Bildmanipulation als Grand Challenge für die Wissenschaft
Thorsten Beck über gefälschte Abbildungen und technische Lösungen zu ihrer Erkennung
Thorsten Beck über gefälschte Abbildungen und technische Lösungen zu ihrer Erkennung
Month: December 2020
NATO-Markenkern Großmachtkonkurrenz
Die “Hirntot”-Gruppe legt ihren Bericht NATO 2030 vor
Die "Hirntot"-Gruppe legt ihren Bericht NATO 2030 vor
Apple’s MagSafe Duo charger finally shows up in online stores
The accessory was announced back in October alongside the iPhone 12.
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The MagSafe Duo charger. [credit: Apple ]
Today, Apple finally began selling and shipping the MagSafe Duo charger, an accessory that was announced alongside the new iPhone 12 lineup on October 13.
The MagSafe Duo is a charging pad that uses Qi wireless charging tech to charge two devices at once. Apple says it supports any Qi-enabled device but, of course, it specifically notes that the Duo can charge any two-device combination of an iPhone, an Apple Watch, or AirPods cases.
The MagSafe Duo charger is just one of a number of MagSafe accessories Apple announced in October. New iPhones have a magnet built into the back that is designed to allow chargers and cases to latch on, and MagSafe iPhones also have built-in sensors to detect what kind of accessory is being connected and communicate with it via NFC.
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Nordatlantikpakt entdeckt Pazifik
Die von einer “Reflexionsgruppe” empfohlene neue NATO-Strategie sieht mit Blick auf China eine engere Zusammenarbeit mit Australien, Japan, Neuseeland, Südkorea und Indien vor
Die von einer "Reflexionsgruppe" empfohlene neue NATO-Strategie sieht mit Blick auf China eine engere Zusammenarbeit mit Australien, Japan, Neuseeland, Südkorea und Indien vor
It’s happening: Starship may fly to 15km as early as Friday
For this test, Starship will ascend above nearly 90 percent of the atmosphere.
Enlarge / When Elon Paul says it's happening, it's happening. (credit: Aurich Lawson / SpaceX / The Internet)
SpaceX has taken a key step toward getting a green light to fly its Starship vehicle to an altitude 100 times higher than the spaceship prototype has previously flown.
On Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a temporary flight restriction for SpaceX to conduct a Starship launch from its facility near Boca Chica Beach in South Texas. The notification allows the company to attempt a Starship hop on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, between the hours of 9am EST (14:00 UTC) and 6pm EST (23:00 UTC) daily. SpaceX must still obtain a launch license from the FAA for this flight.
The company's founder and chief engineer, Elon Musk, has said SpaceX will attempt to fly Starship to an altitude of 15km to demonstrate the performance of three Raptor engines over the course of several minutes. The company's previous flights to about 150 meters, in August and September, used a single Raptor engine.
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‘Copyright Trolls’ Enter Brazil Demanding Money from Suspected Pirates
Thousands of Brazilian Internet subscribers are being accused of downloading pirated copies of films such as ‘Hellboy’ and ‘Rambo: Last Blood’ via BitTorrent. The suspected pirates are receiving settlement offers of 3,000 Real ($575) to make the problem go away. This practice, commonly known as copyright trolling, is not without controversy.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
In recent years, millions of BitTorrent users around the world have received settlement demands from copyright holders.
These so-called “copyright trolling” efforts have been a common occurrence in countries such as Germany, Sweden and the United States. More recently, it started in Brazil as well.
The Usual Suspects
While the letters are sent from another continent, the key players involved are familiar names. The allegedly pirated films, such as Hellboy, Angel Has Fallen, and Rambo: Last Blood, are linked to companies that chase down alleged pirates in several other countries.
Brazilian news site Canaltech wrote an excellent report on the latest copyright troll invasion. The publication spoke to one of the targets, identified as YF, whose mother received the settlement demand as she is the household’s registered Internet subscriber.
“I never thought it would happen to me. My concern was to solve the case on my mother’s behalf, but I was wondering how [the lawyers] got access to all the information they required to send the notification,” YF said.
First Court Case in 2019
As it turns out, the personal details were obtained in court, where the copyright holders requested information on thousands of alleged pirates. While this largely went unnoticed until recently, the related court proceedings got underway last year.
In July 2019 the UK-registered company “Copyright Management Services LTD“, sued Algar Telecom in a Rio de Janeiro court, requesting the ISP to disclose the personal details of several suspected pirates. Since the number of targeted IP-addresses was relatively small, the case remained under the radar.
The same can’t be said for the case that the rightsholders filed in São Paulo this year, targeting subscribers of Claro, a much bigger ISP. Instead of going after a small number of users, this case revolves around more than 50,000 uploads of pirated films.
Guardaley Provided Evidence
These public torrent uploads are tracked by the German outfit Guardaley, which is another familiar name. GuardaLey was behind the record-breaking The Hurt Locker and The Expendables lawsuits in the US and is providing evidence for cases all around the world.
In court, Copyright Management Services used the evidence, which is little more than IP-addresses and timestamps, to request the personal details of the subscribers linked to these accounts. The court eventually signed off on this, after which Internet provider Claro shared a massive database of personal information.
Subscribers Exposed
Initially, the spreadsheet with 70,000 entries, including personal details, was posted in the court docket that could also be accessed by third parties including journalists. That document was redacted after complaints but the copyright holders have full access, of course.
Soon after, the information was used to send settlement requests to the alleged pirates. In the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Brazilian Pirate Party, the copyright holders request a settlement fee of 3,000 Brazilian Real ($575).
This settlement amount is disproportionate, according to YF. Especially since commercial piracy operations are operating throughout Brazil, apparently undeterred.
“I did not make a profit from the film, while there are large pirated film sales operations in any city. Compared to these, I am a small fish,” YF said. The accused pirate did reach out to the law firm offering to pay 1,000 Real instead, but that offer remains unanswered.
Educating Pirates
Rafael Lacaz Amaral, who represents the rights holders, informed Canaltech that his law firm is merely passing on data and sending out letters. The lawyer does, however, stress the ‘educational’ message of the settlement campaign.
“The objective is to make people aware that there is an investment being made in the production and also in the protection of these works, for which to copyright infringers are held responsible”, Amaral explains.
How to Respond?
Opponents counter that this campaign isn’t about education, but about monetization. These types of legal threats can be quite intimidating and some people may simply choose to pay up to avoid trouble, even when they’re innocent. After all, hiring a lawyer to fight the claims isn’t cheap either.
The other option would be to completely ignore the requests. The settlement offers are made out of court and according to the local Pirate Party, no file-sharers have been sued directly, yet.
“Our recommendation is that people do not give in and do not pay. As the old saying goes, don’t feed the trolls,” a Pirate Party member informed Canaltech.
This ‘ignore’ tactic has worked in other countries, but there are no guarantees. However, now that this campaign is out in the open we expect more legal experts will join in with advice and recommendations.
While our understanding of Brazilian law and legal proceedings is limited, it can pay off for defense lawyers to look at Copyright Management Services and the rights it owns or controls. Earlier this year, the Danish High Court dismissed several cases filed by the same company, concluding that it produced no content, distributed none, and wasn’t in a position to sue.
TorrentFreak reached out to a representative of the copyright holders to hear their side of the story, requesting more information, but at the time of writing we have yet to receive an official response.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Caviar will sell you an iPhone 12 Pro with the camera removed (for $5000 and up)
One of the key selling points for the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max smartphones are their top notch camera systems. But some folks don’t want a camera on their smartphones. If you value privacy and/or have the sort of job where you regular…
One of the key selling points for the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max smartphones are their top notch camera systems. But some folks don’t want a camera on their smartphones. If you value privacy and/or have the sort of job where you regularly go places where cameras are not permitted, you might be stuck […]
The post Caviar will sell you an iPhone 12 Pro with the camera removed (for $5000 and up) appeared first on Liliputing.
Physics is somewhat less broken, but still not quite right
Measurements of the proton’s charge radius still disagree, but by less.
Enlarge / One way to measure the charge radius of a proton is to bounce something off it (proton-sized clamp is only available via metaphor). (credit: Jefferson Lab)
How big is a proton? This doesn't sound like a very complicated question, but it's one that turned out to have the potential to wreck a lot of modern physics. That's because different methods of measuring the proton's charge radius produced results that disagreed—and not just by a little bit: the answers were four standard deviations apart. But now, a new and potentially improved measurement brings them much closer to agreement, although not quite close enough that we can consider the issue resolved.
We seem to have a problem
There are a couple of ways to measure a proton's charge radius. One is to bounce other charged particles off the proton and measure its size based on their deflections. Another is to explore how the proton's charge influences the behavior of an electron orbiting it in a hydrogen atom, which consists of only a single proton and electron. The exact energy difference between different orbitals is the product of the proton's charge radius. And, if an electron transitions from one orbital to another, it'll emit (or absorb) a photon with an energy that corresponds to that difference. Measure the photon, and you can work back to the energy difference and thus the proton's charge radius.
(The actual wavelength depends on both the charge radius and a physical constant, so you actually need to measure the wavelengths of two transitions in order to produce values for both the charge radius and the physical constant. But for the purposes of this article, we'll just focus on one measurement.)
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Senate rushes to confirm Trump FCC nominee in order to hinder Biden admin
Democrats fight nomination, hoping for 2-1 FCC majority when Biden is sworn in.
Enlarge / Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) at an FCC oversight hearing held by the Senate Commerce Committee on June 24, 2020. (credit: Getty Images | Washington Post)
Senate Republicans are rushing to confirm President Donald Trump's nominee to the Federal Communications Commission in order to create a 2-2 deadlock for the Biden FCC.
In a 14-12 party-line vote today, the Senate Commerce Committee approved Trump's nomination of Nathan Simington. If Simington is confirmed by the full Senate, the FCC would be deadlocked at two Republicans and two Democrats after the upcoming departures of Chairman Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly. To get a 3-2 majority on the FCC, President-elect Joe Biden would have to nominate a Democrat after taking office and hope that the Senate confirms the nomination.
Senate Democrats said today that Simington is not qualified to be an FCC commissioner and that he misrepresented his work in the Trump administration during the committee's confirmation process.
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EU throws shade as UK approves COVID-19 vaccine after 10-day review
“The idea is not to be first but to have a safe and effective vaccine.”
Enlarge / UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson poses for a photograph with a vial of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University COVID-19 candidate vaccine, known as AZD1222, at Wockhardt's pharmaceutical manufacturing facility on November 30, 2020 in Wrexham, Wales. (credit: Getty | WPA Pool)
Regulators and health officials in the United Kingdom are waving the Union Jack today, celebrating being the first country to approve the COVID-19 vaccine developed by US-based pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and German biotech firm BioNTech.
The frontrunner vaccine is under review in regulatory agencies around the world, including the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Union’s European Medicines Agency. But the UK was the first to give the vaccine the green-light after a remarkably short 10-day review. In non-pandemic times, such reviews typically take months.
“The UK was the first country to sign a deal with Pfizer/BioNTech—now we will be the first to deploy their vaccine,” UK Business Secretary Alok Sharma wrote in a tweet. “In years to come, we will remember this moment as the day the UK led humanity’s charge against this disease.”
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