April 2019 – Page 97 – news.buyenne.com

Airbnb guest found hidden surveillance camera by scanning Wi-Fi network

Airbnb initially didn’t ban offender despite rule against undisclosed cameras.

A New Zealand family that booked an Airbnb in Ireland recently discovered an undisclosed camera in the living room, and the family says that Airbnb initially cleared the host of any wrongdoing before finally banning the offender from its platform.

"Once the family had unpacked, Andrew Barker, who works in IT security, scanned the house's Wi-Fi network," CNN reported today. "The scan unearthed a camera and subsequently a live feed. From the angle of the video, the family tracked down the camera, concealed in what appeared to be a smoke alarm or carbon monoxide detector."

Nealie Barker posted an image on Facebook showing the location of the camera in the living room and a shot of the family from the sneaky video feed:

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Campusnetze: Volkswagen und anderen wollen eigene 5G-Netze bauen

Volkswagen, Daimler und BMW wollen eigene 5G-Frequenzen. Volkswagen ist sich dabei bereits sicher, das Campusnetz nicht in Kooperation mit einem Netzbetreiber aufzubauen. (Telefónica, Telekom)

More people pay for Apple Music than Spotify in the US now

But the Swedish music streaming company still has more active users globally.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the battle between Apple and Spotify continues to escalate. "People familiar with the matter" revealed that Apple Music now has more paid US subscribers than Spotify—specifically, more than 28 million versus Spotify's 26 million as of February 2019.

Those sources also claim that Apple Music is expanding more rapidly in the US, at a rate of about 2.6 to 3 percent. Spotify's growth rate is reportedly 1.5 to 2 percent.

It's unlikely that Apple will claim this as a victory, because it, like Spotify, doesn't publicly break out regional subscriber counts. However, if the estimates are accurate, they show that US customers are embracing Apple Music as much as (and possibly more than) its Swedish competitor.

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Game Pass “Ultimate” and Game Pass for PC rumored to be coming soon

No more hunting for a special offer each time you want to renew Gold.

The arrow is pointing to a PC that's just off-frame to the right.

Microsoft is reportedly planning a couple of new subscription services for gamers, per Brad Sams and WalkingCat.

First up is a "Game Pass Ultimate" that combines an Xbox Live Gold subscription with a GamePass subscription. Xbox Live Gold is routinely on sale, but it typically costs around $60 when bought annually, $10/month when bought month-by-month. Game Pass is a flat $10 per month (though there's a special offer at the moment giving one month for one dollar). The Ultimate subscription is going to be $15/month, making it a break-even proposition for annual subscribers (or even a slight price increase, if you can get Gold for less than $60) but a nice discount for monthly subs.

Second, it's claimed that Microsoft will soon have a Game Pass subscription for Windows, too. Details are thin to non-existent at the moment, but with Microsoft's increasing efforts to unify Xbox and Windows gaming and plans to bring the previously Xbox-exclusive Halo: Master Chief Collection to Windows, a Game Pass for Windows would make a lot of sense.

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Borderlands review bomb triggers Steam’s “off topic” fix [Updated]

Reviews about Borderlands 3‘s Epic Games Store move will no longer be counted.

Recent reviews for Borderlands 2 now show a large asterisk indicating the presence of an off-topic review bomb.

[Update 10:30 p.m.: In a statement sent to Ars Technica just now, Valve's Doug Lombardi says that "after a review of current review activity on Borderlands titles, the decision was made to tag the franchise for off-topic reviews on Steam, effective immediately. As a result, user reviews submitted while the titles are tagged will not count towards the games’ Review Scores. User reviews written during the tagged period will still be accessible and users can choose to include these reviews in the Review Score by changing their preferences."

Steam reviews for Borderlands franchise games since April 2 are now shown in a histogram view with a large asterisk and the warning "Period(s) of off-topic review activity detected. Excluded from the Review Score (by default)." The "Recent Reviews "summaries for those games have also flipped from "Mixed" to "Very" or "Mostly Positive" as a result of the move.]

Original Story (12:21 p.m.)

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Deutschland: Telefónica streicht 10 Prozent der Stellen für Netztechniker

Kaum ist die Netzzusammenlegung abgeschlossen, meint Telefónica Deutschland, im Bereich Network Technology Arbeitsplätze abbauen zu können. Dabei gäbe es bei der Netzabdeckung noch einiges zu tun.. (Telefónica, Mobilfunk)

Bionic Softhand: Festos bionische Hand greift wie eine menschliche

Bei der Pommesgabel verheddert sie sich kurz. Aber sonst ist Festos bionische Hand dem Original verblüffend ähnlich. Greifen bringt sie sich mithilfe von KI selbst bei. (Festo, Roboter)

Installing Linux on a Chromebook with Crouton is (a tiny bit) tougher after security update

Google has rolled out a security update to Chromium OS designed to prevent unexpected code running from on a Chromebook. For the most part, that’s a good thing. But it also means that some code that you may want to run may not work anymore……

The post Installing Linux on a Chromebook with Crouton is (a tiny bit) tougher after security update appeared first on Liliputing.

Freeloading Kodi Add-On Users Are Undermining RapidVideo

Popular file-hosting site RapidVideo says it will change its business model because it can no longer finance itself via advertising. According to its operator, ‘freeloading’ users of Kodi add-ons and similar tools are gobbling up around half of the site’s bandwidth, without generating any revenue.

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

According to statistics provided by the MPAA late 2017, around 70% of 38 million Kodi users were using the platform to pirate content.

Newer figures haven’t yet been provided but at the time, around 26 million were said to be using the platform with ‘pirate’ add-ons installed. Many of these will be accessing movies and TV shows, without permission.

For Kodi add-on users to access content, it has to be stored somewhere online. That is usually one of the dozens of online storage providers available today, which are often called cyberlockers or simply file-hosting sites.

While the appearance of links to content in Kodi add-ons seems to suggest a level of cooperation between the platforms, file-hosting platforms are generally unhappy with their links appearing in this manner.

As reported back in 2016, cyberlockers often generate revenue via advertising. However, many third-party Kodi add-ons prevent these from appearing in front of the viewer, which means that the hosting sites themselves aren’t able to generate revenue from them.

One of the affected sites is RapidVideo, a popular file-hosting site that officially markets itself as a “CDN Video Hosting Service”. The platform has been suffering the effects of ‘freeloading’ Kodi add-on users and other related market challenges for some time. Now the problem appears to have come to a head.

In a posting to webmaster forum WJunction, RapidVideo revealed that it will be changing its business model.

“We can’t finance ourselves from internet ads any longer,” the company wrote.

Over the past three years, RapidVideo says it has suffered from abuse of its service, much of it at the hands of Kodi add-ons and similar tools that are able to bypass the displaying of ads. In fact, these appear to be sucking up around half of the company’s bandwidth.

“We have around 650 Gbit/s of bandwidth in use, while 320 Gbit/s is for KODI, download tools, etc and for that we don’t get paid by the ads,” the site said.

Other problems exist too, including advertising scams and the unauthorized hotlinking of files, but RapidVideo feels it can bring things under control by taking several measures, including implementing a $5 per month subscription.

“With help of Premium accounts, it will efficiently stop all these scams and we can run ad-free like uploaded.net, uptobox.com and others,” the company added.

The company says it is also bringing its pay-per-view rewards program to an end, meaning that people hoping to earn commissions when people view their uploaded content will no longer get paid. While users of the service won’t be delighted by the news, it does address a complaint raised by Hollywood last year.

In 2018, the MPAA, together with several other trade groups, submitted its annual list of ‘notorious markets’ to the US Trade Representative (USTR). Among them was RapidVideo, which among other things was called out over its affiliate program.

“The site incentivizes users to upload content with an affiliate program. The site pays from $7.50 to $60 USD per 10,000 views depending on the country in which the viewer is located,” the MPAA wrote.

The MPAA had other criticisms too but RapidVideo later fought back, claiming that it processes takedown requests, has a designated DMCA agent, a repeat infringer policy, and even has a filter system to ensure that removed files are not re-uploaded.

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

Meng Wanzhou: USA haben Huawei abgehört

Die USA haben Huawei und dessen Finanzchefin geheimdienstlich abgehört, um die Anklage wegen Bankbetrug zu begründen. Es geht um das Verhältnis zu einer Firma im Iran. (Huawei, Spionage)