Month: April 2019

Amazon is in the business of selling stuff… but from time to time the company gives stuff away… primarily stuff that might encourage you to use the stuff Amazon sells. So sure, you could argue that the reason Amazon is giving away 9 Kindle eBooks for free for World Book Day is because it might […]

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Enlarge / A colorized transmission electron micrograph (TEM) of an Ebola virus virion. (Cynthia Goldsmith) (credit: CDC)

The most recent Windows patch, released April 9, seems to have done something (still to be determined) that's causing problems with anti-malware software. Over the last few days, Microsoft has been adding more and more antivirus scanners to its list of known issues. As of publication time, client-side antivirus software from Sophos, Avira, ArcaBit, Avast, and most recently McAfee are all showing problems with the patch.

Affected machines seem to be fine until an attempt is made to log in, at which point the system grinds to a halt. It's not immediately clear if systems are freezing altogether or just going extraordinarily slowly. Some users have reported that they can log in, but the process takes ten or more hours. Logging in to Windows 7, 8.1, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012, and Server 2012 R2 are all affected.

Booting into safe mode is unaffected, and the current advice is to use this method to disable the antivirus applications and allow the machines to boot normally. Sophos additionally reports that adding the antivirus software's own directory to the list of excluded locations also serves as a fix, which is a little strange.

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Enlarge / Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg leaving the Merrion Hotel in Dublin after meeting with Irish politicians to discuss regulation of social media on Tuesday, April 2, 2019. (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto )

Federal Trade Commission officials are discussing whether to hold Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally accountable for Facebook's privacy failures, according to reports by The Washington Post and NBC News. Facebook has been trying to protect Zuckerberg from that possibility in negotiations with the FTC, the Post wrote.

Federal regulators investigating Facebook are "exploring his past statements on privacy and weighing whether to seek new, heightened oversight of his leadership," the Post reported, citing anonymous sources who are familiar with the FTC discussions.

"The discussions about how to hold Zuckerberg accountable for Facebook's data lapses have come in the context of wide-ranging talks between the Federal Trade Commission and Facebook that could settle the government's more than year-old probe," the Post wrote.

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Last year, a group of prominent record labels filed a piracy lawsuit against the Russian operator of YouTube-ripping sites FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com.

The labels hoped to shut the sites down, but this effort backfired.

In January, US District Court Judge Claude M. Hilton dismissed the case due to a lack of personal jurisdiction. The Court carefully reviewed how the sites operate and found no evidence that they purposefully targeted either Virginia or the United States.

The sites are not seen as highly interactive and their interaction with users could not be classified as commercial, the Court concluded.

The record labels didn’t agree with this conclusion and took the case to the Fourth Circuit appeals court. If the verdict stands, the companies believe that Internet pirates will have “carte blanche” to facilitate copyright infringement, as they would be untouchable by U.S. courts.

Tofig Kurbanov, the Russian operator of the two stream-rippers, argued against this last week, hoping to keep the current dismissal in place. Yesterday he received support from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which submitted an amicus curiae brief.

The digital rights group takes interest in copyright cases, in particular when they get in the way of people’s ability to freely use technology. In this instance, EFF points out that the stream-rippers provide a neutral technology, that has plenty of legal uses.

“Like a web browser, photocopy machine, or video recorder, the converters at issue in this case are neutral technologies, equally capable of lawful and infringing uses. And lawful uses abound, from saving a copy of a family member’s home video to downloading clips from a TV show as raw material for a critical commentary,” EFF writes.

The digital rights group points out that companies such as the record labels in this suit, seek to control the use and availability of copying. To this end, they file lawsuits against foreign site operators who often don’t put up a defense.

This then allows them to apply for default judgments and broad preliminary injunctions which compel third-party intermediaries such as domain registrars, or CDN providers, to take action. That can be dangerous, EFF notes, as the merits of the case are not thoroughly considered.

“These injunctions, which can be legally problematic, are often granted
without challenge. Through this process, difficult questions about the scope of such injunctions go unanswered,” EFF notes. 

While there have indeed been several default judgments in the past, that was not an issue in the present case. In fact, at this point, it’s irrelevant whether the sites at issue are infringing at all. The case was dismissed based on a lack of jurisdiction, after all.

According to EFF, the District Court made the right choice in doing so and it encourages the Court of Appeals to uphold this decision. Looking at the broader picture, this may act as a safeguard against default judgments in future cases, the group explains.

“Preserving the limits of personal jurisdiction to uphold due process, as the district court did in this case, also avoids default judgments against foreign defendants, and promotes the resolution of complex legal issues on a full record,” EFF writes. 

Focusing on the jurisdiction issue in the case at hand, EFF notes that the court made the right decision. The sites’ terms of use do not constitute a commercial relationship and geo-targeted ads are not enough to establish jurisdiction, the group argues.

On top of that, the websites in question are not “interactive,” as the District Court also pointed out.

“Here, the websites at issue here are semi-interactive; as explained by the
district court, there is no evidence that users exchanged multiple files with the websites, and users do not need to create an account, sign in, or even register in order to use the websites,” EFF writes.

EFF is not the only outside party that has taken an interest in the case. The record labels’ previously attracted support from other major copyright holders. Through amicus briefs,  Hollywood’s MPAA, The Association of American Publishers, and the Copyright Alliance, all argued that the verdict should be overturned.

It is now up to the Fourth Circuit appeals court, to weigh all arguments and ultimately come to a decision.

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A copy of EFF’s Amicus Curiae brief in support of FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com and its operator 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.

Enlarge (credit: FreeGreatPicture)

Contrary to current trends, the CPU may get bigger in the future. Yes, the size of CPUs are larger today than they were in the past, but they also pack in more transistors. The future may involve larger CPUs but with a much lower density of transistors. Why? Because of optics.

The idea of purely optical computers—and hybrid electronic-optical computers—is not new. But a set of recent advances is the first time I’ve thought we might be entering an era where some functions beyond long-distance communication will be handled optically.

Have you seen the light?

There are two properties of optical computers that make them attractive. The first is that they are naturally fast: light pulses travel at (yes) the speed of light. And when light switches light—the optical equivalent of a transistor—it happens very fast (think femtoseconds, which are 10^-15 of a second). These two properties combine to make optical computers much faster than electronic computers.

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Enlarge / "You can't get us on Steam, and that's a good thing."

Earlier this month, Gearbox drew some ire from Steam-loving Borderlands fans by announcing the next game in the series, due in September, would be exclusive to the Epic Games Store on PC. In a massive tweet thread earlier this week, though (helpfully collated in this reddit post), Gearbox founder and CEO Randy Pitchford defends that decision and highlights what he sees as the long-term positives that Epic's competition with Steam will bring to the industry.

While acknowledging that Epic's platform currently lacks many quality-of-life features available on Steam, Pitchford pointed to Epic's public road map for adding many of those features before September's Borderlands 3 launch. In fact, Pitchford sees the game's impending release as a "forcing function... that will, in turn, make all those features available on a faster timeline than otherwise possible... If I were to bet on this... Epic will inevitably surpass Valve on features and quality of service."

Pitchford acknowledges that publisher 2K and developer Gearbox could have hedged their bets by releasing on both Steam and Epic. But he added that he feels the entire industry will be better served in the long run if Borderlands 3's exclusivity can help make the Epic Games Store competitive with Steam. (The sizable investment Epic has made in paying to get exclusive content on its store probably didn't hurt, either)

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Motorola’s Moto G7 made its North American debut last month. The company’s upcoming Razr phone could be a premium device with a foldable display coming later this year. But what about the Moto Z series with its support for Moto Mod add-ons? It looks like an update is on the way. The folks at 91mobiles […]

The post Moto Z4 leaks point to an upper mid-range phone with Moto Mod support appeared first on Liliputing.

Motorola’s Moto G7 made its North American debut last month. The company’s upcoming Razr phone could be a premium device with a foldable display coming later this year. But what about the Moto Z series with its support for Moto Mod add-ons? It looks like an update is on the way. The folks at 91mobiles […]

The post Moto Z4 leaks point to an upper mid-range phone with Moto Mod support appeared first on Liliputing.

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The GPD Win Max is a new handheld gaming PC from the company that made the GPD Win and GPD Pocket line of devices. That’s about all GPD has confirmed so far. But a new set of leaked images of the computer’s insides tell us a lot about the upcoming device. It’ll be powered by […]

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