Month: January 2024

Apple aims to run AI models directly on iPhones, other devices

Apple has acquired 21 AI startups since the beginning of 2017.

montage of iPhone and Apple logo

Enlarge (credit: FT montage/AFP/Getty Images)

Apple is quietly increasing its capabilities in artificial intelligence, making a series of acquisitions, staff hires, and hardware updates that are designed to bring AI to its next generation of iPhones.

Industry data and academic papers, as well as insights from tech sector insiders, suggest the Californian company has focused most attention on tackling the technological problem of running AI through mobile devices.

The iPhone maker has been more active than rival Big Tech companies in buying AI startups, acquiring 21 since the beginning of 2017, research from PitchBook shows. The most recent of those acquisitions was its purchase in early 2023 of California-based startup WaveOne, which offers AI-powered video compression.

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Alaska Airlines says it found many loose bolts on its Boeing 737 Max 9s

Inspections after a near-disaster reveal widespread problems with Boeing fleet.

A photo showing some of an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9. A mid-cabin panel has been replaced with plastic sheeting.

Enlarge / The missing emergency door of Alaska Airlines N704AL, a 737 Max 9, which made an emergency landing at Portland International Airport on January 5 is covered and taped, in Portland, Oregon on January 23, 2024. (credit: PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)

Inspections of Alaska Airlines' fleet of Boeing 737 Max 9s has turned up "many" loose bolts, according to CEO Ben Minicucci. "I'm more than frustrated and disappointed," he told NBC News, "I am angry. This happened to Alaska Airlines. It happened to our guests and happened to our people."

The inspections follow a near-disaster on Alaska Airlines flight 1282 on January 5 of this year, when a blanking plate blew off the 737 Max 9 aircraft mid-flight. The loss of the blanking plate resulted in a rapid decompression of the plane, but fortunately did not result in loss of control of the aircraft or any physical injuries to passengers or crew.

The following day, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive that has grounded all 737 Max 9s fitted with mid-cabin door plugs—other specifications of the plane use actual doors at that location in order to allow for more passengers in the cabin.

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beIN Sports’ Football Piracy Blitz Adds Blocking to Domain Seizures

With no obvious signs that piracy of live sporting events is on the wane, beIN Sports appears to be waging war against unlicensed providers on multiple fronts. With the Africa Cup of Nations tournament now in full swing, a report that beIN has obtained an order to block 56 pirate sites coincides with action against dozens of others reported earlier this week.

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

beIN SportsPerhaps more than any other broadcaster, beIN Sports understands the potential for piracy to spin out of control.

When a diplomatic crisis between Qatar and other Arab countries led to Saudi Arabia blocking the beIN service in 2017, beoutQ – a full-blown piracy platform – stepped in as a comprehensive but illegal beIN replacement.

Over the next two years, the political fallout spread beyond the Middle East to the United States and European Union, leading to a World Trade Organization report and ultimately the closure of beoutQ’s satellite service in August 2019.

Protecting the Africa Cup of Nations

Over four years later, beIN is still battling commercial-scale piracy. After obtaining exclusive broadcasting rights to Africa’s most prestigious football tournament, the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), tackling piracy of the month-long event would necessarily become a key component of the company’s overall strategy.

According to a report published by L’Informé this week (paywall), beIN’s plan to curtail piracy of AFCON in France had been in the planning for some time.

Early 2022, the broadcaster became the first rightsholder to take action under Article L. 333-10 of the Sports Code, legislation introduced by the French government that provided accelerated access to anti-piracy measures such as site blocking.

According to L’Informé, on December 15 under the same system, beIN served a writ of summons on the main ISPs in France – Bouygues Télécom, Free, Orange, Outremer-Télécom, Société Réunionnaise du radiotéléphone (SFR), and SFR Fibre. On January 9, 2024, the Paris judicial court upheld beIN’s application for blocking measures against 56 illegal streaming sites, to be implemented by the ISPs, to protect the AFCON tournament.

Pirate Sites Were Likely to Air AFCON Matches

To support the blocking application, beIN presented evidence showing that the pirate sites had systematically infringed its rights in the past.

Last November, one of the domains on the list – Ishunter.net – was illegally broadcasting matches from Germany’s Bundesliga, Spain’s La Liga, and Serie A matches from Italy to which beIN holds French broadcasting rights. At the time of writing, the domain returns a parking page rather than live football streams; as a result, takedown notices filed with Google are mostly attempting to take down content that doesn’t exist, at least at the specific URLs listed.

Three other domains – ipcover.tv, maxsmart.pro and pythonlived.com – reportedly service pirate IPTV apps. Maxsmart.pro is the only domain obviously functional today, serving pearls of wisdom from the likes of Mahatma Gandhi rather than football matches, however.

Current Status of Domains

While ISP blocking measures can be evaded when injunctions are static (i.e. targets are fixed) the order obtained by beIN Sports is dynamic. This means that if the listed pirate sites use subdomains, entirely new ones, or any other measures, if beIN is confident the new locations relate to the old ones, blocking can go ahead.

Speaking with L’Informé, Caroline Guenneteau, Deputy General Secretary of beIN Media Group and Legal Director of beIN Sports France, said that 70 domains have already been blocked to protect this competition alone

“It’s very important to be proactive at the start of the competition, when there are a maximum number of illicit streams,” Guenneteau added.

Even though the blocking measures shouldn’t affect those who visit the sites from outside France, tests carried out by TorrentFreak on the specific domains as they appear in the order (full list below) suggest some have made changes.

Around 25 are still operational from their previous locations while a small number redirect to their own subdomains or new/alternative domains. Others display ‘domain parking’ style pages while others prefer to offer up their own blend of humor instead.

pirate travel

One of the pirate domains currently suggests involvement with the insurance and travel business, another claims to be a fitness promotion platform. At least two redirect to new domains before asking for money to keep things going.

bein-money

A handful of others show Cloudflare error messages but as these above show, perhaps not all messages appearing on these domains are authentic.

In any event, finding alternatives through search engines may be more difficult than it was before. The order obtained by beIN allows it to serve court orders on companies such as Google, requiring the domains to be delisted from search results.

The domains listed in an order published on the Lumen Database are broadly similar to those present in the original order, but additional notices will likely be sent as new domains are reported.

The blocking action in France complements the action we reported here on Monday. Dozens of domains linked to sites previously showing live football matches, to which beIN owns the rights, began redirecting to the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment.

Among those domains were 7kora.mpokora-online.com and 7koora.mpokora-online.com, both of which currently show the ACE domain seizure banner.

Since they’re also on beIN’s ISP blocking list, visitors to those domains in France shouldn’t be able to access the sites, so in theory will be spared the bad news.

The domains/URLs to be blocked by ISPs in France:

Kooora4lives.net
Ishunter.net
Sportp2P.com
Rojadirect1.pro
Aflam4you.org
Kora-star.online
Yallalive.id
360kora.net
Live-koora.live
Yalla-live-tv.io
Sporttv123.xyz
Wholewellnesswhirl.live
Sporttvls.com
Top.crackstreamfree.com
Top2.crackstreamfree.com
Top3.crackstreamfree.com
Top4.crackstreamfree.com
Top6.crackstreamfree.com
Stad.livehd7s.live
V3.sportonline.so
Shoot.yallashoote.com
W1.yalla-shoot-tv.io
Futbolandres.xyz
360kora.tvem.net
Aleexsportz.online
Yalla-live.org
Sa.yalla-live.com
Lkooora.live
Livehd72.com
Kora-yallashoot.com
Kora.live-kooora.io
Goalarab.org
Go.livehd72.livve
Ar.new-yallashoot.com
10koora.livekooora.online
Totalsportek.pro
Kooralivs.com
7kora.mpokora-online.com
7koora.mpokora-online.com
Tv.yalla-shoot2day.com
Tv.yacine-tv.app
Spie.livehd7.io
Dotsport1.com
Yala-shoot.live
Streams.lc
Beinmatch1.com
Beinmatch.motorcycles
365kora.com
Ma.360kora-live.com
Kora.live-koora.net
Gogolion.xyz
Ipcover.tv
Maxsmart.pro
Megahdtv.xyz
Pythonlived.com
Smart-prott.xyz

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

Review: Radeon 7600 XT offers peace of mind via lots of RAM, remains a midrange GPU

There are a few measurable benefits to having more RAM, but also some drawbacks.

  • XFX's take on AMD's Radeon RX 7600 XT. [credit: Andrew Cunningham ]

We don't need a long intro for this one: AMD's new Radeon RX 7600 XT is almost exactly the same as last year's RX 7600, but with a mild bump to the GPU's clock speed and 16GB of memory instead of 8GB. It also costs $329 instead of $269, the current MSRP (and current street price) for the regular RX 7600.

It's a card with a pretty narrow target audience: people who are worried about buying a GPU with 8GB of memory, but who aren't worried enough about future-proofing or RAM requirements to buy a more powerful GPU. It's priced reasonably well, at least—$60 is a lot to pay for extra memory, but $329 was the MSRP for the Radeon RX 6600 back in 2021. If you want more memory in a current-generation card, you otherwise generally need to jump up into the $450 range (for the 12GB RX 7700 XT or the 16GB RTX 4060 Ti) or beyond.

RX 7700 XT RX 7600 RX 7600 XT RX 6600 RX 6600 XT RX 6650 XT RX 6750 XT
Compute units (Stream processors) 54 (3,456) 32 (2,048) 32 (2,048) 28 (1,792) 32 (2,048) 32 (2,048) 40 (2,560)
Boost Clock 2,544 MHz 2,600 MHz 2,760 MHz 2,490 MHz 2,589 MHz 2,635 MHz 2,600 MHz
Memory Bus Width 192-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 192-bit
Memory Clock 2,250 MHz 2,250 MHz 2,250 MHz 1,750 MHz 2,000 MHz 2,190 MHz 2,250 MHz
Memory size 12GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 16GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 12GB GDDR6
Total board power (TBP) 245 W 165 W 190 W 132 W 160 W 180 W 250 W

The fact of the matter is that this is the same silicon we've already seen. The clock speed bumps do provide a small across-the-board performance uplift, and the impact of the extra RAM does become apparent in a few of our tests. But the card doesn't fundamentally alter the AMD-vs-Nvidia-vs-Intel dynamic in the $300-ish graphics card market, though it addresses a couple of the regular RX 7600's most glaring weaknesses.

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