Month: April 2022

Lithium costs a lot of money—so why aren’t we recycling lithium batteries?

The nascent recycling industry needs to economically deconstruct lots of formats.

Image of batteries arranged in the outline of a recycling symbol.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Earth Day is April 22, and its usual message—take care of our planet—has been given added urgency by the challenges highlighted in the latest IPCC report. This year, Ars is taking a look at the technologies we normally cover, from cars to chipmaking, and finding out how we can boost their sustainability and minimize their climate impact.

Electric vehicles, power tools, smartwatches—Lithium-ion batteries are everywhere now. However, the materials to make them are finite, and sourcing them has environmental, humanitarian, and economic implications. Recycling is key to addressing those, but a recent study shows most Lithium-ion batteries never get recycled.

Lithium and several other metals that make up these batteries are incredibly valuable. The cost of raw lithium is roughly seven times what you'd pay for the same weight in lead, but unlike lithium batteries, almost all lead-acid batteries get recycled. So there’s something beyond pure economics at play.

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Amazon is hiring to build an “advanced” and “magical” AR/VR product

Job listings revealed some details about Amazon’s XR ambitions.

The "Sword of Damocles" head-mounted display, the original augmented reality headset, circa 1968.

Enlarge / The "Sword of Damocles" head-mounted display, the original augmented reality headset, circa 1968. (credit: Ivan Sutherland)

Amazon plans to join other tech giants like Apple, Google, and Meta in building its own mass-market augmented reality product, job listings discovered by Protocol suggest.

The numerous related jobs included roles in computer vision, product management, and more. They reportedly referenced "XR/AR devices" and "an advanced XR research concept." Since Protocol ran its report on Monday, several of the job listings referenced have been taken down, and others have had specific language about products removed.

For example, Protocol wrote that the description for the role Sr. Technical Program Manager, New Products contained the phrase "you will develop an advanced XR research concept into a magical and useful new-to-world consumer product." Now simply reads, "you will develop a magical and useful consumer product," though it also says, "our team specializes in inventing new-to-world, category creating products using advanced sensing, display, and machine learning technologies."

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Bugs in >100 Lenovo models fixed to prevent unremovable infections

Exploiting critical UEFI vulnerabilities could allow malware to hide in firmware.

Bugs in >100 Lenovo models fixed to prevent unremovable infections

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Lenovo has released security updates for more than 100 laptop models to fix critical vulnerabilities that make it possible for advanced hackers to surreptitiously install malicious firmware that can be next to impossible to remove or, in some cases, to detect.

Three vulnerabilities affecting more than 1 million laptops can give hackers the ability to modify a computer’s UEFI. Short for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, the UEFI is the software that bridges a computer’s device firmware with its operating system. As the first piece of software to run when virtually any modern machine is turned on, it’s the initial link in the security chain. Because the UEFI resides in a flash chip on the motherboard, infections are difficult to detect and even harder to remove.

Oh, no

Two of the vulnerabilities—tracked as CVE-2021-3971 and CVE-2021-3972—reside in UEFI firmware drivers intended for use only during the manufacturing process of Lenovo consumer notebooks. Lenovo engineers inadvertently included the drivers in the production BIOS images without being properly deactivated. Hackers can exploit these buggy drivers to disable protections, including UEFI secure boot, BIOS control register bits, and protected range register, which are baked into the serial peripheral interface (SPI) and designed to prevent unauthorized changes to the firmware it runs.

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Lilbits: AYA’s next handheld gaming PC has an OLED screen, using an SD card with a PalmOS device, new Intel and AMD chips, and more

Handheld gaming PC maker AYA’s latest model was only introduced a few months ago, but the company is already teasing its next model, which it says will be the first Windows handheld with an OLED display. It’s also expected to be smaller and lighter than other models, and competitively priced. More details will be made available […]

The post Lilbits: AYA’s next handheld gaming PC has an OLED screen, using an SD card with a PalmOS device, new Intel and AMD chips, and more appeared first on Liliputing.

Handheld gaming PC maker AYA’s latest model was only introduced a few months ago, but the company is already teasing its next model, which it says will be the first Windows handheld with an OLED display.

It’s also expected to be smaller and lighter than other models, and competitively priced. More details will be made available in May.

In other recent tech news from around the web, an independent developer figured out how to use an SD card with old school Palm OS devices. It’s not practical, but it’s pretty cool and you can do it yourself if you want.

AMD has launched its Ryzen 6000 PRO processor lineup with enhanced security features for business customers. Intel hasn’t announced its new Alder Lake-HX series chips yet, but details have started to leak about these upcoming laptop chips with desktop-class features. Amazon appears to be developing an AR/VR device. And the makers of the Brave web browser have added a De-AMP feature that lets you browse the web without ever encountering a version of a website that uses Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages.

Keep up on the latest headlines by following Liliputing on Twitter and Facebook and follow @LinuxSmartphone on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news on open source mobile phones.

The post Lilbits: AYA’s next handheld gaming PC has an OLED screen, using an SD card with a PalmOS device, new Intel and AMD chips, and more appeared first on Liliputing.

LinkedIn can’t use anti-hacking law to block web scraping, judges rule

HiQ can keep scraping LinkedIn member profile data as court upholds injunction.

The LinkedIn app icon seen on the display of an iPhone SE.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

In a case involving LinkedIn, a federal appeals court reaffirmed Monday that web scraping likely doesn't violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

The ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit drew a distinction between data that is password-protected and data that is publicly available. That means hiQ Labs—a data analytics company that uses automated technology to scrape information from public LinkedIn profiles—can continue accessing LinkedIn data, a three-judge panel at the appeals court ruled:

[I]t appears that the CFAA's prohibition on accessing a computer "without authorization" is violated when a person circumvents a computer's generally applicable rules regarding access permissions, such as username and password requirements, to gain access to a computer. It is likely that when a computer network generally permits public access to its data, a user's accessing that publicly available data will not constitute access without authorization under the CFAA. The data hiQ seeks to access is not owned by LinkedIn and has not been demarcated by LinkedIn as private using such an authorization system. HiQ has therefore raised serious questions about whether LinkedIn may invoke the CFAA to preempt hiQ's possibly meritorious tortious interference claim.

Judges warn against “information monopolies”

The judges said they "favor a narrow interpretation of the CFAA's 'without authorization' provision so as not to turn a criminal hacking statute into a 'sweeping Internet-policing mandate.'" They also found that the public interest favors allowing access to LinkedIn data.

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Thousands report vomiting, diarrhea after eating Lucky Charms cereal

General Mills says it hasn’t found evidence for illnesses as reports pile up.

A bowl of General Mills Lucky Charms cereal.

Enlarge / A bowl of General Mills Lucky Charms cereal. (credit: Getty | Justin Sullivan)

The end of the rainbow may not have a pot of gold—but a pot of something entirely different.

Thousands of people have reported stomach pains, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea after eating Lucky Charms, the "magically delicious" sugar-coated cereal fronted by a cartoon leprechaun that feebly tries to prevent hungry children from getting his colorful charm-shaped marshmallows. The illnesses have left many wondering if the latest lineup of charms includes hearts, stars, horseshoes, clovers, and tasty infectious bacteria.

The website iwaspoisoned.com, which collects consumer reports of food-borne illnesses, has received more than 3,000 complaints about the cereal from all over the US, most of which are from the past few weeks. Lucky Charms has now received more illness reports than any other individual product in the site's 10-year history, according to Patrick Quade, founder of the site, who spoke with The Wall Street Journal.

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85 ‘Pirate’ IPTV Apps Reported as Illegal But Most (If Any) Carry No Content

Over the years, software players have been developed to play various media types. VLC, for example, is a content-agnostic tool that can play most media, regardless of the source – legal or pirated. Interestingly, a report has been submitted to the European Commission naming 85 IPTV players as illegal piracy tools, despite most (if not all) carrying no pirated video content.

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

IPTVOver the past several weeks, numerous rightsholders have filed submissions to the European Commission hoping that sites and services will be added to the upcoming ‘Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List’.

Today, we look at the submission of Spanish football league LaLiga which has been fighting a prolonged battle against pirates for several years. Regular site-blocking, dynamic injunctions targeting IPTV services and criminal investigations are all part of its toolkit.

In a call for action sent to the EC, LaLiga calls out many pirate IPTV services and illegal streaming sites that make live matches available to the public in breach of copyright. Those detailed in the two images below are undoubtedly illegal services. In at least one case, there are breaches of trademark law too.

laliga illegal iptv

laliga illegal streaming

While these are all straightforward cases, LaLiga goes further by attempting to paint software tools as infringing too.

LaLiga Reports ‘Empty’ IPTV Players to the EC

To access any kind of video content stored either on the internet or a local machine, users need some kind of software to facilitate that. From a basic web browser to dedicated media players such as VLC, many tools will do the job, but when users want to access IPTV streams (Internet Protocol Television), they often turn to tools designed for that specific purpose.

Many tools are available, some free (open source or supported by advertising) and others where a small fee is required. What the vast majority have in common, however, is that they are just video players and mostly come with no content installed ‘out of the box’. When they do carry infringing content, rightsholders almost universally call them ‘pirate streaming apps’, not IPTV players.

Of course, in common with other content-agnostic tools such as VLC, most IPTV players are capable of playing both legal and illegal content. Crucially, that choice is left to the user.

If tools come bundled with an infringing channel playlist (usually in the .m3u/.m3u8 format), that would render them immediately illegal and open up serious liability for their operators. Most developers avoid doing so, but LaLiga believes their software tools are still illegal, even when they carry no infringing TV content.

“The chart below [truncated by TF to include all with more than 500,000 downloads] includes the most relevant player applications, as of the date of this contribution, which amounts to a total of eight-five (85). All of them have the same characteristics and are being monitored by LaLiga. The millions of downloads of all these applications describe the serious threat they pose,” LaLiga writes.

laliga iptv players small

“It is important to note that all of these player applications allow the consumption of an innumerable amount of audiovisual contents such as sports, movies, series TV channels, etc. In other words, this problem affects the entire audiovisual and entertainment industry in general,” LaLiga adds, carefully choosing its words.

Indeed, if we look at all applications that “allow the consumption of an innumerable amount of audiovisual contents” we could start with Chrome, Firefox and Safari, then add Windows Media Player and VLC. The big question is, does LaLiga present any additional facts to back up its infringement claims?

“Illegal Application” IPTV by Alexander Sofronov

Because it’s the most-downloaded IPTV player on LaLiga’s list and presumably a good example of an infringing app, LaLiga highlights the ‘IPTV’ app by developer Alexander Sofronov. It’s available here on Google Play but was previously available via another URL.

In support of its case for a crackdown on this ‘IPTV’ app, LaLiga provides the following screenshot:

iptv player laliga-ss

That was captured when the ‘IPTV’ app was available at its previously-available Google Play URL (copy here via Wayback Machine). This is notable because, for reasons known only to LaLiga, the football league decided to crop out the most important aspect of the ‘IPTV’ app – it carries no channels and no playlist, so users have to supply their own. (see the final line on the uncropped version)

iptv app screenshot not cropped

The European Commission will presumably carry out its own independent checks against all of the apps in the LaLiga list and if they do come with any infringing playlists or TV channels, action will be required. However, the top few listed by the football league don’t seem to fall into that category.

Other “Illegal Applications”

For example, ‘IPTV Extreme’ (here, Google Play) specifically notes “Please don’t ask me for playlists, I don’t have / don’t share / don’t sell playlists!” and GSE Smart IPTV (here) states: “Please note this app does not contain any playlists except sample playlists. User must provide their own content.”

We haven’t tested them all but if any ‘player’ in the list offers infringing content out of the box, a simple DMCA takedown to Google will do the trick meaning that help from the European Commission is not needed. That being said, LaLiga is offering its own demonstrations of why these applications are illegal.

“LaLiga has powerful technological tools developed internally and a team of experts working on a daily basis to detect these illegal applications. Naturally, LaLiga has much more extensive and detailed technical information than that included in this contribution, which could be shown to the Europan Commission if required,” the league concludes.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that the way apps are promoted can play a part in determining their legality. If developers promote their tools for infringing purposes, there might be a case to answer, even in the absence of infringing playlists.

For example, in the case of the ‘IPTV’ app, it is currently marketed with screenshots on Google Play featuring BBC channels. That is probably less problematic since publicly available playlists use the BBC’s URLs which can be legally accessed by those with a UK TV license and UK IP address. However, if developers present lists of Hollywood movies or subscription channels, that would be much harder to argue away.

LaLiga’s full submission, including all of the “illegal” IPTV players can be found here (pdf)

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

Powered chopsticks use electricity to make food taste 50% saltier

Researchers’ electric chopsticks claim to increase perceived saltiness of food.

Japanese Sanuki Udon ,fat straight noodle,lifted up with red chopsticks from soup bowl. Steam looks sharp against black background.Eye level angle.

Enlarge (credit: Getty)

According to the FDA, the average American eats 3,400 mg of sodium a day, despite the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommending less than 2,300 mg per day. Moving down to roughly a teaspoon of table salt a day can make your tastebuds weep from dullness, but what if you could get less salty satisfaction from your salt shaker and more from your utensil?

Japanese food, beverage, and pharmaceuticals company Kirin recently announced that it and a team of researchers have developed a "chopstick device" that uses electrical stimulation to make food taste up to 50 percent saltier than it would otherwise.

The chopsticks send electrical stimulation.

The chopsticks send electrical stimulation. (credit: Kirin)

The qualifier "device" is likely here because these aren't your typical chopsticks. They feature a cable that connects to a power supply, making them bulkier than typical chopsticks and not the kind of utensil you'd expect to be thrown in with a delivery order for free.

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