Month: January 2025

The Italian government is considering the purchase of satellite Internet services from SpaceX's Starlink constellation, and the potential deal has triggered controversy along political, economic, and spaceflight lines in Europe.

The story was initially broken by Bloomberg on Sunday, which reported that Italy is in "advanced talks" with SpaceX to purchase $1.6 billion worth of secure telecommunication services from SpaceX. The publication said an agreement, for which talks began in mid-2023, had been stalled until Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited President-elect Donald Trump in Florida recently.

This report set off a firestorm of responses that highlight the increasing sensitivity of European countries to partnering with SpaceX—the success of which has put serious pressure on Europe's launch industry—as well as the Trump administration and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

Read full article

Comments

It's pretty easy to see the problem here: The Internet is brimming with misinformation, and most large language models are trained on a massive body of text obtained from the Internet.

Ideally, having substantially higher volumes of accurate information might overwhelm the lies. But is that really the case? A new study by researchers at New York University examines how much medical information can be included in a large language model (LLM) training set before it spits out inaccurate answers. While the study doesn't identify a lower bound, it does show that by the time misinformation accounts for 0.001 percent of the training data, the resulting LLM is compromised.

While the paper is focused on the intentional "poisoning" of an LLM during training, it also has implications for the body of misinformation that's already online and part of the training set for existing LLMs, as well as the persistence of out-of-date information in validated medical databases.

Read full article

Comments

Just when you thought you had seen every possible Doom mod, two game developers released a free browser game that reimagines the first level of 1993's Doom as an art gallery, replacing demons with paintings and shotguns with wine glasses.

Doom: The Gallery Experience, created by Filippo Meozzi and Liam Stone, transforms the iconic E1M1 level into a virtual museum space where players guide a glasses-wearing Doomguy through halls of fine art as classical music plays in the background. The game links each displayed artwork to its corresponding page on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's website.

"In this experience, you will be able to walk around and appreciate some fine art while sipping some wine and enjoying the complimentary hors d’oeuvres," write the developers on the game's itch.io page, "in the beautifully renovated and re-imagined E1M1 of id Software's DOOM (1993)."

Read full article

Comments

Astrohaus has been selling portable, distraction-free writing devices under the Freewrite brand for years. Most have been described as portable typewriters or modern takes on word processor hardware. But the new Freewrite Wordrunner is something different: instead of a standalone device, it’s a mechanical keyboard designed for use with PCs or mobile devices. Astrohaus is debuting […]

The post Freewrite Wordrunner is a mechanical keyboard from the makers of distraction-free writing gadgets appeared first on Liliputing.

UGREEN entered the network-attached-storage space in 2024 with a robust lineup of NAS systems covering a wide range of price points and hardware capabilities. While Ian was underwhelmed with the company’s work-in-progress software when he reviewed the NASync DXP480T Plus in September, the hardware itself is priced rather competitively and it turns out you can install […]

The post UGREEN NASync iDX6011 and iDX6011 Pro bring Intel Meteor Lake chips and 10 GbE LAN to network-attached-storage appeared first on Liliputing.

The United States Trade Representative (USTR) published its annual “Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets” a few hours ago.

The non-exhaustive list includes dozens of sites and services linked to piracy or counterfeiting activity.

The report is largely based on input from copyright industry groups, including the RIAA and MPA. Platforms detailed in recommendations filed late last year, are meant to serve as ‘prominent and illustrative examples’ without the USTR drawing any legal conclusions.

Complex Ecosystem & Familiar Names

The review acknowledges that rightsholders described a complex piracy ecosystem, one that goes beyond traditional websites with technology companies and services also playing a role. Those include domain registries and registrars, search engines, reverse proxies, payment processors, and hosting companies.

Many third-party intermediaries were nominated in last year’s submissions but despite the mentions, the USTR hasn’t included many in its final overview. This will be welcomed by the i2Coalition, which previously cautioned against blurring the piracy lines.

Overall, the latest list includes many familiar names, some of which have been listed for well over a decade. The Pirate Bay makes an expected appearance, alongside fellow torrent sites 1337x, TorrentGalaxy, RuTracker, and YTS.

The listed torrent sites are identical to those listed in last year’s report. The same applies to ‘cyberlockers’, which include Krakenfiles and Rapidgator. The mentioned publishing sites, LibGen and Sci-Hub, didn’t change either.

The e-commerce platforms also remain completely unchanged in the latest report. While the USTR sees some positive developments in this industry, Baidu Wangpan, DHgate, Pinduoduo, Shopee, and others remain listed.

New Additions to the List

There are some shakeups in the video game scene, however, with Fitgirl-Repacks and Unknowncheats as new additions. Both sites were flagged by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) last October.

“FitGirl-Repacks, often abbreviated to ‘fitgirl’ is a well-known ‘repacking’ site that provides access to compressed versions of unauthorized and pirated versions of video games,” the USTR notes.

USTR about Fitgirl

There’s also a new streamripper, Y2Mate, thanks to a nomination by the RIAA. The site replaces ssyoutube.com, which was taken off the list.

The list of newcomers is completed by hosting provider Virtual Systems and two streaming services, MagisTV and Hianime. The latter replaces Aniwatch, which was taken down following the demise of the Fmovies piracy ring last summer.

USTR Applauds Successes

The Fmovies case is mentioned in detail by the USTR, described as one of the major piracy successes in 2024. This takedown was carried out by Vietnamese authorities, with key input from U.S. rightsholders and authorities.

“In Vietnam, the Hanoi Police collaborated with U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) International Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (ICHIP) program, and the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) to shut down the site Fmovies and associated piracy sites in July and August 2024,” USTR notes.

Other positive developments include the conviction of the operator of BestBuyIPTV in Vietnam, Brazil’s seventh installment of anti-piracy “Operation 404”, and the Italian-led IPTV crackdown “Operation Taken Down“.

Almost Success: Cuevana

Finally, there is one site that deserves a special mention; Cuevana. This brand has been around for many years as new versions typically come online when others are taken offline.

The USTR’s report now lists Cuevana.biza after being nominated by the movie industry. This is somewhat unusual, as the site announced a voluntary shutdown a few weeks ago, citing pressure from the MPA and ACE. Purportedly, Cuevana was offering to sign over its domain names.

This shutdown never came to fruition, however. A message currently displayed on the site’s front page says that ACE merely sent an automated reply to Cuevana’s outreach, but didn’t respond otherwise. A follow-up reportedly remains unanswered too.

“In the last message, we kindly asked for the information to be passed on to the person in charge, but they again have not responded to us,” Cuevana.biz writes.

“I don’t know if the intention is to let us continue with the sites, but a week ago we should have already delivered one of the domains they requested..,” the site’s message adds.

Message for the MPA

Whether the message is sincere is hard to gauge. Technically, Cuevana could’ve put up a static page displaying this notice, instead of keeping the site running. But it’s worth pointing out anyway.

Perhaps it will result in another ‘positive development’, which the USTR can highlight in next year’s version of the notorious markets report.

—

A copy of the USTR’s 2024 Review of Notorious Markets is available here (pdf). The full overview also includes offline markets.

A list of highlighted sites and online services, including those listed for counterfeiting, is included below. The sites mentioned are categorized by TorrentFreak for clarity purposes and listed below.

Torrent Sites

– 1337X
– RuTracker
– The Pirate Bay
– TorrentGalaxy
– YTS.mx

File-Hosting/Cyberlockers

– 1fichier
– Krakenfiles
– Rapidgator
– Savefrom

E-Commerce

– Baidu Wangpan
– Bukalapak
– DHgate
– Indiamart
– Pinduoduo
– Shopee
– Taobao

PaaS

– 2embed
– Streamtape
– WHMCS Smarters

Advertising

– Avito

Streaming /IPTV

– Aniwatch
– BestBuyIPTV
– Cuevana3
– Fmovies
– GenIPTV
– Hianime (new)
– MagisTV (new)
– Pelisplus
– Shabakaty
– Spider
– VegaMovies

Hosting/Infrastructure

– Amaratu
– DDoS-Guard
– FlokiNET
– Squitter
– Virtual Systems (new)

Social Media

– VK.
– WeChat
Gaming

– NSW2U
– Firgirl-Repacks (new)
– Unknowncheats (new)

Music

– SSYouTube
– Y2Mate (new)

Publishing

– Libgen
– Sci-Hub

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

There's a good chance you've seen headlines about HMPV recently, with some touting "what you need to know" about the virus, aka human metapneumovirus. The answer is: not much.

It's a common, usually mild respiratory virus that circulates every year, blending into the throng of other seasonal respiratory illnesses that are often indistinguishable from one another. (The pack includes influenza virus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), adenovirus, parainfluenza virus, common human coronaviruses, bocavirus, rhinovirus, enteroviruses, and Mycoplasma pneumoniae, among others.) HMPV is in the same family of viruses as RSV.

As one viral disease epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control summarized in 2016, it's usually "clinically indistinguishable" from other bog-standard respiratory illnesses, like seasonal flu, that cause cough, fever, and nasal congestion. For most, the infection is crummy but not worth a visit to a doctor. As such, testing for it is limited. But, like other common respiratory infections, it can be dangerous for children under age 5, older adults, and those with compromised immune systems. It was first identified in 2001, but it has likely been circulating since at least 1958.

Read full article

Comments

AT&T, following last year's embarrassing botched update that kicked every device off its wireless network and blocked over 92 million phone calls, is now promising full-day bill credits to mobile customers for future outages that last at least 60 minutes and meet certain other criteria. A similar promise is being made to fiber customers for unplanned outages lasting at least 20 minutes, but only if the customer uses an AT&T-provided gateway.

The "AT&T Guarantee" announced today has caveats that can make it possible for a disruption to not be covered. AT&T says the promised mobile bill credits are "for wireless downtime lasting 60 minutes or more caused by a single incident impacting 10 or more towers."

The full-day bill credits do not include a prorated amount for the taxes and fees imposed on a monthly bill. The "bill credit will be calculated using the daily rate customer is charged for wireless service only (excludes taxes, fees, device payments, and any add-on services," AT&T said. If an outage lasts more than 24 hours, a customer will receive another full-day bill credit for each additional day.

Read full article

Comments

The Asus Vivobook S14 (S3407QA) is a laptop that comes with a choice of 14 inch FHD OLED or 2.5K IPS LCD displays, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. It’s also one of the first laptops powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon X (X1-26-100) processor made for lower-cost systems. So while this won’t be the cheapest Windows […]

The post Asus Vivobook S14 with Snapdragon X and an OLED display coming soon for $799 and up appeared first on Liliputing.

This article is a summary of my personal experiences with using generative models while programming over the past year. It has not been a passive process. I have intentionally sought ways to use LLMs while programming to learn about them. The result has been that I now regularly use LLMs while working, and I consider their benefits to be net-positive on my productivity. (My attempts to go back to programming without them are unpleasant.)

Along the way, I have found oft-repeated steps that can be automated, and a few of us are working on building those into a tool specifically for Go programming: sketch.dev. It’s very early, but so far, the experience has been positive.

Background

I am typically curious about new technology. It took very little experimentation with LLMs for me to want to see if I could extract practical value. There is an allure to a technology that can (at least some of the time) craft sophisticated responses to challenging questions. It is even more exciting to watch a computer attempt to write a piece of a program as requested and make solid progress.

Read full article

Comments