Month: November 2024

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft safely landed empty in the New Mexico desert about eight weeks ago, marking a hollow end to the company's historic first human spaceflight. The vehicle's passengers during its upward flight to the International Space Station earlier this summer, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, remain in space, awaiting a ride home on SpaceX's Crew Dragon.

Boeing has been steadfastly silent about the fate of Starliner since then. Two senior officials, including Boeing's leader of human spaceflight, John Shannon, were originally due to attend a post-landing news conference at Johnson Space Center in Houston. However, just minutes before the news conference was to begin, two seats were removed—the Boeing officials were no-shows.

In lieu of speaking publicly, Boeing issued a terse statement early on the morning of September 8, attributing it to Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of Boeing's commercial crew program. "We will review the data and determine the next steps for the program," Nappi said, in part.

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Google führt einen neuen Veröffentlichungsrhythmus für Android ein - die neuen Hauptversionen kommen ab 2025 bereits im zweiten Quartal. (Android, Google)

Welcome to Edition 7.18 of the Rocket Report! One of the most intriguing bits of news this week is the rolling of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket out to its launch complex in Florida. With two months remaining in 2024, will the company make owner Jeff Bezos' deadline for getting to orbit this year? We'll have to see, as the Rocket Report is not prepared to endorse any timelines at the moment.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

ESA selects four companies for reusable launch. The European Space Agency announced this week the selection of Rocket Factory Augsburg, The Exploration Company, ArianeGroup, and Isar Aerospace to develop reusable rocket technology, European Spaceflight reports. The four awardees are divided into two initiatives focused on the development of reusable rocket technology: the Technologies for High-thrust Reusable Space Transportation (THRUST!) project and the Boosters for European Space Transportation (BEST!) project. The awarded companies will now begin contract negotiations with ESA to further develop and test their solutions.

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Voice over Wireless Fidelity (VoWiFi) schafft per WLAN mehr Reichweite für Schnurlostelefone. Wir stellen drei Modelle vor, mit denen das möglich ist. Eine Anleitung von Ingo Heinicke (Telekommunikation, WLAN)

Bei Amazon gibt es das Samsung Galaxy A15 mit 5G, AMOLED-Display und 50MP-Hauptkamera für kurze Zeit zum günstigen Aktionspreis. (Samsung Galaxy, Smartphone)

Chinesische Forscher nutzen Metas KI-Modell Llama, um mögliche militärische und nachrichtendienstliche Anwendungen zu entwickeln. (KI, Politik)

Hacker haben seit 2019 im Rahmen einer Betrugskampagne unzählige Onlineshops infiltriert. Käufer bestimmter Produkte haben ihre Ware nie erhalten. (Cybercrime, Onlineshop)

It’s no secret that the Motion Picture Association (MPA) has anti-piracy tentacles all over the world.

The group, which is backed by Hollywood, Netflix, and Amazon, is actively involved in enforcement and policy efforts in dozens of countries.

The MPA’s work mostly takes place behind the scenes, but the results are hard to miss. This includes the Philippine pirate site blocking program, which officially launched in January this year.

The Philippine blocking scheme is the result of a memorandum of understanding, overseen by the local Intellectual Property Office (IPOPHL). Under the agreement, Internet providers will voluntarily block sites that are deemed to be copyright infringing; no court order needed.

MPA-Assisted Site Blocking Agreement

While the agreement is a local endeavor, it was made possible thanks to assistance from the MPA and its affiliated anti-piracy arm ACE. Among other things, the movie industry group provided technical expertise.

For example, ACE helped with site-blocking training to equip IPOPHL employees with the technical knowledge to launch a successful site-blocking operation.

The MPA was happy to play a key role in the expansion of global site blocking efforts. Before the scheme was officially live, it marked the achievement by handing an ‘award’ to the Philippines Intellectual Property Office, applauding the country’s innovative anti-piracy effort.

The MPA itself played a major role in shaping the site blocking efforts, but its involvement is far from over.

MPA Complaint Results in First Blockades

In March, the MPA was the first rightsholder representative to file a copyright infringement complaint under the new administrative site blocking rules. The complaint identified several YTS domains, which were blocked in May after IPOPHL’s IP Rights Enforcement Office completed its review.

The review concluded that yts.mx, yts.rs, yts.do, ytsuproxy.to, yts.dirproxy.com, yts.unblocked.love, ytssss.jamsbase.com, yts.lt, yts.ag, yts.am and torrents.yts.rs, all violate local copyright law. IPOPHL then instructed ISPs to block the domains.

IPOPHL Director General Rowel Barba characterized the YTS blockade as a victory for the entertainment industries and encouraged other rightsholders to submit their own complaints.

“Millions of netizens visit this website so this a major win for the creative industry. We encourage more stakeholders to come forward, file a complaint and further disrupt access to piracy websites,” Barba said.

MPA Follows Through

In conjunction with national anti-piracy month, this week IPOPHL announced follow-up blocking action. No new rightsholders are involved since once again the instigator is the MPA.

In two separate complaints, the MPA requested blocking actions against popular pirate streaming sites SFlix and MyFlixer. This MyFlixer is not to be confused with the Fmovies-affiliated site of the same name, which was shut down this summer.

The MPA lists six domains in total; sflix.to, sflix.se, and sflix.is, plus myflixerz.to, myflixertv.to, and myflixer.today, noting that these domains shared pirated copies of many films including “Shazam!”, “Jumanji: The Next Level” and “Top Gun: Maverick”. After a careful review, IPOPHL decided to grant both requests.

“A thorough examination of the evidence presented and the evaluation report submitted reveals that all the cited websites are hosting pirated versions of movies or TV shows, allowing users to access these illegal copies by downloading or streaming them,” IPOPHL writes.

Block and Repeat

Under the voluntary agreement, participating Internet providers including Globe Telecom, SkyCable, and DITO, will implement the required blocking measures. These include DNS, URL, and IP address blocking.

We haven’t seen an official comment from the MPA on this latest achievement, but the movie industry group will likely be happy with the outcome.

Thus far, it seems that MPA’s collaboration with the Philippine authorities has been quite fruitful. And based on comments IPOPHL sent to the U.S. Trade Representative earlier this month, the partnership will continue.

“MPA committed to continue to work closely with the Philippine government and creative industry in the fight against the scourge of digital piracy,” IPOPHL wrote.

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Copies of IPOPHL’s blocking decisions, which were published through official channels, are available here (SFlix, pdf) and here (MyFlixer, pdf).

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

Ein Gruß aus dem Jenseits - so könnte man das auch nennen, dass Christopher Lee Jahre nach seinem Tod erneut als Saruman zu hören sein wird. (Der Herr der Ringe, Instant Messenger)

Apple verdient im letzten Quartal des Geschäftsjahres 2024 noch einmal richtig Geld - und das trotz einer hohen Steuernachzahlung. (Apple, iPhone)