It's a big week for IMAX, which has been promoting today's release of Oppenheimer. It's a particularly big deal for IMAX because the film is the first to get a 70 mm IMAX release since 2020's Tenet. So, you could understand why the company took to social media to boast of the size and magnitude of running the film, which is said to be 11 miles long and 600 pounds. But in addition to the blockbuster IMAX release is something that hasn't been a showstopper in ages: a PDA.
And you can't discuss personal digital assistants (PDAs) without mentioning PalmPilots. The Palm computing devices were once the epitome of handheld technological organization. But Palm Computing, which endured a series of acquisitions before HP sunset the brand in 2011, made other devices besides PalmPilots. One of those is the Palm m130, which is apparently IMAX projectionists' ideal controller for running 70 mm film.
As shown in IMAX's TikTok video below, the 70 mm print for Oppenheimer is so large that they had to extend their film platter. That's fascinating and all, but so is the emulated 2002 PDA apparently running things:
Amazon’s new Fire Max 11 is the company’s biggest, most powerful, and most versatile tablet thanks to an updated design, upgraded processor, and support for accessories including a keyboard and pressure-sensitive pen. But the $230 tablet i…
Amazon’s new Fire Max 11 is the company’s biggest, most powerful, and most versatile tablet thanks to an updated design, upgraded processor, and support for accessories including a keyboard and pressure-sensitive pen. But the $230 tablet is also a little trickier to hack than some older Amazon tablets, because it ships with a newer version […]
A complaint filed by DirecTV in Argentina has led to raids on the alleged operators of Digital TV, a pirate IPTV platform servicing an estimated 85,000 customers. A specialist cybercrime unit led by a local prosecutor identified a 22-year-old IT technician as the service’s founder and now the general public knows him too. Local media immediately published his name while local TV channel Canal26 went on to broadcast images of the suspect to 4.5 million viewers.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
In January 2023, the Alliance Against Pay Television Piracy (Allianz) welcomed Jorge Bacaloni as the organization’s new president.
Bacaloni is also the Regional Anti-Piracy Manager of Vrio Corp, a company comprised of DirecTV Latin America and Sky Brasil, among others. In an interview following his appointment, the anti-piracy chief stressed that public/private partnerships are a necessity in the fight against piracy.
“It is necessary for the entire industry to accept that this is a challenge for everyone and to work in coordination,” he said.
“Alianza has a very important role, but it cannot fight a huge criminal network alone, one that is growing by leaps and bounds, hand in hand with technological advances. That is why we believe that governments, in addition to creating favorable conditions for the private sector to create value, must carry out concrete actions to provide legal certainty.”
Precisely when DirecTV’s anti-piracy team filed its complaint with the authorities in Argentina isn’t clear, but it appears the type of cooperation Bacaloni called for again in June is already producing results.
Specialist Prosecutor Launches Investigation
DirecTV’s complaint focused on Digital TV, a pirate IPTV service offering around 900 live TV channels, including channels exclusive to the company in Latin America. Digital TV also had a sizeable VOD platform, 8,000 movies and 400 TV series, DirecTV reports. To round off the package, Digital TV reportedly offered live soccer and adult channels as part of a low-cost subscription deal.
Under the control of specialist cybercrime prosecutor Alejandro Musso in Buenos Aires, the investigation was carried out by Argentina’s Specialized Fiscal Unit for the Investigation of Cybercrimes (UFECI) with assistance from fraud investigators at online marketplace operator Mercado Libre.
Raids Against Pirate IPTV Provider ‘Digital TV’
After receiving authorization from a local court, law enforcement carried out raids in the Buenos Aires Province town of Ramos Mejía, and the cities of Arrecifes and Chivilcoy.
“A 22-year-old man, a computer technician with extensive knowledge of programming, was arrested in Ramos Mejía and brought to justice after being accused of being the creator of ‘Digital TV’, a platform that was used for the illegal retransmission of television signals,” a statement from DirecTV reads.
Image of the raid issued by police
The company says that according to a preliminary inspection, the service had around 85,000 subscribers. An app associated with the service, available for download from “one of the main virtual stores” is said to have been downloaded over 100,000 times.
“The Court ordered [the app’s] immediate blocking given the million-dollar losses suffered by rightsholders due to the action of piracy,” DirecTV adds.
At the time of writing the app remains available on Google Play from Argentinian and overseas IP addresses. The same is true for what appears to be one of Digital TV’s websites.
TorrentFreak was independently able to link the app on Google Play directly with the website, and then link both to the developer arrested by police.
Police Traced “Mastermind” Via IP Addresses
Local media outlet La Nacion published police photographs of the suspect and identified him as local man Martin Coll, the alleged “mastermind” behind DigitalTV and just one of the players involved in TV piracy across Latin America.
“The suspect is part of one of the organizations that operates throughout Latin America, it is a million-dollar business that generates large losses for the affected companies,” a police source said.
Police-issued photo of Digital TV suspect
La Nacion reported that police were able to identify Coll by tracking the IP addresses he used online. While that evidence would indeed prove useful as part of a larger package, we were able to discover the name of the “mastermind” within five minutes of downloading the Digital TV Android app from Google Play.
Whether it was a blunder or misplaced overconfidence is unclear, but the Digital TV app contains an abundance of useful information. In terms of personally identifying information, the certificates are particularly informative since they carry the developer’s full name.
Among other highly sensitive pieces of information, the app links to an API at the domain DigitalTV.cloud. Other than a default server landing page there’s no public-facing website at that address, but one does exist at another URL.
The servers indicated behind the scenes clearly formed an important part of Digital TV’s infrastructure and the authorities are obviously well aware of that since the domain is now linked to an ISP blocking notice.
As noted earlier, Coll’s anonymity was completely removed when local media published his full name and photographs, which included images of the suspect in handcuffs following his arrest. Whether that’s normal for Argentinan media is unclear but whatever the truth, local TV channel Canal26 went on to broadcast images of the suspect to 4.5 million subscribers all around the country.
When that genie escapes from the bottle, there’s no hope of returning it. In the meantime, reports suggest the developer is refusing to answer any questions. Two other men said to be resellers of the service have reportedly been identified by the authorities.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
While rovers have made incredible discoveries, their wheels can hold them back, and erratic terrain can mean damage. There is no replacing something like Perseverance, but sometimes rovers could use a leg up, and they could get that from a small swarm of four-legged robots.
They look like giant metal insects, but the trio of ANYmal robots customized by researchers at ETH Zurich was tested in environments as close to the harsh lunar and Martian terrain as possible. Robots capable of walking could assist future rovers and mitigate the risk of damage from sharp edges or loss of traction in loose regolith. Not only do the ANYmals’ legs help them literally step over obstacles, but these bots work most efficiently as a team. They are each specialized for particular functions but still flexible enough to cover for each other—if one glitches, the others can take over its tasks.
“Our technology can enable robots to investigate scientifically transformative targets on the Moon and Mars that are unreachable at present using wheeled rover systems,” the research team said in a study recently published in Science Robotics.
“You are not the only thing standing between this and the universe.”
Brie Larson returns as Captain Marvel, who finds herself in a destabilizing universe in The Marvels.
Marvel Studios might not have a panel at San Diego Comic-Con this year, but it did release a shiny full trailer for The Marvels, part of Phase Five of the MCU, and directed by Nia DaCosta (Candyman).
As previously reported, Brie Larson and Iman Vellani reprise their respective roles as Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel and Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel for the film, along with Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau, daughter of Carol/Captain Marvel's BFF Maria. Monica grew up to become a SWORD agent, but thanks to the events of WandaVision, she can also absorb and manipulate energy as Spectrum. As for Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, she's a teenage Pakistani American who lives in Jersey City. She's a major comic books fan, worships Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel, and fantasized about becoming a superhero someday. Her powers stem from the Terrigen Mists, released globally in a crossover storyline, the "Inhumanity." The mists activated dormant Inhuman cells in several people, Kamala included.
Naturally, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) will be on hand to lend some assistance, along with fan-favorite Goose the cat-shaped Flerken (played by two cats, Nemo and Tango). Saagar Shaikh, Zenobia Shroff, and Mohan Kapur will reprise their Ms. Marvel roles as Kamala's older brother Aamir, mom Muneeba, and dad Yusuf, respectively. Lashana Lynch will be back as Maria Rambeau (one assumes in a flashback), and Randall Park returns as Jimmy Woo. There's also a new villain called Dar-Benn, played by Zawe Ashton—the aforementioned Kree revolutionary, who wields an Accuser's hammer. Park Seo-joon (Parasite) has also been cast as a yet-unnamed ally of Carol, and Colin Stoneley plays a Kree scientist named Papp-Tonn.
“You are not the only thing standing between this and the universe.”
Brie Larson returns as Captain Marvel, who finds herself in a destabilizing universe in The Marvels.
Marvel Studios might not have a panel at San Diego Comic-Con this year, but it did release a shiny full trailer for The Marvels, part of Phase Five of the MCU, and directed by Nia DaCosta (Candyman).
As previously reported, Brie Larson and Iman Vellani reprise their respective roles as Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel and Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel for the film, along with Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau, daughter of Carol/Captain Marvel's BFF Maria. Monica grew up to become a SWORD agent, but thanks to the events of WandaVision, she can also absorb and manipulate energy as Spectrum. As for Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, she's a teenage Pakistani American who lives in Jersey City. She's a major comic books fan, worships Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel, and fantasized about becoming a superhero someday. Her powers stem from the Terrigen Mists, released globally in a crossover storyline, the "Inhumanity." The mists activated dormant Inhuman cells in several people, Kamala included.
Naturally, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) will be on hand to lend some assistance, along with fan-favorite Goose the cat-shaped Flerken (played by two cats, Nemo and Tango). Saagar Shaikh, Zenobia Shroff, and Mohan Kapur will reprise their Ms. Marvel roles as Kamala's older brother Aamir, mom Muneeba, and dad Yusuf, respectively. Lashana Lynch will be back as Maria Rambeau (one assumes in a flashback), and Randall Park returns as Jimmy Woo. There's also a new villain called Dar-Benn, played by Zawe Ashton—the aforementioned Kree revolutionary, who wields an Accuser's hammer. Park Seo-joon (Parasite) has also been cast as a yet-unnamed ally of Carol, and Colin Stoneley plays a Kree scientist named Papp-Tonn.
Seven companies—including OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, Anthropic, and Inflection—have committed to developing tech to clearly watermark AI-generated content. That will help make it safer to share AI-generated text, video, audio, and images without misleading others about the authenticity of that content, the Biden administration hopes.
It's currently unclear how the watermark will work, but it will likely be embedded in the content so that users can trace its origins to the AI tools used to generate it.
Deepfakes have become an emerging concern for Internet users and policymakers alike as tech companies grapple with how to deal with controversial uses of AI tools.
Seven companies—including OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, Anthropic, and Inflection—have committed to developing tech to clearly watermark AI-generated content. That will help make it safer to share AI-generated text, video, audio, and images without misleading others about the authenticity of that content, the Biden administration hopes.
It's currently unclear how the watermark will work, but it will likely be embedded in the content so that users can trace its origins to the AI tools used to generate it.
Deepfakes have become an emerging concern for Internet users and policymakers alike as tech companies grapple with how to deal with controversial uses of AI tools.
Vor allem Softwareentwickler können bei Google hervorragend verdienen. Dokumente aus dem Jahr 2022 zeigen, wer wie viel bekommt. (Google, Silicon Valley)
Vor allem Softwareentwickler können bei Google hervorragend verdienen. Dokumente aus dem Jahr 2022 zeigen, wer wie viel bekommt. (Google, Silicon Valley)
“Glorbo” isn’t real, but a news-writing AI model didn’t know it—and then it wrote about itself.
Enlarge/ A World of Warcraft illustration from the Zleague.gg article on "Glorbo." (credit: Zleague.gg)
On Thursday, a Reddit user named kaefer_kriegerin posted a fake announcement on the World of Warcraft subreddit about the introduction of "Glorbo" to the game. Glorbo isn't real, but the post successfully exposed a website that scrapes Reddit for news in an automated fashion with little human oversight.
Not long after the trick post appeared, an article about Glorbo surfaced on "The Portal," a gaming news content mill run by Z League, a company that offers cash prizes for playing in gaming tournaments. The Z League article mindlessly regurgitates the Reddit post and adds nonsensical details. Its author, "Lucy Reed" (likely a fictitious name for a bot), authored over 80 articles that same day.
Members of the World of Warcraft subreddit recently noticed that this kind of automated content scraping of Reddit has been taking place, prompting several of them to try to game the bots and get their posts featured on sites like The Portal.
Vor allem Softwareentwickler können bei Google hervorragend verdienen. Dokumente aus dem Jahr 2022 zeigen, wer wie viel bekommt. (
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