A new lens technology is primed to jumpstart phone cameras

Smartphone optics have been pretty much the same for more than a decade.

A new lens technology is primed to jumpstart phone cameras

Enlarge (credit: Olly Curtis | Getty Images)

The camera on the first iPhone way back in 2007 was a mere 2 megapixels. And it only had a rear camera; there wasn't even a front-facing selfie shooter. Today, you'll find multiple cameras on the front and back of phones—some of them with sensors as large as 108 megapixels, like the biggest camera on Samsung's Galaxy S21 Ultra.

But while the sensor size and megapixel counts of smartphone cameras have increased considerably in the past decade—not to mention improvements in computational photography software—the lenses that help capture photos remain fundamentally unchanged.

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Gaming sites are still letting streamers profit from hate

Far-right, racist figures monetize livestreams via “donation management services.”

Gaming sites are still letting streamers profit from hate

Enlarge (credit: MrLonelyWalker | Getty Images)

In today's attention economy, platforms are megaphones and audiences are income. Shut off the megaphone and the income goes away. Bad guy go bye-bye. Throughout the last year, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and beyond have reckoned with their social responsibility not to amplify and monetize hate in what has become known as “the great deplatforming.” But what about when the megaphone is off and the cash keeps flowing in?

A WIRED investigation has uncovered dozens of far-right and white supremacist figures who monetize or have monetized through financial services essential to Twitch and YouTube’s full-time gamers: Streamlabs and StreamElements. Booted off traditional streaming sites, these figures have fled to more underground, less-moderated streaming services like DLive, where integrations with Streamlabs and StreamElements let viewers send monetary donations alongside public messages to streamers. Unlike PayPal, which has been cutting off white supremacists since at least 2017, Streamlabs and StreamElements’ role in buoying extremists has flown under the radar.

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Tansania: Deutschland und Kolonialschuld

Vor 130 Jahren wurde die Stadt Tanga von den Deutschen an der Ostküste Afrikas gebaut, damals die modernste Metropole am Äquator. Heute rotten viele Gebäude vor sich hin; weder Tansania noch Deutschland haben Interesse am Erhalt der kolonialen Architek…

Vor 130 Jahren wurde die Stadt Tanga von den Deutschen an der Ostküste Afrikas gebaut, damals die modernste Metropole am Äquator. Heute rotten viele Gebäude vor sich hin; weder Tansania noch Deutschland haben Interesse am Erhalt der kolonialen Architektur. Doch einige Tangaer stemmen sich gegen den Verfall

After Hentai.cafe, Fakku Goes After Owner of Pirate Site HentaiNexus

Former pirate scanlation site Fakku is currently trying to unmask the owner of Hentai.cafe, a site that posts Fakku content without permission. At the same time it appears that Fakku is also targeting the owner of HentaiNexus, a pirate site that claims to be “the largest English hentai publisher in the world.”

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

After launching in 2006 as an unlicensed ‘pirate’ platform, over the years scanlation site ‘Fakku’ managed to grow into something more legitimate.

After offering scanlations of adult manga comics (hentai) for years without obtaining permission from the original copyright holders, the site is now a fully-licensed affair. As a result, it now has to contend with pirate sites offering its own content for free.

Fakku Uses DMCA Subpoenas To Identify Pirate Rivals

As previously reported, last December Eric Green of anti-piracy company Remove Your Media wrote to pirate platform Hentai.cafe demanding that the site take down a comic to which Fakku holds the license. When that request fell on deaf ears, Fakku’s legal representative filed a request for a DMCA subpoena at a court in the Eastern District of Michigan.

The aim of that request is to compel CDN company Cloudflare, which Hentai.cafe uses to keep itself online, to hand over the personal details of its allegedly infringing customer. That doesn’t appear to have happened yet but in the meantime, Fakku is lining up another target.

Fakku Also Targeting HentaiNexus.com

Complying with properly-formatted DMCA takedown notices can be a good strategy for keeping copyright holders at bay. However, it appears that HentaiNexus.com, a site with 2.2 million visitors per month according to SimilarWeb, hasn’t complied with at least one and probably many more.

On December 1, 2020, Remove Your Media’s Eric Green wrote to the site demanding that the comic ‘Eroween Panic’ be removed from the site, since it infringes Fakku’s copyrights. However, despite the notice correctly identifying the offending URL, HentaiNexus appears to have ignored the request. That led to Fakku escalating the matter to court.

In an application for DMCA subpoena filed at the same Michigan court involved in the Hentai.cafe matter, Fakku is demanding that Cloudflare unmasks the operator of HentaiNexus.com, which claims to be “the largest English hentai publisher in the world.”

The information requested from Cloudflare includes billing or administrative records that show the “name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), email address(es), IP address(es), account number(s), credit card numbers and any other electronic or physical documents identifying the name(s) and address(es) or contact information of the operator and/or owner of the Infringing Website.”

Quite what Fakku intends to do with this information once obtained remains to be seen but it’s probably safe to say that the licensed hentai platform’s patience is running a little thin when it comes to dealing with the HentaiNexus operation.

According to Google’s transparency report, Fakku and anti-piracy partner Remove Your Media have filed requests to have more than 245,000 HentaiNexus URLs removed from Google’s search results. While Google rejected more than 35% due to duplicate entries (and another 10% due to content not being in its indexes), that still leaves more than 133,400 URLs on the site that reportedly infringe Fakku’s rights.

All of that being said, HentaiNexus has been experiencing other problems recently too. A few weeks ago, users reported the site to be unstable and in some cases inaccessible. That seemed to have prompted some server upgrades which are now being financed by the placing of adverts on the site.

Whether Fakku will go after more site operators in the same way is currently unclear.

However, if we take a look at Google data listing the domains that cause Fakku the most problems, we can see that hentaishark.com, nyahentai.com, nhentai.net, readhent.ai, hentai4manga.com and asmhentai.com have around 18 million complaints filed against them in total. That makes them potential candidates for future action.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Thinkpad-Tastaturen: 1,5 mm und nicht weniger!

Lenovo hat den Tastenhub bei einigen Thinkpads verkürzt, das Tippgefühl leidet. Auch die Trackpoint-Maustasten haben Verbesserungsbedarf. Ein IMHO von Marc Sauter (Thinkpad, Lenovo)

Lenovo hat den Tastenhub bei einigen Thinkpads verkürzt, das Tippgefühl leidet. Auch die Trackpoint-Maustasten haben Verbesserungsbedarf. Ein IMHO von Marc Sauter (Thinkpad, Lenovo)

Wie Bildausschnitte uns manipulieren können

Wie die Aussage von Abbildungen durch Platzierung und Auswahl verändert werden kann – und was das für Journalisten und Mediennutzer bedeutet

Wie die Aussage von Abbildungen durch Platzierung und Auswahl verändert werden kann – und was das für Journalisten und Mediennutzer bedeutet

Corona-Gesetze: "So etwas in sieben Jahren Bundestag nicht erlebt"

Interview mit dem SPD-Bundestagsabgeordneten Marcus Held, der am 18. November 2020 gegen das Infektionsschutzgesetz gestimmt hat – Die Grünen retteten damals die Merkel-Regierung

Interview mit dem SPD-Bundestagsabgeordneten Marcus Held, der am 18. November 2020 gegen das Infektionsschutzgesetz gestimmt hat - Die Grünen retteten damals die Merkel-Regierung