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The Asus ExpertBook P5 is a premium thin and light laptop designed for the business market. It has a 14 inch, 2.5K display with a 144 Hz refresh rate, support for up to 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and support for up to 3TB of storage thanks to dual SSD slots…
The Asus ExpertBook P5 is a premium thin and light laptop designed for the business market. It has a 14 inch, 2.5K display with a 144 Hz refresh rate, support for up to 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and support for up to 3TB of storage thanks to dual SSD slots. According to Asus, it’s also the […]
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Apple’s public betas are usually stable enough for daily use, but be careful.
Enlarge (credit: Apple)
Apple's next-generation operating systems are taking their next step toward release today: Apple is issuing the first public beta builds of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15 Sequoia, tvOS 18, and HomePod Software 18 today. Sign up for Apple's public beta program with your Apple ID, and you'll be able to select the public beta builds from Software Update in the Settings app.
We covered the highlights of most of these releases when they were announced during Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June, including more home screen customization in iOS and iPadOS, window tiling and iPhone mirroring in macOS, RCS text messaging support across all of Apple's platforms, and more. But Apple still isn't ready to show off a preview of its Apple Intelligence AI features, including the text and image generation features and a revamped Siri. Many of these features are still slated for "later this summer" and will presumably be available in some form in the final releases this fall.
Most devices that can run iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS 14 Sonoma will be able to update to the new versions, including owners of the last couple generations of Intel Macs. But a handful of older phones and tablets and the 2018 MacBook Air are being dropped by the new releases. The watchOS 11 update is also dropping the Series 4 and Series 5 models as well as the first-generation Apple Watch SE.
Lawsuit: One user’s IP address was identified in 4,450 infringement notices.
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Smith Collection/Gado )
Major record labels sued Verizon on Friday, alleging that the Internet service provider violated copyright law by continuing to serve customers accused of pirating music. Verizon "knowingly provides its high-speed service to a massive community of online pirates," said the complaint filed in US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Universal, Sony, and Warner say they have sent over 340,000 copyright infringement notices to Verizon since early 2020. "Those notices identify specific subscribers on Verizon's network stealing Plaintiffs' sound recordings through peer-to-peer ('P2P') file-sharing networks that are notorious hotbeds for copyright infringement," the lawsuit said.
Record labels allege that "Verizon ignored Plaintiffs' notices and buried its head in the sand" by "continu[ing] to provide its high-speed service to thousands of known repeat infringers so it could continue to collect millions of dollars from them." They say that "Verizon has knowingly contributed to, and reaped substantial profits from, massive copyright infringement committed by tens of thousands of its subscribers."
Files available on the open source NPM repository underscore a growing sophistication.
Researchers have determined that two fake AWS packages downloaded hundreds of times from the open source NPM JavaScript repository contained carefully concealed code that backdoored developers' computers when executed.
The packages—img-aws-s3-object-multipart-copy and legacyaws-s3-object-multipart-copy—were attempts to appear as aws-s3-object-multipart-copy, a legitimate JavaScript library for copying files using Amazon’s S3 cloud service. The fake files included all the code found in the legitimate library but added an additional JavaScript file named loadformat.js. That file provided what appeared to be benign code and three JPG images that were processed during package installation. One of those images contained code fragments that, when reconstructed, formed code for backdooring the developer device.
“We have reported these packages for removal, however the malicious packages remained available on npm for nearly two days,” researchers from Phylum, the security firm that spotted the packages, wrote. “This is worrying as it implies that most systems are unable to detect and promptly report on these packages, leaving developers vulnerable to attack for longer periods of time.”
Canada’s Federal Court has granted a new ‘dynamic’ piracy blocking order, requiring Internet providers to block specific IP addresses associated with sports streaming piracy. The order covers upcoming NBA, NHL, and Premier League games. It was amended swiftly on Friday, to cover last night’s Euro 2024 football final too.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Three years ago, Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal upheld the first pirate site-blocking order in the country.
The landmark decision opened the door to additional and more advanced blocking requests. Indeed, it didn’t take long before NHL broadcasters asked the court for a pirate streaming blocking order of their own.
This NHL blocking action was followed by a FIFA World Cup blocking order, which was also granted without further hassle. Following up on these successes, sports rightsholders added MLB pirates to their list of targets.
The blocking injunctions were not standalone requests. Instead, the interlocutory orders are part of lawsuits against the operators of the pirate streaming servers. On paper, the goal of the lawsuits is to pursue claims against these defendants and the blockades are a temporary measure to limit the damage these services cause.
This approach made sense, as filing a lawsuit simply for blocking purposes wasn’t common. However, after several injunctions were granted over the past three years, in April rightsholders streamlined their tactics by expanding the coverage of their blocking efforts.
Instead of pursuing blocking requests separately, rightsholders including Bell, Fubo TV, Rogers, and The Sports Network filed a request that covered multiple sports. The organizations sought to secure a blocking order for new NBA, NHL and Premier League games, identifying three “John Doe” defendants.
The defendants were not named but several IP addresses were identified. These appear to have been used by several piracy operations, including the publicly available pirate streaming site ‘epllive.net’ and paid subscription platforms including ‘TVSmarters’, which are mentioned by name.
Canada’s Federal Court granted the joint blocking request last Tuesday. A publicly available copy of the order has all IP addresses redacted, resulting in numerous blacked out pages.
The ‘dynamic’ blocking order allows rightsholders to go back to court, to expand the list of blocked IP addresses. This helps to keep the injunction up-to-date, in the event that pirate streaming services try to circumvent the blocking measures.
Unlike the IP addresses, the ‘game windows’ and targeted games are not a secret. They cover upcoming NBA, NHL, and Premier League games, with the length varying per sport.
The NBA order remains valid until the 2025-2026 season. Coverage for pre-season and regular season games is limited to the only Canadian NBA team, the Toronto Raptors, likely due to rights issues. For the playoffs, non-Raptors games should be blocked too.
The Premier League order has no restrictions and applies to the 2023-2024 season, which has already ended, and the upcoming 2024-2025 season, yet to get underway.
The NHL blocking order appears to have come too late. According to the court documents, it covers the 2023-2024 season and the 2024 Stanley Cup. These ended before the court approved the court order.
The early expiration can be addressed, as the court order also includes the option to submit amendments to the scope of the order, without intervention from the court. This means that the NHL games for the upcoming season can be added, provided that the rights are secured.
The rightsholders requested this ‘expansion’ option because that would be more efficient than having to go back to court again and launch a separate proceeding. If a rightsholder needs more than two amendments, however, the court has to review the matter again.
Updates are not limited to NBA, NHL, or Premier League content. They can also cover different leagues or entirely different sports, as long as the requesting party has the appropriate rights.
The new amendment option was swiftly put to use. Just a few days after the court granted the order, an amendment request sought to expand the blocking order to cover the Euro 2024 football final, which took place yesterday.
This amendment was granted last Friday and, assuming that the targeted ISPs responded in time, were implemented before the broadcast started.
All in all, the recent orders show that rightsholders in Canada continue to optimize and streamline their blocking measures. This will undoubtedly frustrate some piracy services operating locally. That said, successfully defeating piracy remains a challenge.
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A copy of the latest orders, as requested by the NBA, NHL, and Premier League is available here (pdf), courtesy of Teksavvy, which shared it publicly in the interests of transparency
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Years of talk have now moved to design studies and hardware in space.
Is space-based solar power a costly, risky pipe dream? Or is it a viable way to combat climate change? Although beaming solar power from space to Earth could ultimately involve transmitting gigawatts, the process could be made surprisingly safe and cost-effective, according to experts from Space Solar, the European Space Agency, and the University of Glasgow.
But we’re going to need to move well beyond demonstration hardware and solve a number of engineering challenges if we want to develop that potential.
Beaming solar energy from space is not new; telecommunications satellites have been sending microwave signals generated by solar power back to Earth since the 1960s. But sending useful amounts of power is a different matter entirely.
Amazon’s process for inspecting returned items is “broken,” consultant says.
Enlarge (credit: AlexBard | iStock / Getty Images Plus)
A feces-encrusted swim diaper tanked a family business after Amazon re-sold it as new, Bloomberg reported, triggering a bad review that quickly turned a million-dollar mom-and-pop shop into a $600,000 pile of debt.
Paul and Rachelle Baron, owners of Beau & Belle Littles, told Bloomberg that Amazon is supposed to inspect returned items before reselling them. But the company failed to detect the poop stains before reselling a damaged item that triggered a one-star review in 2020 that the couple says doomed their business after more than 100 buyers flagged it as "helpful."
"The diaper arrived used and was covered in poop stains," the review said, urging readers to "see pics."
Court delays FCC rules until August 5, asks sides for briefs on Brand X.
Enlarge / FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr arrive to testify during a House committee hearing on March 31, 2022, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Kevin Dietsch )
A federal court on Friday temporarily stayed enforcement of net neutrality regulations but has not decided on the merits of a telecom-industry request to block the rules on a longer-term basis.
The Federal Communications Commission's revived net neutrality rules were scheduled to take effect on July 22. But the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit needs more time to consider the industry motion to block the rules and wants the parties to file supplemental briefs. As a result, the FCC can't enforce the rules until at least August 5.
"To provide sufficient opportunity to consider the merits of the motion to stay the FCC's order, we conclude that an administrative stay is warranted. The FCC's order is hereby temporarily stayed until August 5, 2024," the court said on Friday.
Amazon Prime Day may kick off tomorrow, but Lenovo and Best Buy are already running “Black Friday in July” sales, and eBay is offering 20% off thousands of items when you use the coupon SUNNYSAVINGS at checkout. You can also already find s…
Amazon Prime Day may kick off tomorrow, but Lenovo and Best Buy are already running “Black Friday in July” sales, and eBay is offering 20% off thousands of items when you use the coupon SUNNYSAVINGS at checkout. You can also already find savings on a bunch of products available from Amazon – Fire tablets are […]
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Will LLMs keep improving if we throw more compute at them? OpenAI dealmaker thinks so.
Enlarge / Kevin Scott, CTO and EVP of AI at Microsoft speaks onstage during Vox Media's 2023 Code Conference at The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel on September 27, 2023 in Dana Point, California. (credit: Getty Images)
During an interview with Sequoia Capital's Training Data podcast published last Tuesday, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott doubled down on his belief that so-called large language model (LLM) "scaling laws" will continue to drive AI progress, despite some skepticism in the field that progress has leveled out. Scott played a key role in forging a $13 billion technology-sharing deal between Microsoft and OpenAI.
"Despite what other people think, we're not at diminishing marginal returns on scale-up," Scott said. "And I try to help people understand there is an exponential here, and the unfortunate thing is you only get to sample it every couple of years because it just takes a while to build supercomputers and then train models on top of them."
LLM scaling laws refer to patterns explored by OpenAI researchers in 2020 showing that the performance of language models tends to improve predictably as the models get larger (more parameters), are trained on more data, and have access to more computational power (compute). The laws suggest that simply scaling up model size and training data can lead to significant improvements in AI capabilities without necessarily requiring fundamental algorithmic breakthroughs.
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