Verkehrssicherheit: Die Lehren aus dem tödlichen SUV-Unfall

Soll man tonnenschwere SUV aus den Innenstädten verbannen? Oder sollten technische Systeme schärfer in die Fahrzeugsteuerung eingreifen? Nach einem Unfall mit vier Toten in Berlin mangelt es nicht an radikalen Vorschlägen. Eine Analyse von Friedhelm Gr…

Soll man tonnenschwere SUV aus den Innenstädten verbannen? Oder sollten technische Systeme schärfer in die Fahrzeugsteuerung eingreifen? Nach einem Unfall mit vier Toten in Berlin mangelt es nicht an radikalen Vorschlägen. Eine Analyse von Friedhelm Greis (Autonomes Fahren, Technologie)

Facebook: Datenschützer dürfen Fanpage-Seiten verbieten

Datenschutzbehörden können von Fanpage-Betreibern die Deaktivierung des Angebots verlangen. Das Bundesverwaltungsgericht sieht die Anbieter als “Türöffner” für Facebooks Datensammelei. (Datenschutz, Soziales Netz)

Datenschutzbehörden können von Fanpage-Betreibern die Deaktivierung des Angebots verlangen. Das Bundesverwaltungsgericht sieht die Anbieter als "Türöffner" für Facebooks Datensammelei. (Datenschutz, Soziales Netz)

White House told NOAA to back Trump’s false hurricane forecast

NOAA backed Trump over forecasters after demand from White House, reports say.

President Donald Trump displaying a doctored forecast map that incorrectly shows Hurricane Dorian hitting Alabama.

Enlarge / President Donald Trump displaying a doctored forecast map at the White House on September 04, 2019 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla )

The White House pressured the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration into backing President Trump over weather forecasters who disputed Trump's incorrect claim that Hurricane Dorian would likely strike Alabama, according to news reports.

"Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, told Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, to have the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration publicly disavow the forecasters' position that Alabama was not at risk," the New York Times reported today, citing anonymous sources. Ross then warned NOAA "that top employees at the agency could be fired if the situation was not addressed," the Times wrote.

Mulvaney took this action after "President Trump told his staff that the [NOAA] needed to correct a tweet that seemed to contradict his statement that Hurricane Dorian posed a significant threat to Alabama as of Sept. 1," the Washington Post wrote in an article on the same topic. There are now multiple investigations into whether the NOAA's scientific integrity and independence were undermined.

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18 months after indictment, Iranian phishers are still targeting universities

A group charged with stealing 32 terabytes of academic data is still going strong.

18 months after indictment, Iranian phishers are still targeting universities

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty)

In March 2018, nine Iranians were criminally charged for their involvement with the Mabna Institute, a company federal prosecutors said was created in 2013 for the express purpose of using coordinated cyber intrusions to steal terabytes of academic data from universities, academic journal publishers, tech companies, and government organizations. Almost 18 months later, the group’s hacking activities are still going strong, Secureworks, a Dell-owned security company, said on Wednesday.

The hacking group, which Secureworks researchers call Cobalt Dickens, has recently undertaken a phishing operation that targeted more than 60 universities in countries including the US, Canada, the UK, Switzerland, and Australia, according to a report. Starting in July, Cobalt Dickens used malicious webpages that spoofed legitimate university resources in an attempt to steal the passwords of targeted individuals. The individuals were lured through emails like the one below, dated August 2.

(credit: Secureworks)

The emails informed targets that their online library accounts would expire unless they reactivated them by logging in. Recipients who clicked on the links landed on pages that looked almost identical to library resources that are widely used in academic settings. Those who entered passwords were redirected to the legitimate library site being spoofed, while behind the scenes, the spoof site stored the password in a file called pass.txt. Below is a diagram of how the scam worked:

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AMD improves real-world boost and idle on Ryzen 3000

The extra 25-50MHz boost speed probably means less than the lower idle, really.

Too much boost is just enough.

Enlarge / Too much boost is just enough. (credit: Universal Pictures)

Tuesday, AMD announced firmware updates for its new Ryzen 3000 desktop CPU line to improve both its highest boost clock speed and its willingness to "idle" at lower, more power-efficient speeds when the processor's full power is not required. The improvements are in the most recent beta reference drivers and are expected to filter down to OEM motherboard manufacturers and become available in about three weeks from now—subject, of course, to testing and implementation schedules of the OEMs.

The announcement also teases a new SDK launch targeted for September 30, which offers APIs for use in monitoring utilities.

Boosted boost

Last week, a survey of more than 3,000 Ryzen 3000 CPU owners showed that fewer than half of those CPUs were capable of hitting the maximum boost clock rate advertised. This really isn't the end of the world—a Ryzen 9 3900X that peaks at 4.5GHz instead of 4.6GHz is only missing out on 2% of its total possible boost clock rate, and even that 2% clock rate does not generally translate to 2% slower application performance. In other words, you're going to need artificial tests to discover the problem—you absolutely would not just suddenly realize, "hey, this isn't as fast as it ought to be!" in the middle of a gaming or content creation session.

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Pixel 4XL Leak Brings Hands-on Videos Hot on the Heels of iPhone 11 Launch

You’re no doubt well aware that Apple revealed the iPhone 11 yesterday. Today, in what is surely a complete coincidence, a pair of fresh, fairly in-depth Pixel 4XL videos have appeared on YouTube. These come hot on the heels of numerous other lea…

You’re no doubt well aware that Apple revealed the iPhone 11 yesterday. Today, in what is surely a complete coincidence, a pair of fresh, fairly in-depth Pixel 4XL videos have appeared on YouTube. These come hot on the heels of numerous other leaks: hands-on photos, hands-on videos, FCC filings, a now-deleted promo video, and even […]

The post Pixel 4XL Leak Brings Hands-on Videos Hot on the Heels of iPhone 11 Launch appeared first on Liliputing.

Nintendo Sues RomUniverse for Mass Copyright Infringement

Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against the alleged operator of the popular pirate site RomUniverse. The game company accuses the site of brazen and mass-scale copyright infringement of its games and hopes to shut it down. RomUniverse, which also offers pirated ebooks and movies, sells paid memberships to those who want unlimited downloads.

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

Last year Nintendo made headlines worldwide when it filed a lawsuit against the popular ROM sites LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co.

The legal action effectively shut the sites down with many other platorms voluntarily following suit.

Not all game pirate sites were shaken up by the legal action though. RomUniverse, a site that’s been around for a decade, saw its visitor numbers rise and announced that it would continue to offer Nintendo ROMs.

Fast forward a year and Nintendo is now taking RomUniverse to court. In a complaint filed at a federal court in California, the Japanese gaming giant accuses the site’s alleged operator, Matthew Storman, of “brazen” and “mass-scale” copyright and trademark infringement.

“The Website is among the most visited and notorious online hubs for pirated Nintendo video games. Through the Website, Defendants reproduce, distribute, monetize, and offer for download thousands of unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s video games,” the complaint reads.

Nintendo states that the site, which has 375,000 members, offers downloads for nearly every video game system it has ever produced.

The complaint specifically notes that “hundreds of thousands of copies” have been illegally downloaded through RomUniverse, including nearly 300,000 copies of pirated Nintendo Switch games and more than 500,000 copies of pirated Nintendo 3DS games.

Users of the site can download one file per week for free. Those who want more have to sign up for a paid membership. After an “upgrade” of $30, members are allowed to download as many files as they want. This includes games, but also ebooks and the latest Hollywood movies.

As said before, RomUniverse wasn’t impressed by the legal threats Nintendo issued against other sites last year. This didn’t go unnoticed to the game publisher, which specifically mentions the operator’s defiance in its complaint.

“In 2018, around the time that Nintendo successfully enforced its intellectual property rights against other infringing ROM websites, defendant Storman bragged that his Website would continue to offer Nintendo ROMs,” Nintendo writes.

Through the lawsuit, which also lists a count of unfair competition, Nintendo hopes to shut RomUniverse down. The company also requests statutory damages of $150,000 per infringing Nintendo game and up to $2,000,000 for each trademark infringement.

This means that, with dozens of copyrighted titles and trademarks on the record, theoretical damages are well over $100 million.

Finally, Nintendo further asks for a permanent injunction ordering the site and its operator(s) to stop their infringing activities while handing over their domain names to the game publisher.

A copy of Nintendo’s complaint against Matthew Storman and any “John Doe” accomplices, 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.

iFixit tears down the newest Fairphone—how repairable is it?

The Fairphone 3 gets the full iFixit treatment and a 10/10 score.

Dutch company Fairphone believes smartphones can and should be completely repairable and free of conflict-sourced materials. Ars covered the Fairphone 2 launch back in 2015 and performed an assisted teardown of a late prototype model with the company's CEO. This time around, repair guide site iFixit got the pre-launch prototype and took it down top-to-bottom to see if Fairphone still makes good on its promise.

The Fairphone 3 itself

Before we get into the physical teardown, let's take a quick look at the Fairphone 3's specs.

  • 5.65-inch display—2160×1080, 24-bit color depth, 18:9 aspect ratio, Gorilla Glass 5
  • Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 SoC—1.8GHz eight-core CPU, with Adreno 506 GPU @ 650MHz
  • 4GB RAM
  • 64GB internal storage, microSD expansion available
  • 12MP rear/8MP front camera. Rear camera has dual LED flash and takes video 4k@30fps, 1080p@60fps, 720p@60fps
  • 802.11ac Wi-Fi with BlueTooth 5 + LE, NFC, and support for multiple GNSS (GPS) standards
  • Dual nano-SIM card, supporting 2G, 3G, and 4G LTE (GSM only—no CDMA; sorry Verizon subscribers)
  • USB Type-C, sensors include fingerprint scanner, ambient light, accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity, barometer, and compass
  • 3.5mm headphone jack included—no USB-C dongle needed!
  • 11.8Wh battery

If you're not a complete phone-head, you may want a few comparisons to place where the Fairphone 3 sits on a performance scale. A lot of international phones use the same Snapdragon 632 SoC, but very few seem to have been sold in the USA. It's best described as a middle-of-the-road budget chipset. When comparing either CPU or GPU scores on multiple benchmarks, the Snapdragon 632 used in the Fairphone scores roughly 25% to 33% faster than the Exynos 7884B used in the Samsung Galaxy A10e (one of AT&T's current line-up of "free with new subscription" budget phones) but only half as fast as the Snapdragon 845 used in Google's flagship Pixel 3. These observations hold up across a wide range of both CPU and GPU benchmarks.

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5G: 1&1 will mit “sehr leistungsfähigem Netz” herausfordern

1&1 Drillisch will ein sehr leistungsfähiges Mobilfunknetz aufbauen und damit die etablierten Betreiber herausfordern. Dabei seien Kooperationen wichtig, aber nicht nur für den Newcomer. (5G, VATM)

1&1 Drillisch will ein sehr leistungsfähiges Mobilfunknetz aufbauen und damit die etablierten Betreiber herausfordern. Dabei seien Kooperationen wichtig, aber nicht nur für den Newcomer. (5G, VATM)

Peakago promises to deliver a 7 inch convertible laptop for $300

First there was the GPD Pocket. Then came the One Mix Yoga. And then the floodgates seemed to open, with companies including Topjoy and Chuwi entering the emerging mini laptop space. Now a new model called the Peakago promises to be one of the most aff…

First there was the GPD Pocket. Then came the One Mix Yoga. And then the floodgates seemed to open, with companies including Topjoy and Chuwi entering the emerging mini laptop space. Now a new model called the Peakago promises to be one of the most affordable models to date. It’s said to be a tiny […]

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