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The next version of Google’s Android operating system might let you install multiple instances of the same app thanks to a new “app cloning” feature. First spotted by Mishaal Rahman, the feature is baked into Android 14 Developer Pre…
The next version of Google’s Android operating system might let you install multiple instances of the same app thanks to a new “app cloning” feature. First spotted by Mishaal Rahman, the feature is baked into Android 14 Developer Preview 1, which was released this week. In a nutshell, this feature lets you install an Android […]
The post Android 14 could let you use two copies of the same app (enabling two accounts on the same device) appeared first on Liliputing.
Amazon’s 3,236-satellite plan greenlit despite SpaceX seeking 578-satellite limit.
Enlarge / Amazon will launch satellites using Arianespace, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance. (credit: Amazon)
Amazon's Kuiper division can start launching satellites to offer broadband service in the US, the Federal Communications Commission said yesterday.
The FCC's International Bureau approved Kuiper's orbital debris mitigation plan. This approval was needed to satisfy a condition imposed in 2020 when the Amazon subsidiary received tentative approval for a network of 3,236 satellites in low-Earth orbit.
"Our action will allow Kuiper to begin deployment of its constellation in order to bring high-speed broadband connectivity to customers around the world," yesterday's FCC order said.
When it comes to evaluating COVID treatments, MDs are only human.
Enlarge / Those lab coats aren't going to protect you from your own biases. (credit: Caiaimage/Robert Daly)
It's no secret that ideology is one of the factors that influences which evidence people will accept. But it was a bit of a surprise that ideology could dominate decision-making in the face of a pandemic that has killed over a million people in the US. Yet a large number of studies have shown that stances on COVID vaccination and death rates, among other things, show a clear partisan divide.
And it's not just the general public having issues. We'd like to think people like doctors would carefully evaluate evidence before making treatment decisions, yet a correlation between voting patterns and ivermectin prescriptions suggests that they don't.
Of course, a correlation at that sort of population level leaves a lot of unanswered questions about what's going on. A study this week tries to fill in some of those blanks by performing controlled experiments with a set of MDs. The work clearly shows how ideology clouds professional judgements even when it comes to reading the results of a scientific study.
If he can do it, why won’t Apple?
Enlarge / He's also selling AirPods Pro cases modded to use USB-C. (credit: Exploring the Simulation/YouTube)
AirPods are a convenient accessory... until the charging case breaks. Functioning earpieces are useless without a case to juice them up. And as one user has detailed, Apple would rather you buy a whole new case than fix the one you have. Well, considering the e-waste the planet's drowning in and the premium price of Apple's wireless headphones, that's an inconvenient truth. But now if you're willing to break your warranty and put your faith in the hands of a clever tech tinkerer, you can get the printed circuit board (PCB) needed to replace the battery in your AirPods Pro case and give it a USB-C port while you're at it.
The mod comes from Ken Pillonel's Exploring the Simulation YouTube channel. Pillonel's the same guy who brought you an Android phone with a Lightning port and an iPhone with USB-C. About six months ago, he also posted a video demoing how to make a PCB and 3D-printed case for repairing the first- and second-generation AirPods and equipping them with USB-C.
On Wednesday, Pillonel brought his mad genius to the AirPods Pro. The DIYer has shared on GitHub how to 3D-print an AirPods Pro case, since it's hard to open the things for repair without breaking them.
DNS-resolver Quad9 continues to fight back against Sony Music’s demands for pirate site blocking measures to be deployed at the DNS level. The non-profit foundation argues that blocking injunctions shouldn’t apply to DNS resolvers as that would create a chilling effect on the free and open Internet. Quad9’s defense is supported by an expert report from Prof. Dr. Ruth Janal.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
In 2021, Sony Music obtained an injunction that ordered DNS resolver Quad9 to block a popular pirate site.
The injunction, issued by the District Court of Hamburg, required the Swiss DNS resolver to block access to a site that links to pirated music.
The name of the targeted site wasn’t revealed, but we deduced that Canna.to was the target. That site was also targeted in a voluntary blocking agreement previously signed by rightsholders and ISPs.
The Quad9 Foundation fiercely opposed the injunction. The DNS resolver submitted an appeal to the Court hoping to overturn the blocking order, arguing that the decision sets a dangerous precedent.
The non-profit foundation stressed that copyrights should be respected online, but believes that enforcing blocking measures through third-party intermediaries goes a step too far.
The initial objection failed when the Regional Court in Hamburg upheld the blocking injunction. However, that was just a preliminary proceeding, and Quad9 was adamant it would continue the legal battle to prevent a broader impact on the Internet ecosystem.
Quad9 isn’t alone in viewing this as a crucial matter; Sony does too, albeit for different reasons. The music company went on to initiate a main proceeding at the Leipzig court, the next step in the legal process where both sides would be able to present more evidence and expert opinions.
The matter was heard yesterday at the regional court in Leipzig, where both sides were able to present their arguments. While a decision is still forthcoming, Quad9 reiterated the importance of the case. If Sony wins, Quad9 believes that more and broader blocking actions may follow.
“Although this blocking applies only to Quad9’s services located in Germany, by bringing this court case to fruition, Sony Music — and those who may eventually follow — appear to be pushing the idea that they are above and beyond the principles of freedom, decentralization, and proportionality,” the DNS provider writes.
Quad9 argues that it’s merely passing on metadata; it doesn’t store or transfer any content. It’s in the best interests of the public at large to keep DNS resolvers universally accessible, and any curation should be done in the best interests of users, not corporations.
That last part could be relevant; Quad9 has positioned itself as a secure DNS resolver that gives users the option to block millions of malware-related connections and websites. In this case, however, it believes that court-ordered piracy blockades are not in the public interest.
“Recursive DNS is not an effective or reasonable place to impose external policies that are undesired or unrequested by the end user,” Quad9 notes.
“The ability of corporate entities to impose their will on unrelated third parties such as DNS resolution services creates a chilling effect which will reduce free information exchange, and introduces a significant risk of overreach and abuse against which there is little recourse.”
The DNS resolver is supported by the German Society for Freedom Rights (GFF), which commissioned Prof. Dr. Ruth Janal to prepare an expert opinion. The report concludes that intermediaries such as Quad9 should’t be held liable for third-party copyright infringement.
According to the professor, Sony Music’s arguments and the lower court’s decision equate the DNS resolver to content hosting platforms such as YouTube and Uploaded, whereas Quad9 is more akin to a mere conduit service, in the sense that it simply passes on bits.
Germany’s Federal Court previously ruled that hosting services can indeed be held liable for copyright infringement (e.g. YouTube/Uploaded) but the same logic shouldn’t apply to a DNS provider, Professor Janal argues.
As a mere conduit service, courts could require Quad9 to take action through a “no-fault” injunction, a process that’s already used in ISP blocking orders. In those cases, however, the intermediary isn’t held liable for pirating users.
Specifically, a recent court order in Germany concerning Sci-Hub clarified that these types of blockades are only warranted if all other options have been exhausted. That includes going after a website’s hosting provider.
GFF project coordinator Felix Reda, who previously served as a Member of the European Parliament for the Pirate Party, notes that Sony failed to go after the hosting company in this case.
“Crucially, Sony did not seek an injunction against the EU-based hosting provider of the website at issue in its lawsuit against Quad9 either,” Reda informs TorrentFreak.
“The expert opinion by Prof. Ruth Janal finds that clearly, Quad9 is a type of mere conduit service like ISPs and must therefore be treated on the basis of the rules of no-fault injunctions, which only allow DNS blocking if all options to bring the infringement to an end at the source have been exhausted,” Reda adds.
The music company is yet to publicly share its view on the case. Sony and other rightsholders will likely put forward their own expert reports arguing that blocking is both warranted and reasonable.
There is no denying that the stakes are high in this case. Quad9 and GFF fear that if DNS providers can be held liable rather than there being “no-fault”, they may choose not to oppose blocking requests going forward.
“If DNS services were treated as wrongdoers, the financial risk of opposing a blocking request would be so high that they would have little other choices than to comply with any blocking request without taking the issue to court,” Reda says.
While there can be good reasons to block a site, doing so with court oversight helps to prevent over-blocking by considering the rights of service providers, copyright holders, and the general public.
For their part, rightsholders believe that third-party intermediaries should take responsibility. When DNS providers risk being held liable, action is guaranteed.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
HP has quietly begun selling budget laptops powered by AMD Mendocino processors. These are AMD Athlon and Ryzen-branded chips that combine Zen 2 CPU cores with Radeon 610M integrated graphics featuring two RDNA 2 GPU cores. Designed to bring decent pe…
HP has quietly begun selling budget laptops powered by AMD Mendocino processors. These are AMD Athlon and Ryzen-branded chips that combine Zen 2 CPU cores with Radeon 610M integrated graphics featuring two RDNA 2 GPU cores. Designed to bring decent performance to low-cost laptops, the chips are also powering notebooks from Acer, Asus, and Lenovo. […]
The post HP launches AMD Mendocino-powered laptops for $330 and up appeared first on Liliputing.
Cloned apps would leverage Android’s multi-user system to have duplicate app icons.
Enlarge (credit: Google)
Android 14 Preview 1 came out yesterday, and while Google is doing its best to hide the interesting consumer-facing features from this early release (either because they're not finished, or for a big I/O reveal), that's not stopping the Internet from finding interesting features. 'App Cloning' is a new feature apparently hidden in the shipping Preview 1 build, and Mishaal Rahman, writing for XDA, managed to enable it.
The feature leverages Android's multi-user system to have two copies of the same app but with different data, allowing you to log in to each with different accounts. Some apps support multiple accounts and some don't, but this feature would bring multiple account support to everything. It would also bring a great deal of consistency to having multiple accounts—every app could deal with multiple accounts in the same way, with one icon for account number one and a second icon for account number two. Under the hood, the whole feature sounds a lot like Android for Work but without the complicated Work Profile setup process and with the ability to pick which apps you want to duplicate.
App cloning in Android 14. (credit: XDA Developers)
You might have seen this feature in some Android skins and third-party apps, so this is making it into Android proper as part of the normal upstreaming process. As Android System UI lead Dan Sandler once explained at Google I/O, the System UI team's feature loop is often "we see a paradigm in the wild, we take it, we learn about it, we make it safer, and then we contribute it back to the framework for everyone to use in Android."
1&1 Mobilfunk will nicht, dass man ihr 5G-Netz nur auf die Antennenanzahl reduziert. Man sei beim Aufbau des Netzes deutlich weiter. Doch womit? (1&1, Long Term Evolution)
1&1 Mobilfunk will nicht, dass man ihr 5G-Netz nur auf die Antennenanzahl reduziert. Man sei beim Aufbau des Netzes deutlich weiter. Doch womit? (1&1, Long Term Evolution) The company has already started producing copper-anode foil from recycled cells.
Enlarge / Workers dismantle an EV battery module at Redwood Materials. (credit: Redwood Materials)
Battery-recycling company Redwood Materials announced today that it has a conditional commitment from the US Department of Energy for a $2 billion loan. The money will be used to build out Redwood's recycling campus, which the company says will create jobs for 3,400 construction workers and another 1,600 full-time employees once the site is fully operational.
Redwood was founded in 2017 by former Tesla executive JB Straubel and has received investment in the past from Amazon, among others.
And in 2022, it announced a series of partnerships with OEMs, including Ford, Volvo, and Volkswagen, to recycle electric vehicle batteries. As EV battery packs from those carmakers reach their end of life, dealers and dismantlers will send them to Redwood for recycling. Of course, it will be some time before that happens, given the longevity of EV batteries, but Redwood also works with lithium-ion cells from consumer products like laptops and cellphones as well as cars.
Der Einsatz an erneuerbaren Energien steigt weltweit. Dennoch erwartet die IEA, dass die Kohlendioxidemissionen noch einige Jahre auf dem aktuellen Stand bleiben. (Strom, Erneuerbare Energien)
Der Einsatz an erneuerbaren Energien steigt weltweit. Dennoch erwartet die IEA, dass die Kohlendioxidemissionen noch einige Jahre auf dem aktuellen Stand bleiben. (Strom, Erneuerbare Energien) 
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