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Now that Google’s Pixel 7 series smartphones are official, it’s time to start speculating about the upcoming Pixel 7a. We don’t know much yet, but a report from Nikkei Asia seems to confirm that it’s coming early next year. In …
Now that Google’s Pixel 7 series smartphones are official, it’s time to start speculating about the upcoming Pixel 7a. We don’t know much yet, but a report from Nikkei Asia seems to confirm that it’s coming early next year. In other recent tech news, the Google Pixel Watch is up for pre-order for $349 and […]
The post Lilbits: Pixel 7a rumors begin, Pixel Watch launched, a modern design for the BBC Micro, and a cyberdeck with a 5 inch screen appeared first on Liliputing.
Open letter cites concerns about misuse of “widely available” commercial robots among the public.
Enlarge / Herbert Reul, Interior Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, looks at Boston Dynamics' robot police dog in January 2022. (credit: Getty Images)
Boston Dynamics and several other robotics companies have pledged not to weaponize "general purpose robots" according to an open letter released publicly on Thursday and first reported by Axios. Although with sizable caveats in place, the letter focuses mostly on unauthorized public misuse of their products.
In the letter, titled "General Purpose Robots Should Not Be Weaponized," six companies (Agility Robotics, ANYbotics, Boston Dynamics, Clearpath Robotics, Open Robotics, Unitree Robotics) spell out concerns about "risks of harm and serious ethical issues" from the weaponization of their general purpose products, fearing that it will "harm public trust in the technology."
For their part, the robot manufacturers write, "We pledge that we will not weaponize our advanced-mobility general-purpose robots or the software we develop that enables advanced robotics and we will not support others to do so."
Meta, Snap, and Discord are also defendants in the lawsuit.
Through the pandemic, the user-created game platform that’s so popular with kids, Roblox, expanded its user base and decided to go public. Within two years, its value shot from less than $4 billion to $45 billion. Now it’s being sued—along with Discord, Snap, and Meta—by a parent who alleges that during the pandemic, Roblox became the gateway enabling multiple adult users to prey on a 10-year-old girl.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday in the San Francisco Superior Court shows how sexual predators can exploit multiple social platforms at once to cover their tracks while financially and sexually exploiting children. It alleges that, in 2020, Roblox connected a young girl called S.U. with adult men who abused her for months, manipulating her into sending payments using Roblox currency called Robux and inducing her to share explicit photos on Discord and Snapchat through 2021. As the girl grew increasingly anxious and depressed, the lawsuit alleges that Instagram began recommending self-harm content, and ultimately, S.U. had to withdraw from school after multiple suicide attempts.
Like many similar product liability lawsuits that social platforms have recently faced for allegedly addicting children and causing harms, this new lawsuit seeks to hold platforms accountable for reportedly continuing to promote the use of features that tech companies know can pose severe risks for minor users. And S.U.’s guardian, known as C.U. in the lawsuit, wants platforms to pay for profiting off systems that allegedly recklessly engage child users.
Pornhub has discovered the ‘holy grail’ to combat piracy on user-generated content sites. This remarkable achievement is exemplified by a historic 98% drop in DMCA removals. All that it took was the mandatory verification of uploaders’ identities. An impressive result that won’t go unnoticed by some of the largest media companies in the world.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Pornhub is without a doubt one of the most visited adult entertainment outlets on the Internet.
The ‘entertainment’ platform is owned by MindGeek, the company formerly known as Manwin. In just a few years it has transformed the adult industry’s pay-to-access model into an all-you-can-eat, free-to-stream business.
Part of this magic formula is down to Pornhub and other MindGeek-owned tube sites allowing users to upload content. This material includes legitimate videos but also quite a few pirated versions too.
These videos drove millions of visitors to the site, which also helped to draw in even more uploaders. This flywheel kept spinning and spinning with help from the DMCA, which shields Pornhub from copyright liability.
Over the years, complaints from porn rightsholders increased alongside pressure from credit card companies calling for a ban on ‘offensive’ material. Then the authorities expressed increasing concern over potentially abusive content on the site.
Pornhub worked hard to weather the storm by implementing upload filters, manual content checks, and by processing hundreds of thousands of takedown requests. But despite all this effort, Pornhub could not prevent the floodgates from opening in late 2020.
In an opinion piece titled “The Children of Pornhub,” the New York Times shone a light on the dark side of the tube site.
The piece made an impact on people around the world, including billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who piled pressure on Pornhub payment providers Visa and Mastercard.
While Pornhub thrives on free content, FT recently documented that its operations are heavily intertwined with the credit card companies, who help to process many millions in ad revenue. So, when Visa and Mastercard suspended these payments, MindGeek’s flagship was destined to go down.
Faced with potentially imminent demise, in December 2020 Pornhub responded by taking down millions of videos. The goal was to prevent anything exploitive, including child pornography, from ever appearing on the platform. To support this commitment, content uploaders would have to be verified going forward.
Pornhub’s decision wasn’t so much about copyright but verification inadvertently became one of the Internet’s most effective ‘anti-piracy’ interventions.
The copyright infringement implications have not been reported publicly by PornHub but data shows a significant impact. When TorrentFreak compared Pornhub’s most recent transparency report with the one issued a year earlier, we found a massive uploader verification effect on piracy complaints.
In 2020, PornHub removed 544,021 pieces of content in response to DMCA notices. That’s a significant number, even when considering that Pornhub hosted close to 14 million videos at the time.
A large chunk of these videos were removed when the site went ‘verified-only’. Roughly four million videos survived the purge and many more were re-added when verified. As a result of this process, DMCA removals tanked.
In 2021, Pornhub removed just 8,547 pieces of content in response to DMCA notices, a historic drop of more than 98% year-over-year.
Aside from the obvious conclusion that it’s good to see Pornhub tackling child exploitation and other types of abuse, this saga might just plant a seed with copyright holders. Apparently, uploader verification is a very effective anti-piracy tool.
Pornhub had been dealing with DMCA complaints for many years. It spent serious effort and resources building a dedicated takedown team. Then, after flipping on the verification switch, all problems suddenly vanished.
This is both impressive and scary, depending on your perspective. While many copyright holders dream of uploader “verification” checks on YouTube, for example, the prospect of mandatory ‘Internet passports’ give others nightmares.
It is hard to tell whether Pornhub’s data will lead to anything new. However, the adult entertainment industry is often the first to implement new ideas and technologies, whether it’s related to online streaming, payment processing, or virtual reality. And user verification too, perhaps.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Valve began taking pre-orders for the Steam Deck in July, 2021. But the company didn’t begin shipping the handheld game console to customers until February, 2022. And for much of this year, there’s been a wait list. If you placed an order …
Valve began taking pre-orders for the Steam Deck in July, 2021. But the company didn’t begin shipping the handheld game console to customers until February, 2022. And for much of this year, there’s been a wait list. If you placed an order for a Steam Deck, you’d have to wait months for it to arrive. […]
The post The Steam Deck is now available without a reserveation appeared first on Liliputing.
Illumination’s changes to familiar Mushroom Kingdom characters are finally confirmed.
Enlarge / Super Mario as he'll look in the series' first full-length CGI-animation film. (credit: Nintendo / Illumination)
The Super Mario Bros. Movie trailer is live ahead of the film's April 2023 launch in theaters, and—hey, whaddya know—it looks decent.
We now have a look at what CGI Mario looks like, as re-created by longtime CGI animation studio Illumination Entertainment, and the character has received a serious touch-up compared to the longtime visual archetype used in 3D Mario video games and instruction manual images since the launch of Super Mario Sunshine. In great news, the version in today's trailer appears to deliver cartoonish exuberance while also looking a bit more human inside this film's fantastical world.
King Koopa descends upon an icy kingdom.
The trailer includes three sequences with familiar characters. The first stars Bowser in a fiery, effects-filled battle against an adorable, penguin-filled ice kingdom. As assisted by an apparent second-in-command Magikoopa, Bowser and his army of Koopa Troopas push forward and seize a familiar-looking "super" star. This moment concludes with a shout from new Bowser voice actor Jack Black (Jumanji) asking, "Now who's gonna stop me?"
The criminalization of marijuana is a “failed approach,” Biden said.
Enlarge / The morning fog leaves a layer of dew on cannabis rows in Petrolia, California, August 3, 2022. (credit: Getty | The Washington Post)
President Biden on Thursday announced that he is pardoning all prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession and encouraged state governors to do the same for state offenses. He also directed federal officials to review how marijuana is classified under the Controlled Substances Act.
"There are thousands of people who have prior federal convictions for marijuana possession, who may be denied employment, housing, or educational opportunities as a result," Biden said in a statement. "My action will help relieve the collateral consequences arising from these convictions."
The blazing announcement means that all prior charges, convictions, and not-yet-prosecuted offenses will be pardoned. The Justice Department will set up an administrative process for those affected to obtain a certificate of pardon.
Musk asked judge to cancel trial, claiming Twitter won’t “take yes for an answer.”
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Samuel Corum)
Update at 7:30 pm ET: Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen McCormick granted Elon Musk's request for a stay in an order that gives the parties three weeks to negotiate and close the merger. The trial won't begin on October 17 as scheduled and would be canceled entirely if the merger closes by the end of this month. If deal talks fall apart, a trial would be scheduled for November.
"This action is stayed until 5 p.m. on October 28, 2022, to permit the parties to close on the transaction. If the transaction does not close by 5 p.m. on October 28, 2022, the parties are instructed to contact me by email that evening to obtain November 2022 trial dates," McCormick wrote.
Musk's motion for a stay said the merger is on track to close by October 28. Twitter did not want the litigation stayed. "Plaintiff Twitter opposes the motion on the basis that Defendants' agreement will not ensure that the transaction closes fast enough," McCormick wrote.
The Steam Deck is a portable gaming PC designed to be held in your hands. But it’s also a full-fledged computer with support for video output, which means you could also connect it to a display, keyboard, and mouse and treat it like a desktop co…
The Steam Deck is a portable gaming PC designed to be held in your hands. But it’s also a full-fledged computer with support for video output, which means you could also connect it to a display, keyboard, and mouse and treat it like a desktop computer for gaming, productivity, or anything else you’d use a […]
The post Steam Deck Docking Stationk is now available for $89 appeared first on Liliputing.
Amazon’s Fire HD 10 tablet is on sale for half price ahead of next week’s Prime Early Access sale. But if you’re looking for a tablet with a little more horsepower (and something closer to stock Google Android software), you can also…
Amazon’s Fire HD 10 tablet is on sale for half price ahead of next week’s Prime Early Access sale. But if you’re looking for a tablet with a little more horsepower (and something closer to stock Google Android software), you can also pick up a Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite for $250, a Galaxy Tab […]
The post Daily Deals (10-06-2022) appeared first on Liliputing.
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