December 2019 – Page 61 – news.buyenne.com

Can 5G replace everybody’s home broadband?

On kicking cable broadband to the curb, experts say “The answer is absolutely! Depending.”

Artist's impression of how fast your house might one day be with 5G mobile broadband.

When it comes to the possibility of home broadband competition, we want to believe. And in the case of 5G mobile broadband, wireless carriers want us to believe, too. But whether or not technological and commercial realities will reward that faith remains unclear. As with 5G smartphones, the basic challenge here sits at the intersection of the electromagnetic spectrum and telecom infrastructure economics.

When delivered over millimeter-wave frequencies and their copious amounts of free spectrum, 5G can match the speed and latency of fiber-optic broadband, with downloads of 1 gigabit per second and ping times under 10 milliseconds. But on those frequencies of 24GHz and up, signals struggle to reach more than a thousand feet outdoors. Carriers can fix that by building many more cell sites, each with its own fiber backhaul, but a fiber-to-the-block build-out may not be appreciably cheaper than fiber-to-the-home deployments. And while residences don't move and don't mind wireless antennas larger than a shirt pocket—unlike individual wireless subscribers—residences also have walls that often block mmWave signals. (Presumably also unlike individual wireless subscribers.)

The other frequency flavors of 5G (the low- and mid-band ones) don't suffer mmWave's allergies to distance or drywall. But they also can't match its speed or its spectrum availability—which in the context of residential broadband means they may not sustain uncapped bandwidth.

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Google: Chrome 79 warnt vor gehackten Zugangsdaten

Die aktuelle Version 79 von Chrome warnt Nutzer aktiv vor gehackten Zugangsdaten und fordert dazu auf, diese zu ändern. Außerdem wird der Phishing-Schutz deutlich ausgeweitet. (Chrome, Google)

Guidemaster: 10 tech gifts to improve the home office

Our latest gift guide looks at useful keyboards, webcams, speakers, and more.

It's not easy to please everyone when it comes to gifting. But trust us, everyone could use a password manager.

So far, our 2019 holiday gift guide series has covered gifts for those on a budget, gifts for frequent travelers, and gifts for the home. Today, we're turning our attention to the office and general productivity needs.

Below you'll find another hand-picked batch of recommendations based on a year's worth of product testing. These are thoughtful yet pragmatic gifts to help improve your friends' and family's work spaces through technology. From password managers to keyboards to business-friendly laptops, we know firsthand that each of the products below can make productive time less of a slog.

Note: Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.

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Glyphosat-Gutachten: Stopp missbräuchlicher Urheberrechtsklagen gefordert

Der Streit um ein Gutachten zu den Auswirkungen des Herbizids Glyphosat entwickelt sich zum Präzedenzfall für den Umgang mit staatlichen Dokumenten und dem Urheberrecht. Wikimedia Deutschland und mehrere Journalistenverbände fordern eine Gesetzesänderu…

Google’s Top UK “Where to Watch” Searches Weren’t a Piracy Concern in 2019

Google has just released its Year in Search 2019 report which reveals what users searched for during the past year. Some of the most popular questions in the UK were “where to watch” followed by popular TV shows and events, something which prompted a warning from anti-piracy group FACT. But are these searches really a major concern anymore?

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

That Google knows every detail of what its users search for is no secret – after all, the company itself processes all of the requests.

Armed with this data, Google publishes its annual ‘Year in Search‘ report, the latest of which appeared yesterday. From our perspective, there were very few – if any – piracy-related aspects to report, something which should be encouraging to rightsholders.

However, after the BBC published its take on Google’s UK search statistics, noting that several questions in the “How to” category were directed at how to watch sports events and TV shows, the Federation Against Copyright Theft took to Twitter to issue a warning.

“Whether it’s a re-stream on social media, a piracy site, or using a TV-connected device, avoiding official providers to access content is illegal,” FACT wrote, linking to the BBC article.

Of course, it is FACT’s job to draw attention to such things but we wondered, given that Google is quite specific about the top titles searched for in 2019, whether Google’s search results were worthy of particular panic. Or, indeed, whether “where to watch” searches should always be considered dangerous and piracy related. But first, some background.

Over the past several years, copyright holders and anti-piracy groups have regularly complained that Google and other search engines help people find content online in a way that prioritizes pirated over legitimate content.

That isn’t the company’s intention, of course, but there have been numerous instances of pirate sites appearing higher in searches than those offering licensed content. In the UK, Google and various industry players agreed to tackle this and similar issues with the signing of a voluntary anti-piracy agreement back in 2017.

So, when placed alongside these top “how to” searches, has it worked?

#1: How to watch Champions League Final

This search clearly related to the match between Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool from which the latter emerged victorious, two goals to nil. However, the related Google search is particularly interesting since all of the top results showed users how to watch the match for free.

While that might sound like a cause for concern, these results linked exclusively to completely legal streams offered via established broadcasters. Clearly, the incentive to pirate had been mostly eliminated by giving consumers what they want.

#2: How to watch Game of Thrones

As one of the most popular shows in living memory, it’s no surprise that Game of Thrones appears in Google’s top search lists for the UK. In past years, this kind of search would’ve likely displayed ‘pirate’ results prominently but that is no longer the case. In our tests we had to go through several pages of Google results with links to either buy the show or articles detailing how to watch the show legally first. Pirate results were not prominent.

#5: How to watch KSI vs. Logan

Given the controversy surrounding this pair of YouTube celebrities, searches on how to watch the fight were bound to score highly. However, a search for the fight yet again yielded pages and pages of legitimate sources or articles detailing how to access the bout legally.

#10: How to watch Chernobyl

The results displayed following a “where to watch Chernobyl” search are very similar to those that are returned following a similar Game of Thrones query. One has to skip through pages and pages of legitimate results to find any pirate sources and, on the way, the emphasis to go legal is clear.

The legal choices, as they appear in Google’s results, are as follows: YouTube, Google Play, Amazon, NowTV, HBO, Sky, Hulu, iTunes, Showmax, DirectTV, HBONordic, HBOGo, and Verizon. Admittedly, not all of those are available to UK users, but that’s four pages deep into the results and not one pirate link in sight.

Conclusion

While this is a very limited sample, there does appear to have been a notable change in the way that Google displays its results in the UK when faced with a basic query of “where to watch X”. There is now a pretty clear bias towards legitimate sources in results presented in the first few pages.

Of course, those that wish to refine their searches to actively seek out pirated content will have more immediate success, that’s the way searches work. However, it’s now more difficult to argue that users will be diverted to pirated sources when they’re seeking out legal options, at least for the samples listed above.

It’s worth noting, however, that pirate users’ viewing habits are probably shifting. There is now less reliance on search engines and more emphasis on apps and tools that are designed to produce infringing results by default, which is the exact opposite of what Google offers in respect of the above.

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

The Snapdragon 865 will make phones worse in 2020, thanks to mandatory 5G

Qualcomm is so obsessed with 5G, it’s hurting 4G performance to spur adoption.

A more accurately labeled Snapdragon 865.

Qualcomm recently took the wraps off its flagship SoC for 2020, the Snapdragon 865. As usual, we can expect this chip in all the high-end Android smartphones in 2020, and it's 25 percent faster than last year, with fancy new camera features and AI-accelerating co-processors. What's unusual is the way Qualcomm designed the LTE modem in the Snapdragon 865: it doesn't have one.

This means nearly every flagship Android phone will be a 5G phone in 2020, and putting the 5G and 4G on a giant extra chip means smartphones are going to use way more more power, no matter which cell network you're connected to. When 5G networks are only going to be in their infancy in 2020, this sounds like an across-the-board downgrade to me.

In 2019, 4G had a big power and size advantage over 5G thanks to the all-in-one SoC with an integrated modem solution. In 2020, Qualcomm is so desperate to make 5G a thing that it's making 4G worse.

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Mourning the end of the video game rental era

Redbox’s move away from games is a bittersweet moment that was a long time coming.

Amateur photograph of a Redbox rental station.

On Monday, Redbox confirmed to The Verge that it was "permanently transitioning out of the games business." That means Redbox would remove the option to rent physical game discs from its thousands of self-serve kiosks (Redbox game sales will still be available through the end of the year).

For many in the United States, Redbox kiosks had been the only convenient way to rent games ever since rental mega-chain Blockbuster went belly up over the course of a decade (along with most of its smaller brick-and-mortar competition). GameFly still offers a rent-by-mail service, but that service's monthly subscriptions and long postal wait times mean those loans are not much like just going down the street and paying a few bucks to sample a game for a few days.

Redbox's decision to exit the game-rental market, just as the 2010s come to a close, marks a poetic and somewhat anticlimactic end to a practice that's been in a steep decline for well over a decade now. Like using a slide rule or blowing into a Nintendo cartridge, renting physical games is a practice we'll harbor nostalgia for even though it's not necessary anymore (assuming you have good-enough Internet access, that is).

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Baystream: The Pirate Bay mit neuem Streaming-Angebot

Neuer Anlauf für hochwertiges Streaming aus meist illegalen Quellen bei The Pirate Bay. Doch Baystream läuft noch nicht besonders stabil. (Pirate Bay, Rechtsstreitigkeiten)

GrapheneOS: Ein gehärtetes Android ohne Google, bitte

Äußerlich unterscheidet es nicht viel von einem sauberen Android 10 – nur die Google-Apps fehlen. Doch im Inneren von GrapheneOS stecken einige Sicherheitsfunktionen. Wir haben den Nachfolger von Copperhead OS ausprobiert. Ein Test von Moritz Tremmel u…

Äußerlich unterscheidet es nicht viel von einem sauberen Android 10 - nur die Google-Apps fehlen. Doch im Inneren von GrapheneOS stecken einige Sicherheitsfunktionen. Wir haben den Nachfolger von Copperhead OS ausprobiert. Ein Test von Moritz Tremmel und Sebastian Grüner (AOSP, Android)

Microsoft: Xbox Scarlett streamt möglicherweise schon beim Download

Solange der Download des Spiels läuft, könnten Besitzer der nächsten Xbox ja schon mal per Cloud Gaming das Tutorial oder die ersten Levels absolvieren: Das plant Microsoft laut einem Medienbericht für die nächste Konsolengeneration. Ein paar technisch…