Apple released two bug-fix updates to iOS 13 in one weekend

A rocky iOS 13 launch has led to an unusually brisk pace of bug-fix updates.

Multiple smartphones on table.

Enlarge / The iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max running iOS 13. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Today, Apple released iOS and iPadOS 13.1.2, as well as watchOS 6.0.1. All of the updates are focused on bug fixes.

The iOS release fixes an issue that prevented Bluetooth connectivity, plus others that stopped the Camera app and the flashlight from functioning in certain situations. Both the iOS and iPadOS updates fixed a bug that left a progress bar still visible after iCloud Backup completed its task. The updates also righted another issue affecting shortcuts on HomePods.

Here are Apple's update notes for iOS 13.1.2:

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

NASA signals openness to change with new Solar System exploration hire

“Sometimes it takes somebody from the outside to bring organizations together.”

Bobby Braun, seen in Mission Control at NASA's Jet Propulsion, will move to the lab in early 2020.

Enlarge / Bobby Braun, seen in Mission Control at NASA's Jet Propulsion, will move to the lab in early 2020. (credit: Bobby Braun)

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has found a new leader for its Solar System exploration program, and the choice of Bobby Braun signals a willingness to adapt to the changing world of aerospace.

Braun, an engineer who specializes in cutting-edge technology, will join the NASA laboratory from the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he served as dean. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (or JPL) has led NASA's efforts to explore the Solar System with uncrewed spacecraft from the beginning.

"JPL has always been a special place to me," Braun said in an interview. "It is the center of our nation's planetary exploration efforts, with flagship missions that have rewritten our textbooks." Those missions have included the Voyager excursions through and beyond the Solar System, dedicated probes to Jupiter and Saturn, and multiple landings on Mars.

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Daily Deals (9-30-2019)

Need a laptop that’s good enough for basic computing on the go, but which is cheap enough that you probably won’t mind too much if you lose it or break it while on vacation? The Acer Spin 1 notebook with an 11.6 inch touchscreen display, 36…

Need a laptop that’s good enough for basic computing on the go, but which is cheap enough that you probably won’t mind too much if you lose it or break it while on vacation? The Acer Spin 1 notebook with an 11.6 inch touchscreen display, 360- degree hinge, Pentium Silver N5000 processor, 4GB of RAM […]

The post Daily Deals (9-30-2019) appeared first on Liliputing.

Atari VCS will support retro game streaming service Antstream

The Atari VCS is a modern game console with a retro design and support for both classic games and some newer titles. It’s not expected to ship until December, but when it does it turns out you’ll be able to play thousands of classic games b…

The Atari VCS is a modern game console with a retro design and support for both classic games and some newer titles. It’s not expected to ship until December, but when it does it turns out you’ll be able to play thousands of classic games by signing up for Antstream, a game streaming service that […]

The post Atari VCS will support retro game streaming service Antstream appeared first on Liliputing.

Wibattack: Weiterer SMS-Angriff auf die SIM-Karte

Wie Simjacker kann auch die Schadsoftware Wibattack Daten aus dem Mobiltelefon ausleiten. Auch hier kommt die Schadsoftware per SMS und läuft auf der SIM-Karte, sie nutzt allerdings eine andere Sicherheitslücke. (SIM-Karte, Telekom)

Wie Simjacker kann auch die Schadsoftware Wibattack Daten aus dem Mobiltelefon ausleiten. Auch hier kommt die Schadsoftware per SMS und läuft auf der SIM-Karte, sie nutzt allerdings eine andere Sicherheitslücke. (SIM-Karte, Telekom)

Cinemood is the little projector that couldn’t quite

Cinemood’s little 360P projector works, but you can do better for the money.

Cinemood is the little projector that couldn’t quite

Enlarge (credit: Jim Salter)

Cinemood is a $300 ultra-portable, lithium-ion-powered projector in a lightweight (8oz) form factor roughly the size of a Rubik's Cube. It's an Android device with no video input that projects from factory pre-loaded videos or onboard streaming apps like Netflix or YouTube at 640x360—and it's not a short-throw projector, either. In our testing, Cinemood needed a 12-foot throw distance to display a rather washed-out image about the size of a 65-inch TV set.

In order to avoid burying the lede, you might as well know up front, we do not recommend this device at this price—but we do have some good alternatives for you at the end of the review if you're in the market for a relatively cheap and portable projector.

A tale of two projectors

Before we get into the real review, let's talk a little inside baseball. A couple of months ago, a vendor I'd never heard of pitched me on reviewing Vava—a high-end, 4K resolution, ultra-short-throw home theater projector with a $2,500 price tag. This projector claimed to provide a 150-inch display from only a few inches' distance, a Harmon-Kardon sound system, and more. I said sure, sounds fun.

Read 27 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Nintendo Takes Down Facebook-Tooled Donkey Kong Remake

Nintendo is continuing to home in on those who copy its classic gaming creations. In a new DMCA complaint filed at Github, the gaming giant targets a remake of Donkey Kong that was created by the technical director of an Australia-based technology consultancy company. The creation, which utilizes tools developed by Facebook, was publicly documented more than a year ago.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

If one took a broad overview of the entire history of video gaming, few would dare to argue Nintendo’s legend status over the past several decades.

The Japanese company’s games, both old and new, are renowned for their brilliance and enduring characters. Arguably the most iconic is Mario, who first made his appearance as the hero in the timeless 1981 release Donkey Kong.

Even today, dangerously close to 40 years on, countless players still enjoy this and other classics on emulators and similar tools but Nintendo’s tolerance is becoming increasingly fragile. Over the past couple of years, as players toil in the shadows to defeat Kong, Nintendo has become a litigation machine throwing takedown notices and even lawsuits (1,2,3) at sites and alleged infringers.

The company’s latest effort came on Friday when it sent a copyright complaint to development platform Github. The target was a remake of Donkey Kong built with React Native, the open-source mobile application framework created by Facebook.

Created by developer ‘bberak’, this React Native version of Donkey Kong isn’t an emulation, it was created from the ground up for iOS and Android and documented in a detailed post on Hackernoon in April 2018.

The jumps and gameplay quirks reveal this is no emu

Perhaps a little unusually, given the risks associated with stepping on Nintendo’s toes lately, the original repo – which was now been taken down – basically acknowledges that parts of the project may infringe copyright. The game’s code may have been created independently but the visual and audio assets are undoubtedly Nintendo’s. And the repo happily pointed to the company behind the project too.

“Copyright Notice: All content, artwork, sounds, characters and graphics are the property of Nintendo of America Inc, its affiliates and/or subsidiaries,” the repo read.

“Get in Touch: We are Neap – a development and design team in Sydney. We love building stuff and meeting new people, so get in touch with us at https://neap.co.”

The Neap website reveals that ‘bberak’ is Boris Berak, co-founder and Technical Director of the Australia-based company. TF contacted them for comment but at the time of publication, we hadn’t received a response.

In hindsight, it was probably a mistake to use Donkey Kong as a technical demo since Nintendo has already shown an aversion to such projects in the past. Back in June 2017, the company targeted a Donkey Kong remake for Roku, also hosted on Github. Interestingly, the complaint filed Friday appears to have an artifact from that two-year-old notice.

Stating the content being targeted most recently, Nintendo states: “Nintendo’s Donkey Kong video game, covered by U.S. Copyright Reg. No. PA0000115040 (supplemented by PA0000547470). The reported repository contains a recreation of Nintendo’s Donkey Kong video game for Roku, which was created and published without Nintendo’s authorization.”

The text is an exact match with that in the earlier complaint, even going as far as referencing Roku, which appears to be an error. Nevertheless, those details are irrelevant to the claim and won’t be good grounds for a counter-notice.

As Nintendo’s notice points out, at least another 30 developers forked this Donkey Kong variant on Github, so all those repositories have been taken down too. They could probably be restored if Berak removed all the original Donkey Kong references, graphics, and sound, but that seems unlikely.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Nintendo Takes Down Facebook-Tooled Donkey Kong Remake

Nintendo is continuing to home in on those who copy its classic gaming creations. In a new DMCA complaint filed at Github, the gaming giant targets a remake of Donkey Kong that was created by the technical director of an Australia-based technology consultancy company. The creation, which utilizes tools developed by Facebook, was publicly documented more than a year ago.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

If one took a broad overview of the entire history of video gaming, few would dare to argue Nintendo’s legend status over the past several decades.

The Japanese company’s games, both old and new, are renowned for their brilliance and enduring characters. Arguably the most iconic is Mario, who first made his appearance as the hero in the timeless 1981 release Donkey Kong.

Even today, dangerously close to 40 years on, countless players still enjoy this and other classics on emulators and similar tools but Nintendo’s tolerance is becoming increasingly fragile. Over the past couple of years, as players toil in the shadows to defeat Kong, Nintendo has become a litigation machine throwing takedown notices and even lawsuits (1,2,3) at sites and alleged infringers.

The company’s latest effort came on Friday when it sent a copyright complaint to development platform Github. The target was a remake of Donkey Kong built with React Native, the open-source mobile application framework created by Facebook.

Created by developer ‘bberak’, this React Native version of Donkey Kong isn’t an emulation, it was created from the ground up for iOS and Android and documented in a detailed post on Hackernoon in April 2018.

The jumps and gameplay quirks reveal this is no emu

Perhaps a little unusually, given the risks associated with stepping on Nintendo’s toes lately, the original repo – which was now been taken down – basically acknowledges that parts of the project may infringe copyright. The game’s code may have been created independently but the visual and audio assets are undoubtedly Nintendo’s. And the repo happily pointed to the company behind the project too.

“Copyright Notice: All content, artwork, sounds, characters and graphics are the property of Nintendo of America Inc, its affiliates and/or subsidiaries,” the repo read.

“Get in Touch: We are Neap – a development and design team in Sydney. We love building stuff and meeting new people, so get in touch with us at https://neap.co.”

The Neap website reveals that ‘bberak’ is Boris Berak, co-founder and Technical Director of the Australia-based company. TF contacted them for comment but at the time of publication, we hadn’t received a response.

In hindsight, it was probably a mistake to use Donkey Kong as a technical demo since Nintendo has already shown an aversion to such projects in the past. Back in June 2017, the company targeted a Donkey Kong remake for Roku, also hosted on Github. Interestingly, the complaint filed Friday appears to have an artifact from that two-year-old notice.

Stating the content being targeted most recently, Nintendo states: “Nintendo’s Donkey Kong video game, covered by U.S. Copyright Reg. No. PA0000115040 (supplemented by PA0000547470). The reported repository contains a recreation of Nintendo’s Donkey Kong video game for Roku, which was created and published without Nintendo’s authorization.”

The text is an exact match with that in the earlier complaint, even going as far as referencing Roku, which appears to be an error. Nevertheless, those details are irrelevant to the claim and won’t be good grounds for a counter-notice.

As Nintendo’s notice points out, at least another 30 developers forked this Donkey Kong variant on Github, so all those repositories have been taken down too. They could probably be restored if Berak removed all the original Donkey Kong references, graphics, and sound, but that seems unlikely.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Scheuer: Mobilfunkbetreiber dürfen LTE an Grenzen voll aufdrehen

Durch eine neue Regelung sollen die Beschränkungen für LTE im Grenzgebiet wegfallen. Scheuer spricht davon, das größte Funkloch Deutschlands zu schließen. (Long Term Evolution, Mobilfunk)

Durch eine neue Regelung sollen die Beschränkungen für LTE im Grenzgebiet wegfallen. Scheuer spricht davon, das größte Funkloch Deutschlands zu schließen. (Long Term Evolution, Mobilfunk)

Jacquard: Levi’s und Google bringen neue smarte Jeansjacke

Die Zusammenarbeit des Jeans-Herstellers Levi’s mit Google hat eine weitere smarte Jacke hervorgebracht: Die neuen Trucker-Jackets kommen wieder mit einem kleinen Sensor an der Manschette, über den sich verschiedene Funktionen des damit verbundenen Sma…

Die Zusammenarbeit des Jeans-Herstellers Levi's mit Google hat eine weitere smarte Jacke hervorgebracht: Die neuen Trucker-Jackets kommen wieder mit einem kleinen Sensor an der Manschette, über den sich verschiedene Funktionen des damit verbundenen Smartphones steuern lassen. (Google, Wearable)