Month: February 2024

Surprising link found between niacin and risk of heart attack and stroke

Breakdown products of niacin, aka Vitamin B3, may spur vascular inflammation.

A shopper looks at a meat display on June 20, 2022 at the Market 32 Supermarket in South Burlington, Vermont. Niacin can be found in foods such as red meat, poultry, fish, fortified cereals and breads, brown rice, nuts, legumes, and bananas.

Enlarge / A shopper looks at a meat display on June 20, 2022 at the Market 32 Supermarket in South Burlington, Vermont. Niacin can be found in foods such as red meat, poultry, fish, fortified cereals and breads, brown rice, nuts, legumes, and bananas. (credit: Getty | Robert Nickelsberg)

In the early 20th century, the deadliest nutrient-related disease in US history ravaged the American South. Pellagra, a disease caused by a deficiency in niacin and/or tryptophan, is marked by the four "D's": diarrhea, dermatitis that leads to gruesome skin plaques, dementia, and death. At its peak during the Great Depression, pellagra killed nearly 7,000 Southerners a year. Between 1906 and 1940, researchers estimate that the epidemic struck roughly 3 million Americans, killing around 100,000.

The deadly epidemic led to voluntary—and eventually mandatory—fortification of wheat and other cereals with niacin (aka Vitamin B3). By the middle of the century, pellagra nearly vanished from the US. But, decades later, the public health triumph may be backfiring. With Americans' diets more reliant than ever on processed, niacin-fortified foods, the average niacin intake in the US is now nearing what's considered the tolerable upper limit of the nutrient, according to a federal health survey. And an extensive study recently published in Nature Medicine suggests that those excess amounts of niacin may be exacerbating cardiovascular disease, increasing risks of heart attacks, strokes, and death.

The study, led by Stanley Hazen, chair of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Sciences at Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute, connected high blood levels of a breakdown product of niacin—and to a lesser extent, tryptophan—to an elevated risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE). And this elevated risk appears to be independent of known risk factors for those events, such as high cholesterol.

Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

HP’s new Pavilion Aero 13 is a 2.2 pound laptop with Ryzen 8040, coming in May for $800 and up

For the past few years, the HP Pavilion Aero 13 has been one of my go-to recommendations for folks looking for a thin and light laptop with performance and design that punches above its price class. HP has given the laptop a few modest upgrades since …

For the past few years, the HP Pavilion Aero 13 has been one of my go-to recommendations for folks looking for a thin and light laptop with performance and design that punches above its price class. HP has given the laptop a few modest upgrades since I first reviewed the notebook in 2021, but for […]

The post HP’s new Pavilion Aero 13 is a 2.2 pound laptop with Ryzen 8040, coming in May for $800 and up appeared first on Liliputing.

Hollywood Used ‘Dynamic+ Injunction’ to Shut Down movie-web and Other Pirate Sites

Late last week, the public-facing demo website of movie-web went offline. New information shows that this was likely the result of a ‘dynamic+ injunction’, ordered by the High Court of Delhi, India on behalf of Netflix and the Hollywood majors. The order requires ISPs to block dozens of pirate sites and also applies to domain name registrars, including the American company Namecheap.

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

delhiThis weekend, we reported that the open source movie search app movie-web lost control over the domain name of its demo site.

Registrar Namecheap suspended the domain following a complaint from several major Hollywood studios and Netflix. Initially, broader context was missing but new information suggests that an Indian order lies at the basis of this intervention.

Like many other countries around the world, India’s copyright law allows rightsholders to limit access to pirate sites. This measure is widely used by major American movie companies to obtain injunctions that require local Internet providers to block websites to prevent piracy.

Dynamic+ Blocking Orders

Over the years the nature of these court orders has evolved. The initial measures were straightforward, in the sense that they pointed out specifically which domains should be blocked. These later evolved into ‘dynamic’ versions, allowing rightsholders to add new domains and proxies whenever they are launched.

The Indian courts are not stopping at dynamic blocking orders either. In several instances, Internet providers have been instructed to block websites because they might make infringing works available in the future. This includes content yet to be created.

In addition, ISPs are no longer the only parties that are covered by dynamic+ injunctions. The orders also require domain name registrars worldwide to disable the mentioned domain names. Domain registrars that refuse to comply risk losing their ability to operate in India.

Movie-web.app and 44 Other ‘Pirate’ Domains

Namecheap’s decision to suspend the movie-web.app domain follows after Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. and others obtained a new dynamic+ injunction at the High Court of Delhi earlier this month. The complaint in question lists 45 domain names linked to 28 defendants (full list below).

defendants

The injunction requires Indian ISPs to block the domains, but also lists ‘domain registrars’ as a broad category, without specifically naming any.

“The respective Domain Name Registrars of Defendants No. 1 to 28, 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,” it reads.

According to the order, the operators of these websites are doing all they can to hide their identities. Attempts to compel the operators to stop the allegedly infringing activity presumably failed.

“Plaintiffs’ legal notices to takedown the infringing content from the websites have been futile. Defendants No. 1 to 28 are thus knowingly engaging in the impugned activities, in utter disregard of the Plaintiffs’ rights,” the order notes.

While the above typically applies to rogue pirate sites, we’re not sure how accurate it is for movie-web. The identities of the developers involved in the open source project are easy to find and, in their shutdown message a few days ago, they said that they “would go down without a fight,” if it came to that.

Movie-web kept its word. After Namecheap put the domain on clientHold, it didn’t make any comeback attempts. The software is still available for others to use but the official demo website will remain offline.

Not all Domains are Offline

The movie-web example suggests that Namecheap complied with the Indian court order. This is further confirmed by other Namecheap-registered domains from the same injunction that also went offline, including moviemods.dev, epxmovies.com, sflix.watch and goflixtor.com.

All of these domains now have a clientHold status, rendering them inaccessible. The same applies to domains that were registered through Porkbun, which include cinehub.wtf, filmygallery.baby, and other filmygallery domains.

Domains registered through Namebright and Dynadot are also unreachable, but these don’t have a dedicated status code.

Not all domains covered by the order are offline though. At the time of writing, several Tucows registered domains remain accessible or redirect to new ones, and the same applies to domains that are linked to Dynadot, Sarek, Realtime Register, and Godaddy.

The above are just our initial findings and these shouldn’t be used to draw broader conclusions, especially since some domain registrars are only tied to a single domain name. However, it is worth taking note and comparing these actions to any in the future.

.To Complications

The above suggests that at least some American domain registrars are responsive to an Indian court injunction, obtained by American movie studios. This means that this “Indian route” could be a fruitful anti-piracy measure for rightsholders.

Thus far, however, none of the .to domain names listed in the injunction have gone offline. The .to registry ‘Tonic‘ is not covered by the injunction, but it appears that none of the registrars of these domain names has ‘intervened’ either.

The .to domain whois doesn’t list who the registrars are but TorrentFreak has information which shows that upmovies.to, zorox.to, flixwave.to and others were registered through Namecheap. This is interesting because Namecheap suspended non- .to domains.

We asked Namecheap for a comment on our findings but the company didn’t immediately respond.

One explanation for the response discrepancy could be that the Tonic registry doesn’t support the clientHold status code. Namecheap used this to suspend the other domain names, so the lack of action with regard to the .to domains may be of a technical nature.

Whatever the explanation is, these dynamic+ orders are among the most effective we’ve seen so far. With that in mind, we expect Hollywood to use the Indian route more often going forward, if they want U.S. companies to take action.

—

A copy of the dynamic+ injunction issued by Justice Sanjeev Narula at the Delhi High Court is available here (pdf). A full list of all affected domain names is available below.

1. fzkidd.net
2. ofilmyzilla.ms
3. ofilmyzilla.com.ve
4. ofilmyzilla.it
5. tamilyogi.plus
6. tamilyogi.love
7. tamilyogi.band
8. soap2day.tel
9. myflixer.la
10. flixer.ph
11. myflixer.ph
12. sflix.watch
13. sflixz.to
14. moviesmod.dev
15. moviesmod.wiki
16. moviesmod.one
17. freemovies360.cc
18. streamm4u.com
19. streamm4u.to
20. desicinemas.ink
21. epxmovies.net
22. movi.pk
23. 123moviesfree.mx
24. filmygallery.baby
25. filmygallery.app
26. filmygallery.cab
27. filmygallery.club
28. filmygallery.foo
29. filmygallery.lol
30. filmygallery.pro
31. zorox.to
32. zoro.vc
33. flixwave.to
34. upmovies.to
35. mydownloadtube.net
36. movie-web.app
37. moviekhhd.biz
38. movieshd.watch
39. goflixtor.com
40. cinehub.wtf
41. arc018.to
42. flixerplus.com
43. netmovies.to
44. aniwatch.to
45. toonstream.in

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

Lenovo ThinkBook 14 2-in-1 with Intel Meteor Lake coming in March

The Lenovo ThinkBook 14 2-in-1 Gen 4 is a convertible notebook with a 14 inch touchscreen display, a 360 degree hinge that lets you position the computer for use in tablet, tent, stand, or laptop modes, and a reasonably compact design: the laptop meas…

The Lenovo ThinkBook 14 2-in-1 Gen 4 is a convertible notebook with a 14 inch touchscreen display, a 360 degree hinge that lets you position the computer for use in tablet, tent, stand, or laptop modes, and a reasonably compact design: the laptop measures about 0.7 inches thick and has a starting weigh of 3.6 pounds. […]

The post Lenovo ThinkBook 14 2-in-1 with Intel Meteor Lake coming in March appeared first on Liliputing.

Apple Vision Pro’s components cost $1,542—but that’s not the full story

The OLED displays account for more than a third of the component costs.

A render of the displays inside the headset

Enlarge / The Vision Pro has two micro-OLED displays. (credit: Apple)

Research firm Omdia has published the first publicly available educated estimates of how much the materials for each Vision Pro really cost Apple. The analysis sets an overall price tag for the materials and identifies which components cost the most money.

Omdia Senior Research Director David Hsieh estimates that the total bill of materials comes in at around $1,542. The consumer price for the headset starts at $3,499 but can be as much as a thousand dollars more than that, depending on the configuration the buyer chooses.

Vision Pro presents both the real and the virtual worlds to the user with two micro-OLED displays, one for each eye. Together, these dual displays are the most expensive component in the headset, costing $456. Another external display (the one used for EyeSight) costs around $70, Hsieh estimates. That means that Omdia estimates the device's displays account for about 35 percent of the total cost of the device's materials.

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Wear OS “Hybrid” design has two OSes, two CPUs, “100 hour” battery life

Wear OS + Snapdragon uses too much power, so what if we just turned it off?

  • The OnePlus Watch 2. [credit: OnePlus ]

Smartwatches are capable little devices, but a big downside is that the battery doesn't last that long. A smartphone-style smooth-scrolling UI usually leads to smartphone-style battery life, where you have to charge the watch every day or so. Simpler fitness devices with more minimal screens and UIs can last a lot longer, but what if there was a smartwatch that could attain the best of both worlds?

That's the solution OnePlus and Google have cooked up, with the new "Wear OS hybrid interface" on the OnePlus Watch 2. Basically, the smartwatch is now packing two different sets of CPUs and OSes: One set is geared for low-power and is used for the always-on display, and a second set is for screen-on touch usage. OnePlus claims "market-leading battery life of up to 100 hours" in the OS-switching "smart mode," though of course, how much you use the watch will make a huge difference.

Wear OS devices have been creeping up to this line for a while. Watches have long shipped with low-power "co-processors" either built right into the system-on-a-chip (SoC) or tacked on as an extra chip. The major step here is the extra OS, which allows the hardware to put Wear OS to sleep when you aren't actively using the watch. Google isn't very forthcoming in its blog post about manufacturers wanting to kick the power-hungry Wear OS to the curb, but OnePlus says the watch runs a real-time operating system (RTOS) when in its "efficiency" mode. On the OnePlus Watch 2, the chip layout is a Snapdragon W5 SoC that runs Wear OS, while the RTOS runs on a BES 2700 microcontroller unit (MCU) chipset.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Onyx BOOX Leaf 3C is basically a Kindle Oasis with an E Ink color display (and more storage, a microSD card reader, etc)

The Onyx BOOX Leaf 3C is an eBook reader with a 7 inch, 1264 x 1680 pixel E Ink display positioned off-center, leaving one side of the device with enough room for a grip with physical page turn buttons. In other words, it looks a lot like Amazon&#8217…

The Onyx BOOX Leaf 3C is an eBook reader with a 7 inch, 1264 x 1680 pixel E Ink display positioned off-center, leaving one side of the device with enough room for a grip with physical page turn buttons. In other words, it looks a lot like Amazon’s Kindle Oasis. But unlike the Oasis, the Leaf […]

The post Onyx BOOX Leaf 3C is basically a Kindle Oasis with an E Ink color display (and more storage, a microSD card reader, etc) appeared first on Liliputing.

OnePlus Watch 2 is a Wear OS watch with up to 4 days battery life (and an activity tracker with up to 12)

Smartwatches running Google’s Wear OS software aren’t exactly known for stellar battery life, often needing to be recharged every day or two. But the OnePlus Watch 2 promises up to 100 hours (a little over four days) of battery life under …

Smartwatches running Google’s Wear OS software aren’t exactly known for stellar battery life, often needing to be recharged every day or two. But the OnePlus Watch 2 promises up to 100 hours (a little over four days) of battery life under normal usage or 48 hours of heavy use. How? By leveraging the Wear OS […]

The post OnePlus Watch 2 is a Wear OS watch with up to 4 days battery life (and an activity tracker with up to 12) appeared first on Liliputing.