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The GenBook RK3588 is a laptop with a 14.1 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel display, a Rockchip RK3588 octa-core processor, support for up to 32GB of RAM, and support for Debian, Ubuntu, and other GNU/Linux distributions. It stands out from most laptops not onl…
The GenBook RK3588 is a laptop with a 14.1 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel display, a Rockchip RK3588 octa-core processor, support for up to 32GB of RAM, and support for Debian, Ubuntu, and other GNU/Linux distributions. It stands out from most laptops not only because of its ARM-based processor, but also its modular design: the processor […]
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The alleged owner and operator of FMovies and affiliated platforms, together considered the most visited pirate sites on the planet before they were recently shut down, has confessed and will be prosecuted in Vietnam. Phan Thành Công, 34, is said to have operated the site between 2016 and 2024. An accomplice, Nguyen Tuan Anh, also 34, allegedly uploaded 50,000 videos.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
After eight years of unprecedented uptime and reliability, the collapse and eventual demise of pirate streaming giant FMovies looked much like the demise of any other.
Cracks first started to emerge in June 2024 when the site stopped updating with new content. A few weeks later in mid-July, FMovies disappeared entirely, without any explanation from its operators or indeed anyone else. An announcement at the end of August confirmed what many had suspected, however.
The Motion Picture Association (MPA) and anti-piracy coalition Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) revealed that they had collaborated with Hanoi Police to shut down the FMovies operation, which included ‘sister’ sites AniWave, Bflixz, Flixtorz, Movies7, and Myflixer.
According to ACE, the FMovies empire was the largest piracy ring in the world, attracting more than 6.7 billion visits between January 2023 and June 2024 alone. Charles Rivkin, MPA CEO and Chairman of ACE, described the dismantling of FMovies as “a stunning victory for casts, crews, writers, directors, studios, and the creative community across the globe.”
The MPA/ACE announcement late August contained praise for Vietnamese authorities but no official statement from them. Initial reports late August didn’t provide details on any arrests either, but it later transpired that two people connected to FMovies had been detained.
After more than two months of silence, local authorities have now released additional information on the investigation and the two men previously arrested. They also confirm that a decision has been made to prosecute the case and both suspects.
Responding to allegations made by the Hollywood studios, the Economic Police Department, in coordination with departments of the Hanoi City Police, launched an investigation to confirm the suspects’ identities and relevant background information.
Police say that documents and other evidence was obtained to clarify the suspects’ operational methods and to confirm their roles in the FMovies operation.
Hanoi City Police now confirm the following:
• Suspect 1: Phan Thanh Cong, 34, is a resident of Mo Lao ward, Ha Dong district, Hanoi.
He is described as the “mastermind, leader, creator, operator, and manager” of the “FMovies website system” which allegedly offered almost 50,000 films to the public, in many cases violating MPA members’ rights.
Authorities also reveal that the suspect was “administratively disciplined for similar behavior” in the past, but the offending was not described in detail.
• Suspect 2: Nguyen Tuan Anh, also 34 and a resident of Mo Lao ward, Ha Dong district, Hanoi, is described as an accomplice/assistant.
It’s claimed he was responsible for illegally copying around 50,000 films and posting them to FMovies and its ‘sister’ websites. In many cases, this violated MPA members’ rights.
According to local police, the offending began in 2016, with the suspects illegally earning “hundreds of thousands of US dollars” before the operation was shut down in August 2024. The authorities claim that during questioning, both men confessed in full to all alleged crimes.
The Investigation Police Agency at Hanoi City Police says it has issued a decision to prosecute the case. Phan Thanh Cong and Nguyen Tuan Anh will be prosecuted for infringement of copyright and related rights under Clause 2, Section 225, Penal Code 2015. What that means for those arrested is currently unclear; the necessary details are yet to be released and almost everything turns on those details.
Section 225 relates to the unlawful copying and/or distribution of infringing copies of audiovisual works, without obtaining permission from rightsholders, on a ‘commercial scale’. That term is not clearly defined. Instead, indications are given in terms of illegal profits, such as VND 50,000,000 (just under $US2,000) or damage to rightsholders of VND 100,000,000 (just under US$4,000).
Profits of “hundreds of thousands of US dollars” does seem to qualify but any predictions on how things might eventually play out would be pure guesswork at this stage and most likely unhelpful.
The framework of penalties is complicated and varies according to the scale and nature of the offending, which isn’t straightforward either. Fines seeem to vary from VND 50,000,000 (just under US$2,000) to VND 300,000,000 (just under US$12,000) and a non-custodial sentence, up to VND 1,000,000,000 (just under US$395,000) and a custodial sentence of between six months and three years, depending on the presence of any specified aggravating factors.
Yet as Phan Thanh Cong apparently knows from experience, the authorities might prefer to impose administrative measures. We just don’t know and the information being made available right now is simply insufficient. It’s possible that MPA/ACE have a clearer idea, but it’s highly unlikely any public comments will be made during an ongoing prosecution.
What happens moving forward in this process is clearly very important to the United States and the studios in particular.
A police video released in connection with the news above skims the following letter. We had to stitch it back together to make it readable, but the sentiment is clear; the United States is very grateful for the assistance and at least thus far, satisfied with the direction of the relationship and the case.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Earlier this year modular laptop maker Framework announced it was partnering with DeepComputing to offer a RISC-V mainboard for the Framework 13 laptop. While the mainboard won’t be mass produced until sometime in 2025, DeepComputing has launched…
Earlier this year modular laptop maker Framework announced it was partnering with DeepComputing to offer a RISC-V mainboard for the Framework 13 laptop. While the mainboard won’t be mass produced until sometime in 2025, DeepComputing has launched an early access program for “industry and business customers” and early adopters a chance to get their hands […]
The post RISC-V Mainboard for Framework Laptop starts at $199 during early access appeared first on Liliputing.
Ein Akku-Kompressor für den Makita Akku 18V ist bei Amazon im befristeten Angebot für unter 40 Euro zu haben. Was steckt dahinter? (Akku, Technik/Hardware)
Ein Akku-Kompressor für den Makita Akku 18V ist bei Amazon im befristeten Angebot für unter 40 Euro zu haben. Was steckt dahinter? (Akku, Technik/Hardware) Entire continents, even in the tropics, seems to have been under sheets of ice.
By now, it has been firmly established that the Earth went through a series of global glaciations around 600 million to 700 million years ago, shortly before complex animal life exploded in the Cambrian. Climate models have confirmed that, once enough of a dark ocean is covered by reflective ice, it sets off a cooling feedback that turns the entire planet into an icehouse. And we've found glacial material that was deposited off the coasts in the tropics.
We have an extremely incomplete picture of what these snowball periods looked like, and Antarctic terrain provides different models for what an icehouse continent might look like. But now, researchers have found deposits that they argue were formed beneath a massive ice sheet that was being melted from below by volcanic activity. And, although the deposits are currently in Colorado's Front Range, at the time they resided much closer to the equator.
Glacial deposits can be difficult to identify in deep time. Massive sheets of ice will scour the terrain down to bare rock, leaving behind loosely consolidated bits of rubble that can easily be swept away after the ice is gone. We can spot when that rubble shows up in ocean deposits to confirm there were glaciers along the coast, but rubble can be difficult to find on land.
From physics to greyboxing, Half-Life 2 broke a lot of new ground.
It's Half-Life 2 week at Ars Technica! This Saturday, November 16, is the 20th anniversary of the release of Half-Life 2—a game of historical importance for the artistic medium and technology of computer games. Each day up through the 16th, we'll be running a new article looking back at the game and its impact.
There has been some debate about which product was the first modern “triple-A” video game, but ask most people and one answer is sure to at least be a contender: Valve’s Half-Life 2.
For Western PC games, Half-Life 2 set a standard that held strong in developers’ ambitions and in players’ expectations for well over a decade. Despite that, there’s only so much new ground it truly broke in terms of how games are made and designed—it’s just that most games didn’t have the same commitment to scope, scale, and polish all at the same time.
GOG still puts up new DRM-free titles, but it sees opportunities in oldies.
The classic PC games market is "in a sorry state," according to DRM-free and classic-minded storefront GOG. Small games that aren't currently selling get abandoned, and compatibility issues arise as technology moves forward or as one-off development ideas age like milk.
Classic games are only 20 percent of GOG's catalog, and the firm hasn't actually called itself "Good Old Games" in 12 years. And yet, today, GOG announces that it is making "a significant commitment of resources" toward a new GOG Preservation Program. It starts with 100 games for which GOG's own developers are working to create current and future compatibility, keeping them DRM-free and giving them ongoing tech support, along with granting them a "Good Old Game: Preserved by GOG" stamp.
The Series D fundraising round was “oversubscribed” and netted Firefly $175 million.
Firefly Aerospace, a Texas-based company resurrected from bankruptcy, is riding high these days. In a few months, Firefly will attempt to become the second company to safely place a commercial lander on the Moon. Firefly's Alpha rocket has reached orbit four times, and engineers are developing a larger medium-class rocket in partnership with Northrop Grumman, one of the largest US aerospace and defense contractors.
There's also an orbital transfer vehicle, named Elytra, in Firefly's diversified portfolio. This diversification is proving attractive to investors. Firefly announced Tuesday that it completed a $175 million Series D fundraising round, resulting in a valuation of more than $2 billion. This follows a banner year of fundraising in 2023, when Firefly reported investors funneled approximately $300 million into the company at a valuation of $1.5 billion.
"Firefly is extremely grateful for our existing and new investors whose support demonstrates a huge vote of confidence in our capabilities and future," said Jason Kim, who took over as the company's CEO in October. He replaced Bill Weber, who resigned as chief executive after reports of an alleged inappropriate relationship with a female employee.
Xbox-Chef Phil Spencer hat Leaks über ein Xbox-Handheld bestätigt. Bis das Gerät kommt, wird es aber noch dauern. (Xbox, Microsoft)
Elon Musk, Peter Thiel oder Marc Andreesen werden die Unterstützung des “Faschisten Trump” (Kamala Harris) noch bitter bereuen, so die eindringliche Warnung des US-Top-Ökonomen Barry Eichengreen. (Donald Trump, Marc Andreessen)
Elon Musk, Peter Thiel oder Marc Andreesen werden die Unterstützung des "Faschisten Trump" (Kamala Harris) noch bitter bereuen, so die eindringliche Warnung des US-Top-Ökonomen Barry Eichengreen. (Donald Trump, Marc Andreessen) 
Credit:
GOG
Xbox-Chef Phil Spencer hat Leaks über ein Xbox-Handheld bestätigt. Bis das Gerät kommt, wird es aber noch dauern. (
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