May 2019 – Page 53 – news.buyenne.com

Google reportedly ends business with Huawei, will cut it off from Play Store [Updated]

Trump’s Huawei ban means no early access to Android Q, no Google app ecosystem.

Update: Statements from Google and Huawei, other companies join the ban

Huawei sent a statement to Ars Technica and others about the ban, saying "Huawei will continue to provide security updates and after-sales services to all existing Huawei and Honor smartphone and tablet products, covering those that have been sold and that are still in stock globally. We will continue to build a safe and sustainable software ecosystem, in order to provide the best experience for all users globally."

Google issued only a terse one-liner, saying "We are complying with the order and reviewing the implications." On Twitter, the company's official Android account was a bit friendlier, saying "For Huawei users' questions regarding our steps to comply w/ the recent US government actions: We assure you while we are complying with all US gov't requirements, services like Google Play & security from Google Play Protect will keep functioning on your existing Huawei device."

Meanwhile, other US companies have started to cut off Huawei, with Bloomberg reporting that Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom, and Xilinx have stopped supplying chips to Huawei. Intel is a big one, as it means Huawei laptops are pretty much dead. Bloomberg also reports that Huawei apparently saw this ban coming, and has stockpiled three months worth of chips from US companies.

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Can a New Anti-Piracy System Really Defeat Cinema “Camming”?

On April 24, 2019, within hours of Avengers: Endgame being released in China, at least two copies of the movie appeared online after being recorded in cinemas. The movie industry is determined to counter this ‘camming’ threat but is there really a technological solution? A China-based partnership claim they have the answer – but do they?

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

During February, China’s National Copyright Administration (NCAC) announced that it would be upping efforts to deal with copyright infringement.

On top of a promise to “dig deep” into the sources of piracy and “sternly investigate” online platforms that help to distribute pirated content, the NCAC said it would also target unauthorized “camming”.

Camming, the act of recording movies in theaters with video cameras, has been a major headache for the entertainment industries for decades. Illegal copies often hit the Internet within hours of a movie’s premiere, as was the case last month with Avengers: Endgame.

While the NCAC clearly couldn’t do anything about that serious event, the question remains whether physical deterrents (such as bag searches and action against complicit theater owners) can also be augmented by technical measures.

Before Endgame dramatically hit the web, the China-based partnership of Ogilvy and Focus Film Media, part of Focus Media Group, announced that they had developed a new system to prevent camming taking in place in cinemas.

“Originality is the soul of the film industry and the foundation from which it thrives upon; it is our job to protect this originality,” said Jason Jiang, Founder and Chairman of Focus Media Group.

“We are delighted to have gone beyond a conventional approach and develop the ‘Piracy Blockr,’ which allows us to address the problem in a discrete but effective way, ensuring that the film industry is protected for years to come.”

Piracy Blockr in action? (Credit: Ogilvy/Focus Film Media)

The image above, although clearly mocked up, provides an idea of how the system is supposed to work. A watermark, invisible to the viewer, is captured by camcorders when an attempt is made to record the screen.

So how does it work? TorrentFreak spoke with Ogilvy to find out.

“There is a lot more to light than what mere human eyes can detect, but a device in your pocket can help you see beyond your biological limits. Our eyes can only detect colors of light that we see as a rainbow, primarily shades of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet,” says Silvia Zhang, Ogilvy Marketing & Communications Manager.

“So while our naked eyes can’t pick up on the wavelength of infrared light, the sensors in your phones and cameras can – essentially making the invisible visible.”

Anyone with a smartphone can easily see what the system is about. Simply press a button on an infrared remote control and point it at the camera lens and the image on the screen will display the infrared light emitted by the device. The camera can ‘see’ the infrared light, we can’t.

“We used this to our advantage to combat the multi-billion dollar illegal cam recording industry by embedding panels of infrared light powered watermarks, which we call the ‘Piracy Blockr’, behind cinema screens in China,” Zhang adds.

The idea of using infrared light to foil pirates isn’t new. A report dating back almost 10 years reveals that Japan’s National Institute of Informatics had teamed up with Sharp to pulse infrared light through cinema screens to disturb digital recording devices.

Since we haven’t heard of any such devices actually being deployed in cinemas, we asked Ogilvy how many screens its system currently ‘protects’ in China. The company didn’t respond to our question, despite repeated attempts.

We also asked how the Piracy Blockr system is able to defeat determined cammers who attach infrared filters to their devices. The company didn’t respond to that question either. A request for a real-life image or video clip of Piracy Blockr in action received the same response.

Some research appears to have been carried out in India (pdf) which considered the challenges presented by pirates who deploy infrared filtering but the problem clearly isn’t straightforward. If it was, someone would be making millions by now while resigning ‘camming’ to history.

As for Piracy Blockr, we won’t be holding our breath while waiting for a live demo.

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

The 2019 Lincoln Nautilus—how does American luxury stack up?

Lincoln goes all-in on luxury with the $67,000 Black Label Nautilus.

I'm a fan of the fan-blade-like wheels. [credit: Eric Bangeman ]

The Nautilus is new to Lincoln's lineup for the 2019 model year—sort of. Another way of looking at it is that Lincoln gave the MKX a significant makeover and renamed it the Nautilus. Both the MKX and Nautilus sit on the same Ford CD4 platform, which we previously encountered in the Ford Edge. The Nautilus is about 2 inches (50mm) longer than the Edge and sports Lincoln's new large, rectangular grille, with the badge centered inside instead of on the body between two smaller grilles. Other cosmetic tweaks include body-color trim instead of black, some really sharp-looking wheels, and more aerodynamic appearance. Perhaps the biggest exterior tweak is the location of the "Nautilus" badge—it's embossed into a metal plate overlapping the forward edge of the front doors and the quarter panels. It gives the Nautilus a more distinctive look.

Turbocharged engines are standard in the Nautilus. Gone is the 3.7-liter V6 of the MKX, replaced with either a direct-injected 2.7-liter turbocharged V6 or a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-banger. The V6 offers up 335hp (250kW) and 380lb-ft (512Nm) of torque, while the standard 2.0L model deals out 250hp (186kW) and 280lb-ft (380Nm). No matter which power plant you opt for, it will be paired with an all-new eight-speed automatic transmission—a clear upgrade from last year's six-speed transmission. Both front-wheel drive and all-wheel drive are available and are paired with an adaptive suspension aimed at offering a posh ride.

Lincoln offers the Nautilus in four trim levels: Standard ($41,335 base MSRP), Select ($45,540), Reserve ($49,870), and Black Label ($57,890). Lincoln makes a suite of driver-assist technology—newly bundled together as Lincoln Co-Pilot360—standard. Unfortunately, Co-Pilot360 doesn't include adaptive cruise control, lane-centering, evasive steering assist, and adaptive steering. Those are add-ons available via the Driver Assistance Package. The car we tested was the Black Label edition, with a sticker price of $67,630.

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Opera Reborn 3: No modern browser is perfect, but this may be as close as it gets

While not as innovative as its mobile brethren, new release closes the gap with Vivaldi.

When Opera Software unveiled a new look and feel for its browser earlier this year, the company made a big deal of the impending changes. "We put Web content at center stage," the Opera team declared on its blog. And early previews of the design appeared to be quite pared down, allowing users to browse "unhindered by unnecessary distractions" as the Opera team put it.

Well Opera recently released what the company refers to as Reborn 3, the latest version of its flagship desktop browser, and it's tempting to dismiss the name as little more than marketing hype. But given the relentless and utterly unspectacular updates that the Chromium project releases every six weeks, it can also be hard to denote actual big releases of browsers based on Chromium—hence the "Reborn" moniker. After spending some time with Reborn 3, however, the name seems accurate. For Opera, this is a significant update that goes far beyond what arrived with the move to Chromium 60.

Opera Reborn 3—or Opera 60 if you want to stick with version numbers—transitions a slew of features that recently debuted in Opera's mobile browsers to the desktop. The big three in this release are support for blockchain-secured transactions, a crypto wallet to go with the mobile version, and a new overall look with light and dark themes available. So if you haven't checked out Opera lately, it's worth revisiting, especially for those older Opera fans still smarting about the switch from Opera's Presto rendering engine to Google's Blink rendering engine.

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How tech companies are shaping the rules governing AI

Industry group urges EU policymakers not to draw “red lines” around specific uses of AI.

In early April, the European Commission published guidelines intended to keep any artificial intelligence technology used on the EU’s 500 million citizens trustworthy. The bloc’s commissioner for digital economy and society, Bulgaria’s Mariya Gabriel, called them “a solid foundation based on EU values.”

One of the 52 experts who worked on the guidelines argues that foundation is flawed—thanks to the tech industry. Thomas Metzinger, a philosopher from the University of Mainz, in Germany, says too many of the experts who created the guidelines came from or were aligned with industry interests. Metzinger says he and another member of the group were asked to draft a list of AI uses that should be prohibited. That list included autonomous weapons, and government social scoring systems similar to those under development in China. But Metzinger alleges tech’s allies later convinced the broader group that it shouldn’t draw any “red lines” around uses of AI.

Metzinger says that spoiled a chance for the EU to set an influential example that—like the bloc’s GDPR privacy rules—showed technology must operate within clear limits. “Now everything is up for negotiation,” he says.

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The Pirate Bay’s Oldest Torrents Survived 15 Years of Turmoil

The Pirate Bay has been around since 2003 and is still going strong. The longest surviving torrents on the site recently turned 15 years old. While these torrent files are still being seeded after many turbulent years, the file-sharing world and the web itself have completely changed.

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

When The Pirate Bay launched in the second half of 2003, the World Wide Web looked nothing like it does today.

Mark Zuckerberg was still preoccupied with “Facemash,” the “hot or not” site he launched before Facebook was invented. YouTube wasn’t around yet either, nor were Twitter and Instagram, which launched years later.

At the time nearly everyone used regular computers to access the web. Smartphones and tablets didn’t exist, and high-quality online video streaming was unthinkable on most residential Internet connections. If there was anything to stream at all.

People interested in watching a movie could use the Internet to buy a DVD at one of the early webshops or sign up with Netflix, which shipped DVDs through the mail. There were no download stores yet.

Given this context, imagine the appeal of a website that offered a high-quality archive of digital movies and tv-series to download, for free.

That site was The Pirate Bay.

Remarkably, many of the videos that were posted on the site during the early days remain available today. In fact, quite a few torrents on The Pirate Bay have been around longer than some of the site’s users.

This is quite an achievement, as torrents require at least one person with a full copy of the file to keep it alive. This prompted us to take a look at the oldest Pirate Bay torrents that are still being shared today.

During the early months of the site, it appears that some torrents were purged or otherwise lost. The oldest ones we can find data back to March 2004, which means that they are well over 15 years old today.

An episode of “The High Chaparral” has the honor of being the oldest torrent. The file was originally uploaded on March 25, 2004, and although it lists zero seeders in search results, there are still several people actively sharing the torrent.

Many of the other torrents in the list above need some help. However, the Top Secret Recipes E-Books and a copy of the documentary Revolution OS, which covers the history of Linux, GNU, and the free software movement, are doing very well.

While these torrents have survived one-and-a-half decades of turmoil, including two raids, they’re still going strong. In part, perhaps, because some people want to keep history alive.

“To maintain history, I will gladly put this on my seedbox forever,” one commenter writes below the High Chaparral torrent, with another one adding “I will save this torrent for history!!!”

History indeed, as it is clear that things have changed over the past 15 years. In the early days, The Pirate Bay wasn’t just popular because people didn’t have to pay. It was often the only option to get a digital copy of a movie, TV-show, or even a music album. It was a revolution in a way.

This is still the case to a certain degree in some countries, but to many, the magical appeal has gone now that there are so many legal alternatives online.

It’s worth keeping in mind, though, that these legal alternatives were in part a direct answer to sites such as The Pirate Bay.

In fact, if piracy hadn’t existed the world might have looked entirely different today. Piracy showed the entertainment industries that people wanted instant online access to media, a demand that was later fulfilled by iTunes, Netflix streaming, Spotify, and many others.

Today The Pirate Bay remains online. Despite several raids, criminal prosecutions, dozens of website blockades, and other anti-piracy measures, the site continues to thrive. And so do its torrents.

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

Onlinehandel: Mehr Verbraucherbeschwerden im Paketgeschäft

Im vergangenen Jahr haben sich deutlich mehr Kunden über Probleme bei Paketzustellungen beschwert als noch ein Jahr zuvor. Auch im laufenden Jahr hält der Trend durch das Wachstum des Onlinehandels an. Gemessen an der Zahl der gelieferten Pakete sind e…

Premium Alexa Skills: Skills für Amazons Alexa mit Bezahlfunktion starten

Amazon hat erste Premium Alexa Skills für Deutschland veröffentlicht. Diese enthalten sogenannte In-Skill-Käufe, Kunden können gegen Bezahlung spezielle Funktionen aktivieren. Zum Start stehen insgesamt 14 Angebote zur Verfügung. (Amazon Alexa, Amazon)…

Vodafone: Otelo-Vertragskunden erhalten Zugang zum LTE-Netz

Die Vodafone-Marke Otelo bietet Kunden mit Laufzeitverträgen Zugang zum LTE-Netz. Bisher musste der LTE-Zugang extra bezahlt werden, nun ist er in allen Tarifen enthalten, auch für Bestandskunden. Prepaid-Kunden können das LTE-Netz weiterhin nicht nutz…

Everyone is “gun-fu” fighting: John Wick 3 is almost as good as the original

Latest installment showcases some of the finest stuntwork you’re likely to see onscreen

"It wasn't just a puppy." Keanu Reeves is back, declaring war on the High Table in <em>John Wick: Chapter 3: Parabellum.</em>

John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum is blowing up the box office this weekend with a projected $56.8 million opening. No sequel is likely to match the lean, mean, revenge-filled fury of the original film, but Parabellum comes close. Director Chad Stahelski knows exactly what his audience wants. This third installment advances the assassin's underworld mythology while stringing together a series of spectacularly choreographed fight sequences showcasing some of the finest stuntwork you're likely to see onscreen.

(Spoilers for first two films and mild spoilers for Chapter 3 below.)

For those who missed the first two movies, John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is a legendary hitman (known as the Boogeyman or "Baba Yaga") who tried to retire when he fell in love and got married. Unfortunately, he's drawn back into the dark underground world by an act of senseless violence after his wife's death. Nothing will stop John Wick from seeking retribution. The first John Wick grossed more than $88 million worldwide for a film that cost around $30 million to make, and it was praised for its brisk pace, heart-stopping action sequences, and stylish noir feel.

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