October 2018 – Page 99 – news.buyenne.com

Apple to Congress: Chinese spy-chip story is “simply wrong”

“Our internal investigations directly contradict every consequential assertion.”

Apple isn't relenting in its attacks on last week's Bloomberg story claiming that tiny Chinese chips had compromised the security of Apple and Amazon data centers. In a Monday letter to Congress, Apple wrote that the claims in the Bloomberg story were "simply wrong."

Bloomberg's story, published last Thursday, claimed that the Chinese government had secretly added spy chips to the motherboards of servers sold by Supermicro. According to Bloomberg, these servers wound up in the data centers of almost 30 companies, including Apple and Amazon. But the three companies featured in the story—Apple, Amazon, and Supermicro—have all issued broad and strongly worded denials.

The stakes here are high for Apple. Millions of Americans rely on the company to protect the privacy of their data on iCloud and other online services. If there were really Chinese chips infiltrating Apple data centers, it could call into question the security of those services. But Apple insists that the story was simply bogus.

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Next generation of body cams for cops can livestream, detect gunshots

Company formerly known as Taser also announces new energy weapon, new training.

Axon, the preeminent manufacturer of body-worn cameras for law enforcement, has launched the latest version of its devices, known as the Axon Body 3. The new version features gunshot detection, livestreaming, and wireless uploads.

The current version of the cameras, which are typically worn in the mid-chest region, must be physically docked before investigators can access the footage. These also lacked detection and livestreaming capabilities.

Since May 2018, when Axon acquired its next-largest rival, VieVu, it has had a near-monopoly in the United States on body-worn cameras. A tiny Silicon Valley startup rival, Visual Labs, has been selling its Android-based cameras, which have had livestreaming and similar wireless features for at least two years.

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Portal: Facebook bringt sonderbare Echo-Show-Variante

Facebook hat eine Art Echo-Show-Variante vorgestellt. Das Portal genannte Display hat Kameras mit Nachverfolgungstechnik, um damit Videotelefonate durchführen zu können. Auf dem Facebook-Gerät läuft Amazons digitaler Assistent Alexa, aber jenseit davon…

Here’s what it would take to stop climate change sooner

New IPCC report explains value and difficulty of limiting warming to 1.5°C.

One of the biggest surprises leading up to the 2015 international Paris Agreement on climate-changing emissions was an argument about a new goal. Nations settled on a target of limiting global warming to no more than 2°C a while back. Most argument since has centered on the fact that our actions haven't been sufficient to reach that goal. But in Paris, a few vulnerable nations decided to stand up and say that 2.0°C wasn’t good enough. Low-lying island nations, for example, weren’t satisfied with negotiating toward a goal that might not even save them.

In the end, the Paris Agreement noted that nations were striving to keep warming “well below” 2°C. The problem with even a slight shift in goals is that the scientific work done in advance of the international talks hadn’t provided results for a 1.5°C scenario.

While government representatives are frankly buried by more high-quality scientific information than they really need to make sound decisions about the urgency of slowing climate change, they ordered up a 1.5°C addendum. After working overtime for the last couple of years, scientists volunteering for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have now provided a report summarizing what existing research tells us about a 1.5ºC warmer world.

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Ongoing SickRage Dispute Descends into Trademark War

SickRage is a successful fork of Sick Beard, a piece of software designed to monitor torrent and Usenet platforms for the latest TV shows, download them, and add them to a user’s library. A DMCA notice from another fork took SickRage down temporarily in 2017 but now the architect of that complaint is back for a second bite after registering SickRage as a trademark.

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

With file-sharers manually acquiring increasingly large libraries of content, several years ago it became clear that software to automate the process would prove popular with the masses.

One such tool was Sick Beard, a PVR-like piece of software that was able to utilize Usenet providers, indexers, and TheTVDB to identify airing dates for TV shows and automatically download whenever they became available online. It would then add the content to a user’s library ready for viewing.

Like many successful open projects, Sick Beard later found itself ‘forked’, with developers breathing life into SickRage, a GNU General Public Licensed tool that took Sick Beard’s dreams and ran with them. With improved Usenet and torrent support plus a whole raft of new features, SickRage gained an impressive following.

SickRage in action

Unfortunately, however, SickRage began to suffer problems common to many projects where not every developer is an agreement on every point of action. This led to fragmentation, with devs moving to work on other similar projects. One of those who departed was a dev known as Echel0n, who started up his own SickRage variant operating from SickRage.ca.

In July 2017, things appeared to boil over when Echel0n (later self-identified as ‘Justin Tabish’) filed a DMCA complaint with Github, claiming copyright over the SickRage code.

“SiCKRAGE and the original code has not been provided or its use authorized, this is a violation of my copyright. I have a good faith belief the distribution of SiCKRAGE includes content of which the distribution is not authorized by the copyright owner, it’s [sic] agent, or the law,” the complaint reads.

Just days later, SickRage fought back, filing a counter-notice with Github. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the various contributors to long-standing open projects, the counter-notice points out a number of issues with the original DMCA notice.

Disputing all of its claims, the counter-notice states that the original SickRage copyright holder (@midgetspy) endorsed adding his name to the license and adding the counter-notice filer’s name “underneath his as credit for later contributions as per convention.” It also states that ‘Echel0n’ has no standing to make a complaint.

“As such, all other claims are disputed for this DMCA. We are in compliance with all applicable law to the best of our knowledge. Very little if any code is shared among these forks, however if complainant would like a prior credit added that would be amenable,” the notice adds.

With that, Gihub reinstated the project and for some time it appeared that an uneasy peace had broken out. It now transpires, however, that Echel0n (Tabish) was just getting warmed up.

As the image below shows, in September the developer registered the trademark ‘SickRage’ in the US with the United States Trademark and Patents Office (USPTO).

SickRage trademark filing

Armed with this piece of paper, Justin Tabish fired off a complaint to developer Dustyn Gibson (aka ‘miigotu‘) of the SickRage project, warning him to cease and desist using the SickRage trademark, even though it doesn’t appear to have been awarded yet.

Cease and Desist

Tabish also wrote to Github, demanding that the site transfer ownership of the SickRage repository to him.

“I’d like to report a case of trademark infringement and am requesting transfer of ownership for the following organization to my control so that I can remedy the situation, the organization is https://github.com/sickrage and is owned/controlled by username Miigotu, user’s profile is located at https://github.com/miigotu,” he told the company.

“This repo also has a website located at https://sickrage.github.io. This user/repo is a ex-team member of mine that I let go awhile back, they and others decided to open a repo on you’re servers under the exact same name of my company and project causing confusion and misleading members, as you can see in the title of the repo they have placed ‘The new home of the SickRage community’ which leads others to think there was some sort of change of ownership.”

Describing the effort as a “hostile takeover” attempt, ‘miigotu’ posted a note to the official Github account promising to fight every inch of the way.

“I will have to fight this again, he is claiming his ‘company’ owns a trademark to the name SickRage. This is a joke and I will fight it tooth and nail,” miigotu writes.

“Just another attempt by the drug addict to try and claim he owns the work that we all did on this project. He abandoned the project and we made it what it is. Then he popped up 2 years later and removed the entire team. If I have to take him to court, that will happen.”

There’s now a pretty huge argument taking place on Github as to who is right and wrong, and who is infringing on various rights. It’s a minefield of opinions that’s best read directly to be understood. Needless to say, it’s very messy indeed.

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

After throttling firefighters, Verizon praises itself for “sav[ing] lives”

Verizon tries to repair reputation after throttling firefighters during wildfire.

A firefighter sitting in a fire truck and talking.

Verizon is touting its commitment to firefighters and public safety in a new ad, released weeks after Verizon throttled the Santa Clara County fire department while it was fighting California's largest-ever wildfire.

"From coast to coast and everywhere in between, people rely on us to ensure they can communicate when they need it most," Verizon said in an introduction to the new ad. "Our innovations and technology allow first responders to do their jobs. What we do saves lives."

The ad, titled "Enabling heroes," received a chilly reception on YouTube, leading Verizon to disable comments and voting on the video. The video is still being panned in a Reddit discussion.

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Daily Deals (10-08-2018)

The recently-announced Microsoft Surface Pro 6 is up for pre-order for $899 and up, but if you’re looking for something a little cheaper, the Microsoft Store is clearing out 5th-gen Surface Pro models for as little as $649 at the moment. That pri…

The post Daily Deals (10-08-2018) appeared first on Liliputing.

Project Xcloud: Microsoft steigt ins Spielestreaming ein

Gerade hat Google sein Project Stream angekündigt, nun stellt Microsoft sein Project Xcoud vor. Das soll Spielestreaming auf Windows-PCs, Konsolen und mobilen Endgeräten bieten. Das Unternehmen hat für seine Azure-Rechenzentren sogar eigene Blades entw…

Groundbreaking maker of gentle factory robots shuts down

Friendly Baxter faced strong competition from smaller, lighter rivals.

Back in 2014, we wrote about Baxter, an anthropomorphic factory robot that was gentle enough to work alongside human workers. We visited Baxter at a robotics trade show in New York, and it seemed like the company was getting a lot of interest from potential customers. Unfortunately, we learned last week that Rethink Robotics, the company behind Baxter, is shutting down.

Traditional factory robots are dangerous—they're often put behind cages to avoid accidentally injuring human workers nearby. Baxter, by contrast, is designed to work directly alongside human workers. All of Baxter's joints are designed not to pinch fingers. Its arms can "feel" if they encounter unexpected resistance (like a human body part) and stop. Company representatives liked to put their arms or heads in the path of the robot's arms to show off this safety feature.

Traditional factory robots are also difficult to program. By contrast, almost anyone can learn how to teach Baxter a new task by grabbing its arms and guiding it through the desired steps.

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Tracking: Facebook wechselt zu First-Party-Cookie

Safari und Firefox erschweren Cross-Site-Tracking. Facebook wechselt nun auf Cookies unter der aufgerufenen Webseite und folgt damit Google und Microsoft. Das Tracken geht weiter. (Tracking, Firefox)