January 2024 – Page 122 – news.buyenne.com

Full trailer for 3 Body Problem captures epic scope of Liu Cixin’s novel

“They are coming. And there’s nothing you can do to stop them.”

Netflix will debut its new sci-fi series 3 Body Problem in March, based on the award-winning novel by Liu Cixin.

Netflix debuted the official full trailer for 3 Body Problem at CES in Las Vegas today, an eight-episode sci-fi series adapted from the award-winning novel The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, the first book in his Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. The series was created by David Benioff, D.B. Weiss (Game of Thrones), and Alexander Woo (True Blood). CES attendees also had the opportunity to participate in a 3 Body Problem "immersive experience," intended to transport them "into the mysterious world of the series in a fun and experimental way."

(Some spoilers for the novel below.)

The novel began as serialized fiction in Science Fiction World in 2006 and received the Galaxy (Yinhe) Award for Chinese science fiction that same year. Liu published it as a standalone book in 2008. But it was Ken Liu's 2014 English translation for Tor Books—complete with informative footnotes to acquaint Western readers with the many references to Chinese history, particularly the Cultural Revolution—that rocketed The Three-Body Problem to international acclaim. Liu is also the author of two follow-up novels to complete the trilogy (The Dark Forest and Death's End), as well as The Wandering Earth—adapted into film in 2019—and Ball Lightning.

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OpenAI says it’s “impossible” to create useful AI models without copyrighted material

“Copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression” and cannot be avoided.

Enlarge (credit: OpenAI)

ChatGPT developer OpenAI recently acknowledged the necessity of using copyrighted material in the development of AI tools like ChatGPT, The Telegraph reports, saying they would be "impossible" without it. The statement came as part of a submission to the UK's House of Lords communications and digital select committee inquiry into large language models.

AI models like ChatGPT and the image generator DALL-E gain their abilities from training sessions fed, in part, by large quantities of content scraped from the public Internet without the permission of rights holders (In the case of OpenAI, some of the training content is licensed, however). This sort of free-for-all scraping is part of a longstanding tradition in academic machine learning research, but because deep learning AI models went commercial recently, the practice has come under intense scrutiny.

"Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression—including blogposts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents—it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials," wrote OpenAI in the House of Lords submission.

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Citing “crew safety,” NASA delays upcoming Artemis missions by about a year

“We must be realistic.”

Orion, the Earth, and the Moon, captured during the Artemis I mission.

Citing "crew safety" as the agency's chief priority, NASA officials outlined a new schedule for the Artemis lunar program on Tuesday. The roughly one-year delay for each of the next three missions came as little surprise, given the significant amount of work left to be done before astronauts can return to the Moon later this decade.

"Safety is our top priority," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a teleconference with reporters.

The new dates, according to NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free, are:

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HP sued (again) for blocking third-party ink from printers, accused of monopoly

Suit seeks injunction blocking HP from bricking printers using third-party ink.

HP has used its "Dynamic Security" firmware updates to "create a monopoly" of replacement printer ink cartridges, a lawsuit filed against the company on January 5 claims. The lawsuit, which is seeking class-action certification, represents yet another form of litigation against HP for bricking printers when they try to use ink that doesn't bear an HP logo.

The lawsuit (PDF), which was filed in US District Court in the Northern District of Illinois, names 11 plaintiffs and seeks an injunction against HP requiring the company to disable its printer firmware updates from preventing the use of non-HP branded ink. The lawsuit also seeks monetary damages greater than $5,000,000 and a trial by jury.

The lawsuit focuses on HP printer firmware updates issued in late 2022 and early 2023 that left users seeing this message on their printers when they tried to print with non-HP ink:

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Daily Deals (1-09-2024)

The Epic Games Store Holiday Sale ends January 10, which means there’s less than a day left to score deals or use the Epic Coupon for 33% off. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for something to play games on, Best Buy is selling the entry-level…

The post Daily Deals (1-09-2024) appeared first on Liliputing.

Samsung’s “Ballie” home robot is back, way bigger, and headed to production

Samsung jumps into the home robotics market with a bowling ball-sized robot.

Ballie is now the size of a bowling ball. [credit: Samsung ]

Four years ago at CES 2020, one of Samsung's quirkier little projects was "Ballie," a cute little ball robot that would wheel around the house, stream camera footage, and act as a roving smart speaker. The coolest thing about 2020 Ballie was that it would have looked right at home on the set of a Star Wars movie—it was a ball droid, where the wheels were integrated into the spherical body. At CES 2024, Ballie is back with a new design, and according to a report from The Washington Post, it will puportedly hit the market sometime this year. Although much like a concept car being watered down to make it to production, the 2024 Ballie lost much of the prototype's cute appeal.

The 2024 Ballie is no longer a ball droid, and instead is a sphere mounted on three wheels, giving it basically the same locomotion as a robot vacuum. The new Ballie is also bigger, growing from about the size of a softball to the size of a bowling ball, and it's now a two-handed lift. This bigger size can give production Ballie a more practical battery size and make room for a projector. It looks like the sides of the sphere body are stationary (that's where the wheels are mounted), while the sphere's center can still rotate up or down, allowing Ballie to aim the camera/projector mounted on the front.

Take a guess at how Ballie sees the world. I see two cameras, a big projector in the center, and two other mystery sensors. (credit: Samsung)

It looks like there are five sensor windows on Ballie's front visor. The big center rectangle is the projector, with a camera on the left and right side, giving the bot stereo vision. The other sensors are a mystery. Maybe they are robot navigation sensors like time-of-flight. The back features a lot of openings, which probably include a speaker. A robot vacuum would have visible metal contacts for autonomous docking and charging, but there are no clear ports, connectors, or a dock for charging.

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Pirate Sites Worldwide Face Emerging, Perpetual Threat of Domain Seizures

Pirate sites are facing an emerging and potentially global threat of domain name seizures that goes way beyond anything seen before. A pirate site blocking order obtained by the studios of the MPA in India encapsulates the incremental steps taken in recent years. The end result is so expansive that almost any site offering the studios’ content, even that yet to be made, could face perpetual domain name suspensions. No matter where they are in the world.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Over the past several years and especially over the past several months, major rightsholders’ interest in India appears to have risen.

India’s piracy rates provide the most obvious explanation but seemingly sudden and escalating use of India-based anti-piracy outfits is more difficult to quantify. Maybe they’re simply cheaper than the alternatives, or perhaps the jurisdiction has benefits. Certainly, Indian courts might already be providing access to one of the most powerful anti-piracy tools seen in years.

Cautious Approach Disappears Into History

Last May, the High Court in Delhi issued an injunction that among other things, required ISPs to block domain names that hadn’t even been registered. That was just another example of what can be obtained relatively easily from an Indian court today that would’ve been unthinkable just a few years ago.

Guided by the experience of courts in other jurisdictions, in April 2019 the High Court of Delhi issued the country’s first dynamic injunction, carefully crafted to deal with pirate site countermeasures such as domain hopping and mirror sites.

The Court acknowledged the “wide ramifications” of permanent site-wide blocking orders, the need to mitigate risk of over-blocking, and the corresponding need for judicial scrutiny. Justice Manmohan’s order also considered the importance of balancing the interests of rightsholders, ISPs, and the public, with a strictly proportionate response to online piracy.

Supercharging Site-Blocking

Having brought India right up to date, courts seemed happy to press ahead. Within months, a court ordered the preemptive blocking of over 1,100 websites, to protect a movie that hadn’t been released yet, while injunctions issued previously were updated to tackle the hydras.

In September 2022, the High Court of Delhi issued a site-blocking injunction that required domain registrars in the United States to immediately suspend a list of site domain names. The stated aim was to prevent an unreleased movie from appearing on those domains, at an unknown date sometime in the future. A month later another court handed down an order to block over 13,400 sites to protect another unreleased movie.

Major U.S. rightsholders could ask a court in the United States for something similar but for obvious reasons, have not. However, Indian courts are much more predictable and, when it comes to site-blocking injunctions, now seem receptive to new mechanisms being included to ensure compliance.

Suspending Domains Under Dynamic+ Injunctions

What we’re able to show today is that at least one domain registrar in the United States has suspended domain names under the instructions of the High Court of Delhi. The suspensions are part of a dynamic+ injunction issued in India last year, to protect the rights of several Hollywood studios and Netflix, ostensibly in India.

There are more than 70 domains in the injunction and orders for domain registrars to suspend them all have already been issued.

fztvseries.mobi, mobiletvshows.net, www.stagatv.com, vexmovies.uno, coolmoviez.cloud, coolmoviez.com.de, coolmoviez.com.co, fztvseries.mobi, mobiletvshows.net, www.stagatv.com, vexmovies.uno, www.coolmoviez.cloud, www.coolmoviez.com.de, www.coolmoviez.com.co, aniwave.to, aniwave.bz, aniwave.ws, aniwave.tv, www.animehana.in, www.animesenpai4u.com, gogoanime.is, w7.123animes.mobi, anix.to, freemovies2021.com, freemovieswatch.tv, freemovieswatch.net, medeberiyaa.com, medeberiyaa.com, kinogo.biz, ridomovies.pw, lmoviestv.com, moviehax.me, ripcrabbyanime.in, moviehunt.us, mlwbd.rent, mlwbd.digital, mlwbd.love, mlwbd.me, mlwbdofficial.com, mlwbd.photos, www.mov.onl, nyafilmer.gg, 02tvseries2.com, projectfreetv.one, raretoons.me, raretoonsindia.in.net, uflix.cc, waatchmoviess.top, waatchmovies.top, watchmoviiess.top, yifymovies.xyz, kickassanime.am, kaas.am, kickass.onl, wwI.kickass.help, hindimoviesonline.to, www.hindimovies.to, freedrivemovie.lol, freeseries.watch, hdmp4mania2.com, hdmp4mania I .net, genvideos.org, hdflixtor.com, www.24-hd.com, 123serieshd.ru, anihdplay.com, nocensor.cloud, nocensor.click, www2.showbox-movies.net, moviestowatch.tv, moviestowatch.cc, torrentbay.net

The most striking domain in the list is Aniwave.to, a site dedicated to anime that currently receives 317 million visits per month; roughly 40% from the U.S., 9% from the United Kingdom, 8% from Canada, 3.5% Australia, and 2.5% Philippines.

Whatever percentage visit from India, it’s less than 2.5% of the site’s traffic according to SimilarWeb stats. A domain suspension, meanwhile, has global repercussions.

MPA Requests Blocking Injunction

“In a continued effort to curb dissemination of pirated content and its availability on internet, the Plaintiffs who are well established Hollywood Studios have approached this Court seeking blocking and removal of their copyrighted content, from the internet, accessed through rogue websites,” an order handed down by the High Court of Delhi explains.

“The suit is filed against a number of rogue websites who are unlawfully disseminating and communicating a large quantum of copyrighted content of the Plaintiffs,” the order continues, adding that the content “can be accessed and viewed on a variety of devices including Televisions, Personal Computers, Laptops, Tablets, Mobile Phones, etc.”

The order notes that the “rogue websites” offer “illegal viewing almost on a real-time basis” of the studios’ content including Stranger Things, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Batman, Spider Man: No Way Home, Top Gun: Maverick, and The Jungle Book.

Court Issues Dynamic+ Injnction

In light of the claims, the Court says it’s necessary to restrain the sites from streaming, reproducing, distributing, making available to the public and/or communicating to the public, in any manner, any copyrighted content owned by the Plaintiffs including any content they may own in the future.

The scope of the injunction includes all domains listed above, plus any mirror/redirect websites or alphanumeric websites or any variations thereof. At this point the scope of the injunction starts to become apparent.

“….websites identified in the present suit or any mirror/redirect websites or alphanumeric websites, or any variations thereof including those websites which are associated with the Defendants’ websites either based on the name, branding, identity of its operator, or discovered to provide additional means of accessing the Defendant’s website, and other domains/ domain along with their sub-domains and sub-directories, owners, website operators/ entities or even sources of content.”

Assumed association due to “sources of content” could be significant. The vast majority of movie and TV show piracy sites use the same pool of movie and TV show content by default. Arguing these sources of content are effectively the same wouldn’t be difficult in this type of court procedure, especially when arguing otherwise would require a pirate site operator to explain to the contrary.

Block Domains But Also Suspend Them

The order instructs local ISPs to block the domains listed above and as explained, any and all domains (plus “associated” domains) that subsequently appear to facilitate access to them, in perpetuity. However, it also goes further still by ordering domain name registrars to “lock and suspend” all affected domains while handing over domain owners’ details to the Hollywood studios.

“The Domain Name Registrars (DNRs) of the rogue websites’ domain names, upon being intimated by the Plaintiffs shall lock and suspend the said domain names. In addition, any details relating to the registrants of the said domain names including KYC, credit card, mobile number, etc. be also provided to the Plaintiffs,” the order reads.

Whether all registrars will comply remains to be seen but if they want to continue doing business in India, they appear to have little choice. Non-compliance could mean that registrars themselves will be blocked by ISPs.

TorrentFreak can confirm that at least two domains were suspended recently due to this action; fztvseries.mobi and mobiletvshows.net

“In the month of December, Namecheap suspended our domains based on the order from an Indian court,” the former owner of the domains informed us this week.

“The suspension was done without any warning or any sort of communication from either Namecheap or the plaintiff. It was only after noticing the suspension that we reached out to Namecheap. It took approximately five days for Namecheap to reply with an explanation for the suspension.”

Communication between the domain owner and Namecheap is included below.

Follow-up request for information

Eventual response from Namecheap

“Indian courts have a reputation of issuing broad orders that encompass thousands of websites in a single directive, often without thorough verification. Such practices could potentially cause significant global disruption, especially if domain registrars begin to comply with orders from various countries,” the former domain owner concludes.

The sites in question have moved to new domains (fztvseries.live and mobiletvshows.site) and claim that traffic levels have returned to 80% of the levels seen before the suspensions.

Given the nature of the injunction, those domains are vulnerable to being blocked at bare minimum or even seized again. The bigger question is whether Indian courts are now being viewed as the preferred option for enforcement moving forward.

The order issued by the High Court of Delhi can be found here (pdf)

The domains affected by the initial order are listed below but according to the Court’s instructions, any domains that can be linked to these sites or their operators in future must also be blocked and suspended

fztvseries.mobi
mobiletvshows.net
www.stagatv.com
vexmovies.uno
coolmoviez.cloud
coolmoviez.com.de
coolmoviez.com.co
fztvseries.mobi
mobiletvshows.net
www.stagatv.com
vexmovies.uno
www.coolmoviez.cloud
www.coolmoviez.com.de
www.coolmoviez.com.co
aniwave.to
aniwave.bz
aniwave.ws
aniwave.tv
www.animehana.in
www.animesenpai4u.com
gogoanime.is
w7.123animes.mobi
anix.to
freemovies2021.com
freemovieswatch.tv
freemovieswatch.net
medeberiyaa.com
medeberiyaa.com
kinogo.biz
ridomovies.pw
lmoviestv.com
moviehax.me
ripcrabbyanime.in
moviehunt.us
mlwbd.rent
mlwbd.digital
mlwbd.love
mlwbd.me
mlwbdofficial.com
mlwbd.photos
www.mov.onl
nyafilmer.gg
02tvseries2.com
projectfreetv.one
raretoons.me
raretoonsindia.in.net
uflix.cc
waatchmoviess.top
waatchmovies.top
watchmoviiess.top
yifymovies.xyz
kickassanime.am
kaas.am
kickass.onl
wwI.kickass.help
hindimoviesonline.to
www.hindimovies.to
freedrivemovie.lol
freeseries.watch
hdmp4mania2.com
hdmp4mania I .net
genvideos.org
hdflixtor.com
www.24-hd.com
123serieshd.ru
anihdplay.com
nocensor.cloud
nocensor.click
www2.showbox-movies.net
moviestowatch.tv
moviestowatch.cc
torrentbay.net

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Asus NUC Pro and Pro+ mini PCs pack Intel Meteor Lake processors into 4×4 designs

The new Asus ROG NUC is grabbing a lot of attention this week as the first compact gaming PC from Asus since the company took over development, marketing, and support of the NUC brand from Intel last year. But it’s not the only new NUC system As…

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Regulators aren’t convinced that Microsoft and OpenAI operate independently

EU is fielding comments on potential market harms of Microsoft’s investments.

European Union regulators are concerned that Microsoft may be covertly controlling OpenAI as its biggest investor.

On Tuesday, the European Commission (EC) announced that it is currently "checking whether Microsoft's investment in OpenAI might be reviewable under the EU Merger Regulation."

The EC's executive vice president in charge of competition policy, Margrethe Vestager, said in the announcement that rapidly advancing AI technologies are "disruptive" and have "great potential," but to protect EU markets, a forward-looking analysis scrutinizing antitrust risks has become necessary.

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These are Honda’s concepts for its new family of EVs due in 2026

A production car based on the Saloon should go on sale in the US in two years.

A futuristic-looking concept car called the Honda Saloon

The global auto show might be in decline, but at least fans of futuristic cars still have CES. Today, Honda unveiled a pair of concepts in Las Vegas that it says preview a new range of electric vehicles. Called the Honda 0 series, the first of these new EVs is due to go on sale here in the US in 2026.

That car will be based on the Saloon, a sedan-ish car that looks like it just teleported in from Neo Tokyo. Some of the Saloon's details might get watered down by the inevitable compromises of road legality regulations, but fans of the sedan should take comfort in its name—"saloon" is what they call one of those in Britain.

Just the other day, someone was lamenting the lack of cool-looking concepts. [credit: Honda ]

The low-slung form factor is increasingly out of style these days due to a confluence of factors that now includes the difficulty in packaging a slab of batteries into something that isn't crossover-shaped. But that appears to have been taken as something of a challenge by the automaker.

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