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Motorola is expected to launch its next-gen Moto G smartphone on May 17th, and a series of leaks have given us an idea of what to expect… but the latest leak suggests the phone might be more of an upgrade than previously thought.

A phone that may be the 4th-gen Moto G passed through the FCC this week, and as Roland Quandt notes, the website for benchmarking utility Geekbench also has a few more details.

Continue reading 4th-gen Motorola Mot G hits the FCC, may have Snapdragon 617 at Liliputing.

The Philadelphia Police Department has refused to answer Ars’ questions about how or why it deployed an unmarked police vehicle equipped with at least one license plate reader and a bizarre Google Maps decal.

Lt. John Stanford, a spokesman for the department, repeated a statement he previously sent to Vice Motherboard, which broke the story on Thursday.

"We have been informed that this unmarked vehicle belongs to the police department; however, the placing of any particular decal on the vehicle was not approved through any chain of command," he wrote. "Once this was brought to our attention, it was ordered that the decals be removed immediately."

Ars specifically asked if only one such vehicle was disguised as being a Google vehicle, who authorized this deployment, and whether the PPD has used similar tactics in the past. Lt. Stanford did not respond on any front.

A Google spokeswoman told Ars that the vehicle is not a company car, adding, "We are currently looking into the matter."

Vice Motherboard reported earlier that it found this vehicle after from a tweet by a University of Pennsylvania computer science professor.

WTF? Pennsylvania State Police license plate reader SUV camouflaged as Google Street View vehicle. pic.twitter.com/0z4yo2rVoR

— matt blaze (@mattblaze) May 11, 2016

As Ars has reported for years, license plate readers are used by law enforcement agencies big and small nationwide as a way to automatically scan, record, and analyze potentially wanted or stolen license plates. Police have long argued that they are necessary tools to catch wanted criminal suspects, while privacy advocates have expressed concern that the data collection is too broad and often is retained for years on end. In Oakland, California, for example, the "hit rate" (wanted cars divided by all scanned cars) is just 0.16 percent.

Toshiba’s Satellite Radius 12 is a 2.9 notebook with a 12.5 inch, full HD display. It’s also a tablet, thanks to a 360 degree hinge that lets you fold the touchscreen display all the way back.

While a model with 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and an Intel Core i5 Skylake processor has a list price of $800, Best Buy is currently selling it for just $550.

A model with a 3840 x 2160 pixel display and a Core i7 processor is also on sale for $150 off its list price… but at $850, it’s still a lot more expensive than the 1080p model.

Continue reading Deals of the Day (5-13-2016) at Liliputing.

In 2014, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) shuttered a $1 billion program to give an iPad to every kid in the school district. There were improprieties in the way the bidding process was carried out, the school said, and a year earlier, students had “hacked” their iPads (really just deleting profile information that imposed limits on how the kids could use the tablets).

That failure, which resulted in an FBI probe and an SEC investigation and eventually led to a multi-million dollar settlement reach with Apple and curriculum-provider Pearson, has not repeated itself in other school districts, the Wall Street Journal reports. Part of the reason for fewer high-profile failures may be that Apple is more active about its involvement in the programs, sending former teachers to work with current teachers to develop lesson plans. The company also gets high level executives like Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet software and services, to act as advocates and sponsors for schools in great need.

Apple committed $100 million in 2014 to fund 114 mostly low-income schools as part of an Obama Administration initiative to even the playing field of technology in the the classroom. The WSJ spoke to teachers at HL Suverkrup Elementary in Yuma, AZ who have benefited from the program and claim the new tech "really enhances [the students'] learning and it motivates them to learn." Apple provided an iPad for each student and teacher, a MacBook for each teacher, and an Apple TV for each classroom. Apple also assigned an employee, generally a former teacher, "to spend 17 days a year at each school, training teachers and helping prepare lessons."

Of course, despite the positive feedback from teachers, renewed funding for the schools' iPad programs may not be available in three years when the money is scheduled to run out. But if the benefiting school districts are willing to put up money to continue the programs in three years, Apple's investment might be a way to regain some of the market share it has lost in the classroom to Alphabet. That company's “Chromebooks accounted for 51 percent of computer and tablet purchases by US schools in the third quarter of 2015,” the WSJ reported. Apple products were only 24 percent of school purchases in that time period.

iPad programs not funded by Apple seem to be doing well, too, at least in the early stages. A separate effort in Southern California's Coachella Valley Unified School District is not funded by Apple, but school administrators said that a $42 million bond measure funded by the district has paid off. Superintendent Darryl Adams told the WSJ that he “credits the iPads with helping to lift the district’s high-school graduation rate to 82 percent in 2015 from 65 percent in 2011.” Rather than simply giving the iPads to students, though, the school has put effort into making sure its students have Internet access after school by parking school buses broadcasting a Wi-Fi signal in neighborhoods where it's needed most.

Want to interact with your laptop, phone, or tablet? Then you probably need a keyboard, mouse, and/or touchscreen. But what about next-gen devices like smartwatches, VR headsets, and augmented reality systems like Microsoft’s HoloLens? It can be tough to use a traditional keyboard or touchscreen on devices that are tiny, or which obstruct your vision.

So the makers of Tap came up with a new idea: a device that you wear on your hand which lets you type or perform other actions just by moving your fingers.

Continue reading Tap wants to turn your hand into a Bluetooth keyboard at Liliputing.

The Amazon Echo was the first device to utilize Amazon’s Alexa voice service, and it’s probably still one of the best, thanks to its high-quality speaker and microphone array that enables always-listening support and the ability to detect your voice from across the room.

But it’s also more expensive than the Amazon Tap or Dot, and a lot less portable, since it’s bigger and lacks a battery.

But now there’s a third-party accessory that allows you to use the Echo when it’s not plugged in: the $50 Battery Base from Mission Cables can power the Echo for up to 6 hours at a time.

Continue reading $50 Battery Base makes Amazon Echo a portable device at Liliputing.

"Less than one percent" of Verizon customers who were switched over to Frontier Communications suffered service outages after the transition, according to Frontier.

But with more than 3 million customers being forced to switch providers, that could put the total number of customers who suffered outages at nearly 30,000. What isn't clear is how many people still lack service.

Frontier closed its acquisition of Verizon's FiOS and DSL operations in Florida, California, and Texas on April 1. "Due to the size and complexity of the conversion of these customers to our systems, Frontier started planning over a year ago, with the goal of ensuring a conversion as seamless and straight-forward as possible," Frontier said in a statement sent to Ars. "We hired over 8,000 contractors to assist with the process. Overall, less than one percent of the over 3,000,000 customers transitioned to Frontier experienced a service disruption as a result of this conversion, and there was no disruption of traditional voice service or of the 911 network."

The number of customers who lost service could actually be more than 30,000, depending on how close the outage number is to 1 percent. The Verizon transfer gave Frontier another 3.3 million phone customers, 2.1 million Internet customers, and 1.2 million TV customers. We're doing a little guesswork here, but whether the number is a little above or below 30,000, that's a lot of customers who lost service.

Whatever the exact numbers are, Frontier said it is "not satisfied with that result." Customers and government officials aren't satisfied, either. California legislative committee is planning a hearing on the topic on Wednesday next week, and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi demanded a meeting with Frontier officials.

Despite Frontier's statement that no "traditional voice service" went out, Bondi said that "business and residential customers have complained of going days or weeks without any Internet or phone service." With no phone service, customers lost access to 911, Bondi said. The discrepancy between the Frontier and Florida statements may be due to the former Verizon network offering two kinds of phone calling: traditional landline service and the newer FiOS Digital Voice that uses VoIP technology.

Bondi had her meeting with Frontier officials on Wednesday. Frontier agreed to prioritize complaints from seniors and people with serious medical problems and has set up a local customer service number and a "'SWAT Team' to coordinate the rapid response to customer escalations and service outages," Bondi said. Frontier also agreed to give credits to all customers who reported service outages.

“After a lengthy, productive meeting with Frontier executives, I am cautiously optimistic that Frontier disruptions in services will be quickly resolved,” Bondi said in a press release. "However, my office will continue to work with the company on each consumer complaint until they are all appropriately addressed.”

Bondi's office had received 721 complaints about Frontier as of yesterday morning and is forwarding each one to the company.

Besonders clever wollten offenbar Polizisten in Philadelphia sein: Einen ihrer zur Verkehrsüberwachung genutzten SUVs tarnten sie als Kamerawagen von Googles Street View. Einem Passanten kamen die Kameras auf dem Dach jedoch verdächtig vor. (Google, Google Street View)

Following the failed SOPA and PIPA bills, entertainment industry groups have switched their efforts away from legislation and towards voluntary cooperation with various stakeholders.

This has resulted in several agreements with Internet providers, advertising agencies and payment processors, designed to help prevent piracy.

Continuing this trend, the MPAA is now actively working on private deals with domain name registries and registrars. After teaming up with U.S-based Donuts a few months ago, the movie industry group is now going global.

Today, the MPAA and Asian registry Radix announced their new anti-piracy partnership. Radix bills itself as Asia’s largest new gTLD applicant and controls several domain extensions including .online, .tech, .space, .website, .press, .host, .site.

Under their agreement the MPAA will act as a “trusted notifier,” tasked with reporting sites that are clearly copyright-infringing. After several checks, these domain names may then be suspended by the registry.

“We welcome MPAA’s cooperation in helping us prevent intellectual property and copyright violations in our name space,” comments Sandeep Ramchandani, Business Head of Radix.

“We’re hopeful that our joint actions will not only protect creators from having their works stolen, but also protect Internet users from exposure to malware that is commonly found on sites run by unlicensed operators,” he adds.

The details of the partnership have not been released but they are likely similar to the Donuts agreement, which we analyzed in detail in our previous coverage.

Radix’s gTLDs

The new deal suggests that the MPAA is actively reaching out to registries to help them fight online piracy.

The Hollywood group previously lobbied domain name system oversight body ICANN to take action against pirate sites, without any result. Thus far, reaching out to registries directly has proven to be more fruitful.

According to Steven Fabrizio, the MPAA’s Senior Executive Vice President, voluntary partnerships should help to battle online piracy, and he hopes they will expand to other industries and domain name services.

“While this agreement is geared to film and television piracy, similar agreements could address other illegal activity online. Hopefully, it can become a model to be used with other players in the domain name ecosystem and Internet intermediaries,” Fabrizio says.

While the deal doesn’t put any major pirate sites at risk right away, it does limit the number of domain name options they have. It also means that sites such as yts.host, thepiratebay.tech and torrentmirror.online could soon disappear.

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

Es soll eine Art Fifa für den Esport werden: Das Unternehmen ESL und acht bekannte Teams haben die Wesa gegründet, die World Esports Association. Der Verband möchte den Progamern viel Einfluss geben, aber Branchenschwergewichte wie Valve sind noch nicht mit von der Partie. (E-Sport, Games)