Month: December 2024

Brasilien will nicht nur einen Anbieter für Satelliteninternet. Mit dem chinesischen Anbieter erhält der Staat mehr Unabhängigkeit von Starlink und Elon Musk. (Satelliteninternet, Raumfahrt)

Mit zwei Satelliten will die Esa eine Sonnenfinsternis simulieren. Die Mission startet von Indien aus. (ESA, Raumfahrt)

Im Bereich Identity- & Access-Management gilt Keycloak als führend. Wie das Open-Source-Tool für sichere Benutzerverwaltung und Zugriffsrechte in Unternehmensnetzwerken implementiert wird, zeigt dieser Workshop. (Golem Karrierewelt, Server-Applikationen)

There's nothing quite like a deep dive into the shallow, vomitous puddles of children's splash pads. Even toeing the edge is enough to have one longing for the unsettling warmth of a kiddie pool. But the brave souls at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have done it, wading into 25 years' worth of records on gastrointestinal outbreaks linked to the wellsprings of fecal pathogens. And they unsurprisingly found enough retch-inducing results to make any modern-day John Snows want to start removing some water handles.

Between 1997 and 2022, splash pads across the country were linked to at least 60 outbreaks, with the largest sickening over 2,000 water frolickers in one go. In all, the outbreaks led to at least 10,611 illnesses, 152 hospitalizations, and 99 emergency department visits. People, mostly children, were sickened with pathogens including Cryptosporidium, Camplyobacter jejuni, Giardia duodenalis, Salmonella, Shigella, and norovirus, according to the analysis, published Tuesday in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The tallies of outbreaks and illnesses are likely undercounts, given reporting delays and missed connections.

Though previous outbreak-based studies have provided bursts of data, the new analysis is the first to provide a comprehensive catalog of all the documented outbreaks since splash pads erupted in the 1990s. Together, they provide a clear, stomach-churning explanation of how the outbreaks keep happening. Basically, small children go into the watery playgrounds while they're sick and spread their germs.

Read full article

Comments

An app outage that locked numerous rental car customers out of their vehicles is a reminder of the perils of completely relying on apps for basic functionality—especially when those apps have seemingly limited support resources.

Zipcar is a car-sharing service that lets customers pay a membership fee to rent vehicles. Users use the Zipcar app to locate cars, unlock and lock them, share images of the vehicle (for proof that you didn't damage it), and report concerns. One typically goes through the entire Zipcar rental process without interacting with a human. Avoiding car rental lines and customer service representatives seems efficient until the app utterly fails you.

As reported by 404 Media today, Zipcar experienced an outage on Friday that prevented the app from functioning properly for numerous users. Without the app support, people could not unlock cars to start rentals, open cars that didn't come with keys, lock cars, and/or return cars before their rental period expired.

Read full article

Comments

Those who follow mainstream tabloid media in the UK should be familiar with the risks of online streaming piracy by now.

There’s no country in the world where more ‘pirate box’ or IPTV resellers have been prosecuted. Meanwhile, the number of suspects who have received official warnings runs in the hundreds.

Local police, in collaboration with anti-piracy group FACT, carry out many of these enforcement actions. This practice dates back more than a decade and in recent years only seems to have intensified.

New Pirate Streaming Crackdown

Today, FACT announced yet another successful ‘crackdown’ where cease and desist letters were sent to thirty suppliers of illegal IPTV services across the UK. The warning urged them to stop immediately, or face criminal consequences.

The main goal of the two-week enforcement effort was to disrupt and dismantle online piracy. While most suspects received warnings, South Wales Police arrested a 42-year-old man who’s allegedly involved in the pirate IPTV business through sales of ‘illicit’ Firesticks.

The suspect remains under investigation and may eventually face criminal charges. To further combat illegal IPTV services, FACT has also issued takedown notices to various social media sites and online marketplaces.

The latest actions were “highly effective” according to FACT. They follow less than a month after ‘yet another‘ person was sent to prison for their involvement in the pirate streaming business, which shows that consequences can be severe.

‘Serious Consequences’

To emphasize that piracy doesn’t go unpunished, FACT CEO Kieron Sharp issued a stark warning via the press.

“Our cease-and-desist measures are not just warnings — they are the first step toward holding offenders accountable. Many who ignored these notices in the past are now facing arrest and criminal charges. We strongly advise anyone involved in these activities to stop immediately,” Sharp says.

“If you’re supplying or using illicit streaming devices or illegal IPTV subscriptions, take this as a clear warning: you are breaking the law and risk facing serious consequences.”

whack-a-Mole

While reporting in UK media can be dramatic and overblown at times, there’s indeed a real threat, as is exemplified by the many convictions over the years. However, for reasons unknown, the numerous warning campaigns, dating back many years, have yet to solve the problem.

Even rumored ‘Illegal Streaming Detector Cars‘, and ‘home visits’ to as many as a thousand pirate streaming subscribers, don’t appear to have eliminated the problem.

One could argue that without the efforts from FACT and police, things would be even worse today. However, it’s notable that after sending hundreds of warnings, new pirate IPTV sellers continue to surface. It appears to be an endless whack-a-mole.

Finally, it’s worth noting that FACT repeatedly targets Amazon’s Firestick brand in their headlines. This reached the point where the term “dodgy Firestick” has entered the lexicon. While these devices can be exploited, there’s nothing inherently illicit about the hardware.

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

Turnover at the top of the company isn't stopping Intel from launching new products: Today the company is announcing the first of its next-generation B-series Intel Arc GPUs, the Arc B580 and Arc B570.

Both are decidedly midrange graphics cards that will compete with the likes of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4060 and AMD's RX 7600 series, but Intel is pricing them competitively: $249 for a B580 with 12GB of RAM and $219 for a B570 with 10GB of RAM. The B580 launches on December 13, while the B570 won't be available until January 16.

The two cards are Intel's first dedicated GPUs based on its next-generation "Battlemage" architecture, a successor to the "Alchemist" architecture used in the A-series cards. Intel's Core Ultra 200 laptop processors were its first products to ship with Battlemage, though they used an integrated version with fewer of Intel's Xe cores and no dedicated memory. Both B-series GPUs use silicon manufactured on a 5 nm TSMC process, an upgrade from the 6 nm process used for the A-series; as of this writing, no integrated or dedicated Arc GPUs have been manufactured by one of Intel's factories.

Read full article

Comments

The Asus Vivobook S 15 OLED was one of the first laptops available with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X series processor when it first launched in May. But at the time it was positioned as a premium laptop with prices starting at $1300. Now you can pick one up from Best Buy for just $500. Keep […]

The post Daily Deals (12-03-2024) appeared first on Liliputing.

"A clean desk is a sign of a sick mind" is a phrase sometimes attributed to Oscar Levant, but I give it to Egon Spengler. I also live that phrase.

My desk is not clean, but I know why everything is on it. It is inefficient if you are not me and are trying to find things or make sense of it. If you know where to look, like I do, however, every piece is doing a particular job.

If you're like me, or know someone like me, you know desk space is at a premium—not to keep it tidy and empty, but to fill it with even more junk. With this in mind, I have compiled some of the items I either own and cherish, or have saved to various online carts and considered many times. These gadgets keep devices powered, items labeled, the office space conveniently automated, and cables always within arm's reach. With all the space and mental stress these gadgets can and do save me, I have so much more room for, say, reading about Oscar Levant and putting empty seltzer cans everywhere.

Read full article

Comments

A few years after Apple stopped shipping MacBook Pro models with a Touch Bar, a startup called ENIAC is banking on the idea that the reason Apple’s version proved unpopular wasn’t because the idea lacked merit… but because it didn’t go far enough in offering users enough customization options. So ENIAC has launched a Kickstarter […]

The post Flexbar touchscreen controller for PC or Mac picks up where the MacBook Touch Bar left off (crowdfunding) appeared first on Liliputing.