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Daniel Paul Schreber war für Sigmund Freud ein Fall von Paranoia. Wenn aber die ganze Gesellschaft zum Fall wird, wie steht es dann um die Heilungschancen?
Following the lead of Samsung and Apple, Google is supporting DIY repairs.
Enlarge (credit: iFixit)
iFixit has signed a deal with Google to make Pixel repairs much easier. iFixit.com will sell genuine Google parts individually and in kits later this year. Both companies published blog posts about the collaboration.
Google says that parts will be offered for the "Pixel 2 through Pixel 6 Pro, as well as future Pixel models, in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and EU countries where Pixel is available." iFixit is the leading site for consumers wanting to find parts and instructions on how to fix devices, and soon, it will sell Pixel screens, batteries, cameras, and more. If you don't want to fix the phone yourself, Google points out that it also has authorized repair deals with uBreakiFix in the US and Canada and "similar partnerships with walk-in support providers in Canada, Germany, Japan, and the UK."
Google's deal with iFixit comes on the heels of a similar agreement with Samsung, which is also planning to offer smartphone parts through the repair site. Samsung's partnership with iFixit starts this summer and only covers the S20, S21, and Tab S7+, though Samsung says it wants to expand the program over time. Google's deal with iFixit covers everything back to the 2017 Pixel 2, which is surprising given that many earlier Pixels were made in partnership with Android manufactuers like LG or HTC. Apple is also embracing the DIY repair market with its own in-house parts service.
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Lawyer recruits cable customers for mass arbitration that could be costly for Cox.
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Jeffrey Coolidge)
Cable TV provider Cox is facing hundreds of arbitration demands alleging that it failed to adequately disclose its "Broadcast Surcharge" and "Regional Sports Surcharge" and that it used these fees to raise prices on customers who were promised fixed rates.
The Hattis & Lukacs law firm last night "filed 295 individual consumer arbitrations against Cox with the American Arbitration Association," representing clients in 17 of the 19 states Cox operates in, attorney Daniel Hattis told Ars. Hattis said he aims to file thousands more arbitration cases against Cox, which has an estimated 3.4 million TV customers. The arbitration filings describe claimants as "victim[s] of Cox's bait-and-switch scheme whereby the Company charges customers more for its Cable TV service plans than Cox advertised and promised."
Cox's customer service agreement has a mandatory arbitration clause, which customers can opt out of within 30 days of getting service. "Cox is currently under the mistaken impression that the arbitration clause is a liability shield such that they'll never have to face consequences for their past deception because class actions aren't possible, and consumers won't bother filing a bunch of individual arbitrations for $100 or so in damages," Hattis told Ars in an email.
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The bitumen-coated boat once plied the waterways around one of the world’s first cities.
Enlarge (credit: German Archaeological Institute)
All that’s left today of an ancient boat discovered in 2018 in what was formerly Uruk is the bitumen, black tar that once coated its framework of reeds, palm leaves, or wood. That fragile organic material is long gone, leaving behind only ghostly imprints in the bitumen. But there’s enough left for archaeologists to tell that in its heyday, the boat would have been a relatively slender craft—7 meters long and about 1.5 meters wide—well-suited to navigating the rivers and canals of ancient Sumer.
Archaeologists found the boat in an area that, 4,000 years ago, would have been the bustling hinterlands of the largest city in the world: Uruk. Founded in 5000 BCE from the merger of two smaller settlements on the bank of the Euphrates River, Uruk was one of the world’s first major cities and possibly even the birthplace of the world’s first writing (the oldest known writing samples in the world are tablets from Uruk). The Sumerian King List claims the legendary hero-king, Gilgamesh, ruled from his seat at Uruk in the 2600s BCE, which is not long before the recently excavated boat was built, sailed, and sank.
At its height around 3000 BCE, Uruk boasted 40,000 residents in the city, with a total population of about 80,000 or 90,000 people in the surrounding hinterlands. The area outside the city boasted smaller communities, farms, ancient manufacturing workshops, and networks of canals. Uruk was beginning its long, slow decline by 2000 BCE, around the time our boat was built.
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Lenovo is selling a new 14 inch laptop in Malaysia that’s available with up to a 2,880 x 1800 pixel display, up to 32GB of RAM and up to 2TB of storage. The Lenovo ThinkBook 14 Gen 4+ also supports an optional discrete GPU on some models, and the laptop is available with up to a 45-watt […]
The post Lenovo ThinkBook 14 Gen 4+ laptop supports Intel’s Alder Lake U, P, and H series chips (15 to 45 watts) appeared first on Liliputing.
Lenovo is selling a new 14 inch laptop in Malaysia that’s available with up to a 2,880 x 1800 pixel display, up to 32GB of RAM and up to 2TB of storage. The Lenovo ThinkBook 14 Gen 4+ also supports an optional discrete GPU on some models, and the laptop is available with up to a 45-watt Intel Core i7-12700H 14-core, 20-thread processor based on Intel’s Alder Lake-H architecture.
But what’s a bit unusual is that the same laptop can also be configured with a 15-watt Alder Lake-U processor or a 28-watt Alder Lake-P chip. Basically it’s a single laptop that supports nearly the full range of 12th-gen Intel mobile processors.
According to the Dell Malaysia website, the laptop is available with the following processor options:
These are all 12th-gen Intel chips that use hybrid architecture that mixes a set high-performance CPU cores with lower-performance cores that offer better energy efficiency. This can help extend battery life by allowing the Efficient cores to handle basic tasks, while also offering strong single-core and multi-core performance thanks to the inclusion of some Performance cores and support for using all cores at once for tasks that can take advantage of heterogenous processing.
The difference is that the U-series chips consume 15-55 watts of power and have just 2 Performance cores and up to 8 Efficient cores. The P series chips use between 28 watts and 64 watts and the models Lenovo offers for this laptop have 4 Performance cores and 8 Efficient cores.
Intel’s Core i5-12500H processor also has 4 Performance cores and 8 Efficient cores, but it has a base power level of 45 watts and supports up to 95 watts of turbo power, allowing it to deliver even more performance (at the potential cost of battery life). And the Core i7-12700H is a 45 -115 watt chip with 6 Performance cores and 8 Efficient cores.
Lenovo also offers an optional NVIDIA RTX 2050 graphics card for configurations of the laptop with Alder Lake-P or Alder Lake-H processors, while models with the U-series chips only support Intel’s Iris Xe integrated graphics.
The notebook’s other options include
Models with 28 or 48-watt processors are only available with the higher capacity battery though, and will likely weigh a bit more than the 3.3 starting weight that Lenovo lists for the laptop.
Standard features include a Thunderbolt 4 ports, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, HDMI and Ethernet jacks, a microSD card reader, headset jack, backlit spill-resistant keyboard, stereo speakers and dual microphones.
While the ThinkBook 14 Gen 4+ looks an awful lot like the Lenovo ThinkBook 14 G4+ that Lenovo unveiled during the Consumer Electronics Show in January, it’s unclear if the company will offer the same processor options on that model when it goes on sale in the US later this month.
via GizmoChina
The post Lenovo ThinkBook 14 Gen 4+ laptop supports Intel’s Alder Lake U, P, and H series chips (15 to 45 watts) appeared first on Liliputing.
GitHub received 1,828 valid DMCA takedown notices last year, which resulted in the removal of 19,276 projects. Less than one percent of these projects were reinstated following retractions or counter-notices. The developer platform uses automated tools to scan for abuse, but this technology is not used for copyright infringements.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
With over 200 million code repositories, GitHub takes prides in being the largest and most advanced development platform in the world.
As with other platforms that host user-generated content, this massive code library occasionally runs into copyright infringement troubles.
In some cases, people use code without permission from the creators, while others use GitHub to store pirated books or even music. And there are also developers whose projects are seen as pirate tools or apps, which often leads to copyright holder complaints.
A few high-profile cases have popped up over the years, including the RIAA’s takedown of YouTube-DL, which was later reversed. Other rightsholders were more successful, with GitHub taking down Unblockit proxy service respositories, as well as the reverse engineered GTA games “Re3” and “reVC”.
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. GitHub’s latest transparency report reveals that the platform received a total of 1,828 valid DMCA takedown notices last year. Just a small number of these, 46, were retracted or reversed.
GitHub doesn’t just remove content in response to takedown notices, it can also reach out to developers before taking action. This means developers can sometimes make modifications to prevent entire repositories from going offline.
“That way, if the user removes or remediates the specific content identified in the notice, we avoid having to disable any content at all. This is an important element of our DMCA policy, given how much users rely on each other’s code for their projects,” GitHub notes.
GitHub already posts copies of all DMCA notices on its own website and, starting this year, it also sends copies to Lumen. This central database, managed by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, also archives copies of notices sent to Google, Twitter, and other platforms.
These detailed notices also show how many GitHub projects were targeted last year. This is substantially higher than the number of notices, which can list dozens of projects each.
In 2021, DMCA notices took down 19,276 GitHub projects. This can refer to complete repositories and subsets of code or individual files. In response to counternotices or reversals, 85 projects were reinstated, which means that 19,191 stayed down.
Github notes that this number is significantly lower than in 2020, when 36,173 projects were pulled offline. The company stresses that the number is also relatively small compared to the total number of repositories hosted on the site.
“The number 19,191 may sound like a lot of projects, but it’s less than .01% of the more than 200 million repositories on GitHub in 2021,” GitHub writes.
There is no clear explanation for the drop in takedowns. However, GitHub believes that its response to the YouTube-DL debacle, after which it committed strongly to supporting developers’ rights, may have played a role.
“We are not able to determine the exact cause of the downtick, however, we suspect that a contributing factor is GitHub’s continued focus on standing up for developers’ rights, including the update to our DMCA review process in late 2020,” GitHub writes.
It’s also worth noting that, for the first time, GitHub provides details on its automated scanning filters. The platform doesn’t use these for copyrighted content but it does scan images for child abuse, extremist and terrorist content. This resulted in one hit last year.
“In 2021, out of millions of images scanned, we confirmed automated detection of one account with CSEAI, which was reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC),” GitHub writes, noting that no terrorist or extremist content was found.
GitHub’s full transparency report is available here. In addition to what’s discussed above, it also includes more details on requests for user data, national security letters, takedown requests from governments, and more.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
The Microsoft Store is holding a Spring Sale with discounts on PCs, games, accessories, and more. Deals run through April 21, while supplies last. Best Buy, meanwhile, is holding a 3-day sale that runs from Friday through Sunday, with discounts on laptops, tablets, phones, TVs, and more. Here are some of the day’s best deals. […]
The post Daily Deals (4-08-2022) appeared first on Liliputing.
The Microsoft Store is holding a Spring Sale with discounts on PCs, games, accessories, and more. Deals run through April 21, while supplies last.
Best Buy, meanwhile, is holding a 3-day sale that runs from Friday through Sunday, with discounts on laptops, tablets, phones, TVs, and more.
Here are some of the day’s best deals.
The post Daily Deals (4-08-2022) appeared first on Liliputing.
Partnership to use computational materials science to speed development.
Enlarge / Nissan is hoping that it can use computational materials science to find new battery materials faster. (credit: Nissan)
Nissan is partnering with NASA on a computational approach to developing all-solid-state batteries that don’t rely on rare or expensive metals, the AP has reported.
The automaker, which was the first to market with an affordable, mass-produced electric vehicle in the Leaf, is clearly hoping to make up for lost time. Nissan has floundered of late with its electrification strategy. Its second EV, the Ariya, is scheduled to arrive this fall, some 12 years after the first Leaf was sold. The company hopes that its in-house solid-state batteries will debut in passenger vehicles by 2028.
To get there, the company said it’s opening a pilot solid-state battery plant in 2024. The small-scale factory will be a key step in rolling out solid-state technology; many of the concepts that underpin the batteries have been demonstrated in laboratories time and again, but making the leap to manufacturing often reveals unexpected problems that can take years to solve.
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Pac-Land re-release includes “Pac-Mom” in place of the legally disputed “Miss.”
Enlarge / Who's that Pac-lady in the pink hat, and what has she done with Ms. Pac-Man? (credit: @nickisonlinet / Twitter)
Obsessive Pac-fans of a certain age may remember Ms. Pac-Man's cameo appearance in Pac-Land, the 1984 side-scrolling spin-off that first gave Pac-Man legs. This week's re-release of the game on the Switch seems to have thrown the "miss" down the memory hole, though, an odd retcon that may be the result of the complicated legal history surrounding Ms. Pac-Man's creation.
Pac-Man book contributor Ryan Silberman and artist Nick Caballero were among the first to note the apparent change on Twitter this week. They highlighted Pac-Land Switch screenshots in which Ms. Pac-Man's iconic bow and high, red boots have been replaced with a character sporting pink high heels and a matching hat. The sprite for the baby-sized Jr. Pac-Man has been similarly changed to remove the trademark red bow that was first seen in 1983's Jr. Pac-Man.
Ms. Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man as they appeared in the original release of Pac-Land. The pair have been edited out of this week's Switch re-release. (credit: @nickisonlinet / Twitter)
Leaving the sprites in their original form would have obviously been the simpler choice for Hamster, which publishes the Arcade Archives series on Switch. And the description for Pac-Land's Arcade Archives re-release notes that the "series has faithfully reproduced many classic Arcade masterpieces," making such a minor change even more bizarre. What's going on here?
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Drei Gorillas-Fahrer haben die Klage gegen ihre Entlassung verloren. Der Richter versuchte jede Diskussion über das Streikrecht zu unterbinden. (Arbeit, Lieferdienst)
Drei Gorillas-Fahrer haben die Klage gegen ihre Entlassung verloren. Der Richter versuchte jede Diskussion über das Streikrecht zu unterbinden. (Arbeit, Lieferdienst) 
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