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The Onyx BOOX Leaf2 is an eBook reader with a 7 inch, 1680 x 1264 pixel E Ink Carta black and white display with 300 pixels per inch, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and Android-based software. In other words, it’s similar in a lot of ways to the f…
The Onyx BOOX Leaf2 is an eBook reader with a 7 inch, 1680 x 1264 pixel E Ink Carta black and white display with 300 pixels per inch, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and Android-based software. In other words, it’s similar in a lot of ways to the first-gen Onyx BOOX Leaf that launched […]
The post Onyx BOOX Leaf2 is a 7 inch eReader with Android 11, page turn buttons and $200 price tag appeared first on Liliputing.
Bei den Zwischenwahlen zum US-Kongress könnten die Republikaner die Mehrheit erhalten. Damit droht im mächtigsten Land der Welt der politische Betrieb erneut einzurasten. Über Ursachen und Konsequenzen einer absurden Macht-Mechanik.
In the small study, 44% of untreated, recovered people had rebound COVID-19 symptoms.
Enlarge / Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), adjusts her protective mask during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)
Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has experienced a COVID-19 rebound—a return of mild symptoms and positive tests after completing a course of the antiviral drug Paxlovid and testing negative—the CDC announced today.
Walensky first tested positive on October 21 and experienced mild symptoms. She completed a five-day course of Paxlovid, recovered, and tested negative. But on Sunday, October 30, her mild symptoms returned, and she once again tested positive, the agency reported.
Walensky now joins the ever-growing ranks of people reporting rebounds after Paxlovid, including high-profile rebounders such as President Biden and top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci. But, according to a small study published in JAMA Network Open last week, rebounds may be surprisingly common in all COVID-19 cases—even those not treated with Paxlovid.
Ghostwriter generates, completes, or transforms code in 16 languages, similar to GitHub Copilot.
Enlarge / Replit's Ghostwriter AI tool can assist you while you code. (credit: Replit)
Today, Replit announced Ghostwriter, an AI-powered programming assistant that can make suggestions to make coding easier. It works within Replit's online development environment and resembles GitHub Copilot's ability to recognize and compose code in various programming languages to accelerate the development process.
According to Replit, Ghostwriter works by using a large language model trained on millions of lines of publicly available code. This baked-in data allows Ghostwriter to make suggestions based on what you've already typed while programming in Replit's IDE. When you see a suggestion you like, you can "autocomplete" the code by pressing the Tab key.
Replit says that Ghostwriter performs best with JavaScript and Python but supports 16 languages, including C, Java, Perl, Python, and Ruby. It also supports HTML and CSS for web development and SQL for database queries.
CEO Tim Cook confirmed Apple’s product lineup is “set” for the year.
Enlarge / The 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro from 2021. (credit: Samuel Axon)
For months, there have been rumors that Apple would launch new, M2-based Macs—specifically MacBook Pro and Mac mini models with new M2 Pro or M2 Max chips—sometime before the end of this year. But now two usually reliable insiders and Apple CEO Tim Cook are signaling that those new computers will arrive sometime in early March instead.
During a recent call with investors last week, Cook began a sentence with "as we approach the holiday season, with our product lineup set," suggesting that there will be no new hardware announcements from Apple in 2022.
Further, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo tweeted several weeks back that he expects the new MacBook Pro models in early 2023.
Unconfirmed media report says Russian spies hacked former UK prime minster’s phone.
Enlarge / Liz Truss, then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, taking a picture on her phone on May 1, 2018, in London. (credit: Getty Images)
British opposition politicians are calling for an "urgent investigation" into an unconfirmed media report that spies suspected of working for Russia hacked the phone of former Prime Minister Liz Truss while she was serving as foreign minister.
The report, published by the UK's Mail on Sunday newspaper, cited unnamed people speaking on condition of anonymity saying that Truss' personal cell phone had been hacked "by agents suspected of working for the Kremlin." The attackers acquired "up to a year's worth of messages," discussing "highly sensitive discussions with senior international foreign ministers about the war in Ukraine, including detailed discussions about arms shipments."
The Mail said that the hack was discovered during the Conservative Party's first leadership campaign over the summer, which ultimately named Truss prime minister. The discovery was reportedly "suppressed" by Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister at the time of the campaign, and Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, with the latter reportedly imposing a news blackout.
Publishers and authors are not happy with Z-Library, an online repository offering millions of pirated books for free download. The site’s userbase is growing rapidly, in part helped by TikTok users’ viral videos. Following a recent complaint from the Authors Guild, TikTok has banned the hashtag #zlibrary pending further review. But will that help?
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
While movie and music piracy tends to generate the most headlines, the publishing industry is facing similar issues.
Pretty much every book ever written is available online for free, including through so-called ‘shadow libraries’.
Z-Library is one of the largest shadow libraries on the Internet. Through a variety of domain names, the site offers over 11 million books and 84 million articles. This has attracted a steady userbase and many millions of monthly visitors.
All books can be accessed at no cost but Z-Library also accepts donations. These donations provide a month of access to a variety of additional features, including more search results and the option to send books to the Kindle ebook reader.
Publishers and authors are not happy with the site and are actively trying to limit its exposure. Just recently, publishers won a site blocking order in France and they regularly target the site with takedown notices as well.
Z-Library was also mentioned in several recommendations to the US Trade Representative’s overview of notorious piracy markets. In some instances, third-party platforms such as TikTok were called out as well.
According to the Authors Guild, Z-Library has emerged as a vastly popular, high-volume source of illegal ebook downloads in recent years. This growth is facilitated by users who openly advertise the site on social media, TikTok included.
“The hashtag #zlibrary on popular social media platform TikTok has 4 million views, in reference to the countless videos posted by college and high school students and others across the world promoting it as the go-to place for free ebooks,” the Guild writes.
The USTR submission provides a detailed overview of the site and also contains comments from writers. They include NYT-bestselling author Sarina Bowen, who highlights TikTok’s ‘role’ in popularizing book piracy.
“Z-Library is killing us. A book we release in the morning is up on Z-library by lunchtime. All my books are up there,” Bowen says. “This isn’t the only site that hurts us, but it’s the site that keeps showing up in Tiktok videos.”
TikTok is not happy with this characterization. While the Authors Guild doesn’t recommend branding the platform as a notorious market, the social media platform responded to these and other rightsholder complaints in a letter to the USTR.
The Chinese company stresses that it takes the concerns of intellectual property owners seriously. It has procedures in place to prevent piracy and counterfeiting and has taken action in response to the Z-Library complaint.
TikTok says that it’s not doing anything wrong and like other online platforms, responds to takedown notices from rightsholders. The company says it also ‘bans’ problematic hashtags and after the Authors Guild complaint, #Zlibrary was blocked on the platform.
“Reducing user discoverability of content that violates our Community Guidelines is of paramount importance. Accordingly, TikTok proactively blocks search results for terms that violate our Community Guidelines, including terms that relate to counterfeit goods such as #designerdupe and #designerreplicas.
“We also recently blocked search results for #zlibrary while our team assesses content associated with that hashtag,” the platform explains.
Indeed, at the time of writing TikTok users will no longer find any content under the popular hashtag. This is a clear statement by TikTik but unlikely to prove effective against the constant stream of Z-Library videos.
In fact, TikTok’s Z-Library “discovery” page remains online and with 1.5 billion views, that’s getting a lot more exposure than the hashtag ever managed. In addition, Z-Library searches will return plenty of content as well.
This doesn’t mean that TikTok is doing anything wrong from a legal perspective. Similar videos appear on other sites as well, including Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and elsewhere.
In its letter to the USTR, TikTok reiterates that it will take action when rightsholders report problematic activity. The Authors Guild doesn’t dispute that, but it would like to see more proactive anti-piracy measures.
The good news for the authors is that not all TikTok users are soulless pirates. When searching for Z-Library, one can also find people questioning the ease at which others promote piracy.
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A copy of the Authors Guild submission to the USTR is available here (pdf) and TikTok’s response can be found here (pdf)
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Was the Falcon Heavy a mistake by SpaceX?
Enlarge / Falcon Heavy clears the tower during its maiden flight on February 6, 2018. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)
As early as Tuesday morning, the Falcon Heavy will take flight for the first time since June 2019, ending a long period of inactivity for the world's most powerful, operational rocket. Under the power of 27 Merlin engines in its first stage, the rocket will carry two space technology payloads into orbit for US Space Force.
Ahead of this much-awaited USSF-44 launch, it is natural to ask why it has been more than 40 months since the rocket last flew. And perhaps more importantly, does this suggest that the Falcon Heavy—developed internally at SpaceX, at the company's own expense, for half a billion dollars—was a mistake?
But first, some details about the launch, which is set for 9:41 am ET (13:41) on Tuesday from Kennedy Space Center, in Florida.
Amazon is selling select Fire tablets for up to 50% off, which is a pretty good deal if you’re looking for a portable device for streaming music, movies, and other content from Amazon, surfing the web, or reading Kindle eBooks. But it’s ge…
Amazon is selling select Fire tablets for up to 50% off, which is a pretty good deal if you’re looking for a portable device for streaming music, movies, and other content from Amazon, surfing the web, or reading Kindle eBooks. But it’s getting tougher and tougher to hack Amazon’s tablets to behave more like stock […]
The post Daily Deals (10-31-2022) appeared first on Liliputing.
What happens when Twitter’s owner can’t spot disinformation when he sees it?
Enlarge (credit: Anadolu Agency / Contributor | Anadolu Agency)
This weekend, advertisers, regulators, and Twitter users were all attentively watching Elon Musk’s Twitter feed for any indication of whether the free speech absolutist could be trusted to do things like effectively combat disinformation spread after taking over the site. In what may be considered Musk’s first major misstep as Twitter’s new owner, Musk chose that moment to amplify a far-right conspiracy theory in a now-deleted tweet garnering scrutiny from all sides.
Musk’s tweet came amid a wave of online chatter discussing what happened when an accused intruder, David Wayne DePape, broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s house, attacked her now-hospitalized husband Paul with a hammer, and screamed out, “Where’s Nancy?” Investigating possible motives, CBS News reviewed some of DePape’s social media posts and confirmed that DePape had shared several far-right conspiracy theories, including posts denying the Holocaust and tying Democratic officials to child sex rings. CBS also reported that DePape allegedly had a list of other targets.
Hillary Clinton joined others in tweeting critically of the Republican party, which she accused of inciting violence by spreading “deranged conspiracy theories.” Clinton’s tweet prompted Musk to link Clinton to an article from a weekly newspaper known to publish false news—the Santa Monica Observer—which, according to The New York Times, reported false allegations suggesting that Paul Pelosi knew his attacker. Overlooking the dubious news source, Musk repeated those false allegations, telling Clinton and his millions of followers that “there is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye.”
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