AMD exec: Nvidia fell for our double bluff

AMD seems intent on revitalizing its business strategy as much as its tech.

AMD's Scott Herkelman explains to HotHardware how he "jebaited" Nvidia.

Enlarge / AMD's Scott Herkelman explains to HotHardware how he "jebaited" Nvidia. (credit: 2.5 Geeks)

Earlier this month, AMD Radeon VP Scott Herkelman tweeted a single, cryptic word: jebaited. If you're not a big Twitch person, that probably doesn't mean much to you. Thankfully, Herkelman made it clear for the rest of us a week later, when he appeared on HotHardware's 2.5 Geeks podcast to talk about the Radeon 5700 launch.

The first half of the 45 minute interview goes by with Herkelman propping up his gamer cred, then he walks through AMD's usual talking points about contrast-adaptive sharpening and doing the usual "we love the reviewer community" routine. But about 26 minutes later, HotHardware's Dave Altavilla asked Herkelman about the tweet—which referenced AMD's Radeon pricing strategy—and things got more interesting.

Ever seen a T-shirted division vice president of a $35B company crow about "jebaiting" a corporate opponent by "double bluffing the Super strategy?" No? Well, today's your day.

AMD first unveiled its new Navi cards in June, with Nvidia's forthcoming "Super" line of upclocked refreshes waiting in the wings. While the RX5700 line promised a better performance-per-dollar ratio than competing Nvidia cards—a promise that has been borne out by third-party reviews—Nvidia still had the possibility of muting AMD's thunder with a well-timed Super release, which might bring that price:performance ratio back into line. Herkelman's cryptic tweet dropped when Nvidia acted—and the next day, AMD slashed prices on the new cards enough to bring the entire line under the new RTX 2070 Super's $499 asking price.

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Daily Deals (7-22-2019)

The Google Pixel Slate normally sells for $799 and up, and Microsoft’s Surface Pro 6 usually has a starting price of $899. But right now both of these tablets are on sale for $100 off — and both Microsoft and Google are throwing in a keyboa…

The Google Pixel Slate normally sells for $799 and up, and Microsoft’s Surface Pro 6 usually has a starting price of $899. But right now both of these tablets are on sale for $100 off — and both Microsoft and Google are throwing in a keyboard for free. Here are some of the day’s best […]

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Silicon LED created by buzzing surface with high-speed electrons 

Free-flying electrons generate light in silicon, CMOS lasers long way off.

If only controlling electron behavior was as easy as building atom illustrations out of children's toys...

Enlarge / If only controlling electron behavior was as easy as building atom illustrations out of children's toys... (credit: Japatino / Getty Images)

A long time ago, in a place not so far away, I used to believe that future lasers and optics would knock electronics into a tin hat. Yet silicon electronics still dominate all forms of computation and integrated circuit technology. The only place where optics rules is in communication, but even there, the extent of optic’s kingdom is limited.

For optics to really be useful, it needs to be based on the same technology as electronic integrated circuits: complementary metal oxide semiconductors (CMOS). Therein lies the problem—there are no light sources that are CMOS compatible. New research, involving bar-buzzing electrons, may create a future for silicon light sources, but only if some fairly fundamental problems are solved.

Silicon’s dark secret

Light-emitting diodes are as cheap as chips, but they aren’t made from silicon. Why? Because silicon doesn’t like to emit light.

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The Lincoln Aviator uses cameras to read the road, smooth out big potholes

Adaptive suspension is not new, but using cameras to measure the road ahead is.

When Lincoln's new three-row Aviator SUV goes on sale later this summer, its engineers hope it'll be one of the smoothest-riding vehicles in its class. The key to that is a clever new adaptive suspension system with a feature called Road Preview. As you may have just gathered from the name, it looks at the road ahead and uses that information along with the more normal sensor input to constantly adjust the stiffness of the dampers in anticipation of big bumps or potholes.

A vehicle's suspension is often required to please more than one master. On the one hand, its job is to keep the contact patch of each tire as close to optimum as possible to ensure good handling and road-holding. But it also has to soak up all the bumps and filter out all the jolts of the road in the name of ride comfort. For decades, that meant plenty of compromise when setting up springs, dampers, and the rest of the bits that attach the wheels to the car. Enthusiasts could buy adjustable dampers, although the adjustment usually meant parking up, popping the hood, and breaking out a wrench.

The idea of a suspension system that could react to different driving conditions while driving dates back at least as far as the hydropneumatic Citroens of the 1950s, but it was really the advent of electronic control that made the technology possible. Toyota started playing with the idea in the early 1980s with the Soarer, a domestic-market coupé. More will know it from its use in Formula 1, where it was introduced by Lotus' Colin Chapman, who was looking for a new unfair advantage. By 1992, the Williams F1 team refined the concept to such good effect that its FW14B was nigh unbeatable, causing the sport to ban the technology thereafter.

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Smach Z handheld gaming PC prototype gets an in-depth preview (videos)

The Smach Z is a handheld gaming computer that’s been in development for so long that it was derided as “Scam Z” in a popular YouTube video more than two years ago. But after many delays, the developers of the Smach Z started showing …

The Smach Z is a handheld gaming computer that’s been in development for so long that it was derided as “Scam Z” in a popular YouTube video more than two years ago. But after many delays, the developers of the Smach Z started showing off working prototypes this year, letting trade show attendees actually play […]

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Google pays $11 million to settle 227 age discrimination claims

The lead plaintiff interviewed with Google four times but never got a job.

Google's Mountain View campus in 2019.

Enlarge / Google's Mountain View campus in 2019. (credit: Michael Short/Getty Images)

Google will pay $11 million to settle the claims of 227 people who say they were unfairly denied jobs because of their age, according to Friday court filings. The settlement must still be approved by the judge in the case.

The original lead plaintiff in the case, first filed in 2015, was a 60-something man named Robert Heath who says he was deemed a "great candidate" by a Google recruiter. The lawsuit said that in 2013, the median age of Google employees was 29, whereas the typical computer programmer in the US is over 40 according to several different measures.

During the interview process, Heath received a technical phone interview with a Google engineer. Heath alleged that the engineer had a heavy accent, a problem made worse by the engineer's insistence on using a speakerphone. When Heath was working through a technical problem, he asked if he could share his code using a Google Doc. The interviewer refused to do so, Heath alleged. Instead, Heath had to read code snippets over the phone—an inherently error-prone process. Heath argued that the interview process "reflected a complete disregard for older workers who are undeniably more susceptible to hearing loss."

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Dailymotion Must Pay €5.5m For Failing to Remove Pirated Content

Dailymotion has been ordered to pay Italian broadcasting giant RTI €5.5m in compensation after failing to take down copyrighted TV shows. The Court of Rome ruled that the video platform can be held liable for infringing uploads by its users and requires it to remove content, even when no specific URLs are pointed out.

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

Similar to other sites that rely on user-generated content, Dailymotion has to deal with the occasional unauthorized upload.

In doing so, it generally relies on takedown notices from copyright holders. In most cases, rightsholders report allegedly infringing URLs which Dailymotion then removes.

This is how most of these platforms work. However, according to a recent ruling by the Court of Rome, that’s not always good enough.

The Court ruled that Dailymotion can be held liable for failing to remove copyright-infringing content, even when the specific URLs are never pointed out to the platform. The title of a TV-show plus the name and trademark of a broadcaster already creates an obligation to act, the Court found.

The case in question was filed by RTI, a company owned by Italy-based mass media giant Mediaset. The company complained that Dailymotion hosted hundreds of infringing copies of its TV-shows, such as Big Brother and Celebrity Island.

When RTI pointed this out, identifying just a representative list of specific infringing videos, only the mentioned URLs were removed.

Dailymotion argued that there’s not much else it can do without specific URLs detailing the allegedly infringing content. However, the Court disagreed. In a ruling handed down by the Court of Rome, Dailymotion was ordered to pay €5.5 million to RTI.

According to the ruling, the video platform is seen as an active hosting provider under Article 14 of the European E-Commerce Directive. As such, it can’t benefit from safe harbor exemptions and the company should have taken action when it was notified about allegedly infringing content.

This argument is similar to the previous ruling against The Pirate Bay, which was also held liable for the uploads of its users.

In addition to the €5.5 million in damages, which is €700 per minute for the pirated shows, Dailymotion also has to deal with future uploads. If it fails to do so, the video platform must pay an additional €5,000 for each copyright-infringing video that appears on the site.

Dealing with future uploads is required, as Dailymotion is assumed to have “actual knowledge” of infringements, without the need for rightsholders to point out specific URLs, RTI attorney Alessandro La Rosa informs TorrentFreak.

“The actual knowledge of the infringing content can’t in a way be linked to the specification of the relevant URLs. The Court states that a specific indication of the infringing files [e.g., names and a general desription of shows plus the broadcaster’s trademark] is enough,” La Rosa says.

In other words, when specific TV-shows are pointed out to Dailymotion, the platform must ensure that these titles don’t appear on its site. This implies that Dailymotion has to set up a proactive piracy filtering system targeting specific works, as IPKAT notes.

The ruling poses a threat to similar video hosting services. While most are able to remove specific content, making sure that titles don’t appear on their sites in the future is something entirely different. In fact, it sounds a lot like a mandatory upload filter of specified works, similar to what the new EU copyright directive prescribes.

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

Equifax to pay $575M for data breach, promises to protect data next time

The company promises free credit monitoring and not to screw up with security.

Now you can get six of these for free every year until 2027.

Enlarge / Now you can get six of these for free every year until 2027. (credit: Smith Collection/Gado | Getty Images)

Equifax, the Federal Trade Commission, and other state and federal regulators have agreed on what Equifax owes in penalties, nearly two years after the company's massive breach of sensitive consumer information became public.

The company will pay at least $575 million, according to the terms of a settlement the FTC announced today. At least $300 million goes into a fund to pay for credit monitoring services for "affected customers," which includes more than 40% of the entire US population. That fund can get boosted by another $125 million if the initial $300 million isn't enough to compensate all consumers who make claims.

Equifax will pay another $175 million in fines to be split up among the 50 attorneys general who filed suit, representing 48 states, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico, and $100 million in penalties to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

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5G-Media Initiative: Fernsehen über 5G geht nicht einfach über das Mobilfunknetz

In einem Streit unter den Öffentlich-Rechtlichen wird dem Intendanten des Deutschlandradios erklärt, dass Rundfunk über 5G nicht einfach über die Netze der kommerziellen Betreiber ginge. Der Intendant hatte die Technik nicht ganz verstanden. (Fernsehen…

In einem Streit unter den Öffentlich-Rechtlichen wird dem Intendanten des Deutschlandradios erklärt, dass Rundfunk über 5G nicht einfach über die Netze der kommerziellen Betreiber ginge. Der Intendant hatte die Technik nicht ganz verstanden. (Fernsehen, Technologie)

SpaceX: Beide Starships sollen in wenigen Monaten starten

Der Test mit dem experimentellen Raumschiff ist fehlgeschlagen. Laut SpaceX-Chef Elon Musk kein Problem. Dann soll eben gleich das Starship fliegen – und zwar beide im Bau befindlichen Versionen. Am besten noch zwei Mal in diesem Jahr. (SpaceX, Technol…

Der Test mit dem experimentellen Raumschiff ist fehlgeschlagen. Laut SpaceX-Chef Elon Musk kein Problem. Dann soll eben gleich das Starship fliegen - und zwar beide im Bau befindlichen Versionen. Am besten noch zwei Mal in diesem Jahr. (SpaceX, Technologie)