NFC: Deutsche Ausweise können bald per iPhone ausgelesen werden

Die teilweise Öffnung der NFC-Schnittstelle zeigt auch in Deutschland Wirkung. Mit iOS 13 brauchen iPhone-Nutzer keinen externen Kartenleser mehr, um Personalausweise und elektronische Aufenthaltstitel auszulesen. (E-Personalausweis, iPhone)

Die teilweise Öffnung der NFC-Schnittstelle zeigt auch in Deutschland Wirkung. Mit iOS 13 brauchen iPhone-Nutzer keinen externen Kartenleser mehr, um Personalausweise und elektronische Aufenthaltstitel auszulesen. (E-Personalausweis, iPhone)

A bride must play the most dangerous game in Ready or Not red band trailer

“It’s just something we do when someone joins the family.”

Samara Weaving plays a new bride who must survive a deadly game of hide-and-seek in the horror/comedy Ready or Not.

A young bride's idealized wedding night takes a deadly turn when her eccentric new in-laws insist that playing a game at midnight is a family tradition in the red-band trailer for Ready or Not, a forthcoming comic horror film from Fox Searchlight. Per io9, "It's kind of The Purge meets every newlywed-themed gothic horror movie ever (Rebecca, Crimson Peak) but with a pitch-black sense of humor." That sounds like a winning combination.

Grace (Samara Weaving) can't believe her good fortune when she falls in love with Alex Le Domas (Mark O'Brien), a member of a wealthy gaming dynasty—although the family prefers the term "dominion." After a picture-perfect wedding on the family estate, Alex informs her that there's just one more formality to be observed: "At midnight, you have to play a game. It's just something we do when someone joins the family."

That game turns out to be hide-and-seek, except Grace soon discovers that, as played by the Le Domas family, it has less in common with an innocent children's pastime and more with the classic 1924 short story "The Most Dangerous Game." Grace is the prey, and she must elude detection until dawn to avoid being killed in a bizarre ritual sacrifice.

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AMD says its Ryzen 3000 isn’t just cheaper—it’s better

AMD’s Travis Kirsch says there’s no reason to buy an Intel CPU anymore.

Promotional image for new AMD devices.

Enlarge / AMD provided infrared photos showing its new Ryzen 3700x running cooler than an Intel i7-9700k. (credit: AMD Computex slide deck)

AMD's new line of Ryzen 3000 desktop CPUs will benefit from the same 7nm manufacturing process as the company's new Navi-powered GPUs. Much of the tech community's hype is for the biggest and baddest of the bunch: the 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 3950x. But there's an entire new line ranging from the $499 3950x down to a relatively-modest $199 3600X—and AMD is gunning for Intel every step of the way.

What's really interesting is, this time around, AMD is not just pitching cheaper parts and "good-enough" performance—the company is claiming top-dog stats, along with thermal and power efficiency wins. The Ryzen 9 3700x is listed at $329, while Intel's i7-9700k is currently available for about $410. But according to AMD's slides, the Ryzen part also outperforms the i7-9700k across the board, and it draws less power and produces less heat while doing so. Even when comparing absolute flagship CPUs, the monstrous 16-core/32-thread Ryzen 3950x boasts 135W TDP, while Intel's 32-threaded i7-7960x runs 165W TDP.

If the data here is reasonably accurate, the savings in power and cooling costs over the lifespan of a system will probably outweigh its already lower purchase price.

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Federal bill would allow clean energy companies to structure like oil companies

In the meantime, IEA says value of subsidies for fossil fuels has increased.

Wind turbines near Palm Springs, Calif.

Enlarge / Wind turbines near Palm Springs, Calif. (credit: nate2b / Flickr)

Last week, US senators and representatives introduced bills in the Senate and the House to open up a type of corporate structure originally reserved for oil, gas, and coal companies to clean energy companies.

Called a Master Limited Partnership (MLP), the structure currently allows fossil fuel companies to take advantage of lower taxes placed on limited partnerships while also allowing those companies to issue publicly traded stocks and bonds. If the recently re-introduced bills—which have bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate—pass their respective votes, clean energy companies would have the option to structure their companies as MLPs and take advantage of the tax and funding benefits.

According to sponsoring Senator Chris Coons' (D-Del.) website, "Newly eligible energy resources would include solar, wind, marine and hydrokinetic energy, fuel cells, energy storage, combined heat and power, biomass, waste heat to power, renewable fuels, biorefineries, energy efficient buildings, and carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS)."

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Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 06/17/19

The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent are in again. ‘Dumbo’ tops the chart this week, followed by ‘Pokémon Detective Pikachu’. ‘Captain Marvel’ completes the top three.

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This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

Dumbo is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:
Movie Rank Rank last week Movie name IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1 (…) Dumbo 6.5 / trailer
2 (2) Pokémon Detective Pikachu 6.9 / trailer
3 (1) Captain Marvel 7.1 / trailer
4 (3) Us (Subbed HDRip) 7.2 / trailer
5 (…) I Am Mother 6.9 / trailer
6 (…) Murder Mystery 6.1 / trailer
7 (4) Avengers: Endgame (HDCam) 9.1 / trailer
8 (5) Hotel Mumbai 7.8 / trailer
9 (7) Captive State 7.0 / trailer
10 (9) Glass 6.9 / trailer

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AT&T cuts another 1,800 jobs as it finishes fiber-Internet buildout

1,800 new job cuts in addition to 23,000 AT&T jobs cut since December 2017.

AT&T service truck driving on a street in a residential neighborhood.

Enlarge / AT&T service truck driving on a street in a residential neighborhood on May 17, 2019 in Sunnyvale, Calif. (credit: Getty Images | Andrei Stanescu)

AT&T has informed employees of plans to cut another 1,800 jobs from its wireline division, an AT&T workers' union told Ars today.

Last week, AT&T declared more than 1,800 jobs nationwide as "surplus," meaning they are slated to be eliminated in August or September, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) told Ars.

"They've been cutting their employment massively in the past year and a half or so," with cuts affecting both union and non-union jobs, CWA Communications Director Beth Allen told Ars. Under union contracts, AT&T can declare a surplus of jobs each quarter, she said. But even by AT&T standards, last week's surplus declaration "was a very large number," Allen said.

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Russia warns of “cyberwar” following report the US attacked its power grid

NYT reported on US efforts to insert malware into Russia’s energy infrastructure.

Giant outdoor power station.

Enlarge / Zapadnaya in the Moscow region. (credit: Vladimir Fedorenko / Владимир Федоренко)

The Kremlin on Monday warned that reported US digital incursions into Russia's electric power grid could trigger a "cyberwar" between the two countries.

The warning came two days after The New York Times reported that the US Cyber Command, the arm of the Pentagon that runs the military's offensive and defensive operations in the online world, was aggressively stepping up its targeting of Russia's grid. Saturday's report said the command had taken steps to place "potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before." In some cases, the NYT reported, Pentagon and intelligence officials have been hesitant to brief President Trump in detail about the activities out of concern he might countermand the operations or discuss them with foreign officials. Last year, Trump gave the Cyber Command more leeway to conduct offensive online operations, the publication said.

Some analysts have cast doubt on the NYT reporting that the United States has put implants inside Russia's grid, and the publication was clear it had no classified information detailing how deep into Russia's power infrastructure the US has bored. The report, however, was enough to get the attention of Kremlin officials, who pushed back in a post published Monday by the TASS news agency, which is owned by the Russian government.

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PSA: Upgrade 3 years of Xbox Live to Game Pass Ultimate for just $1

Prepaid Xbox Live gold subscriptions can be bumped up cheaply for a limited time.

Promotional image for Xbox promotion.

Enlarge (credit: Xbox)

If you've been paying attention to Xbox rumors and announcements of late, you may know that Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass have now been officially merged into a single $15 a month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription plan (which now also includes PC games, for good measure).

What you might not realize is you can upgrade up to three years of a current Xbox Live gold subscription to the new, more expensive plan for $1 as part of a launch promotion from Microsoft.

As Microsoft describes on the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate announcement page (emphasis added):

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Prolific Pirate Bay User Agrees to Pay $2,900 to Movie Outfits

A self-proclaimed prolific Pirate Bay user from Hawaii has agreed to a $2,900 consent judgment. The makers of the movies “Boyka: Undisputed IV” and  “Mechanic: Resurrection” initially targeted the wrong person. However, after a follow-up investigation, they turned the case into a win.

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

Every year, thousands of people are sued in the United States for allegedly sharing pirated video, mostly through BitTorrent.

These efforts share a familiar pattern. After the film companies acquire a subpoena to obtain the personal details of an alleged pirate, they contact this person with a settlement request.

In 2017, movie companies used this strategy to identify the then 72-year-old Mr. Harding from Hawaii, whose Internet connection was used to share more than 1,000 torrents. 

The film companies reached out to the man and offered a hefty $3,900 settlement, which would increase to $4,900 if he failed to respond in time. However, Mr. Harding denied downloading the files, describing the pay-up-or-else demand as “absolutely absurd.”

The accusations eventually made the local press and after a careful review of the matter movie company attorney Kerry Culpepper decided to dismiss the case against the elderly man.

However, that didn’t mean that the downloads were completely disregarded. After digging into the matter, the movie companies learned that, while the offending IP-address was linked to Mr. Harding, the home in question was used by someone else. 

The movie companies ‘ UN4 Productions ‘ and ‘Millennium Funding’ eventually found out that the resident or tenant in question was Mr. Graham. This prompted the rightsholders to file a new federal lawsuit, targeting this man, who they believed was the true ‘pirate.’

This time the accusations were indeed lodged against a prolific downloader. In a declaration submitted to the court Mr. Graham, who is in his fifties, admits that he regularly used The Pirate Bay to download files.

“Since approximately 2016, I have been downloading torrent files of motion pictures from websites of the Pirate Bay at my residence. I believed that it was acceptable to do so because the websites are completely open with their objective to share files,” he states. 

According to the declaration, Mr. Graham often downloaded so many files that he doesn’t remember the names of many torrents. As such, he is not confident that he downloaded the movies “Boyka: Undisputed IV” and Mechanic: Resurrection,” which are listed in the complaint.

The account holder of the Internet connection, who was initially accused, was not aware of this activity.  Mr. Graham, meanwhile, apologized to the rightsholders and agreed not to use The Pirate Bay going forward. 

“I agree to stop using the Pirate Bay,” Mr. Graham writes.

While the man denies liability, he does admit to downloading copyrighted movies through The Pirate Bay and in a consent judgment, submitted to the court, he agrees to a $2,900 settlement to cover costs, fees, and damages. 

In addition, the stipulated consent judgment includes a permanent injunction prohibiting Mr. Graham from infringing the copyrights of the two movie companies going forward. 

A copy of the stipulated consent judgment is available here (pdf).

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