Assange is in prison for skipping bail, and he faces hacking-conspiracy charge.
Enlarge/ Julian Assange speaks to the media from the balcony of the Embassy Of Ecuador on May 19, 2017 in London, England. (credit: Getty Images | Jack Taylor)
Swedish prosecutors have dropped a nine-year-old rape investigation into Julian Assange, saying that "the evidence has weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed since the events in question."
"I would like to emphasize that the injured party has submitted a credible and reliable version of events," Deputy Director of Public Prosecution Eva-Marie Persson said, according to a BBC report today. "Her statements have been coherent, extensive and detailed; however, my overall assessment is that the evidential situation has been weakened to such an extent that there is no longer any reason to continue the investigation."
Prosecutors said they interviewed seven witnesses before deciding to stop the investigation, according to the BBC.
Wer will, kann ausprobieren, wie sich das eigentlich autarke Oculus Quest als verkabeltes PC-Headset macht: Facebook hat eine Beta veröffentlicht, vorerst läuft diese nur mit Nvidia-Grafikkarten, aber mit AMD-Prozessoren. (Oculus Rift, Soziales Netz)
Wer will, kann ausprobieren, wie sich das eigentlich autarke Oculus Quest als verkabeltes PC-Headset macht: Facebook hat eine Beta veröffentlicht, vorerst läuft diese nur mit Nvidia-Grafikkarten, aber mit AMD-Prozessoren. (Oculus Rift, Soziales Netz)
In highly hedged post, Microsoft pledges support for DoH and other schemes, eventually.
Enlarge/ Microsoft will (eventually) support secure DNS requests over the DoH protocol, and maybe over some others at some point. (credit: Yuichiro Chino via Getty Images)
In a post yesterday to the Microsoft Tech Community blog, Microsoft Windows Core Networking team members Tommy Jensen, Ivan Pashov, and Gabriel Montenegro announced that Microsoft is planning to adopt support for encrypted Domain Name System queries in order to "close one of the last remaining plain-text domain name transmissions in common web traffic."
That support will first take the form of integration with DNS over HTTPS (DoH), a standard proposed by the Internet Engineering Task Force and supported by Mozilla, Google, and Cloudflare, among others. "As a platform, Windows Core Networking seeks to enable users to use whatever protocols they need, so we’re open to having other options such as DNS over TLS (DoT) in the future," wrote Jensen, Pashov, and Montenegro. "For now, we're prioritizing DoH support as the most likely to provide immediate value to everyone. For example, DoH allows us to reuse our existing HTTPS infrastructure."
But Microsoft is being careful about how it deploys this compatibility given the current political fight over DoH being waged by Internet service providers concerned that they'll lose a lucrative source of customer behavior data.
Images show missing light bar, potential microphone opening.
Patent images showing a potential PlayStation 5 controller design. Perspective view. [credit:
Sony / Japanese patent office
]
New images from a Japanese Sony patent, first filed in March and recently published by the Japanese patent office, seem to show a new version of Sony's DualShock controller. The patent images display some potential changes to the hardware for next year's planned release of the PlayStation 5.
Sony system architect Mark Cerny previously discussed the PlayStation 5's new controller in an interview with Wired last month. That interview mentioned that the new system's controller would sport a USB-C connector for charging and a potential wired data connection. And while the newly published patent images resemble the PS4's existing DualShock 4 in many ways, the port at the top appears to be USB-C rather than the USB-B micro connector on the DualShock 4.
There are a few other changes in the patent images that do not reflect potential controller changes Sony has publicly discussed. Chief among them is the apparent omission of the DualShock 4's lightbar. That lightbar's ability to glow in different colors was often used as a gimmick by game developers to indicate health or other in-game status effects, but it was also positioned in a way that was hard for players to use it or see it effectively. More importantly, many PlayStation VR games used that lightbar in conjunction with the PlayStation Eye camera to track the controller's position in space, a function that would not be possible in the same form on the patented controller.
There are over 7 million courses available in Super Mario Maker 2. And at least seven of them are pretty fun.
Seriously, though, making a good Mario level is one of those tasks that's harder than it looks. So what differentiates a satisfying level from a frustrating one?
To find out, we reached out to both the Mario Maker and Nintendo Switch subreddits and asked readers to submit their favorite homemade levels for review. After sifting through pages and pages of submissions, we picked out a handful of interesting examples for a fuller evaluation by Corey Olcsvary of Nintendo's storied Treehouse product development division.
Enlarge/ A Starship on the Moon? It could happen in as few as three years. (credit: SpaceX)
About a year ago, NASA announced it had selected nine different companies that were eligible to compete for contracts to deliver relatively small science and cargo missions to the lunar surface.
What seemed notable about this was that many of the companies selected had not done much (if any) business with NASA before. (Lockheed Martin was an exception.) NASA has since begun to award a couple of contracts for actual deliveries, but it evidently wants more bidders. So on Monday, the agency added five new companies to the pool of eligible contractors in its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS.
“Expanding the group of companies who are eligible to bid on sending payloads to the Moon’s surface drives innovation and reduces costs to NASA and American taxpayers," the agency's administrator, Jim Bridenstine, said in a news release.
Spain’s National Police says it has dismantled a pirate IPTV operation worth an estimated €1 million to its operators. A police video shows raids on various locations which resulted in the arrest of 12 individuals, four said to have captured signals with eight more acting as resellers of the service.
Raids, shutdowns, legal action, settlements, and even technical issues have caused many sellers of ‘pirate’ IPTV to shut down in recent months.
The end to the problem for broadcasters, however, seems as far away as ever, with large numbers of providers and sellers managing to service the illicit market, despite serious setbacks.
Hoping to make a dent in the supply chain, police in Spain say they have carried out an operation to “dismantle” a service that sourced raw TV streams and distributed them, supplied VOD content, and then sold packages to clients.
The investigation began in 2017 when officers of the Central Cybercrime Unit became aware of a Facebook page where access to pirate TV was being offered.
Investigators determined that those behind the operation were capturing channels broadcast by the major TV outfits and uploading them to servers operated by different companies abroad. At the same time, they operated a sales and marketing division, to sell their product to the public.
In total, 12 people were identified as suspects, with four people said to have been in charge of capturing the broadcast signals and distributing them, managing access to content, attracting customers, and collecting the cash through various platforms.
The remaining eight were considered resellers of the services. These individuals obtained access to the main platform from the four operators at a reduced cost in order to market these subscriptions to their own customers in Spain and overseas.
Image credit: Policia Nacional
The two-year investigation came to head last Friday when the 12 suspects were arrested when raids were carried out on addresses in Madrid, Toledo, Alicante, Murcia, Gran Canaria, Tenerife and other locations.
Seven websites and two social media profiles were shut down and 86 decoders, 15 hard drives, 10 computers, NAS drives, 17 mobile phones, a ‘high-end’ vehicle and more than 22,000 euros in cash were seized.
According to police, the as-yet-unnamed service generated an estimated 1,000,000 euros for its operators who are now charged with various offenses including intellectual property crimes, belonging to a criminal organization, and money laundering.
Nicht nur Vodafone versteht die Ergebnisse nicht, doch im Test der Computer-Bild stehen alle Betreiber schlechter da als im Vorjahr. (Long Term Evolution, Telekom)
Nicht nur Vodafone versteht die Ergebnisse nicht, doch im Test der Computer-Bild stehen alle Betreiber schlechter da als im Vorjahr. (Long Term Evolution, Telekom)
Amazon’s latest Fire TV gadget combines is a $35 gadget called the Fire TV Blaster, and while the name makes it sound like some sort of gaming accessory, it’s really an add-on that lets you use your voice to control a TV, cable box, soundba…
Amazon’s latest Fire TV gadget combines is a $35 gadget called the Fire TV Blaster, and while the name makes it sound like some sort of gaming accessory, it’s really an add-on that lets you use your voice to control a TV, cable box, soundbar, and other accessories. Designed to be used with a Fire TV device […]
The x86 processor market is largely dominated by Intel and AMD. But at a time when x86 dominance is being challenged by processors based on ARM, RISC-V, or MIPS designs, there are also a few other companies working on x86 processors. Over the past few …
The x86 processor market is largely dominated by Intel and AMD. But at a time when x86 dominance is being challenged by processors based on ARM, RISC-V, or MIPS designs, there are also a few other companies working on x86 processors. Over the past few years, Zhaoxin has been developing x86 processors for use in […]
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