Just another news site
Lenovo’s been selling a line of thin, light, and premium laptops with carbon-fiber covers under the ThinkPad X1 Carbon name for a few years. But it looks like the company plans to bring the material to non-ThinkPad laptops. The upcoming Lenovo Y…
Lenovo’s been selling a line of thin, light, and premium laptops with carbon-fiber covers under the ThinkPad X1 Carbon name for a few years. But it looks like the company plans to bring the material to non-ThinkPad laptops. The upcoming Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Carbon is a compact, durable laptop with a white carbon fiber body. […]
The post Carbon’s not just for ThinkPads: Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Carbon leaked appeared first on Liliputing.
5G Home is barely available even in the few areas that have Verizon mobile 5G.
Enlarge / A Verizon 5G Home router/receiver mounted on a window. (credit: Verizon)
If you're hoping to get Verizon's 5G Home Internet service in the near future, you're probably out of luck—even if you live in one of the few cities where it's already deployed. More than two years after its unveiling, Verizon 5G Home is for sale in parts of eight cities, with an emphasis on "parts." PCMag's Sascha Segan used the 5G home service's address-lookup tool to find out how prevalent 5G Home is in areas that have Verizon 5G mobile access, and the results were disappointing.
"Since the company doesn't offer a coverage map for its home service, we pumped more than 400 Chicago and Minneapolis addresses through the Verizon 5G Home address finder and discovered that the home service has even less coverage than the mobile service does," PCMag wrote in the article published yesterday.
Segan's PCMag article includes several maps that show a large majority of houses in Verizon's 5G mobile coverage areas cannot get 5G Home. Verizon 5G mobile has limited reach to begin with because it relies on millimeter-wave frequencies that don't travel far and are easily blocked by walls. The ad industry's self-regulatory body recently urged Verizon to stop running ads that falsely imply the carrier's 5G mobile service is available throughout the United States because "Verizon's 5G coverage is primarily restricted to outdoor locations in certain neighborhoods and varies from block to block."
Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Internet provider RCN has submitted its answer to the piracy liability lawsuit filed by the major recording labels. The ISP denies most of the allegations and also strikes back. In a recent filing, it accuses the music companies, the RIAA, and piracy tracking company Rightscorp, of unfair and fraudulent practices that violate California’s Business and Professions Code.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Under US copyright law, Internet providers must terminate the accounts of repeat infringers “in appropriate circumstances.”
In the past such drastic action was rare, but with the backing of legal pressure, ISPs are increasingly being held to this standard.
Several major music industry companies including Arista Records, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music, and Warner Records, have filed lawsuits against some of the largest U.S. Internet providers. The list of targets includes RCN, which was sued last year.
The liability lawsuits are seen as a major threat to the ISP industry, as multiple companies face hundreds of millions of dollars in potential damages. This is not just a hypothetical threat, as the $1 billion verdict against Cox made clear.
The Cox verdict bolstered the confidence of the music companies to score big in cases against other ISPs as well. Before things get that far, however, they will have to overcome various counterclaims. Over the past several months ISPs including Charter and Bright House have countersued the rightsholders for sending deceptive anti-piracy notices. This week, RCN follows this trend.
The Internet provider filed its amended answers to the music companies’ complaint at a federal court in New Jersey, denying most copyright infringement allegations. At the same time, RCN countersued the music companies, the RIAA, and piracy tracking firm Rightscorp for unfair competition.
“RCN’s counterclaims are based on Rightscorp’s, the RIAA’s, and the Record Labels’ unfair and fraudulent business practices in generating and sending millions of unsupported emails accusing RCN’s customers of BitTorrent-based copyright infringement, while intentionally destroying the evidence necessary to determine whether any of those accusations were true,” RCN begins.
The ISP doesn’t deny that it received millions of notices from Rightscorp listing copyright infringements allegedly carried out by RCN’s customers. However, these claims are based on ‘flimsy’ evidence, much of which has been destroyed since. According to RCN, the record labels are trying to force ISPs into taking extreme measures without proper evidence.
“In a sane world, only actual, verifiable evidence of copyright infringement would provide a sufficient basis for an ISP to terminate the internet access of a customer. But that is not the world the Record Labels and the RIAA want to live in,” RCN writes.
“Instead of actually policing their copyrights — and identifying and proving claims of direct copyright infringement — Counterclaim Defendants seek to create an environment in which ISPs, including RCN, have no choice but to indiscriminately terminate the internet access of every customer accused of copyright infringement, or face the wrath of the Record Labels and the RIAA.”
RCN points out that it has a publicly published DMCA policy that describes the minimum requirements for a legitimate infringement notification. Among other things, this includes a PGP signature, to verify that the sender is legitimate, and a valid copyright registration number. Rightscorp’s notices lacked both.
The ISP informed Rightscorp about these deficiencies and pointed the company to its DMCA policy, but that didn’t change anything. The notices simply kept coming in, and RCN could not verify whether they were accurate or not.
“The RIAA and the Record Labels have known all of this for years. Nevertheless, they have allowed Rightscorp to continue sending suspect emails accusing RCN’s customers of copyright infringement while destroying all of the evidence on which those accusations are based.
“Rightscorp’s process for detecting copyright infringement is a sham built on shoddy business practices, the willful destruction of evidence, and a cavalier approach to — if not outright disregard for — the truth.”
Verification of copyright infringement notices is crucial, RCN points out, also because Rightscorp included settlement demands. This is a controversial practice, even among copyright holders.
RCN’s counterclaim cites emails where employees from Sony Record Labels discussed Rightscorp’s efforts “to milk consumers,” expressing concern that “[t]o the average user, it looks like us” and asking if there is “any way to block this activity if we don’t support and don’t benefit.”
However, these same copyright notices are now being used as ammunition against ISPs, including RCN. According to the ISP, Rightscorp wasn’t picked as a partner because its evidence is great, but simply to gain leverage over ISPs and pressure them to disconnect subscribers.
“The unspoken threat is RCN’s reality: accept the new copyright regime or face the cost and burden of defending against a protracted secondary copyright infringement lawsuit seeking vast sums of damages.”
The counterclaim accuses the record labels, RIAA, and Rightscorp of unfair and fraudulent conduct amounting to unfair competition under California’s Business and Professions Code. Unlike counterclaims from other ISPs, there is no allegation of sending false notices under the DMCA.
The end goal is the same, however. By casting doubt over the evidence at the basis of the lawsuit against it, RCN hopes to turn the tables and come out as the winner in this legal dispute.
—
A copy of RCN’s first amended answers and the counterclaim against the music companies, the RIAA, and Rightscorp, is available here (pdf)
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Die “toxische Chemikalie” ist zwei Nowitschok-Verbindungen ähnlich, die kürzlich auf die OPCW-Liste gesetzt wurden, aber nicht selbst dort gelistet
Musk: “It’s a step in the right direction, but they should really aim for full reusability.”
Here's a schematic of the proposed Amur rocket. [credit: GK Launch Services ]
On Wednesday Russia's state space corporation, Roscosmos, unveiled plans to develop a new "Amur" rocket.
The booster will be powered by new and as yet undeveloped rocket engines that burn methane. Just as significantly, for the first time, Russia is seeking to build a reusable first stage. And Roscosmos is targeting a low price of just $22 million for a launch on Amur, which is advertised as being capable of delivering 10.5 tons to low-Earth orbit.
"We would like our rocket to be reliable, like a Kalashnikov assault rifle," said Alexander Bloshenko, executive director of Roscosmos for Advanced Programs and Science.
Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Google rebrands its business app suite to “Google Workspace.”
Google Workspace, the new name for G Suite. [credit: Google ]
Google's business productivity suite is getting its fourth brand in 14 years. This business app suite was originally called "Google Apps for Your Domain" when it launched in 2006, then "Google Apps for Work," then "G Suite" in 2016, and now it's "Google Workspace."
Google says, "Our new Google Workspace brand reflects this more connected, helpful, and flexible experience, and our icons will reflect the same." Google's "more connected experience" shipped two months ago in Gmail, which got a merged interface with Google Chat, Meet, and Docs on the Web. For users of G Suite—erm, I mean "Google Workspace"—Gmail was turned into a one-stop productivity shop, with the ability to open chat rooms and documents right in the Gmail interface.
As part of this announcement, Google Meet video chat is also coming to the individual Google document editors (Docs, Sheets, etc). Right now there is only text chat inside a document, but soon you'll be able to press a video chat button to collaborate.
Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments
McAfee allegedly did not pay taxes on $23M he earned by allegedly committing fraud.
Enlarge / John McAfee gesticulating on his yacht outside Havana, Cuba, during an interview with AFP in June 2019. (credit: Adalberto Roque | AFP | Getty Images)
Noted cybersecurity eccentric John McAfee is under arrest in Spain awaiting extradition to the United States after being indicted on federal tax evasion charges.
The Department of Justice unsealed the indictment (PDF) yesterday following McAfee's arrest by Spanish authorities at Barcelona's airport over the weekend.
The filing alleges that McAfee deliberately not only avoided paying federal taxes from tax years 2014 through 2018 but also tried to hide considerable assets from the IRS. He allegedly hid those assets—including a yacht, a vehicle, real estate, bank accounts, and cryptocurrency—by purchasing and titling them under "the name of a nominee."
Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments
SPD und lokale Stadtnetzbetreiber sehen eine starke Verteuerung für die Mieter beim Kabelnetz. (Kabelnetz, Glasfaser)
The iPhone was conspicuously missing from Apple’s September event.
Enlarge (credit: Apple)
Apple normally introduces each year's new iPhone model at a September event, but the iPhone was conspicuously missing from Apple's September 15 event this year. That event focused on other products, including a new iPad and a new Apple Watch.
Now Apple has announced an October 13 event—that's a week from today—with the tagline "Hi, Speed." It will begin at 10am Pacific Time.
The announcement doesn't specifically mention the iPhone, but it's a safe bet that Apple will introduce the new iPhone 12 lineup at the event. And we have a lot of information from fairly reliable sources about Apple's new phones. Here's how Ars Technica's Sam Axon described the expected lineup last month:
Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments
‘Twas the week before Prime Day and… Amazon decided to put a bunch of things on sale anyway. The online retailer is offering deep discounts on select Echo, Kindle, and Fire devices, and even deeper discounts on a number of subscription ser…
‘Twas the week before Prime Day and… Amazon decided to put a bunch of things on sale anyway. The online retailer is offering deep discounts on select Echo, Kindle, and Fire devices, and even deeper discounts on a number of subscription services. You can score 4-month subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited for $1, or subscribe […]
The post Daily Deals (10-06-2020) appeared first on Liliputing.
SPD und lokale Stadtnetzbetreiber sehen eine starke Verteuerung für die Mieter beim Kabelnetz. (
You must be logged in to post a comment.