Die Netflix-App für Smartphones hat ein Update erhalten. Damit lässt sich neuerdings die Qualität des Videostreams festlegen - allerdings mit einigen Einschränkungen. (Netflix, Streaming) Smart Home: Homekit soll in iOS 10 zentrale App bekommen
Apple soll in iOS 10 die Smarthome-Schnittstelle Homekit in eine eigene App integrieren, in der sich alle kompatiblen Geräte des Anwenders steuern lassen. Bisher bietet jeder Hersteller eigene Apps an. (Hausautomation, Apple)
Apple soll in iOS 10 die Smarthome-Schnittstelle Homekit in eine eigene App integrieren, in der sich alle kompatiblen Geräte des Anwenders steuern lassen. Bisher bietet jeder Hersteller eigene Apps an. (Hausautomation, Apple) Mac: iTunes 12.4 soll Bedienung erleichtern
Eine neue iTunes-Software für eine bessere Bedienung hat Apple-Manager Eddy Cue schon im Februar in Aussicht gestellt. Nun sind erste Screenshots aufgetaucht. (Weekly News Roundup (8 May 2016)
From the common sense to undeniable greed, read the news roundup for the week ending 8 May 2016
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From the common sense to undeniable greed, read the news roundup for the week ending 8 May 2016
Listen up: James West forever changed the way we hear the world
Now in his 80s, the legendary inventor still pursues research and fights for education.
We hear the world in a much different way thanks to James West. (credit: Johns Hopkins University)
If you’ve ever used a cellphone, hearing aid, or baby monitor, listened to live or recorded music, or recorded anything yourself, you’re indebted to James West.
West is the co-inventor of the electret microphone used in all of those devices and more. It’s estimated that over 90 percent of the microphones in use today are electret mics, and more than 2 billion of these devices are produced worldwide every year. The electret microphone’s usefulness is matched only by its longevity. While it has been refined over the years, the basic technology is virtually identical to what West and Gerhard Sessler invented at Bell Labs in the early 1960s.
A peek at the typical electret microphone preamp circuit. (credit: Wikimedia )
Today, this invention's success is only matched by legacy of its inventor. After his groundbreaking work, West went on to become an internationally-recognized electrical engineer. He holds more than 40 US and over 200 international patents. He has been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the National Academy of Engineering. His many awards include the Acoustical Society of America’s Gold Medal, the George Stibitz Trophy from AT&T, the Benjamin Franklin Medical Award in Electrical Engineering, and the US National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
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Moto X leaks point to an all-metal device
A rear speaker and huge camera mark a departure from past models.
The back of the alleged Moto X.
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After getting a sneak peek of the 2016 Moto G, it looks like we're now getting reliable leaks of the 2016 Moto X. Both Evleaks and HelloMotoHK have posted pictures of a new Motorola phone identified as the company's new flagship.
Long smartphone product pipelines mean this will be the first round of Motorola phones that new owner Lenovo has had a significant hand in, and the new Moto X definitely seems like a departure from past models. The "all-metal" design would be a big improvement over the old Moto X, but it also makes us question if the low price will stick around. On the back there's a very large camera assembly and a rear-facing speaker. Motorola has been a big proponent of front-facing speakers in the past, but it looks like that's coming to an end with Lenovo.
The bottom of the phone has a huge bezel, which houses a new fingerprint reader, just like the Moto G. On the front, there are four sensors at each corner of the display, which most likely means active display—a feature that lets you wave a hand over the display to turn it on—will return. It looks like the Moto X will see a launch on Verizon, too. HelloMotoHK has a version festooned with Droid logos.
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Pirate Bay Crew Removes Thousands of Torrents, Just Not ‘Those’
The Pirate Bay is known for its refusal to accept takedown requests from copyright holders. However, that doesn’t mean that the site keeps all files that are uploaded, quite the contrary. Week in and week out a dedicated team of moderators removes thousands of torrents to keep the site from turning into a The Spam Bay. Today we talk to a few of them.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
At TorrentFreak we regularly receive concerned emails from Pirate Bay users who have spotted an influx of suspicious torrents on the popular torrent site.
These torrents usually carry the name of popular new TV-shows or movies, and appear to be shared by thousands of people.
However, those who download the torrents will soon notice that the video files won’t playing. Instead, they urge downloaders to install suspicious software, or worse.
This spam phenomenon is not new and neither is it limited to The Pirate Bay. However, it does appear to have gotten worse in recent years, something several of the site’s moderators confirm today.
Most regular users of the site are probably unaware of the efforts ‘invisible’ moderators have to put into the site to keep it clean day in and day out.
To lift a corner of the veil we reached out to a few crew members to ask about the influx of spam, torrent removals, and their motivations to contribute to the site for free.
First up: who are these moderators and why do they volunteer to keep the site clean?
“We’re all ordinary downloaders at heart who share a love for TPB with millions of others. We put in the hours because we love helping others and we love TPB,” Spud17 tells us.
“I believe in the ideals TPB represents, that sharing is a fundamental human right,” veteran crew member Xe adds.
The overarching theme is that the moderators identify with The Pirate Bay’s ideal to share everything freely, without restrictions. Ironically, however, a large part of their job involves removing torrents, mostly fakes and spam.
“The Crew remove hundreds of thousands of fakes and torrents infested with malware, spyware etcetera. Spam and child porn are also removed,” Spud17 says.
While spam has always been an issue, it’s sometimes hard to contain. At some hours of the day there are no mods available to deal with it, which may result in batches of suspicious content getting through.
“The Crew volunteer their time as and when they can, so it’s inevitable that there’ll be periods where the fakes have piled up for a few hours. Users are welcome to report bad torrents and uploaders on our forum, and on our IRC channel,” Spud17 says.
“I should also mention that sometimes we delete legitimate torrents by mistake. We’re human. We have a forum where people can appeal such calls,” Xe adds.
The Pirate Bay crew recommends downloaders to use common sense, and educate themselves on how fake files and spam can be detected. And in case of doubt, it’s best to avoid newly uploaded content, they say.
“The best defense for TPB users against the fakers is knowledge. Read the FAQ on our forum and pay particular attention to the section on finding torrents – if you read and understand that, you should be able to spot the fakes easily,” Spud17 says.
In any case, fake files and spam never stay on the site for long.
“The important thing for downloaders to know is that the vast majority of crap is dealt with by staff within a day, but often much quicker,” Xe adds.
All moderators we talked to embrace TPB’s decision not to comply with copyright holder’s takedown requests. However, they do respect sites that do. Running a torrent site can be quite tricky, and if they feel it’s safer to adhere to the DMCA then that’s their choice.
However, the removal policies at some other sites also means that The Pirate Bay remains relevant today, as the true haven for ‘uncensored’ sharing.
“It is the only site I’m aware of which doesn’t delete content following DMCA requests,” Xe says.
“It is THE place to upload to avoid the disappointment of having your torrents deleted and THE place to download from when what you want has been deleted from elsewhere. It is the standard by which all other sites are judged.”
As the media industry keeps throwing up artificial barriers to prevent people from enjoying their content, people will keep flocking to The Pirate Bay.
“The Pirate Bay will always be relevant as long as money and location are barriers to accessing culture and educational media,” Spud17 says.
All in all, The Pirate Bay Crew take a lot of pride in what they do. The moderation team is not involved in keeping the site up and running technically, but they are vital to its survival.
Like last year’s temporary rift has shown, without moderators to remove the thousands of fake files TPB would soon turn into a spammer heaven. So, in a way, removing torrents is central to the site’s survival. As long as the pirated stuff stays up…
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
Illinois residents can sue Facebook for photo tagging, judge says
Northern California District Judge not swayed by Facebook’s Terms of Service arguments.
(credit: Marco Paköeningrat)
Last week, a Northern California District Judge ruled that Facebook will have to face a class action lawsuit (PDF) from Illinois Facebook users who are unnerved by the site’s photo-tagging feature that relies on facial recognition to suggest people to tag.
The plaintiffs argue that the feature runs afoul of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which was passed in 2008 and restricts how private companies are allowed to collect biometric data.
The lawsuit had been transferred from an Illinois court to one in California at Facebook’s request. The social media company then asked the judge to dismiss the case, saying that the plaintiffs had no grounds to sue given that Facebook’s Terms and Conditions have stipulated since 2015 that claims against the company must be litigated according to California law, where no such provision against biometric tagging exists.
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Are smartphones “de-evolutionizing” humanity?
Video: the conflicted lives of cell phone owners.
Produced by Nathan Fitch. (video link)
On any given day in New York City, you can see people using their cell phones to take selfies on the Staten Island Ferry, read books on the L train, or hail an Uber car. Like everywhere else in the world, everyone in New York's got a phone.
But when we spent a recent afternoon in Washington Square Park, asking people about their cell phone use, they all had critical things to say. People mediate their lives through Instagram; there's too much texting instead of real talking; sidewalk denizens routinely crash into scaffolding and other pedestrians when staring at their screens.
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The internet of flying, floating, and rolling things takes center ring at “unmanned” expo
At the “drone prom,” robots that fly, roll, and swim get a chance to dance.
Nathan Mattise
Down the street from the world's premier home of 1940s tech (the National World War II Museum), NOLA got a taste of modern autonomy.
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NEW ORLEANS—If you need evidence that drones are big business, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) XPonential conference is a good start. The event, in its previous incarnation, filled a much more modest space in Washington DC three years ago, and was much more defense-focused. But this week's event, filling four of the vast halls of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center here on the bank of the Mississippi River, had the trappings of a big tech conference. Keynotes were supplied by Amazon vice president Gur Kimchi and Cisco's retired CEO John Chambers (complete with the requisite "hockey stick" growth slides), while vendors hawked cloud platforms and professional services alongside the expected collection of flying, swimming, rolling, and crawling robots.
The cloud connection to drones is gaining increasing attention because of the massive amount of data that uncrewed vehicles collect. Optical and multi-spectral imagery, 3D laser mapping, and any number of other geospatial datapoints acquired in ever-increasing resolution have to be stored, processed, and routed to the people who need them. Representatives from oil and gas companies, utilities, insurers, civil engineers, and a host of other industries stalked the floor at Xponential in search of systems that would let them inspect assets from a distance.
But because of current Federal Aviation Administration regulations, only a few of those industries have begun using uncrewed vehicles. One of the most well-established applications of drones outside the military is "precision agriculture," in which UAVs equipped with near-infrared and other sensors detect problems with crop health in high resolution. This data is subsequently used by automated, GPS-controlled chemical applicators. But while drones have been used in precision agriculture in Japan and other countries for over a decade, many US farmers who currently use drones to pinpoint where crops need to be fed or sprayed are "cowboys," as one drone manufacturer described them—not because they raise cattle, but because they flaunt the FAA's rules.
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