Month: December 2021

Die Top Ten unter den Sachbüchern nebst einer persönlichen Empfehlung

Die Kleinen haben unter der Pandemie viel gelitten. Jetzt gilt Impfen als Masterplan. Dumme Idee oder sinnvolle Strategie? Ein Netzwerk bemüht sich um Aufklärung

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There is no doubt that over the past 20 years, online piracy has transformed in many ways. While still not completely dead, the original “sharing is caring” ethos is now overshadowed by what is a largely commercial web of for-profit piracy services.

In most jurisdictions, the operators of commercial piracy services commit crimes ranging from criminal copyright infringement to money laundering and fraud. So, by definition, pirate sites are run by criminals. Furthermore, if they do business systematically in even a small team, they can be officially labeled an Organized Crime Group (OCG).

This status elevation of copyright infringers is useful for rightsholders. Instead of expensive and unpredictable civil legal action, law enforcement can be encouraged to engage in criminal prosecutions with the prospect of prison sentences for offenders. None of this is particularly new but in more recent years, the opportunity to ‘upgrade’ pirates in the eyes of the public and policymakers has proven too good to miss.

The problem, it seems, is that Joe Public doesn’t really consider streaming a movie or TV show to be a particularly serious matter. Neither do most people feel that media piracy should be given priority over burglaries, car theft, large-scale drug dealing, violent crime, child abuse or similar exploitation.

But what if there was a subtle way to directly link illegal streaming to the most despicable of crimes, crimes that most people really care about?

The headline of a recent Forbes article promised just that: “Sweden: Up To 600,000 IPTV Users Support Human Trafficking Every Month” it declared. If you don’t worry about piracy then perhaps this will get you to change your mind, it suggested.

Much of the article is focused on Sweden’s problems with IPTV providers, their networks of resellers, and the users who buy their subscriptions. In a nutshell, Sweden should be harder on people who buy pirate subscriptions but it can’t because the law and funding for law enforcement are lacking. The same is true for IPTV resellers, despite the estimated $45m per year they funnel to the “organized crime groups” providing the illegal streams.

It’s completely understandable that Sweden doesn’t have the resources to go after hundreds of thousands of end-users but surely, funding is available to deal with the most heinous of crimes?

“The effects of hundreds of thousands of customers transferring funds on a monthly basis to organized crime groups is being underestimated. Due to their tremendous and continuous incoming flow of funds, those organizations support everything from human trafficking to arms trafficking,” says Anders Braf, CEO at Nordic Content Protection Agency, according to Forbes.

The article goes further still. It cites law enforcement sources that claim pirate IPTV providers are closely connected to other major crimes too, including child abuse and drug shipments. If true, this could be the public relations coup the entertainment industries need but, in common with the overwhelming majority of similar claims made in the past, zero evidence is provided.

According to Forbes, the reason for not backing up the claims is that the interviewed members of law enforcement insisted that details should not be disclosed in the article to protect “investigation tactics.” They could, of course, have cited previous public cases where pirate site operators were also jailed for arms trafficking or, indeed, those where people smugglers were also sentenced for providing pirate streams. Unfortunately, and to the extent of our knowledge, none exist.

Herein lies the problem. If pirate IPTV subscribers are to be convinced that their purchases are causing untold misery, they are going to need more than a few anonymous quotes to change their habits. But, more importantly, there is a much bigger picture than that.

Al Capone, despite a laundry list of terrible crimes, was ultimately imprisoned for tax evasion. So, given that there is no money available in Sweden for dealing with pirate IPTV providers, sellers or customers, why don’t the police concentrate on the bigger issues instead? If they can round up the arms dealers, people smugglers and child abusers (apparently already known to the country’s anti-piracy groups) and prosecute them for those crimes, pirate IPTV disruption should be a welcome by-product.

All of this is more easily said than done, anyone can see that. But, by attempting to link streaming to some of the worst crimes around, it actually draws even more attention to the fact that there are much more serious crimes that are deservedly given priority.

No one is suggesting that pirate IPTV isn’t a big problem for media companies, it absolutely is. To use their terminology, they are having their goods stolen each and every day. Anyone would say the same in their position since millions in profits are at stake, money that – by legal definition – is being unquestionably siphoned off by criminals.

But of course, the general public already knows that, it’s just that they don’t see their viewing as particularly serious. One day, perhaps, they will see some real evidence that will change their minds. We’ll be standing by to report on it in detail but until then, we’ll be taking all such claims with a pinch of salt.

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

The Astro Slide is a smartphone with a 6.5 inch AMOLED touchscreen display, a MediaTek Dimensity 800 processor, 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, a 4,000 mAh battery and support for wireless charging. But those aren’t the features that make this phone unusual.

It also has a physical keyboard that slides out from behind the display, allowing you to use the Astro Slide like a tiny laptop computer. And while it will ship with Android, the phone is also working with mobile Linux developers to ensure that it will be able to support GNU/Linux distributions like Ubuntu Touch.

Planet Computers first unveiled the Astro Slide almost two years ago when the company launched a crowdfunding campaign. But that was also near the beginning of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the global supply chain shortage that was at least partially caused by the pandemic.

So it’s unsurprising that things haven’t exactly gone according to plan – when Planet Computer showcased the Astro Slide during the 2021 Consumer Electronics Show, the company expected to begin shipping the phone to backers in June, 2021. That didn’t happen.

But Planet Computer says its manufacturing partner began mass production of the Astro Slide this month, and the phone should begin shipping to customers in March, 2022. The company is showing off the final version of the phone at the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show this week.

BlackBerry is fully dead, but @planetcom2017 is launching a new #5G (@mediatek Dimensity 800) qwerty angled slider based on classic Psion PDA heritage: the Astro Slide. @showstoppers #ces2022 pic.twitter.com/Tv0zoJzKkv

— Avi Greengart (@greengart) January 6, 2022

This week the company announced it’s also now taking pre-orders for the Astro Slide through the Planet Computer Store. But since the company is charging £719 ($975) for the phone at its store, I’m not sure why anyone would order one that way when the phone is also still up for pre-order for about $650 through an Indiegogo InDemand campaign.

The Astro Slide will be available with multiple keyboard layouts including UK English, QWERTZ German, and Arabic. And Planet Computer has begun testing support for 5G mobile networks in multiple regions including the United States, where the phone seems to work well with T-Mobile and Verizon, but which only seems to support 4G on AT&T so far. It’s also been confirmed to work with DoCoMo in Japan and Telia in Finland.

While the Astro Slide is the most powerful phone from Planet Computers to date, it’s not the company’s first phone-that-looks-like-a-mini-laptop. It’s also not the first to take longer than anticipated to ship.

The company introduced the Gemini PDA in early 2017 and began shipping it more than a year later (after running into some delays). Then the company introduced the Cosmo Communicator in November 2018 and began shipping phones to backers about a year later (although it took a while to fill all orders).

But those devices were more mini-laptops than phones, as they had limited functionality when the clamshell-devices were folded. The Astro Slide has a new design that allows you to use the touchscreen display whether the keyboard is visible or hidden, allowing you to choose whether to use the device in phone or mini-laptop modes.

Here’s a run-down of key specs for the Astro Slide:

Display:	6.53 inch, 2340 x 1080 pixel
Processor:	MediaTek Dimensity 800 (4 x Cortex-A76 + 4 X Cortex-A55)
GPU:	ARM Mali-G57 MC4
RAM:	8GB LPDDR4x
Storage:	128GB
Cameras:	48MP rear, 13MP front
Speakers:	Stereo
Ports:	2 x USB-C, 3.5m audio, microSD card slot
Wireless:	5G (global), WiFi 5, Bluetooth 5.1, NFC, FM radio, GPS, GLONASS
Battery:	4,000 mAh
Charging:	10W Wireless + fast charging (wired)
Biometrics:	Fingerprint sensor (on side of phone)
Keyboard:	Backlit, slide-out, mechanical, with support for 24 language layouts
Dimensions:	164mm x 76.6mm x 15mm
Weight:	300 grams

This article was originally published December 31, 2021 and last updated January 7, 2021. 

The post Crowdfunded Astro Slide phone with slide-out keyboard, Linux support should ship in 2022 appeared first on Liliputing.

The Astro Slide is a smartphone with a 6.5 inch AMOLED touchscreen display, a MediaTek Dimensity 800 processor, 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, a 4,000 mAh battery and support for wireless charging. But those aren’t the features that make this phone unusual.

It also has a physical keyboard that slides out from behind the display, allowing you to use the Astro Slide like a tiny laptop computer. And while it will ship with Android, the phone is also working with mobile Linux developers to ensure that it will be able to support GNU/Linux distributions like Ubuntu Touch.

Planet Computers first unveiled the Astro Slide almost two years ago when the company launched a crowdfunding campaign. But that was also near the beginning of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the global supply chain shortage that was at least partially caused by the pandemic.

So it’s unsurprising that things haven’t exactly gone according to plan – when Planet Computer showcased the Astro Slide during the 2021 Consumer Electronics Show, the company expected to begin shipping the phone to backers in June, 2021. That hasn’t happened yet.

But Planet Computers says its manufacturing partner began mass production of the Astro Slide this month, and the company expects to show off the final version of the phone next week at the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show.

The Astro Slide will be available with multiple keyboard layouts including UK English, QWERTZ German, and Arabic. And Planet Computer has begun testing support for 5G mobile networks in multiple regions including the United States, where the phone seems to work well with T-Mobile and Verizon, but which only seems to support 4G on AT&T so far. It’s also been confirmed to work with DoCoMo in Japan and Telia in Finland.

While the Astro Slide is the most powerful phone from Planet Computers to date, it’s not the company’s first phone-that-looks-like-a-mini-laptop. It’s also not the first to take longer than anticipated to ship.

The company introduced the Gemini PDA in early 2017 and began shipping it more than a year later (after running into some delays). Then the company introduced the Cosmo Communicator in November 2018 and began shipping phones to backers about a year later (although it took a while to fill all orders).

But those devices were more mini-laptops than phones, as they had limited functionality when the clamshell-devices were folded. The Astro Slide has a new design that allows you to use the touchscreen display whether the keyboard is visible or hidden, allowing you to choose whether to use the device in phone or mini-laptop modes.

Here’s a run-down of key specs for the Astro Slide:

Display:	6.53 inch, 2340 x 1080 pixel
Processor:	MediaTek Dimensity 800 (4 x Cortex-A76 + 4 X Cortex-A55)
GPU:	ARM Mali-G57 MC4
RAM:	8GB LPDDR4x
Storage:	128GB
Cameras:	48MP rear, 13MP front
Speakers:	Stereo
Ports:	2 x USB-C, 3.5m audio, microSD card slot
Wireless:	5G (global), WiFi 5, Bluetooth 5.1, NFC, FM radio, GPS, GLONASS
Battery:	4,000 mAh
Charging:	10W Wireless + fast charging (wired)
Biometrics:	Fingerprint sensor (on side of phone)
Keyboard:	Backlit, slide-out, mechanical, with support for 24 language layouts
Dimensions:	164mm x 76.6mm x 15mm
Weight:	300 grams

The phone is still up for pre-order for about $600 through an Indiegogo InDemand campaign.

The post Crowdfunded Astro Slide phone with slide-out keyboard, Linux support should ship in 2022 appeared first on Liliputing.

The Beelink Expand F is a docking station with USB, HDMI, Ethernet, and audio jacks. Plug a PC, tablet, or phone into the dock with a single USB-C cable and you get access to all of them – plus storage.

Under the hood, the Expand F also has an M.2 2280 slot for a SATA3 SSD and a bay for a 2.5 inch hard drive or SSD. The Beelink Expand F is up for pre-order for $149 and up.

The starting price is for a model that ships without any storage, for folks that either don’t need any or who want to add their own. But there are currently three pricing/configuration options:

• No storage – $149
• 512GB SSD – $199
• 512GB SSD + 1TB HDD for $239

If the Expand F looks more like a tiny desktop computer than a typical hub, there are two good reasons for that. First, it needs to be a bit larger than a typical hub in order to make room for laptop-sized storage devices. Second, it comes from a company that’s known for making mini PCs, although this isn’t Beelink’s first USB-C dock.

The company also introduced the Expand X smartphone dock earlier in 2021, followed by the Expand M mobile dock with room for an SSD later in the year.

The Beelink Expand F has a plastic chassis that measures 114.3 x 113.3 x 27.2mm (4.5″ x 4.5″ x 1.1″ and which has a selection of ports that includes:

• 5 x USB 3.0 Type-A
• 1 x USB-C
• 2 x HDMI
• 1 x RJ45 (Gigabit Ethernet)
• 1 x 3.5mm audio
• 1 x DC power input

There’s also a button on the front of the case that you can press to wake the SSD and hard drive storage or put it to sleep. When the light is glowing green, that means the storage is active. When it’s off, the storage devices are sleeping.

Beelink says the dock supports read/write speeds of 440MB/s from a SATA SSD or 140MB /s read and 70MB/s write from a hard drive.

The dock comes with a 19V/4.7A power adapter and can output up to 90 watts of power, which should be enough to charge most low-power laptops, tablets, or other devices when connected.

via AndroidPC.es

The post Beelink Expand F is a USB-C dock that can house an SSD and HDD appeared first on Liliputing.

The Beelink Expand F is a docking station with USB, HDMI, Ethernet, and audio jacks. Plug a PC, tablet, or phone into the dock with a single USB-C cable and you get access to all of them – plus storage.

Under the hood, the Expand F also has an M.2 2280 slot for a SATA3 SSD and a bay for a 2.5 inch hard drive or SSD. The Beelink Expand F is up for pre-order for $149 and up.

The starting price is for a model that ships without any storage, for folks that either don’t need any or who want to add their own. But there are currently three pricing/configuration options:

• No storage – $149
• 512GB SSD – $199
• 512GB SSD + 1TB HDD for $239

If the Expand F looks more like a tiny desktop computer than a typical hub, there are two good reasons for that. First, it needs to be a bit larger than a typical hub in order to make room for laptop-sized storage devices. Second, it comes from a company that’s known for making mini PCs, although this isn’t Beelink’s first USB-C dock.

The company also introduced the Expand X smartphone dock earlier in 2021, followed by the Expand M mobile dock with room for an SSD later in the year.

The Beelink Expand F has a plastic chassis that measures 114.3 x 113.3 x 27.2mm (4.5″ x 4.5″ x 1.1″ and which has a selection of ports that includes:

• 5 x USB 3.0 Type-A
• 1 x USB-C
• 2 x HDMI
• 1 x RJ45 (Gigabit Ethernet)
• 1 x 3.5mm audio
• 1 x DC power input

There’s also a button on the front of the case that you can press to wake the SSD and hard drive storage or put it to sleep. When the light is glowing green, that means the storage is active. When it’s off, the storage devices are sleeping.

Beelink says the dock supports read/write speeds of 440MB/s from a SATA SSD or 140MB /s read and 70MB/s write from a hard drive.

The dock comes with a 19V/4.7A power adapter and can output up to 90 watts of power, which should be enough to charge most low-power laptops, tablets, or other devices when connected.

via AndroidPC.es

The post Beelink Expand F is a USB-C dock that can house an SSD and HDD appeared first on Liliputing.

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Anmerkungen zur medialen und politischen Darstellung Alexander Lukaschenkos und der Flüchtlingskrise an der Ostgrenze der EU (Teil 1)