei den aktuellen Problemen helfen werden, der Weg müsse aber mit Verantwortung beschritten werden. (Sergey Brin, Google)