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Mena Winkler und Ekkehard Lenz über die eine Friedensdemonstration in Berlin, Versionen einer Zeitenwende und weiße Fahnen in der Ukraine.
Der M2-Chip im Test und Neues von Sony und VW: die Woche im Video. (Golem-Wochenrückblick, Games)
Über den Aufstieg – und wer aus welchen Gründen eine Spitzenposition erreicht
Android scamware uses many tricks to sign you up for pricey services.
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)
Android malware developers are stepping up their billing fraud game with apps that disable Wi-Fi connections, surreptitiously subscribe users to pricey wireless services, and intercept text messages, all in a bid to collect hefty fees from unsuspecting users, Microsoft said on Friday.
This threat class has been a fact of life on the Android platform for years, as exemplified by a family of malware known as Joker, which has infected millions of phones since 2016. Despite awareness of the problem, little attention has been paid to the techniques that such "toll fraud" malware uses. Enter Microsoft, which has published a technical deep dive on the issue.
The billing mechanism abused in this type of fraud is WAP, short for wireless application protocol, which provides a means of accessing information over a mobile network. Mobile phone users can subscribe to such services by visiting a service provider's web page while their devices are connected to cellular service, then clicking a button. In some cases, the carrier will respond by texting a one-time password (OTP) to the phone and requiring the user to send it back in order to verify the subscription request. The process looks like this:
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The NVIDIA Shield continues to be one of the most expensive Android TV media streamers on the market, but it’s also one of the most powerful… and one of the most well supported. NVIDIA regularly releases updates that bring bug fixes and ne…
The NVIDIA Shield continues to be one of the most expensive Android TV media streamers on the market, but it’s also one of the most powerful… and one of the most well supported. NVIDIA regularly releases updates that bring bug fixes and new features, and the latest adds support for automatically enabling game mode on […]
The post Lilbits: Elden Ring as a Game Boy title, Asus ROG Phone 6 leaked pics, NVIDIA Shield’s latest update appeared first on Liliputing.
With millions of dollars at stake, the legal battle over the Pulp Fiction “NFT” copyrights is heating up. Quentin Tarantino recently asked the court to dismiss the case because he still owns the rights to the screenplay. However, Miramax now argues that the movie director’s ‘limited rights’ only apply to print publications and not NFTs.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Last fall, movie director Quentin Tarantino announced that he would auction ‘Pulp Fiction’ NFTs to the public.
These NFTs would unlock handwritten scripts and exclusive custom commentary from Tarantino, assets that many fans would like to get their hands on.
NFTs are not without copyright issues, however, as Quentin Tarantino swiftly discovered. Movie studio Miramax, which owns most of the rights to the film, sees the plan as a contract breach and copyright infringement.
In a lawsuit filed at a California federal court last November, the movie company accused the director of attempting to cash in on something to which he doesn’t own the full rights.
“Eager to cash in on the non-fungible token (‘NFT’) boom, as widely reported in the media, Quentin Tarantino recently announced plans to auction off seven ‘exclusive scenes’ from the 1994 motion picture Pulp Fiction in the form of NFTs,” the complaint read.
Despite this legal dispute, the first NFT was put up for auction early this year, selling for over a million dollars. Follow-up auctions were halted soon after but the same can’t be said about the legal battle.
After some early mud-throwing back and forth, Tarantino’s legal team asked the court to dismiss the case last month. According to the defense, Miramax’s claims are ungrounded. Tarantino sees the film as a derivative of the screenplay he personally wrote and still holds the rights to
This week, Miramax responded to the motion, arguing that the star director misrepresented the facts. While he indeed retained some rights to the screenplay, those rights are rather limited.
“Defendants are roughly half right about the rights to Pulp Fiction. As one of the authors of what would become the blockbuster movie, Quentin Tarantino at one point had extensive rights to some elements that ultimately comprised the film.”
“But he assigned and transferred virtually all of those rights to Miramax in June 1993, carving out only a specifically enumerated, limited set of ‘Reserved Rights’ far narrower than Defendants’ Motion suggests,” Miramax adds.
Tarantino is “shockingly” trying to mischaracterize the license agreements by leaving out critical parts, Miramax informs the court. The movie company admits that the director reserved the print publication rights to the screenplay, but not much more than that.
The movie studio says that the 1993 agreement clearly shows that it holds virtually all rights to the Pulp Fiction screenplay. The legal paperwork also carved out a section for the distribution of content in new types of media that had yet to be invented.
That last past wasn’t mentioned by Tarantino’s legal team. Since NFTs did not exist yet in the nineties, these would certainly qualify as a new type of media, Miramax argues.
“Defendants’ arguments rely on an incomplete, misleading factual history of their contractual rights and a strained reading of those limited rights. Put simply, nonfungible tokens, which host and display unique content using blockchain technology, were not (and could not have been) contemplated by the parties in 1993,” Miramax writes.
Whether that is indeed the case is up for the court to decide. However, the movie studio believes that there are plenty of reasons to continue the case. Aside from the screenplay rights disagreement, the NFT sale also used other images and artwork that were directly related to Pulp Fiction.
For example, the early artwork on TarantinoNFTs.com featured iconic depictions of Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta, which have since been replaced with an image of Tarantino himself.
In addition, several tweets from the Tarantino NFT team with alleged copyright-infringing material were deleted as well. The tweets are also listed as infringing examples in the legal paperwork. These alleged infringements alone should be sufficient to support a valid copyright claim, Miramax notes.
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A copy of Miramax’ objections and response to Tarantino’s motion is available here (pdf).
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
The first laptop powered by a processor that uses RISC-V architecture is up for pre-order in China. The “Roma” laptop comes from a collaboration between China’s DeepComputing and Xcalibyte. For now it appears to be aimed at developer…
The first laptop powered by a processor that uses RISC-V architecture is up for pre-order in China. The “Roma” laptop comes from a collaboration between China’s DeepComputing and Xcalibyte. For now it appears to be aimed at developers looking to build and test software on a native RISC-V computer, but it could pave the way […]
The post The first laptop with a RISC-V processor is coming (to China) appeared first on Liliputing.
Fans blast through everything from King’s Quest V to Halo Infinite.
Enlarge / All four of the mascots seen in this SGDQ promo image appear in various speedruns hosted over the past week. (credit: Summer Games Done Quick)
The Games Done Quick series of charity events has long been a favorite among the gaming fans and critics at Ars Technica since it combines classic, beloved video games and carefully studied methods to break them apart in search of high-speed exploits.
This year's summertime installment is particularly special, as it's the first in 2.5 years to take place at a physical venue—albeit with some of the most stringent masking and distancing requirements we've seen in a livestreamed public show in 2022. (GDQ's organizers appear to read the news, which makes sense for a series that benefits the likes of Doctors Without Borders.) Even with precautions taken, its combination of players, commentators, and crowds in the same room has brought excitement back to its broadcasts, which is why we're pulling together some of the best runs from the past week, as archived at GDQ's official YouTube channel.
The event is still ongoing as of this article's publication, which means you can watch it right now via its Twitch channel. The event's final runs, dedicated to Elden Ring, will conclude in the late hours on Saturday, July 2.
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Two executives in charge of Google’s most turbulent products are leaving this week.
Enlarge (credit: Sean Gallup | Getty Images)
Google had a pair of high-ranking executives leave this week. The first was Bill Ready, Google's "President of Commerce, Payments & Next Billion Users," who left to become CEO of Pinterest. The second big departure is Javier Soltero, who was vice president and GM of Google Workspace, Google's paid business app, and was the leader of Google Messaging. Both executives made big changes to Google in their nearly three-year stints at the company. Now that they are leaving, it's unclear what the future of their respective products holds.
Ready was only at Google for two-and-a-half years, where his highest-profile move was presiding over the disastrous rollout of a significant Google Pay revamp. The new Google Pay app was spearheaded by Ready's payments team, led by another recently ousted executive, Caesar Sengupta. The Google Pay revamp brought an app originally developed for India to the US, where the requirement for phone number-based identity came with a huge list of downgrades: The Google Pay website had to be stripped of payment functionality, the app no longer supported multiple accounts, and you couldn't be logged in to multiple devices.
The rollout of the new app was also clumsy. Slowly, over a month or two, users were kicked out of the old Google Pay and had to transition to a new app. The new identity system wasn't backward compatible with the old Google Pay, though, which meant users still on the old app couldn't send money to users on the new app.
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FCC approves Starlink application for Earth stations in motion.
Enlarge / A Starlink satellite dish. (credit: Starlink)
SpaceX has secured US approval to provide Starlink satellite Internet service on moving vehicles, ships, and airplanes. In an order released Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission granted SpaceX's application to operate consumer and enterprise Earth stations in motion (ESIM) throughout the US.
The FCC also approved a request from Kepler Communications to operate ESIMs on ships. Starlink and Kepler will be allowed to provide service on vessels in US territorial waters and international waters.
Starlink offers a service for RVs but says it isn't designed to be used while the vehicles are moving. A version for moving RVs will presumably be offered at some point now that SpaceX has received the FCC approval, which says "SpaceX is authorized to operate Earth Stations In Motion on vehicles throughout the United States." SpaceX is also planning to provide Starlink Internet on flights.
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Der M2-Chip im Test und Neues von Sony und VW: die Woche im Video. (
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