OS X 10.11.6 and iOS 9.3.3 released as Apple’s current OSes wind down

Apple’s current OSes go into maintenance mode as new major releases loom.

Enlarge / Fire up your updaters. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Apple has just released a new round of updates for all of its platforms, including OS X 10.11.6 and iOS 9.3.3. All are minor updates that focus mostly on fixing bugs, as most of Apple's attention has turned to the new major versions of its operating systems that are due in the fall. Both iOS 10 and macOS Sierra are currently available as public betas.

OS X 10.11.6 fixes a bug in user accounts with parental controls enabled that could prevent settings from being saved, and it also addresses a problem with SMB network shares that could keep certain kinds of devices from accessing them. The update tackles a handful of business-centric features, too. The OS boots a bit faster when connecting to a NetBoot server, and the release fixes both startup issues with OS X 10.11.4 and 10.11.5 NetBoot images and a problem with Active Directory authentication.

iOS 9.3.3 includes nonspecific bug fixes, as do the watchOS 2.2.2 and tvOS 9.2.1 updates for Apple's other iOS-adjacent platforms. iOS 9.3.3 is available for all devices that support iOS 9, including the iPhone 4S and newer; iPad 2 and newer; all iPad Minis and iPad Pros; and the fifth- and sixth-generation iPod Touches. A list of all security holes patched in OS X, iOS, tvOS, and watchOS can be found on Apple's security update page.

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Final Android 7.0 Nougat developer preview now available

Final Android 7.0 Nougat developer preview now available

Google has released the 5th and final developer preview of Android 7.0 Nougat. The next release will be the official one and it should be available later this summer.

The update is available for the Nexus 5X, Nexus 6, Nexus 6P, and General Mobile 4G Android One smartphone as well as the Nexus 9 and Pixel C tablets and the Nexus Player TV box.

The latest preview includes near-final system images for supported devices, the final Android N APIs and a few known issues affecting features including stability, multi-window mode, and 240fps slow-motion video recording and playback.

Continue reading Final Android 7.0 Nougat developer preview now available at Liliputing.

Final Android 7.0 Nougat developer preview now available

Google has released the 5th and final developer preview of Android 7.0 Nougat. The next release will be the official one and it should be available later this summer.

The update is available for the Nexus 5X, Nexus 6, Nexus 6P, and General Mobile 4G Android One smartphone as well as the Nexus 9 and Pixel C tablets and the Nexus Player TV box.

The latest preview includes near-final system images for supported devices, the final Android N APIs and a few known issues affecting features including stability, multi-window mode, and 240fps slow-motion video recording and playback.

Continue reading Final Android 7.0 Nougat developer preview now available at Liliputing.

FCC will let jails charge inmates more for phone calls

Court rejects rate caps of 11¢ to 22¢ per minute.

(credit: Jason Farrar)

The Federal Communications Commission is trying once again to limit the prices prisoners and their families pay for phone calls, proposing a new, higher set of caps in response to the commission's latest court loss.

A March 2016 federal appeals court ruling stayed new rate caps of 11¢ to 22¢ per minute on both interstate and intrastate calls from prisons. The stay remains in place while appeals from prison phone companies are considered, but FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn last week proposed new caps of 13¢ to 31¢ per minute in an apparent attempt to satisfy prison phone companies and the courts.

Prison phone companies Global Tel*Link (GTL) and Securus Technologies had argued that the FCC's limits fell short of what the companies are contractually obligated to pay in "site commissions" to correctional facilities. The new Wheeler and Clyburn proposal still wouldn't ban the commissions or limit what prisons can charge companies for site access. However, they say that the caps of 13¢ to 31¢ per minute account "for the possibility that jails and prisons bear legitimate costs in providing access to ICS [inmate calling services]."

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How to grow electronics that are one atom thick

Two atomically thin materials can form functional circuits given the right pattern.

Once a channel is cut into the graphene, a molybdenum disulfide crystal can grow within it. (credit: Berkeley Lab)

The features we're making in current semiconductor materials are shrinking to the point where soon, they will be just a handful of atoms thin. Unfortunately, the behavior you get from bulk materials is often different from what you see when there are just a few atoms present, and quantum effects begin to dominate. There is an alternative, however: start with a material that is already incredibly small and has well-defined properties. Graphene, for example, is a sheet of carbon just one atom thick, and it's an excellent conductor; a variety of similar materials have been also developed.

It's a big challenge to manipulate these things that are just one atom thick, so it's really hard to put together any sort of circuitry based on these materials. Now, however, researchers have figured out how create a template where single-atom-thick materials will grow to create functional circuitry.

As we noted above, graphene is an excellent conductor of electrons, so the authors of the new paper decided to use it to create wiring. But getting sheets of graphene lined up to consistently create the wiring of even simple circuitry has been nearly impossible. The authors didn't even try. Instead, they took a larger sheet of graphene, dropped it onto silicon dioxide, and then etched away any material they didn't want. The etching involved a plasma of oxygen ions, which burned channels in the graphene that were about 15µm wide.

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Nintendo auf dem Smartphone: Pokémon Go Out!

Gamer an die frische Luft – das ist das Spielprinzip von Pokémon Go. Wir haben ein paar von ihnen getroffen und festgestellt: Das Spiel hat sich seit den 90ern zwar verändert, der Spaß aber nicht. (Pokémon Go, Smartphone)

Gamer an die frische Luft - das ist das Spielprinzip von Pokémon Go. Wir haben ein paar von ihnen getroffen und festgestellt: Das Spiel hat sich seit den 90ern zwar verändert, der Spaß aber nicht. (Pokémon Go, Smartphone)

Accused “Pirate” Questions Dallas Buyers Club’s Copyright Claim

Several companies behind the Oscar-winning movie Dallas Buyers Club are fighting over the movie’s proceeds, as well as the profits from copyright trolling endeavors. This confusing situation has prompted an accused pirate to question the legitimacy of the claim against him, which could get interesting.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

dallasMovie studio Voltage Pictures is no stranger to suing BitTorrent users.

The company has filed lawsuits against alleged pirates in the United States, Europe, Canada and Australia, and is estimated to have made a lot of money doing so.

Most of these cases target downloaders of the Oscar-winning movie Dallas Buyers Club. Voltage Pictures is one of the production companies behind the film, but as is common in Hollywood, it’s not the sole rightsholder.

In fact, another company named “Dallas Buyers Club LLC” (DBC) has also filed dozens of cases against pirates. While one might think that both rightsholders are working in tandem, they are in fact fighting over the anti-piracy loot behind the scenes.

In a case DBC and Truth Entertainment filed against Voltage Pictures last year (pdf), the latter is accused of various deceptive practices, including breach of contract and fraud.

The two plaintiffs suggest that Voltage has been holding back money from foreign proceeds. They further state that the production company hasn’t been open about its practices.

Aside from claims that money has gone missing, its anti-piracy methods are also under the spotlight. According to DBC, Voltage hasn’t provided any details on enforcement actions, nor has it shared any of the proceeds from its anti-piracy efforts.

“DBC entered into an Agreement with Voltage to act as its agent to enforce Anti-piracy actions against people who have illegally downloaded or otherwise obtained the ability to watch the movie without paying for the right to watch it,” the filing reads.

“The only updates DBC receives are thorough, mostly negative, media reports about the actions of Voltage around the World. DBC has not received any funds, reports, updates or any information from Voltage on the status numerous lawsuits filed around the World in the name of DBC.”

Where’s the anti-piracy bounty?

voltagedbc

While the paperwork doesn’t explicitly state that both parties agreed to share the anti-piracy bounty, the claims above suggest that this is the case. Most interesting, perhaps, is that it’s unclear whether all enforcement actions are ultimately driven by Voltage.

This confusing situation is casting doubt over the legitimacy of these piracy lawsuits, as FCT highlights. This prompted Nicholas Ranallo, attorney for an accused “pirate”, to ask a California federal court for an extra safeguard.

Ranallo mentions that there is doubt over who owns the movie and he cites the legal battle between Dallas Buyers Club LLC, in whose name his defendant was sued, and Voltage.

“It is unclear what rights (if any) are actually held by Voltage Pictures or the suing entities, though it is abundantly clear that Voltage Pictures controls the litigation and keeps the proceeds collected on behalf of the purported plaintiffs,” Ranallo writes.

The amended complaint against the accused pirate identifies Dallas Buyers Club LLC as the owner, but the original complaint listed Truth LLC as such. Then again, the DVD cover and other material list Voltage as the copyright holder.

“Various advertising and promotional materials cast further doubt about the claims that Dallas Buyers Club LLC owns the relevant copyright(s), and reveal a myriad of entities that have, at one time or another, claimed copyright in the film.”

As a safeguard, Ranallo asks the court to require Dallas Buyers Club to post a $50,000 bond (pdf), to secure costs and attorney fees if the suspicions do indeed hold ground.

While it’s not uncommon for several companies to have a stake in a single movie, it will be interesting to see if this case leads to more clarity over the rights they have to pursue a copyright claim in court.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

IRTF: Maschinelles Lernen soll das Internet besser machen

Einige typische Probleme des Internets lassen sich mit Hilfe von maschinellem Lernen lösen – das glauben zumindest einige Forscher, die gerade eine offizielle Arbeitsgruppe gründen, um diese Lösungen zu finden. (Maschinelles Lernen, Spam)

Einige typische Probleme des Internets lassen sich mit Hilfe von maschinellem Lernen lösen - das glauben zumindest einige Forscher, die gerade eine offizielle Arbeitsgruppe gründen, um diese Lösungen zu finden. (Maschinelles Lernen, Spam)

Chinese consortium’s $1.2 billion bid for Opera falls through, but there’s a new plan to acquire certain assets

Chinese consortium’s $1.2 billion bid for Opera falls through, but there’s a new plan to acquire certain assets

A group of Chinese companies that had put in a $1.2 billion bid to acquire Opera Software has scrapped that plan… and come up with a new one.

Instead of buying the entire company, now the Kunqi consortium plans to acquire Opera’s desktop and web browser businesses along with certain other assets for $600 million. But the group wouldn’t be buying the whole company and wouldn’t acquire Opera’s advertising, gaming, or other businesses.

Continue reading Chinese consortium’s $1.2 billion bid for Opera falls through, but there’s a new plan to acquire certain assets at Liliputing.

Chinese consortium’s $1.2 billion bid for Opera falls through, but there’s a new plan to acquire certain assets

A group of Chinese companies that had put in a $1.2 billion bid to acquire Opera Software has scrapped that plan… and come up with a new one.

Instead of buying the entire company, now the Kunqi consortium plans to acquire Opera’s desktop and web browser businesses along with certain other assets for $600 million. But the group wouldn’t be buying the whole company and wouldn’t acquire Opera’s advertising, gaming, or other businesses.

Continue reading Chinese consortium’s $1.2 billion bid for Opera falls through, but there’s a new plan to acquire certain assets at Liliputing.

Turkish plotters used WhatsApp to coordinate coup

But plotters, including an army cyber expert, got tripped up by social media.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan urges supporters to fight the coup attempt in Turkey via a FaceTime session with NTV as he fled to Istanbul. (credit: NTV)

A failed coup attempt in Turkey, which began during the evening of July 15, was apparently coordinated using the WhatsApp mobile messaging service, according to reports from Turkish media. And among the apparent plotters was a Turkish Army colonel who was considered an expert in cyber-operations. Ahmet Zeki Gerehan, a Turkish infantry officer, was head of the operation and intelligence department at the Turkish Army War College and co-author of a number of articles on cyber-warfare.

According to video reports, officers involved in the coup gave moment-by-moment status reports in a WhatsApp group chat entitled "We are a country of peace" ("yurta suhl b iziz"), as the faction moved to shut down the bridge over the Bosporus connecting the Istanbul region to the rest of Turkey and conceal their operations from official communications channels.

Gerehan was highly aware of how effective using technology like WhatsApp could be against a centralized command-and-control system. One of the papers he co-authored was presented in 2015 with one of his students at the Turkish Army War College during the Journal of National Security and Military Science's International Leadership Symposium entitled Security and the Environment of Future Military Operations. Speaking of the hybrid nature of conflicts in the 21st Century, he wrote, "Cyber Warfare might be the decisive factor in future wars."

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Microsoft: Xbox One S ab 2. August 2016 erhältlich

Die Slim-Version der Xbox One ist ab Anfang August verfügbar. Vorerst gibt es offenbar nur das teure Modell mit 2 TByte Speicher. Auch ein neuer Controller ist erhältlich. (Xbox One S, Xbox Live)

Die Slim-Version der Xbox One ist ab Anfang August verfügbar. Vorerst gibt es offenbar nur das teure Modell mit 2 TByte Speicher. Auch ein neuer Controller ist erhältlich. (Xbox One S, Xbox Live)