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Google announced last year that it was replacing Google Play Music with YouTube Music and shutting down the older online music streaming service. But before pulling the plug, the company launched tools that would let you transfer your data to YouTube …
Google announced last year that it was replacing Google Play Music with YouTube Music and shutting down the older online music streaming service. But before pulling the plug, the company launched tools that would let you transfer your data to YouTube Music and/or download any music you’d uploaded to Google Play’s cloud storage. And you’re […]
The post Last call to export your Google Play Music data (it shuts down Feb 24) appeared first on Liliputing.
The Pixel 5a design is a case of “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”
The Pixel... 5a? It looks exactly like all the other recent Pixels. [credit: Steve Hemmerstoffer ]
Steve Hemmerstoffer, aka OnLeaks, is back with our first look at a render of Google's next midrange phone, the Pixel 5a. Hemmerstoffer previously nailed the design of the Pixel 4a all the way back in January 2020, so it's smart to take his Pixel 5a info seriously.
There really isn't much to see in the renders since the Pixel 5a looks identical to previous Pixel devices like the Pixel 4a 5G and the Pixel 5, and it isn't that much different from the Pixel 4a. In this case, Google isn't fixing what isn't broken. The design looks perfectly modern with slim bezels and a hole-punch camera, and there's really no need to demand change for change's sake.
Like a few other midrange phones, the Pixel 5a offers some design decisions you might actually prefer to a flagship smartphone. There's a flat-screen without any curved sides, a headphone jack, and a rear capacitive fingerprint reader. Hemmerstoffer says the phone has a plastic back, stereo speakers, and a 6.2-inch display, which is a size increase over the 5.8-inch Pixel 4a.
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The new laptops launch this spring.
The front of the ThinkPad X13. [credit: Lenovo ]
Today, Lenovo announced a broad overhaul of its ThinkPad laptop lineup, led by the popular X13 and X13 Yoga.
Lenovo has added many features previously seen in its X1 Nano model to various other laptops across the ThinkPad line. Among those is a continuing shift to 16:10 displays, which most productivity users will greatly appreciate compared to the more media-focused 16:9 aspect ratio found in recent prior models.
There's also human-presence detection; the laptops use a radar sensor to detect when you're sitting down in front of them, and they wake up accordingly. And of course, like so many similar laptops in this day and age, you can get these machines with fingerprint readers built into the power buttons now.
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A few years after launching the Asus PN40 line of small form-factor desktop computers with fanless designs and support for low-power 6-watt Intel Celeron or Pentium Silver chips, Asus is preparing to launch a new model called the Asus PN41. It will li…
A few years after launching the Asus PN40 line of small form-factor desktop computers with fanless designs and support for low-power 6-watt Intel Celeron or Pentium Silver chips, Asus is preparing to launch a new model called the Asus PN41. It will likely be virtually identical to its predecessor on the outside, but under the […]
The post Asus PN41 fanless mini PC with Intel Jasper Lake chips coming soon appeared first on Liliputing.
Australian Facebook users’ News Feeds can once again have actual news in them.
Enlarge / Facebook's Menlo Park, California, headquarters as seen in 2017. (credit: Jason Doiy | Getty Images)
Facebook has apparently emerged victorious from its standoff with the entire nation of Australia, as lawmakers in that country have agreed to amend a proposed law that would have required Facebook to pay publishers for news content linked on its platform.
The social networking giant last week banned all news posts both in and from Australia to protest a bill under discussion in Parliament. Users inside Australia became unable to share news links of any kind from any source, and users outside Australia became unable to share links from Australian media. Facebook at the time argued that the proposed law "fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content."
Facebook's ban turned out to be an extremely blunt instrument, blocking sharing not only of news inside Australia but also of public communications from the government, pages for nonprofit organizations and charities, and other Australian organizations that tried to share links to off-Facebook sites. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison blasted Facebook over the ban, saying last week, "We will not be intimidated by BigTech seeking to pressure our Parliament as it votes on our important News Media Bargaining Code."
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Best Buy is running a Flash sale with deep discounts on hundreds of products including laptops, phones, tablets, speakers, headphones, and other accessories. Some of the deals look suspiciously like the same prices the store was offering yesterday, bu…
Best Buy is running a Flash sale with deep discounts on hundreds of products including laptops, phones, tablets, speakers, headphones, and other accessories. Some of the deals look suspiciously like the same prices the store was offering yesterday, but other deals are brand new. Here are some of the day’s best deals. Windows laptops Asus […]
The post Daily Deals (2-23-2021) appeared first on Liliputing.
The company’s blockchain business “never became operational,” SEC says.
Enlarge (credit: Lipton / Timothy B. Lee)
Back in 2017, we reported on the bizarre story of the Long Island Iced Tea Company rebranding itself as the Long Blockchain Corp. This happened at the peak of the last big blockchain boom, with bitcoin's price approaching $20,000 and dubious initial coin offerings raising millions of dollars. The name change led to an immediate tripling of the company's stock.
Beyond the name change, the Long Blockchain Corp's blockchain strategy was vague. The company said it was "shifting its primary corporate focus toward the exploration of and investment in opportunities that leverage the benefits of blockchain technology."
The company initially planned to buy bitcoin mining equipment, but those plans were scrapped within weeks. The NASDAQ stock exchange soon got fed up and booted the company, forcing investors to trade the stock over the counter.
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A class-action lawsuit filed by musician Maria Schneider and Pirate Monitor claims that YouTube restricts access to takedown tools and fails to act against repeat infringers. However, YouTube is steadily picking the case apart, including by identifying the operator of a “shell company” plaintiff whose earlier work will be familiar to fans of The Simpsons.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Last summer, Grammy award-winning musician Maria Schneider and entity calling itself ‘Pirate Monitor’ filed a class action lawsuit against YouTube.
They accused YouTube of failing in its copyright responsibilities by denying smaller artists from accessing its takedown tools (Content ID), failing to terminate repeat infringers, and profiting from piracy. YouTube was not impressed.
In an early fightback, YouTube said that Pirate Monitor and/or its agents had opened bogus YouTube accounts to upload its own videos and then filed takedown notices against the same content claiming that its rights had been infringed. This, YouTube said, was a ploy to gain access to its Content ID system after Pirate Monitor had been previously denied.
Early January there were signs that the claims against YouTube were starting to unravel. YouTube said that there was no legal basis to allow Pirate Monitor to access Content ID and Schneider already has access to Content ID through her publishing agent, who had used it for years on her behalf. Furthermore, YouTube added that the original complaint failed to allege even a “single instance of infringement” for Schneider’s works and in any event, Schneider’s publishing agent had already granted YouTube a license to use all of her musical works, effectively negating all copyright claims.
With arguments over discovery continuing, YouTube has now amended its counterclaim. The additional details appear to undermine the case against Pirate Monitor further still, with allegations that the company and its operator are behind an elaborate and unlawful scheme to manipulate YouTube to support a lawsuit.
Right off the bat, YouTube identifies the person it believes is behind Pirate Monitor Ltd/Pirate Monitor LLC – Hungarian film director and California resident Gábor Csupó.
While not mentioned in YouTube’s filing, information online indicates that Csupó is the founder of animation studio Klasky Csupo, which produced shows like Rugrats, Duckman, Stressed Eric, and Aaahh!!! Real Monsters. Klasky Csupo also animated The Simpsons cartoons that first appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show. The company continued its involvement in The Simpsons for its first two seasons.
YouTube says that Pirate Monitor is refusing to cooperate with discovery but it has managed to determine that Pirate Monitor has no employees other than Csupó, who presides over an “inadequately capitalized shell corporation” that “disregards corporate formalities” and was set up for the purposes of the action against YouTube.
“Csupó created Pirate Monitor LTD after his personal liability for the acts alleged herein first arose, and his misuse of the corporate form is continuing. As a result, Csupó is responsible, and personally liable for, not only his own actions, but the acts of Pirate Monitor LTD as well,” YouTube writes.
According to YouTube, Pirate Monitor, Csupó and/or their agents opened YouTube accounts using bogus account information to upload videos. YouTube says this was done to mask the fact that those who subsequently filed copyright complaints to have the same content taken down were acting in concert. YouTube identifies two dozen accounts (all with Gmail addresses including the phrase ‘ransomnova’) that were created via an IP address in Pakistan and used to upload videos listed in the original complaint.
At the time, YouTube says it was unaware of the connection between Pirate Monitor, Csupó, and the ‘Ransomnova’ accounts, so when it received around 1,800 DMCA takedown notices from Pirate Monitor and Csupó, it took the necessary action to remove the allegedly-infringing videos. It appears they were effectively taking down their own content, ostensibly to gain access to YouTube’s Content ID system.
YouTube says that Pirate Monitor and Csupó are in possession of information that would reveal their “unlawful scheme” but to date has refused to provide anything in response to discovery requests.
“While withholding from YouTube all relevant information they possess, Pirate Monitor and Csupó have never denied that they and/or their agents were responsible for creating the Ransom Nova accounts. They have never denied that they and/or their agents uploaded through those accounts the very same videos that they then promptly claimed in DMCA takedown notices were infringing,” YouTube informs the court.
But even without cooperation, YouTube says it already has “overwhelming evidence” that Pirate Monitor and Csupó operated the accounts, either directly or indirectly. YouTube says that the clips uploaded were mostly 31 seconds long and did not correspond to particular moments from the films they came from.
Furthermore, they were given nondescript names, suggesting that the uploader didn’t intend regular YouTube users to find them. Nevertheless, Pirate Monitor and Csupó did manage to find them, and sent takedown notices within a few days of the uploads, despite many of the videos failing to clock up even a single view on YouTube.
“In other words, Pirate Monitor and Csupó knew that the videos for which they sent takedown notices were on the YouTube service without having to actually view them. That is because Pirate Monitor and Csupó were responsible for having uploaded those videos in the first place,” YouTube notes.
YouTube alleges that when Pirate Monitor, Csupó and/or their agents uploaded supposedly infringing videos to YouTube, they attempted to conceal their identities by uploading from a Pakistani IP address. However, when taking that same content down, they had no reason to do so, sending DMCA takedown notices from a Hungarian IP address.
then, on November 12, 2019, YouTube says that someone logged into one of the Ransom Nova accounts – not from the usual Pakistani IP address – but from the same Hungarian IP address used to send the takedown notices.
“In other words, RansomNova7 was sharing a computer and/or unique Internet connection with Pirate Monitor and Csupó in Hungary on the same day (and in fact, at almost the same time) that Pirate Monitor and Csupó were using that same computer and/or Internet connection to send takedown notices to YouTube,” the company alleges.
This allegation is not new but YouTube now goes further by naming the individual behind the ‘RansomNova’ accounts. Based on email address information supplied to YouTube, the platform was able to identify Sarfraz Arshad Khan, a resident of Pakistan who advertises himself as a computer services freelancer with expertise in the promotion of content on YouTube.
Khan’s LinkedIn profile is posted under the name ‘Ransom Nova’ and YouTube believes he was hired by Pirate Monitor and Csupó to upload the ‘pirate’ videos which were later taken down based on allegations that they infringed copyright.
Based on the above, YouTube demands damages against Pirate Monitor LTD, Pirate Monitor LLC, and Gábor Csupó to compensate YouTube for the harm caused by their conduct.
YouTube also requests damages against the same for acting fraudulently and requests an injunction to prevent any similar behavior moving forward.
YouTube’s amended counterclaim can be found here (pdf)
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Tired of everything being 4.5+ stars on Amazon? We’ll show you the real winners.
Enlarge / Both portable SSDs were great—as were the SanDisk thumb drives, each in their own price and performance class. The other thumb drives... not so much. (credit: Jim Salter)
If you shop for thumb drives on Amazon, you'll discover one thing very quickly—they pretty much all have 4.5+ star overall reviews, but the top reviews all tend to be very, very negative. This isn't much help to somebody trying to look for the best gear to buy, of course—and neither are the scads of "review guides" scattered across the net, which seem to take manufacturer numbers based on raw interface speeds at face value.
This is a problem that wound up biting me pretty hard personally since becoming Ars Technica's newest technology reporter. Properly testing a laptop means loading about 13GiB's worth of benchmark utilities on it. This is normally something I'd do across the network... but new laptops tend not to have Ethernet jacks in the first place. That generally leaves either Wi-Fi or thumb drives—and I don't want to screw up my family's Wi-Fi experience while I'm testing.
Today, we're going to do a little real-world demonstration to help guide you in your portable storage purchases. We're not looking for super high-end hard drive replacements, here—only those under $100 (in some cases, under $10!) and hopefully those with effective sneakernet tools.
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Huawei hat die Ruralstar-Mofilfunkstation für Entwicklungsländer verbessert. Sie verbraucht jetzt weniger Energie und kann aus der Ferne konfiguriert werden. (Huawei, UMTS)
Huawei hat die Ruralstar-Mofilfunkstation für Entwicklungsländer verbessert. Sie verbraucht jetzt weniger Energie und kann aus der Ferne konfiguriert werden. (
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