Month: January 2025

Samsung’s newest flagship smartphones are powered by a “customized” version of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, which Samsung says brings the “most powerful NPU” available in an Android smartphone, enabling support for private, on-device AI features including a “Personal Data Engine” that lets use your voice to search for pictures, get personalized news briefings, or […]

The post Samsung Galaxy S25 series smartphones make “personalized AI” a key feature appeared first on Liliputing.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are puzzling phenomena because their details are so difficult to resolve, and observations to date have been inconsistent. Astronomers added another piece to the puzzle with the detection of an FRB that seems to originate in a dead galaxy that is no longer producing new stars, according to a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, along with a related paper on the event from scientists at Northwestern University.

As we've reported previously, FRBs involve a sudden blast of radio-frequency radiation that lasts just a few microseconds. Astronomers have observed over a thousand of them to date; some come from sources that repeatedly emit FRBs, while others seem to burst once and go silent. You can produce this sort of sudden surge of energy by destroying something. But the existence of repeating sources suggests that at least some of them are produced by an object that survives the event. That has led to a focus on compact objects, like neutron stars and black holes—especially a class of neutron stars called magnetars—as likely sources. Only about 3 percent of FRBs are of the repeating variety.

There have also been many detected FRBs that don't seem to repeat at all, suggesting that the conditions that produce them may destroy their source. That's consistent with a blitzar—a bizarre astronomical event caused by the sudden collapse of an overly massive neutron star. The event is driven by an earlier merger of two neutron stars; this creates an unstable intermediate neutron star, which is kept from collapsing immediately by its rapid spin.

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Bei Amazon gibt es einen Eiskratzer mit wärmendem Griff für nur 7,49 Euro befristet im Angebot. (Technik/Hardware)

Samsung setzt bei seinen neuen Galaxy-S25-Modellen weltweit auf Qualcomms Top-SoC und mehr KI. Beim Basismodell gibt es kaum neue Hardware. (Galaxy S25, Smartphone)

Googles stärkstes Smartphone ist günstig wie nie bei Amazon erhältlich. Im befristeten Angebot spart man über 20 Prozent beim Pixel 9 Pro. (Smartphone, Google)

Die Ankündigung eines neuen Kontrollsystems für ihre 3D-Drucker durch Bambu Lab hat die Kunden aufgeschreckt. Nun rudert das Unternehmen zurück. (3D-Drucker, Technik/Hardware)

Seeed Studio has launched a new HAT for the Raspberry Pi 5 that allows makers to add a ton of high-bandwidth storage to their creations. The PCIe 3.0 to Dual M.2 HAT adds a pair of slots that can each handle up to 2TB of NVMe storage. While we’ve seen plenty of SSD HATs for […]

The post Seeed Studio PCIe 3.0 HAT brings faster SSD transfers to Raspberry Pi 5 appeared first on Liliputing.

Launched last year, Italy’s elaborate ‘Piracy Shield‘ blocking scheme was billed as the future of anti-piracy efforts.

To effectively tackle live sports piracy, broad blocking powers aim to block piracy-related domain names and IP addresses within 30 minutes.

While many pirate sources have indeed been blocked, Piracy Shield is not without controversy. There have been multiple reports of overblocking, where the anti-piracy system blocked access to Google Drive, Cloudflare, and other legitimate sites and services. Meanwhile, calls for more transparency and accountability are growing.

Tech Industry Sounds Alarm Bell

Yesterday, the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) sounded the alarm. In a letter addressed to the EU Commission, the coalition of tech industry companies, including Amazon, Cloudflare and Google, shared grave concerns.

The European branch of CCIA acknowledges that Piracy Shield aims to protect rightsholders. However, they argue that the ‘blunt’ DNS and IP blocking measures represent a threat to other companies and the public.

“While this approach aims to protect intellectual property and reduce online piracy, it relies on IP address and domain name system (DNS)-level blocking, making it a potentially extremely blunt instrument to address online copyright infringement,” CCIA writes.

In addition, extending the blocking scheme to DNS resolvers and VPN providers is seen as a major concern. These tools are not suited to carry out blocking measures, CCIA says, as they are fundamental to the protection of free expression.

CCIA emphasizes that concerns about overblocking are not hypothetical, as the Piracy Shield is already wreaking havoc. It cites the aforementioned Google Drive blockade, which affected millions of Italians and took hours to resolve.

“On 20 October 2024, Google Drive was mistakenly blocked by the Piracy Shield system, causing a three-hour blackout for all Italian users, while 13.5% of users were still blocked at the IP level, and 3% were blocked at the DNS level after 12 hours.”

Overblocking

Transparency, Verification & Accountability

While European Courts have previously greenlighted pirate site blocking schemes, CCIA highlights that Italy’s implementation lacks sufficient safeguards and transparency. That makes the prevention and swift correction of errors much more difficult.

The tech group also notes that Piracy Shield was developed by a company affiliated with local football league Serie A, one of the few rightsholders currently allowed to use the system. This raises concerns of whether the system adequately considers all stakeholders’ interests.

CCIA says that AGCOM, the regulator that manages Piracy Shield, should take measures to address these concerns.

“The Italian Piracy Shield should at the very least incorporate more robust verification protocols and significantly enhance transparency, as well as adequate redress mechanisms for affected users, to reduce these negative impacts.”

Problematic Reporting Obligations

In addition to matters directly related to blocking, the tech industry is concerned about recent amendments to Italian copyright law that introduce obligations that contradict the principles set forth in the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).

These amendments mandate all intermediary providers to report any knowledge of illegal activity, including minor copyright infringements. Failure to comply could result in up to one year of imprisonment.

According to the CCIA, these requirements introduce new obligations for companies that simply pass on traffic. It argues that these requirements go beyond EU law and will create a chilling effect on freedom of expression and innovation online.

Withdraw Piracy Shield

CCIA believes that Piracy Shield and the recent legal amendments violate several EU laws. They were not submitted under the TRIS procedure either, a key element of the European Union’s single market policy when it comes to rules regarding online services.

To properly address these concerns, CCIA urges the EU Commission to engage with the Italian Government to put a halt to the anti-piracy measures, so their lawfulness can be thoroughly checked.

“The Italian government should withdraw the above-mentioned legislation in order to go through the TRIS procedure, allowing the Commission and other Member States to review the substance of these flawed and ineffective initiatives, and address their infringement of European laws,” CCIA concludes.

Withdraw

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A copy of CCIA Europe’s letter is available here (pdf)

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

Bei Amazon gibt es einen Saug- und Wischroboter von Roborock im Angebot. Er ist gegenüber der UVP um fast 200 Euro reduziert. (Saugroboter, Amazon)

This week Google is introducing a bunch of new ChromeOS features for educators and students as well as the rollout of new accessibility features like the ability to control a Chromebook with facial expressions. And PC makers are also introducing a bunch of new Chromebooks for the education market. Case in point: Asus has introduced […]

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