August 2021 – Page 16 – news.buyenne.com

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Lilbits: The Pixel 5a headphone jack gets an official promo

Google did away with headphone jacks in its flagship Pixel smartphones a few years ago, encouraging users to opt for Bluetooth headphones or use a USB-C adapter instead. But the company’s mid-range phones continue to have them. The Pixel 3a has …

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Lilbits: The Pixel 5a headphone jack gets an official promo

The post Lilbits: The Pixel 5a headphone jack gets an official promo appeared first on Liliputing.

“Worst cloud vulnerability you can imagine” discovered in Microsoft Azure

30% of Cosmos DB customers were notified—more are likely impacted.

Enlarge / Cosmos DB is a managed database service offering—including both relational and noSQL data structures—belonging to Microsoft's Azure cloud infrastructure. (credit: Microsoft)

Cloud security vendor Wiz announced yesterday that it found a vulnerability in Microsoft Azure's managed database service, Cosmos DB, that granted read/write access for every database on the service to any attacker who found and exploited the bug.

Although Wiz only found the vulnerability—which it named "Chaos DB"—two weeks ago, the company says that the vulnerability has been lurking in the system for "at least several months, possibly years."

A slingshot around Jupyter

Jupyter notebook functionality in CosmosDB enables many advanced data visualization techniques with relatively little coding experience or effort. [credit: Wiz ]

In 2019, Microsoft added the open-source Jupyter Notebook functionality to Cosmos DB. Jupyter Notebooks are a particularly user-friendly way to implement machine learning algorithms; Microsoft promoted Notebooks specifically as a useful tool for advanced visualization of data stored in Cosmos DB.

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Amazon urges FCC to reject SpaceX proposals for next-generation Starlink

Amazon: Starlink’s plan to have two plans should be dismissed.

Enlarge (credit: SpaceX)

Amazon is urging US regulators to reject an update to SpaceX's plan for a second-generation Starlink system.

Kuiper Systems, Amazon's satellite-broadband subsidiary, says that SpaceX broke Federal Communications Commission rules by "propos[ing] two different configurations for the nearly 30,000 satellites of its Gen2 System, each of which arranges these satellites along very different orbital parameters. SpaceX's novel approach of applying for two mutually exclusive configurations is at odds with both the commission's rules and public policy and we urge the commission to dismiss this amendment."

Amazon summarized its views in a meeting with commission staff and in an ex parte filing on Wednesday that summarized the meeting, saying that SpaceX should be allowed to resubmit the amendment to its application only "after settling on a single configuration for its Gen2 System."

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ACE/MPA Target Pirate Sites Pulling in 1.3 Billion Visits Per Year, Including EZTV

The DMCA subpoena can be a potent weapon for entertainment companies seeking to identify the operators of pirate sites. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment and partners MPA were back in court recently, demanding access to the identities of people behind major torrent site EZTV and several other platforms with more than 1.3 billion yearly visits in total.

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

Global entertainment coalition Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment is engaged in perhaps one of the most far-reaching anti-piracy operations the internet has ever seen.

The group, which has the key Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon and dozens of major content creators as members, has carried out many highly-publicized takedowns. Streaming platforms, IPTV providers, file-hosting platforms and torrent-related entities have all been targeted but that is the tip of a very large iceberg.

At the time of writing, ACE and partners the MPA have seized more than 200 domain names connected to pirate services large and small, a list that is growing every week. These seizures are often proceeded by investigations that involve Cloudflare handing over identifying information after being served with a DMCA subpoena.

As a result, a new pair of subpoenas obtained in the last few days by ACE/MPA may give an indication of which sites and services could soon find themselves in the firing line.

Subpoenas Target Sites With More Than 1.3 Billion Annual Visits

While ACE/MPA regularly target smaller operations, it makes complete sense for larger platforms to get most of the attention. The new pair of subpoenas cover a range of sites and when their traffic is combined, the reason they are being targeted is clear. The 23 domains listed in the subpoenas together pull in more than 1.3 billion visits per year according to SimilarWeb stats.

At the top of the list in pure traffic terms with around 26.5 million visits per month is torrent site EZTV.re. This index grabbed eighth place in our 2021 report of the world’s most-visited torrent sites. The TV-focused platform proudly displays the well-known EZTV branding but the original team was forced out following a hostile takeover several years ago. It now appears that ACE/MPA could be planning a takeover of their own.

Had it not witnessed an unexplained plunge in traffic over the past few months, KissAsian.li would’ve topped EZTV’s traffic in this latest batch of ACE/MPA subpoenas. However, after dropping from 46 million visits per month in May, by July the streaming site was pulling in ‘just’ 24.7 million visits, the majority of that traffic from the Philippines. However, sites of this size are always of interest to the largest producers of movies and TV shows in the world, so this drop in traffic keeps it on the radar.

Another large player, Olevod.com, seems to be on an upwards trajectory. The service appears to cater to a large Chinese audience and was enjoying around 11.2 million visits during February. By July, however, traffic had rocketed to nearer 19 million visits per month, progress that ACE/MPA will be keen to curtail. The same can be said of Dandanzan.com, which also targets a Chinese audience and is currently enjoying around 5.7 million visits per month.

‘WatchSeries’ branded sites have always been a thorn in the side of movie and TV show companies and Watchseries.ninja is no different. The site appears to be decreasing in popularity over recent months but with 5.7 monthly visits in July, is still a significant player.

Spanish Language and South American Sites

Another highly-trafficked site targeted in the subpoenas is Hackstore.net. It currently enjoys around 10.2m visits per month according to SimilarWeb, with 27% of that traffic coming from Mexico. Somewhat ironically, perhaps, our attempts to access the site were thwarted by a Cloudflare blocking message but with in excess of 125 million visits per year, the site is clearly of interest to the entertainment companies.

With around 8.6 million visits per month, Cuevana2.io is next on the list and provides a clear indication that ACE/MPA want to finish a job they started some months ago. Back in May, ACE announced that it had won a major battle against Cuevana-branded sites, which had dominated the pirate streaming arena in Latin America.

What ACE didn’t report, however, is that the most popular Cuevana domains, including Cuevana2.io and Cuevana3.io, were still in business pulling in tens of millions of visits every month. Cuevana3 was targeted in an earlier subpoena against Cloudflare and now Cuevana2 also finds itself in the crosshairs.

Other Spanish-language and South American-focused sites include Assistirseriados.net (4.3m) and Gofilmes.me (2.75m) which are both popular in Brazil and Megadede.se (1.1m), popular in Spain. Fanpelis.org, Repelis24.info, Pelispe.com and Pelismegahd.pe have a few million visits between them and are all popular in Mexico.

Finally there are a few dead or dying domains in the list. Pelisplus.movie did have 20 million visits per month in February but traffic has since fallen off a cliff. Hdfull.cx had 3 million visits in February but has now nosedived to almost nothing. Other sites with low traffic reports include Reboot.tube, Duboku.fun and Embedforfree.co, although the latter may be more significant than reports suggest.

The new ACE/MPA subpoenas against Cloudflare can be found here and here (pdf)

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

Engineering a second genetic code in parallel with the normal one

As if an Android phone could all of a sudden run iOS at the same time.

A cartoon of the process that translates the genetic code in DNA into a protein.

All living things on Earth use a version of the same genetic code. Every cell makes proteins using the same 20 amino acids. Ribosomes, the protein-making machinery within cells, read the genetic code from a messenger RNA molecule to determine which amino acid to put next into the particular protein they are building.

This code is universal, which is why the ribosomes in our cells can read a piece of viral messenger RNA and make a functional viral protein from it. There are plenty of other amino acids, though. While life does not generally use them, scientists have been incorporating these into proteins. Now, researchers have figured out a way to greatly expand the genetic code, allowing widespread incorporation of these non-biological amino acids. They accomplish this by running a second set of everything—proteins and RNAs—needed to translate the genetic code.

A system apart

Non-canonical amino acids can serve a number of functions. They can act as labels so a researcher’s particular protein of interest can more easily be tracked within cells. They can help to regulate a protein’s function, allowing researchers to activate and inactivate it at a specific time and place of their choosing and then observe the downstream effects. If enough of these non-canonical amino acids are strung together, the resulting proteins would constitute an entirely new class of biopolymers that might carry out functions that traditional proteins cannot—for research, therapeutic, or other purposes.

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Daily Deals (8-27-2021)

The annual Intel Gamer Days promotion has kicked off, which means a bunch of PC makers and retailers are offering discounts on gaming PCs and accessories. You can pick up an entry-level gaming laptop for as little as $629, save on gaming mice, keyboar…

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DeSantis’ ban on school mask mandates violates Constitution, judge rules

DeSantis’ controversial ban “does not meet constitutional muster,” judge said.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks at a press conference.

A Florida judge on Friday struck down Governor Ron DeSantis' controversial executive order barring school districts from mandating masks in schools.

Reading from his notes, Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper said DeSantis' ban “does not meet constitutional muster,” according to a CBS affiliate in south Florida. Cooper's ruling has not yet been put in writing, but he said he plans to sign the order Monday. He added that he expects the ruling to be appealed, which DeSantis vowed to do on Thursday in advance of his loss.

In his decision, Cooper sided with eight parents who sued DeSantis, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, the Florida Department of Education, and the Florida Board of Education. The parents claimed that the ban prevented educators from ensuring a safe learning environment for their children and "endangered all Floridians."

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Man robbed of 16 bitcoin hunts down suspects, sues their parents

Alleged perpetrators used malware to send funds to their own bitcoin addresses.

Andrew Schober was almost all-in on cryptocurrency. In 2018, 95 percent of his net wealth was invested in the digital tokens, which he hoped he could sell later to buy a home and support his family.

But then disaster struck. Schober had downloaded an app called “Electrum Atom” after clicking a link on Reddit, mistakenly thinking it was a bitcoin wallet. Instead, it was malware that allowed hackers to steal 16.4552 bitcoin when he tried moving some of his tokens. At the time, they were worth nearly $200,000. Today, they would be worth over $750,000.

Distressed, Schober didn’t eat or sleep for days. He vowed to track down the culprits. After years of private investigations costing more than $10,000, Schober thinks he has found the thieves, and he’s suing their parents to get his bitcoin back. Krebs on Security first reported on the lawsuit.

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