Blue Origin has chosen to continue fighting NASA's selection of SpaceX to build a Human Landing System as part of the Artemis Moon Program.
The company filed suit in the US Court of Federal Claims on Friday and received a protective order to seal the documents on Monday. The lawsuit follows a decision in late July by the US Government Accountability Office that rejected a protest by Blue Origin and Dynetics over NASA's $2.9 billion award to SpaceX to further development of its Starship program.
The new lawsuit escalates Blue Origin's feud with NASA. As recently as last week, senior leaders at NASA and Blue Origin were in talks to forestall such a lawsuit. NASA would still like to include Blue Origin in its Artemis Program, a source familiar with those talks said. However, the space agency does not appear to have come to an agreement with the company .
Am Fall Winterhoff zeigt sich die Herrschaft falscher Ratio und die Schläfrigkeit der Behörden: Nachdenken über Pipamperon, “fügsame Körper” und die Semantik der Macht
Am Fall Winterhoff zeigt sich die Herrschaft falscher Ratio und die Schläfrigkeit der Behörden: Nachdenken über Pipamperon, "fügsame Körper" und die Semantik der Macht
T-Mobile apparently lied to government regulators about its 3G shutdown plans in order to win approval of its merger with Sprint, according to a ruling in a proceeding in front of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). The ruling issued Friday ordered T-Mobile "to show cause why it should not be sanctioned by the commission for violating" a CPUC rule with "false, misleading, or omitted statements."
T-Mobile won approval for its 2020 acquisition of Sprint in part by agreeing to sell Sprint's Boost Mobile prepaid business and other assets to Dish, which is building its own 5G network and reselling capacity from other networks. T-Mobile agreed to make its 4G LTE and 3G CDMA networks available to Dish customers during a three-year transition period from 2020 to 2023, the CPUC ruling said. But T-Mobile now plans to stop providing CDMA network services nationwide on January 1, 2022, and Dish has urged government regulators to force T-Mobile to live up to its commitments.
T-Mobile's false and misleading statements under oath indicated, among other things, that T-Mobile would make its CDMA network "available to Boost customers until they were migrated to Dish Network Corporation's LTE or 5G services" and that Dish would have up to three years to complete the migration, the ruling said.
As long as there is someone asking whether or not a particular gadget will run Doom, there will be someone else who wants to prove that, yes, it will Doom. This week’s installment: an ordinary-looking office phone! It’s not truly an ordina…
As long as there is someone asking whether or not a particular gadget will run Doom, there will be someone else who wants to prove that, yes, it will Doom. This week’s installment: an ordinary-looking office phone! It’s not truly an ordinary office phone — this is a CaptionCall, an accessible phone that features a […]
Dozens of hospitals and clinics in West Virginia and Ohio are canceling surgeries and diverting ambulances following a ransomware attack that has knocked out staff access to IT systems across virtually all of their operations.
The facilities are owned by Memorial Health System, a nonprofit network of services that represents 64 clinics, including hospitals Marietta Memorial, Selby, and Sistersville General in the Marietta-Parkersburg metropolitan area in West Virginia and Ohio. Early on Sunday, the chain experienced a ransomware attack that hampered the three hospitals’ ability to operate normally.
Beginning at midnight on Sunday, the three hospitals started diverting emergency patients to Camden Clark Medical Center. The facility is an hour's drive from Selby, which has 25 beds. Camden Clark is about a 25-minute drive from the other two Memorial Health System hospitals hit by the breach. Another affected facility providing critical care includes a freestanding emergency room at Belpre Medical Campus in Belpre, Ohio.
The highly anticipated new MacBook Pro models with Apple-designed silicon will arrive by this November, reporter Mark Gurman said in his most recent newsletter.
Gurman, who has a strong history of accurately reporting on new Apple products from sources with direct knowledge of Apple's plans, writes that "some hiccups have led to production delays" for the new MacBook Pro computers, which analysts and consumers have been expecting any day now for most of the year.
Previous reports from the supply line suggest that the manufacturing of new Mini LED displays may be a bottleneck. Still, Gurman says that the new computers "should still go on sale by the time the current MacBook Pro hits its two-year anniversary." Context suggests he is talking about the second anniversary of the 16-inch model, not the 13-inch one. That model went on sale on November 13, 2019.
The formation of a gas giant involves a race against time. Planets come into being as newly forming stars heat up, a process that quickly drives all the stray gas out of the planet-creating regions nearby. To create a gas giant, a large, rocky planet has to form prior to this process and generate a large enough gravitational pull to draw in gas before it's all pushed away.
The process should leave planets like Jupiter and Saturn with a solid, rocky core buried deep within the envelope of gas. But confirming that core composition has been difficult. Now, researchers have used features in Saturn's rings to detect subtle gravitational influences from the core. While not definitive, the results suggest that the core is large, and the solid, rocky portion is widely spread out across that area.
A layered look?
Planets like the Earth and Mars were hot enough during their formation to establish a layered structure, with the heaviest elements at the core and lighter materials above. The same should occur in a planetary body that is large enough to draw in a massive gas envelope. As a result, early models of gas giant interiors suggested a series of layers: a metallic inner core surrounded by a rocky layer, and then metallic gasses compressed by the layers of gaseous atmosphere above them.
The preliminary ruling could lead to a ban on Nest Audio, Pixel, and Chromecast.
Enlarge/ Sonos says the Google Home stole its technology. (credit: Jeff Dunn)
Sonos scored an early victory in its case against Google Friday, when the US International Trade Commission ruled that Google infringed five of Sonos' smart speaker patents. The ruling is preliminary and subject to a full ITC review, but it could lead to a ban on Google smart speakers.
In January 2020, Sonos brought a patent infringement case against Google targeting Google's smart speakers, the Google Home, and later the Nest Audio line. Sonos is the originator of Internet-connected speakers that easily hook up to streaming services, while Google speakers combine a similar feature set with voice-activated Google Assistant commands. To hear Sonos tell the story, Google got a behind-the-scenes look at Sonos' hardware in 2013, when Google agreed to build Google Play Music support for Sonos speakers. Sonos claims Google used that access to "blatantly and knowingly" copy Sonos' audio features for the Google Home speaker, which launched in 2016.
However you want to measure it, Sonos is a tiny company compared to the tech giants it regularly battles. The 19-year-old company only has products in the connected speaker market, and it has a $5 billion market cap. Its competitors—Google, Amazon, and Apple—are some of the world's biggest companies, each with a market cap above $1.5 trillion. To make matters more complicated for Sonos, the company relies on both Google and Amazon to do business in search, advertising, and retail sales, and it worried about retaliation from the two giants. Plus, once Amazon and Google entered the market, Sonos was forced to adopt support for both voice assistants in order to compete. Back in 2020, Sonos said Amazon also seemed to be using its technology, but it would focus its legal efforts on Google.
The Montreal-based affiliate network AdCenter has closed shop overnight. The company gives no reason for its sudden decision, which follows a few weeks after an investigation linked the outfit to one of the largest piracy-related scam operations.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Scammers have been around for centuries but, on the Internet, they can reach broader audiences than ever.
Most people are familiar with ransomware, trojans, and the prince who inherited millions of dollars. These ploys are targeted at anyone who’s willing to bite.
Scams can also be more tailored towards a specific audience. This includes people who search the web for pirated content. Malicious actors trap prospective pirates by pointing them to their own streaming portals.
We have seen these promotions in the comment sections of pirate sites but also on legitimate platforms. At the same time, scammers exploit weaknesses in reputable sites to place their ‘offers’ in Google’s top search results.
Expensive Fake Sites
The business model behind these schemes is simple and effective. Through various links and advertisements, people are lured into signing up for a website that offers ‘free’ movies, sports events, or books.
A popular variation of this scheme uses a video player that shows a short movie intro, after which people are redirected to a signup page. As part of this process, they are eventually asked to provide their credit card details to start a free trial.
After completing the registration process, subscribers indeed get access to a movie library. Unsurprisingly, the selection doesn’t include the latest blockbusters that were advertised but relatively unknown licensed films instead.
This isn’t what people were promised and many will immediately cancel their ‘free’ subscription. However, some people simply forget to do so, which results in a $49.95 subscription payment after the five-day trial ends.
The Canadian Investigation
A few weeks ago, Radio Canada’s program Décrypteurs published a detailed investigation into one of the largest pirate scam operations. The research found that a Barbados company called Hyuna International was behind more than 1,100 of these sites.
Hyuna didn’t appear to advertise its services directly, however. The company reportedly used the services of the marketing company AdCenter, which is based in Montreal. AdCenter, for its part, relies on thousands of affiliates who do the promotional work.
When the investigation came out AdCenter dismissed the allegations as false, misleading, and downright defamatory. However, Radio Canada interviewed over a dozen former AdCenter employees to confirm the misleading nature of the subscription scheme and stands behind its findings to this day.
AdCenter Closes Shop
After the initial media storm subsided, AdCenter appeared to operate as usual. However, behind the scenes, there was plenty going on and a few days ago, affiliates were informed that the “AdCenter” brand had been shut down with immediate effect.
“After careful consideration, we have decided to close the Ad-Center brand permanently. We would like to thank everyone who made Ad-Center so successful over the last 10 great years,” the email reads.
It is not clear if the shutdown has anything to do with Radio Canada’s exposé. TorrentFreak reached out to the company asking for additional information but, at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back.
The email mentions that all affiliates will be fully paid out and the AdCenter website is still up and running as well. It makes no mention of the closure but the signup link no longer works and login credentials have been deleted.
“We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you, and we wish you the best of success in your future endeavors. Ad-Center login will be removed as of today,” the AdCenter email ends.
While the AdCenter ‘brand’ has been discontinued, the parent company “Action Media” remains operational, as far as we know. Perhaps a new brand will surface soon?
For now, it is clear that AdCenter closed shop overnight and affiliates will have to find a new home. That’s pretty ironic, considering the following line from one of AdCenter’s recent advertisements.
“The networks I trusted let me down and disappeared overnight. I wasted time, money, and got no closer to my dreams.”
AdCenter Ad
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Scammers have been around for centuries but, on the Internet, they can reach broader audiences than ever. 
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