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SD Express cards are removable storage cards that can fit in the same slot as other SD or microSD cards. But thanks to support for PCIe and NVMe interfaces, they can offer much higher data transfer speeds. And now the SD Association has unveiled a new…
SD Express cards are removable storage cards that can fit in the same slot as other SD or microSD cards. But thanks to support for PCIe and NVMe interfaces, they can offer much higher data transfer speeds. And now the SD Association has unveiled a new version of the SD specification which doubles the top […]
The post Lilbits: SD Express cards with 2GB/s speeds, AMD Threadripper chips with up to 96 cores and 192 threads appeared first on Liliputing.
“It’s always been in the plan, but we definitely accelerated this.”
Enlarge / Artist's illustration of Varda's reentry capsule. (credit: Varda Space Industries)
Varda Space Industries says it has reached an agreement with a private range operator in Australia for spacecraft landings as early as next year after the US government declined to grant approval for the reentry of Varda's first experimental mission carrying pharmaceuticals manufactured in orbit.
After years of applications, reviews, and discussion, the Federal Aviation Administration and the US Air Force would not clear Varda's spacecraft to land at a military test range in the Utah desert last month. An Air Force spokesperson told Ars it did not grant approval for the landing "due to the overall safety, risk, and impact analysis."
Likewise, the FAA denied Varda's application for a commercial reentry license in early September. Varda's first small satellite mission launched The company's leaders say they are still working with the FAA and the Air Force in hopes of getting the spacecraft back to Earth in Utah in the coming months, but now they're looking at other options for future missions.
“It’s always been in the plan, but we definitely accelerated this.”
Enlarge / Artist's illustration of Varda's reentry capsule. (credit: Varda Space Industries)
Varda Space Industries says it has reached an agreement with a private range operator in Australia for spacecraft landings as early as next year after the US government declined to grant approval for the reentry of Varda's first experimental mission carrying pharmaceuticals manufactured in orbit.
After years of applications, reviews, and discussion, the Federal Aviation Administration and the US Air Force would not clear Varda's spacecraft to land at a military test range in the Utah desert last month. An Air Force spokesperson told Ars it did not grant approval for the landing "due to the overall safety, risk, and impact analysis."
Likewise, the FAA denied Varda's application for a commercial reentry license in early September. Varda's first small satellite mission launched The company's leaders say they are still working with the FAA and the Air Force in hopes of getting the spacecraft back to Earth in Utah in the coming months, but now they're looking at other options for future missions.
40-45 jobs are cut, one employee says. “We’re definitely worse off without them.”
Enlarge (credit: Google / Ron Amadeo)
Google used to be a company that rarely did layoffs, but this year job cuts are almost a monthly occurrence. The latest group to see cuts is Google's news division, which CNBC's Jennifer Elias reports is losing an estimated 40-45 jobs, according to an Alphabet Workers Union spokesperson.
Google News is one of the biggest drivers of traffic on the Internet, thanks to spots at the very top of Google Search results, on the Chrome mobile new tab page, in the Google search app, on some Android home screens, and on the news.google.com home page. Online misinformation is surging, and between the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war between Israel and Hamas, worldwide regulators are cracking down on news sites spreading false information. Usually Google's content concern from regulators revolves around YouTube, but now Google seemingly has fewer people to deal with misinformation in one of its biggest content-promotion divisions.
A Google spokesperson told CNBC there's nothing to worry about, saying, "These internal changes have no impact on our misinformation and information quality work in News." A staff engineer at Google News had a different take on the layoffs, though, posting on LinkedIn, "Today Google laid off a bunch of workers who worked on Google News. These are some of the best and brightest people I've ever worked with, and frankly, I don't expect the calculus behind this decision will ever make sense to me. We're definitely worse off without them."
HP is running a sale on select Pavilion Plus laptops with 14 inch displays, allowing you to pick up some pretty good configurations with decent specs for as little as $550. Meanwhile the ACEMAGIC S1 mini PC with an Alder Lake-N processor and a built-i…
HP is running a sale on select Pavilion Plus laptops with 14 inch displays, allowing you to pick up some pretty good configurations with decent specs for as little as $550. Meanwhile the ACEMAGIC S1 mini PC with an Alder Lake-N processor and a built-in status LCD display that I wrote about last month? It […]
The post Daily Deals (10-19-2023) appeared first on Liliputing.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has concluded that Kiwi Farms operator Joshua Moon can be held liable for copyright infringement. The highly controversial site previously refused to remove links to infringing content in response to DMCA notices. While this inaction doesn’t automatically lead to liability, the appeals court concludes that posting and mocking the notices can.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Kiwi Farms is an online forum with a reputation for mocking and harassing people, actions that have been linked to several tragic deaths.
In response to the barrage of negative news, several third-party providers including DreamHost, DDoS-Guard and Cloudflare have all banned the site.
These voluntary curation actions are just the tip of the iceberg. Behind the scenes, many other services refused to work with the controversial site. Hurricane Electric, a Tier 1 Internet backbone provider, reportedly refused to pass on the site’s traffic across the Internet.
It’s no surprise that companies want to distance themselves from the highly controversial forum. However, it’s a slippery slope when backbone providers start to censor speech on their own accord. Ideally, such restrictive measures should be backed by a court order.
None of the cases referenced above went before a court but Kiwi Farms and its founder Joshua Moon were sued for copyright infringement. A person who was systematically targeted through Kiwi Farms took the site and Moon to court three years ago.
The copyright infringement claims were filed by Russell Greer, who was targeted by Kiwi Farms users when he sued Taylor Swift years ago. Greer wrote a book about his experiences and later recorded a song too. These copyrighted works eventually made their way back to Kiwi Farms, where pirated copies were shared by site users.
In response, Greer issued takedown notices to have his works removed from the site, but to no avail. Kiwi Farms’ Joshua Moon refused to remove the content and published the DMCA notices on the site, openly mocking the author.
These actions prompted Greer to file a complaint at a federal court in Utah, accusing Moon of contributory copyright infringement. The complaint alleged that Kiwi Farms users infringed Greer’s copyrights, that Moon was aware of this, and that he knowingly permitted these infringing activities.
In a decision issued in 2021, a district court agreed that Kiwi Farms’ operator was aware of the infringing activities. However, to establish contributory liability, a defendant must “induce, cause, or materially contribute” to the activity. The court found no evidence of that and dismissed the claim.
The district court sympathized with Greer, noting that “it sounds like people on Kiwi Farms have said vile things about him and made his life miserable,” but concluded that his copyright liability claims fell short.
Greer wasn’t pleased with the outcome and appealed the ruling. This week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit concluded that the contributory copyright claims are indeed sufficient, so the case will now return to the lower court.
The reasoning behind the court’s conclusion is interesting. For starters, the court of appeal agreed with the lower court that simply refusing to comply with a takedown notice isn’t sufficient to establish contributory copyright infringement.
“We discern no error in the district court’s explanation that contributory liability requires more than merely ‘permitting’ the infringing material to remain on the website,” the decision reads.
In this case, however, the court of appeals believes that by publishing and mocking the DMCA takedown notice in public, Kiwi Farms’ operator effectively ‘encouraged’ the site’s users to continue their copyright infringing activities.
“Mr. Greer sent repeated requests to Mr. Moon, identifying the materials on which he held the copyright, as well as where and how his rights were being infringed. Mr. Moon not only expressly refused to remove the materials, he mockingly posted the correspondence to Kiwi Farms,” the court notes.
“Under the circumstances, this is not the passive behavior of one ‘merely permitting’ infringing material to remain on his site. Rather, we conclude a reasonable inference from the facts alleged is that the reposting of the takedown notice, combined with the refusal to take down the infringing material, amounted to encouragement of Kiwi Farms users’ direct copyright infringement.”
Put differently, site operators are not liable for copyright infringement when they refuse to take action following a takedown notice. However, when they publish that same notice online, they can incur liability.
Summarizing pages-long rulings strewn with legal nuances isn’t straightforward, but in this case the court’s findings are puzzling to legal experts too. Law professor Eric Goldman points out several issues, including a mix-up of legal doctrines and how the court’s conclusions have the potential to negatively affect takedown notice transparency.
“[T]he court seems to be saying that Moon’s inaction was OK, but Moon’s inaction + posting the takedown notice is not OK. What?” Goldman writes.
“This suggests that all contributors to Lumen have exacerbated their legal risk by providing greater transparency into the shadowy world of copyright takedown notices. That cannot be the right legal standard, and I am reasonably confident no other court would reach that conclusion. Oy, what a mess.”
Indeed, the district court ruling was great news for online services, as it confirmed that they can’t be held liable for refusing to act on a DMCA takedown notice. However, if posting that same notice publicly makes them liable, we might see less transparency going forward.
Of course, there are plenty of nuances to this case. Kiwi Farms’ operator didn’t automatically publish the takedown notice; Moon specifically selected this particular DMCA notice and openly mocked it. That ‘active’ choice may be seen as a crucial distinction.
The court of appeals ruling means that the matter will now revert to the district court for further consideration. Given the unique characteristics of the decision and its potential impact, legal experts will be following it closely.
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A copy of the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit is available here (pdf)
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
“Toughest hurdle” for Google? Defending high cost of default deals, expert says.
Enlarge / Pandu Nayak, Google's vice president of search, was Google's first witness called after the Department of Justice rested its case in historic monopoly trial. (credit: Eamonn M. McCormack / Stringer | Getty Images Europe)
The Department of Justice called its last witness this week, resting its case in a blockbuster antitrust trial probing Google's alleged monopoly over search. Over the next five weeks, Google will do everything in its power to defend against those allegations—or else risk a potential breakup of its lucrative, industry-dominating search business—including likely calling Google CEO Sundar Pichai and other top executives as witnesses.
Since the trial began on September 12, Judge Amit Mehta has heard testimony from 29 witnesses, Bloomberg reported, including leading economists and senior executives from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and other tech companies either partnering with or rivaling Google over the years.
Much of this testimony was closed to protect tech companies' trade secrets, but news outlets have since filed a motion hoping to unseal testimony and access more trial documents sooner, hoping to share more details with the public about the case the DOJ made.
Chinese device maker Emdoor, which is probably best known these days for its rugged tablets, showed off something a little different at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair this week: the company’s first handheld gaming PC. Notebook Italia got a look …
Chinese device maker Emdoor, which is probably best known these days for its rugged tablets, showed off something a little different at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair this week: the company’s first handheld gaming PC. Notebook Italia got a look at the upcoming handheld, and while it looks a lot like many other models we’ve […]
The post Emdoor shows off an 8 inch handheld gaming PC with an Intel Meteor Lake-H processor and Arc 5 integrated graphics appeared first on Liliputing.
2023 subscription costs will pay for 2024’s increased content and talent costs.
Enlarge / The Netflix logo at the entrance to Netflix Albuquerque Studios film and television production studio lot.
Having earned a 22 percent margin on $8.5 billion in revenue and picked up nearly 9 million customers from its crackdown on shared passwords, there's only one thing left for Netflix to do as it rounds out 2023: raise prices. The streaming giant will not, it turns out, be waiting for the actors' strike to end.
Starting today Netflix's non-HD, one-screen-at-a-time Basic plan will be $11.99 per month, up $2, or 16.7 percent, from the $9.99 price set during Netflix's last price increase in January 2022. The Standard package remains $15.49 per month, while the Premium plan, with 4K resolution and four screens, was bumped from $19.99 to $22.99 per month, about 13 percent. The "Standard with ads" plan remains at $6.99.
In its letter to shareholders for Q3 2023, Netflix states that adoption of ads-included plans grew 70 percent from Q2 to Q3, and that 30 percent of new signups are for ad-based plans. Making people pay for password-sharing also had a big impact, as the last quarter saw 8.8 million paid net subscriber additions versus the 2.4 million added the same quarter in 2022, due to "the roll out of paid sharing, strong, steady programming and the ongoing expansion of streaming globally." Netflix now stands at 247 million subscribers worldwide.
The OnePlus Open is a foldable phone with a 7.82 inch AMOLED primary display that folds in half to reveal a 6.31 inch cover screen that you can use when you don’t want to use your phone as a small tablet. It’s the first foldable from OnePl…
The OnePlus Open is a foldable phone with a 7.82 inch AMOLED primary display that folds in half to reveal a 6.31 inch cover screen that you can use when you don’t want to use your phone as a small tablet. It’s the first foldable from OnePlus, a company that got its start by offering […]
The post OnePlus Open joins the foldable fray with a thinner, lighter, and (slightly) cheaper phone appeared first on Liliputing.
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