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Warum die Äußerungen der Beherrschten auch in Nicht-Pandemie-Zeiten nur Ausdruck der herrschenden Interessen sind
Elsevier and other academic publishers see ‘pirate’ site Sci-Hub as a major threat to science and their own multi-billion-dollar industry. Through a lawsuit in India, the companies hope to have the site blocked but Sci-Hub is actively fighting this request in court. According to the site’s founder, the publishers are the real threat to the progress of science.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
By offering free access to millions of ‘paywalled’ research papers, Sci-Hub is often described as “The Pirate Bay of Science”.
The site is used by researchers from all over the world, to access papers they otherwise have a hard time accessing. For some, the site is essential to do their work.
The major academic publishers such as Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society are not happy with the rogue research library. These companies have made billions of dollars by selling access to research and see Sci-Hub as a direct threat to their business model.
This has resulted in several lawsuits including two that were won by publishers through default judgments in U.S. courts.
Despite these rulings, Sci-Hub and its founder Alexandra Elbakyan are not backing down. On the contrary, the site has become a household name in many academic institutions and most users care very little about the copyright angle. They see more value in open access to research.
Sci-Hub’s latest legal battle, which takes place in India, is the first one where the site will actively put up a defense. Soon after the legal action was announced last year lawyers came in to offer their help, while local researchers pledged their support.
The broader academic community is watching the case closely as well. Nature, which itself is one of the most prestigious scientific publications, highlighted the ongoing legal battle in an article yesterday, including some comments the publishers behind the Indian lawsuit.
“Pirate sites like Sci-Hub threaten the integrity of the scientific record, and the safety of university and personal data,” the publishers told Nature, adding that the site uses stolen credentials and compromises the security of libraries and higher education institutions.
Nature also heard Sci-Hub’s founder who characterized the publishers’ comments as “empty accusations”. However, Elbakyan said more than that but not all her comments made it into the article.
In fact, the full response, posted by Elbakyan on Twitter, shows that she sees the publishers are the real threat to science.
“Academic publishers threaten the progress of science: open communication is fundamental property of science and it makes scientific progress possible. Paywalled access prevents this and is a great threat to science.”
“The great threat is also when the whole scientific knowledge became the private property of some corporation such as Elsevier, that has full control of it. That is a threat, and not Sci-Hub,” Elbakyan adds.
Sci-Hub’s founder also rejects the notion that the site threatens the integrity of the scientific record. It simply republishes the same articles that are normally behind a paywall and doesn’t alter anything.
Similarly, the accusation that Sci-Hub threatens the safety of university and personal data is refuted at well. Those are a bunch of empty words. It sounds dangerous but it’s not backed up by any evidence, Elbakyan notes.
The people who use Sci-Hub do so because they have no other affordable option to access the academic research they need for their own work.
“Nobody is complaining about ‘compromised security’ except academic publishers. It is touching to see, how caring they are about others. Except, that they do not care at all about millions of people who cannot access science because they do not have money.”
“Do they have any actual case when Sci-Hub somehow compromised the security of any library or a person? Any person that complained about credentials that were ‘stolen’ from them? Or is it again, nothing more but empty accusations.”
Sci-Hub’s founder gets a lot of support from researchers from all over the world and her recent tweet is no exception to this. There are dozens of academics openly supporting her on Twitter.
Ultimately, however, the ‘legality’ of Sci-Hub will be decided in court. While it’s clear that Sci-Hub takes copyrighted content without permission, the defense argues that this is for the greater good, so it’s ‘fair dealing’.
Sci-Hub’s lawyers Shrutanjaya Bhardwaj and Sriya Sridhar are confident that they can make this case. They tell Nature that, if Sci-Hub wins, this could have a global ripple effect, which may change how foreign courts see the site.
Of course, the opposite is also true. Thus far Sci-Hub has been blocked in several countries already, so a ‘fair dealing’ victory would be an outlier.
Elbakyan hopes that Sci-Hub will eventually be recognized as a legal site. In that sense, not much has changed since we first interviewed here six years ago. Since then the legal pressure has increased, but so have the public support and users of the site.
Below is Sci-Hub founder’s full response to Nature’s inquiry, as posted on Twitter.
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From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Eine Sicherheitslücke in Java lässt sich nicht so leicht flicken: die Woche im Video. (Golem-Wochenrückblick, Server)
Eine Sicherheitslücke in Java lässt sich nicht so leicht flicken: die Woche im Video. (Golem-Wochenrückblick, Server) Meteorologen bestätigen Rekordmessung. Klimawandel setzt dem hohen Norden zu
Google released Android 12 nearly two months ago, bringing major changes to the user interface of its mobile operating system, updated privacy features, and new accessibility features. But big updates have a habit of breaking compatibility with third-party apps from developers who haven’t updated their software to ensure compatibility. And for most of the past […]
The post Amazon Appstore now works with Android 12 (better later than never?) appeared first on Liliputing.
Google released Android 12 nearly two months ago, bringing major changes to the user interface of its mobile operating system, updated privacy features, and new accessibility features.
But big updates have a habit of breaking compatibility with third-party apps from developers who haven’t updated their software to ensure compatibility. And for most of the past two months the Amazon Appstore fell into that category. But now Amazon says its app store is finally compatible with Android 12.
The Amazon Appstore for Android is basically Amazon’s version of the Google Play Store: a central location where you can find apps and games and pay for in-app purchases including game items or newspaper or media streaming subscriptions.
Amazon first launched the Appstore in early 2011, about half a year before the company began selling its own line of tablets running the Android-based Fire OS. Initially one of the key reasons to use the Amazon Appstore was that the company gave away a free app or game every day. That program was eventually discontinued, but I’ve still got some decent games in my library that I picked up nearly a decade ago.
These days the primary reason to install the Amazon Appstore on an Android phone or tablet is probably because you’ve already paid for apps or games for an Amazon Fire tablet and you’d rather not have to buy them again from the Google Play Store in order to use them on your phone or other devices.
And so when folks who had been using the Amazon Appstore on devices running Android 11 or earlier started updating to Android 12 and found that the Appstore no longer worked, they began leaving complaints in Amazon support forums.
The problem is that not only did the app not load, but any games you’d already installed through the Appstore wouldn’t run either. Now they should:
An Amazon representative says:
“We have released a fix for an issue impacting app launches for Amazon Appstore customers that have upgraded to Android 12 on their mobile devices. We are contacting customers with steps to update their Appstore experience. We are sorry for any disruption this has caused.”
I just downloaded and installed the Appstore on my Pixel 4a 5G running Android 12 and I can confirm that I was able to run the app and download and install a game linked to my account. So it looks like we’re good to go… a few months after Android 12 was released.
While it’s not unheard of for an app developer might not update their apps or games to be compatible with the latest Google APIs in time for a major Android OS update, it’s more than a little surprising that a company as big as Amazon took this long to ensure that their software worked with the latest version of Android. But better later than never, I guess.
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Klaus Ernst über die Kritik an seiner Leitung des Bundestagsausschusses für Klima und Energie, die soziale Frage in der Klimapolitik und Wählerwanderungen
Dutch authority for nuclear safety issues warning, bans 10 scammy “negative ion” products.
Enlarge / This "quantum pendant" purports to protect the wearer from 5G signals. The anti-5G hysteria is a groundless conspiracy theory, but the pendants aren't just useless trinkets. They emit low levels of ionizing radiation that can cause adverse health effects over time. (credit: Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu)
Worried that 5G cell phone towers are beaming dangerous levels of radiofrequency radiation into your brain? Forget the classic tinfoil hat and try the "quantum pendant" pictured above. It's a much more stylish accessory. The product leans on a tried and true pseudoscientific marketing gimmick: Slap the label "quantum" on something, and the word imparts an aura of magical mystery in the minds of the perpetually gullible.
These kinds of "negative ion" products can be found for sale all over the Internet, claiming to enhance immune function, increase energy, and, yes, protect the wearer from supposedly harmful 5G waves, among other purported benefits. The hysteria over 5G risks has no scientific basis, and even if it did, "negative ions" aren't some kind of magical defense. But if people want to spend their hard-earned cash on nonsense, that's their prerogative. No harm, no foul, right?
Not so fast. It turns out that many of these products emit low levels of ionizing radiation that could be dangerous over prolonged use—so much so that the Authority for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection (ANVS) in the Netherlands has just issued a consumer warning and banned the sale of ten such products, including that snazzy quantum pendant.
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The LG Wing was one of the last (and weirdest) smartphones LG released before the company exited the smartphone space earlier this year. What looks at first glance like a normal smartphone with a 6.8 inch display is actually a dual-screen phone with a smaller 3.9 inch display that folds out to give the Wing a […]
The post LG Wing hack: Turn the smaller screen into a standalone phone appeared first on Liliputing.
The LG Wing was one of the last (and weirdest) smartphones LG released before the company exited the smartphone space earlier this year. What looks at first glance like a normal smartphone with a 6.8 inch display is actually a dual-screen phone with a smaller 3.9 inch display that folds out to give the Wing a T-shaped design.
Theoretically this lets you view multiple apps at once or use the smaller portion as a controller. But now that the phone has been discontinued, one hacker has found another use for the smaller screen – rip out the smartphone’s guts and cram them behind the display to create a small standalone.
In a short video posted to Chinese site bilbibili, the hacker shows an LG Wing that’s been disassembled and repurposed to build a tiny-but-functional smartphone.
While the video is light on details, it looks like the hacker discovered that the smartphone’s mainboard and battery could both fit behind the smaller display if they were stacked on top of one another. The end result is a rather thick, but apparently functional phone.
The LG Wing’s original specs included a 6.8 inch 2460 x 1080 pixel plastic OLED primary display, that 3.9 inch, 1240 x 1080 pixel pOLED secondary display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G processor, 8GB of RAM, at least 128GB of storage, a 4,000 mAh battery, triple rear cameras, and a 32MP pop-up selfie camera and in-display fingerprint reader.
It’s unclear if all of those parts have been transplanted into the new Wingless mini, but at the end of the video you can see a brief demo showing that the touchscreen display is functional, the pop-up camera seems to have survived the surgery, and there’s even an LED light bar on top of the small-screen smartphone.
It’s unclear whether it can do things like, you know, connect to the internet or make phone calls, but if anyone who understands Chinese wants to watch the video and let us know if there are some details we might have missed, the comments are open.
via @MishaalRahman
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Best Buy is running a 72-hour flash sale this weekend. The Microsoft Store has kicked off a “Countdown Sale” with deep discounts on select PCs, games, and other goodies. And the Epic Games Store is giving away another free PC game today. Here are some of the day’s best deals. Chromebooks HP Chromebook 11 w/MT8183/4GB/32GB […]
The post Daily Deals (12-17-2021) appeared first on Liliputing.
Best Buy is running a 72-hour flash sale this weekend. The Microsoft Store has kicked off a “Countdown Sale” with deep discounts on select PCs, games, and other goodies. And the Epic Games Store is giving away another free PC game today.
Here are some of the day’s best deals.
Chromebooks
Windows
Tablets, smartphones & eReaders
Webcams
Wireless audio
Downloads & Streaming
The post Daily Deals (12-17-2021) appeared first on Liliputing.
Add to a charity haul that’s raised nearly $9,000 in just three days.
Enlarge / Just some of the prizes available in this year's Ars Technica Charity Drive Sweepstakes.
[Dec. 22: As we approach Christmas and the midway point of this year's Charity Drive, we've now raised over $18,000 from nearly 200 separate donations. Child's Play is in the lead over EFF, approximately $9,600 to $8,400, for those who keep track of such things.
That's a great start, but we still have a ways to go to beat last year's $58,000 record. Read on below to find out how you can take part!]
If you've been too busy playing Halo Infinite to take part in this year's Ars Technica Charity Drive sweepstakes, don't worry. You still have time to donate to a good cause and get a chance to win your share of over $1,600 worth of swag (no purchase necessary to win).
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