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Die Berliner Polizei setzt künftig auch Elektroroller vom Typ BMW CE 04 ein. Gefertigt wurden die Fahrzeuge in Berlin. (BMW, Auto)
C, C++, Rust und Go: Programmiersprachen zur systemnahen Entwicklung gibt es viele. Zig ist eine weitere und verfolgt einen minimalistischen Ansatz (Programmiersprachen, Open Source)
C, C++, Rust und Go: Programmiersprachen zur systemnahen Entwicklung gibt es viele. Zig ist eine weitere und verfolgt einen minimalistischen Ansatz (Programmiersprachen, Open Source) Vodafone-Kunden erhalten pro Jahr 40 GByte und als Bonus gibt es Freieinheiten für Anrufe und SMS-Versand ins EU-Ausland. (Vodafone, Mobilfunk)
The results and analysis for DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray sales for the week ending February 25, 2023, are in. A classic gets released on 4K for the first time, and is the top-selling new release for the week. Find out what movie it was in our wee…
The results and analysis for DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray sales for the week ending February 25, 2023, are in. A classic gets released on 4K for the first time, and is the top-selling new release for the week. Find out what movie it was in our weekly DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray sales stats and analysis feature.
Thanks to Meta LLaMA, AI text models have their “Stable Diffusion moment.”
Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)
Things are moving at lighting speed in AI Land. On Friday, a software developer named Georgi Gerganov created a tool called "llama.cpp" that can run Meta's new GPT-3-class AI large language model, LLaMA, locally on a Mac laptop. Soon thereafter, people worked out how to run LLaMA on Windows as well. Then someone showed in running on a Pixel 6 phone. Next came a Raspberry Pi (albeit very slowly).
If this keeps up, we may be looking at a pocket-sized ChatGPT competitor before we know it.
But let's back up a minute, because we're not quite there yet. (At least not today—as in literally today, March 13, 2023.) But what will arrive next week, no one knows.
Two recent papers offer evidence of “social learning” and possible culture in bees.
Enlarge / Bumblebees can learn to solve puzzles from experienced peers. Honeybees do the same to learn their waggle dances. (credit: Diego Perez-Lopez, PLoS/CC-BY 4.0)
Social insects like bees demonstrate a remarkable range of behaviors, from working together to build structurally complex nests (complete with built-in climate control) to the pragmatic division of labor within their communities. Biologists have traditionally viewed these behaviors as pre-programmed responses that evolved over generations in response to external factors. But two papers last week reported results indicating that social learning might also play a role.
The first, published in the journal PLoS Biology, demonstrated that bumblebees could learn to solve simple puzzles by watching more experienced peers. The second, published in the journal Science, reported evidence for similar social learning in how honeybees learn to perform their trademark "waggle dance" to tell other bees in their colony where to find food or other resources. Taken together, both studies add to a growing body of evidence of a kind of "culture" among social insects like bees.
"Culture can be broadly defined as behaviors that are acquired through social learning and are maintained in a population over time, and essentially serves as a 'second form of inheritance,' but most studies have been conducted on species with relatively large brains: primates, cetaceans, and passerine birds," said co-author Alice Bridges, a graduate student at Queen Mary University of London who works in the lab of co-author Lars Chittka. "I wanted to study bumblebees in particular because they are perfect models for social learning experiments. They have previously been shown to be able to learn really complex, novel, non-natural behaviors such as string-pulling both individually and socially."
Raspberry Pi’s RP2040 chip is designed for dirt cheap microcontroller boards like the Raspberry Pi Pico, which sells for as little as $4. With a $133 dual-core ARM Cortex-M0+ processor and 264KB of memory, it’s clearly not designed to be a…
Raspberry Pi’s RP2040 chip is designed for dirt cheap microcontroller boards like the Raspberry Pi Pico, which sells for as little as $4. With a $133 dual-core ARM Cortex-M0+ processor and 264KB of memory, it’s clearly not designed to be a general-purpose computer. But folks have managed to build things like game consoles, pocket computers, […]
The post Lilbits: A Raspberry Pi RP2040-powered game console-on-a-stick and a single-board PC with NVMe support and 2 Ethernet ports appeared first on Liliputing.
Every year, copyright holders nominate countries with significant intellectual property challenges for a mention on the US Trade Representative’s ‘Special 301’ watchlist. Heard at the highest diplomatic levels, allegations can carry significant weight, including one statement that 90% of the Iraqi population pirate sports content and other media.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Piracy is a global phenomenon but the availability of enforcement options varies from country to country.
In Iraq, for example, tackling copyright infringement isn’t seen as a priority or a new phenomenon.
When U.S. troops were still stationed in Iraq, rightsholders discovered that American soldiers were picking up the local habit. As a result, “copyright notices” were sent to US bases and United States Central Command was put on high alert.
At the end of 2021, the U.S. combat mission in Iraq officially ended, so that’s no longer an issue. Iraq still faces plenty of internal issues, of course, but fighting piracy doesn’t appear to be high on the agenda. That’s a concern for copyright holders.
Given Iraq’s history, it is no surprise that the country has been repeatedly flagged by the U.S. Trade Representative. The USTR considers rightsholder input and other public signals when compiling its Special 301 Report, an annual list of countries that deserve extra attention due to intellectual property shortcomings that may hurt U.S. businesses.
The report doesn’t lead directly to concrete action but is used as a leverage tool at the highest diplomatic levels to ‘demand’ change. As such, recommendations are taken very seriously.
Ideally, strong statements and claims from rightsholders should be backed up by solid evidence. That’s not always needed for their positions to be cited in the USTR report but, more recently, the USTR has begun asking detailed follow-up questions. That has lead to some insightful results, also regarding Iraq.
Miramax and beIN, for example, stated in their submission that around 90% of the Iraqi population watches pirated live sports events and other media content. That’s a remarkable figure that we have never seen in any official reports, and it also triggered the USTR to ask “how these estimates are formulated.”
With roughly half of Iraq lacking a basic broadband connection, describing this section of society as online pirates is problematic. And since more than a third of all Iraqis are under 14, a considerable number of pirates must be rather young too.
Last week Miramax and beIN responded to the USTR’s questions, explaining that the claims about Iraq and Algeria come from local contacts and partners, as well as their own extensive, independent knowledge.
“beIN has developed these estimates through discussions with contacts and commercial partners on the ground in both countries. These estimates are also informed by beIN’s extensive, independent knowledge of piracy networks in Iraq and Algeria,” Miramax and beIN write.
The companies further explain that the 90% Iraqi piracy rate “should not come as a surprise” as external researchers have described the region as a “piracy hotspot.”
We examined the cited research and found that it doesn’t mention Iraq or Algeria specifically. In general terms, it refers to North Africa and the Middle East as a piracy hotspot, without sharing any concrete statistics.
While we don’t doubt that piracy is rampant in Iraq (and Algeria), there seems to be no hard data to back up the “90% of the population are pirates” claim. Without proper evidence, making such bold and strong claims in such an important recommendation could raise some eyebrows.
The USTR’s follow-up questions for beIN, Miramax, and other rightsholders are mostly requests for further evidence, to back up the claims being made. Responses often cite third-party sources instead of concrete detail, however.
For example, beIN said that it ‘understood’ that it would be very difficult for rightsholders to convince a public prosecutor to launch a copyright case against pirates in Algeria. The USTR requested further information on specific difficulties but it appears beIN’s comments are mostly based on input from its local counsel.
“beIN has not yet attempted to file a copyright infringement action (either civil or criminal) in Algeria. However, Algerian counsel has advised beIN that it would be extremely difficult for an audiovisual copyright holder to prevail in civil litigation against an infringer.
“According to Algerian counsel, it would be similarly difficult for an audiovisual copyright holder to convince an Algerian prosecutor to pursue criminal action,” beIN’s answer adds.
The same is true for the “lack of legal enforcement options in Iraq,” as reported by beIN to the U.S. Government. This claim is mostly based on advice from third parties rather than first-hand experience.
“beIN has received professional advice that due to the endemic political corruption in Iraq, legal actions against key infringers are unlikely to succeed,” beIN responded.
beIN and Miramax do mention some names of ‘pirate’ services that allegedly have good connections with local government. This leads to corruption and the lack of enforcement options, including prosecutions.
“beIN understands that the owners and operators of Earthlink, Chaloos, and iStar (three major Iraqi media pirates) have significant influence among Iraqi government officials, both at the federal and regional levels.
“This helps explain the lack of criminal action to date in Iraq against any of these three pirates, despite their wide reach and notoriety,” the broadcaster notes.
Similar claims were made last year. While this definitely sounds concerning and plausible, yet again the claims were based on reports from third-party sources rather than concrete evidence. At least, as far as we can see.
The question is whether the USTR feels comfortable repeating these allegations in its high-profile Special 301 report. Based on the questions asked, it appears that the Office would like to have more detail.
In addition to the contributions from beIN and Miramax, the lack of concrete detail also comes up in other responses. For example, the Premier League also mentions the Shabakaty and Chaloos services, noting that local rightsholders reported them to the Iraqi Government.
The USTR asked the Premier League to provide more detail on these reporting efforts and how the government responded, but the football organization says it can’t share any.
“As the Premier League has not itself been directly involved in attempts to pursue enforcement action against the services in question, we are unable to provide further specific details,” the Premier League responded.
All in all, the above shows that several rightsholders’ complaints concerning governments lacking copyright policies rely on reports from third-party sources. While these can be insightful, placing a country on the Special 301 Watchlist ideally requires some verifiable facts as well.
—
A copy of beIN and Miramax’ answers to the USTR’s follow-up questions is available here (pdf) and the Premier League’s comments can be found here (pdf)
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Quoting Herman Melville is only one of Emotet’s latest innovations.
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
Widely regarded as one of the Internet’s top threats, the Emotet botnet has returned after a months-long hiatus—and it has some new tricks.
Last week, Emotet appeared for the first time this year after a four-month hiatus. It returned with its trademark activity—a wave of malicious spam messages that appear to come from a known contact, address the recipient by name, and seem to be replying to an existing email thread. When Emotet has returned from previous breaks, it brought new techniques designed to evade endpoint security products and to trick users into clicking on links or enabling dangerous macros in attached Microsoft Office documents. Last week’s resumption of activity was no different.
A malicious email sent last Tuesday, for instance, attached a Word document that had a massive amount of extraneous data added to the end. As a result, the file was more than 500MB in size, big enough to prevent some security products from being able to scan the contents. This technique, known as binary padding or file pumping, works by adding zeros to the end of the document. In the event someone is tricked into enabling the macro, the malicious Windows DLL file that’s delivered is also pumped, causing it to mushroom from 616kB to 548.1MB, researchers from security firm Trend Micro said on Monday.
Quoting Herman Melville is only one of Emotet’s latest innovations.
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
Widely regarded as one of the Internet’s top threats, the Emotet botnet has returned after a months-long hiatus—and it has some new tricks.
Last week, Emotet appeared for the first time this year after a four-month hiatus. It returned with its trademark activity—a wave of malicious spam messages that appear to come from a known contact, address the recipient by name, and seem to be replying to an existing email thread. When Emotet has returned from previous breaks, it brought new techniques designed to evade endpoint security products and to trick users into clicking on links or enabling dangerous macros in attached Microsoft Office documents. Last week’s resumption of activity was no different.
A malicious email sent last Tuesday, for instance, attached a Word document that had a massive amount of extraneous data added to the end. As a result, the file was more than 500MB in size, big enough to prevent some security products from being able to scan the contents. This technique, known as binary padding or file pumping, works by adding zeros to the end of the document. In the event someone is tricked into enabling the macro, the malicious Windows DLL file that’s delivered is also pumped, causing it to mushroom from 616kB to 548.1MB, researchers from security firm Trend Micro said on Monday.
Die Berliner Polizei setzt künftig auch Elektroroller vom Typ BMW CE 04 ein. Gefertigt wurden die Fahrzeuge in Berlin. (
Vodafone-Kunden erhalten pro Jahr 40 GByte und als Bonus gibt es Freieinheiten für Anrufe und SMS-Versand ins EU-Ausland. (
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