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Microsoft may be have rolled out a more Windows-like user interface to its dual-screen Surface Duo smartphone lineup, but the devices still ship with Google’s Android operating system. That hasn’t stopped developers like Gustave Monce from…
Microsoft may be have rolled out a more Windows-like user interface to its dual-screen Surface Duo smartphone lineup, but the devices still ship with Google’s Android operating system. That hasn’t stopped developers like Gustave Monce from working to install actual Windows software on the phones. Up until recently, a lot of that work has focused […]
The post Lilbits: Installing Windows on all the things (or at least the Steam Deck and Surface Duo 2) appeared first on Liliputing.
Microsoft may be have rolled out a more Windows-like user interface to its dual-screen Surface Duo smartphone lineup, but the devices still ship with Google’s Android operating system. That hasn’t stopped developers like Gustave Monce from…
Microsoft may be have rolled out a more Windows-like user interface to its dual-screen Surface Duo smartphone lineup, but the devices still ship with Google’s Android operating system. That hasn’t stopped developers like Gustave Monce from working to install actual Windows software on the phones. Up until recently, a lot of that work has focused […]
The post Lilbits: Installing Windows on all the things (or at least the Steam Deck and Surface Duo 2) appeared first on Liliputing.
Comments and the OpenForum will be down from 1 am ET until Wednesday afternoon.
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)
We’ve spent months getting ready, and tonight (around 1 am ET on Wednesday) we’re flipping the switch on a major upgrade to our community platform, which supports both article comments and the OpenForum. We won’t be losing any data, and you won’t need to set up a new account or change your password. You will have to wait a few hours, though, and for that we’re sorry!
We anticipate that both systems will remain offline until around Wednesday afternoon as we process our massive 22 years of comments (that’s 1 million topics and more than 28 million posts). All logins and user registration functions will be unavailable during this time. That means no article comments, no forum browsing, and unfortunately, it also means subscribers will not be able to access their sub benefits for a brief time. We’ll make it as short as possible. When it’s done, just log in again with your old credentials and you’re set.
For more detail on what we’re doing and why, keep reading.
Holmes is expected to appeal her conviction.
Enlarge / Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes (center) arrives at federal court with her father, Christian Holmes, and partner, Billy Evans, on October 17 in San Jose, California. Holmes appeared in federal court related to an attempt to overturn her fraud conviction. (credit: Getty | Justin Sullivan)
Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of the defunct blood-testing startup Theranos, lost her bid for a new fraud trial. That's despite the dramatic twist in the case last month, with Holmes winning a last-minute hearing over a bizarre incident in which the government's star witness against her showed up distraught and disheveled at her home.
Holmes, who was convicted in January on four counts of criminal fraud for deceiving investors, is now scheduled for sentencing on November 18.
In a ruling filed late Monday, US District Judge Edward Davila flatly denied Holmes' motions for a new trial, concluding that they didn't include new information relating to her case or establish any misconduct by government prosecutors.
The 1956 LGP-30 computer, subject of hacker lore, is one of only 45 made in Europe.
Enlarge / The LGP-30 computer, from 1956, that a Redditor found in a basement. (credit: c-wizz)
On Monday, a German Redditor named c-wizz announced that they had found a very rare 66-year-old Librascope LGP-30 computer (and several 1970 DEC PDP-8/e computers) in their grandparents' basement. The LGP-30, first released in 1956, is one of only 45 manufactured in Europe and may be best known as the computer used by "Mel" in a famous piece of hacker lore.
Developed by Stan Frankel at California Institute of Technology in 1954, the LGP-30 (short for "Librascope General Purpose 30") originally retailed for $47,000 (about $512,866 today, adjusted for inflation) and weighed in at 800 pounds. Even so, people considered it a small computer at the time due to its desk-like size (about 44×33×26 inches). According to Masswerk.at, the LGP-30 included 113 vacuum tubes, 1,450 solid-state diodes, and rotating magnetic drum memory—a 6.5-inch diameter and 7-inch long tube rotating at 3,700 RPM—that could store 4,069 31-bit words (equivalent to about 15.8 modern kilobytes).
Along with the main LGP-30 unit, c-wizz found a Flexowriter typewriter-style console (used for input and output with the machine) and what looks like a paper tape reader for external data storage. A few PDP-8/e machines and some related equipment lurked nearby. "There seem to be more modules belonging to the PDP/8E's as well," c-wizz wrote in a Reddit comment. "There is a whole 19-inch rack where all of this is supposed to be mounted in. Maybe I can find some manuals and try to put it all together."
Der Angriff auf den Mann der Sprecherin des Repräsentantenhauses Pelosi macht erneut klar: Politische Gewalt bedroht zunehmend die US-Demokratie. Bei den Kongresswahlen wird auch das Wahlsystem attackiert. Was auf dem Spiel steht.
Coal, wind, and solar all went up as hydro took a dive.
Enlarge / A field of solar panels and windmills in the desert. (credit: Getty)
On Monday, the Energy Information Agency released its annual figures for how the US generated electrical power during 2021. The year saw lots of changes as the country moved out of the pandemic, with coal, wind, and solar power all seeing large jumps compared to the previous year. Meanwhile, widespread drought conditions in the west caused a significant drop in hydroelectric production.
Longer term, the big stories are the two renewables, wind and solar. Wind only started outproducing hydro three years ago but has now developed a commanding lead. And solar has gone from a rounding error to 4 percent of annual production over the last decade and is poised for explosive growth.
2021 marks the first increase in annual coal use since the Obama administration. Megawatts generated via coal were up by 16 percent compared to the year prior and accounted for a bit under 22 percent of the total electricity produced. But this is likely to be a temporary change. No new coal plants are planned in the US, and the past decade has seen both the number of operating coal plants drop by half, and coal go from powering 44 percent of US electricity production to only 22 percent.
The MediaTek Dimensity 9200 chip is the first smartphone processor to feature an ARM Cortex-X3 CPU core, the first to feature ARM Immortalis-G715 graphics, the first to support WiFi 7 technology, and the first to support LPDDR5X 8533 Mbps memory. In t…
The MediaTek Dimensity 9200 chip is the first smartphone processor to feature an ARM Cortex-X3 CPU core, the first to feature ARM Immortalis-G715 graphics, the first to support WiFi 7 technology, and the first to support LPDDR5X 8533 Mbps memory. In the short term though, the most important things to know about the new chip are […]
The post MediaTek Dimensity 9200 chip brings faster performance, lower power consumption, and new technologies for next-gen smartphones appeared first on Liliputing.
Octavia Butler described her 1979 genre-busting bestseller as “a kind of grim fantasy.”
An adaptation of Octavia Butler's classic 1979 novel is coming to FX with Kindred.
First published in 1979, sci-fi author Octavia Butler's bestselling novel Kindred defies conventional genres, incorporating classic time-travel tropes, Antebellum South slave narratives, and historical fiction. Butler herself described it as "a kind of grim fantasy." More than 40 years later, Kindred is now an eight-episode TV miniseries, coming to Hulu next month, and we now have our first look via a 90-second teaser.
(Spoilers for the 1979 novel below.)
Butler's novel is told from the first-person perspective of a young Black writer named Dana, who moves to Los Angeles with her husband Kevin in 1976. On her 26th birthday, Dana suddenly becomes dizzy, and the walls of their LA home fade away. She finds herself at the edge of a wood near a river and promptly rescues a young, red-haired boy named Rufus Weylin. Another dizzy spell quickly brings her back to her present, but the attacks keep coming, and soon Dana is being transported back and forth on a regular basis, for varying lengths of time. (Time passes more swiftly in the past, further complicating matters.) She quickly learns there are certain compromises she must make, and cruelties she must endure, in order to navigate the Antebellum South. Eventually Kevin finds himself transported back to the same time period, too, and must learn to navigate the Antebellum South as a white man.
A group of filmmakers has won over $4.2 million in damages from the defunct hosting company MICFO. The order is tied to a default judgment that finds the company liable for contributory copyright infringement through its VPN customers. It also opens the door to follow-up liability claims against these VPN providers.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Copyright holders have tried a wide variety of options to tackle online piracy over the years, including through direct legal action
More recently we have seen lawsuits against people who allegedly downloaded and shared pirated content, but operators and developers of pirate services have also been sued.
A group of US-based independent movie companies has expanded its legal reach by going after third-party intermediaries. The makers of movies such as “Hellboy,” “Hunter Killer,” “Rambo V: Last Blood,” and “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” have taken aim at VPN services and their hosting companies.
This legal campaign has already returned several successes. Earlier this year, the filmmakers won $14 million in damages in their case against VPN provider LiquidVPN. Other companies including Torguard, VPN Unlimited and VPN.ht settled their disputes and agreed to block torrent traffic on U.S. servers.
Hosting companies haven’t been spared either. Sharktech, for example, initially fought back but later agreed to settle and block prominent pirate sites including ‘Pirate Bay,’ ‘YTS’, and ‘RARBG’.
Last week, another victory was added to the list. At a federal court in Colorado, United States District Judge R. Brooke Jackson issued a judgment against the defunct hosting company MICFO, awarding $4,200,000 in statutory damages for contributory copyright infringement.
The judgment is a clear win for movie company Millennium and its affiliates. For MICFO, which is no longer operational, it only adds to its troubles.
In addition to this civil lawsuit, MICFO finds itself at the center of a criminal case. The hosting company and its owner were indicted by a grand jury in Charleston, South Carolina in 2019, and stand accused of a scheme to fraudulently obtain IP addresses from ARIN.
These IP-addresses were sold to major companies such as Amazon and Saudi Telecom for millions of dollars. MICFO also used the IP-addresses to serve its own clients, which included VPN companies Hide My Ass, NordVPN and Proton.
The filmmakers accused the hosting company of turning a blind eye to piracy activities allegedly committed by the subscribers of its VPN clients. In practice, this meant that it didn’t forward any of the piracy notifications that were sent.
“Defendant failed to take any action against these customers in response to the Notices because it was motivated to receive subscription funds from the customers rather than terminate service,” Judge Jackson writes in his order.
MICFO was held liable for copyright infringement through a default judgment and after an evidentiary hearing, the court ruled that maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work is appropriate here. With 28 movies at play, this brings the total to $4,200,000.
This damages award is “more than reasonable,” Judge Jackson argues, as the movie companies calculated that the actual damage they suffered is much higher.
“The Court finds Plaintiffs’ request for maximum statutory damages of $4,200,000 more than reasonable in view of Plaintiffs’ lost revenue of nearly $7,000,000..,” the order reads.
MICFO is no longer operational. The company and its CEO pleaded guilty in the criminal wire fraud case and will be sentenced soon. Interestingly, that appears to be good news for the filmmakers, as the US Government seized close to $17 million in funds and assets in that case.
Part of the seized assets could be used to pay the damages award. And indeed, Judge Jackson’s order clarifies that the Plaintiffs may execute judgment immediately to claim restitution from the District Court in South Carolina.
The filmmakers are also assigned any third-party contract breach claims the hosting company has against its clients. This includes any claims against the VPN companies it served.
MICFO’s terms of service required its customers to indemnify the hosting provider in the event of liability claims. This means that the filmmakers can use this as a stick to go after the hosting company’s VPN clients.
Over the past several years, Millennium Funding and affiliated film companies have established a record of obtaining leverage in court, which can then be used for related matters, both in and outside of court. It wouldn’t be a major surprise to see this pattern repeat.
The only active VPN case that we’re aware of is against VPN provider PIA, which recently defeated the direct infringement claims through a motion to dismiss. The contributory and vicarious copyright infringement claims remain, however.
Following the partial dismissal, the filmmakers filed an amended complaint against PIA and the case is still ongoing.
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A copy of the money judgment against MICFO, issued by United States District Judge R. Brooke Jackson, is available here (pdf). The associated findings and conclusions can be found here (pdf)
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
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