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Enlarge / The Department of Justice seal as seen during a press conference in December 2019. (credit: Samuel Corum | Getty Images)

Two state-sponsored hackers in China targeted US businesses in a "sophisticated and prolific threat" for more than 10 years, both for financial gain and to steal trade secrets, the Department of Justice said today.

The 11-count indictment (PDF), which was made public today, alleges Li Xiaoyu and Dong Jiazhi worked with China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) and other agencies to hack into "hundreds of victim companies, governments, non-governmental organizations, and individual dissidents, clergy, and democratic and human rights activists in the United States and abroad."

Li and Dong were allegedly infiltrating networks of businesses in a wide array of sectors, including "high tech manufacturing; civil, industrial, and medical device engineering; business, educational, and gaming software development; solar energy; and pharmaceuticals," as well as defense contractors, since at least September 2009. In recent months, prosecutors allege, the two were seeking ways in to "the networks of biotech and other firms publicly known for work on COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and testing technology" in at least 11 countries, including the US.

Enlarge / Ryzen 4000 desktop CPUs are here—but they don't look like the follow-up breakthrough many readers have been hoping for. (credit: AMD)

This morning, AMD announced the next big thing for its Ryzen desktop CPU line—the Ryzen 4000 series, slated to arrive in Q3 2020.

Those of you who've been waiting breathlessly for Zen 3 architecture will need to keep waiting—Ryzen 4000 desktop CPUs are still built on 7nm, Zen 2 architecture. There also don't appear to be any performance recordbreakers in Ryzen 4000's desktop lineup: the highest-end SKU announced is the 65W 8 core / 16 thread Ryzen 7 Pro 4750G.

Instead, AMD is taking solid aim at rival Intel's chokehold on the office PC market. Every single one of the 18 new processor SKUs announced features integrated Radeon graphics—and nine of the 18 are "GE" suffix CPUs, meaning only 35W TDP. Both of these features are highly desirable in either home-office or business environments—Radeon integrated graphics are good enough for anything short of high-end content creation or gaming, and lower TDP means lower power bills, and lower cooling bills as well in hotter climates.

Enlarge (credit: Rocket League / Aurich Lawson)

Sometime "this summer," the popular car-soccer video game Rocket League will become fully free to play on all existing platforms. In order to pull this off, however, the game's publishers at Epic Games are making a curious change to its PC version: it will be delisted from Steam.

If you have not already purchased the game's existing PC version, priced at $19.99, the only way to claim its free version once it launches will be through the Epic Games Store. Tuesday's announcement from game developer Psyonix did not include a firm estimate of when this "summer" switchover will happen, and Psyonix representatives did not confirm a time frame when asked directly by Ars—so if you don't already own the game and feel wedded to Steam, consider this a final "summer" warning. Anyone who has already purchased the game on Steam will still be able to download and play the free-to-play version through that interface—and receive updates, patches, and access to existing content and unlocks.

“Long-term plans” are here today

Existing players on any platform (Steam, EGS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One) who pay for and log in to Rocket League before its F2P transition will receive a bundle of free "Legacy" content, mostly consisting of new and existing cosmetic options for the game's roster of cars. (This means owners of the game's disc version must log in ASAP to claim said goodies; after the switchover, your paid disc copy of the game won't trigger any special status.) This includes a few packs of cars and decorations that used to be sold as traditional DLC, before Rocket League delisted all discrete DLC packs in favor of an in-game, Fortnite-like store full of limited-time sales options.

Enlarge / A telephone in a prison. (credit: Getty Images | Image Source)

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is urging state governments to impose price caps on prison phone calls, three years after Pai helped kill Obama-era FCC rules that limited the price of such calls.

Pai yesterday sent a letter to the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), saying it is up to state governments to cap intrastate calling prices because the FCC lacks authority to do so. (NARUC represents state utility regulators.) Pai wrote:

Given the alarming evidence of egregiously high intrastate inmate calling rates and the FCC's lack of jurisdiction here, I am calling on states to exercise their authority and, at long last, address this pressing problem. Specifically, I implore NARUC and state regulatory commissions to take action on intrastate inmate calling services rates to enable more affordable communications for the incarcerated and their families.

Pai's letter did not mention that his own actions helped cement the status quo in which the FCC does not regulate intrastate prices. It's well-established that the FCC can regulate interstate rates, those affecting calls that cross state lines. Pai is even proposing to lower the FCC-imposed rate caps on interstate calls from 25¢ to 16¢ per minute in an order the FCC will vote on next month. But Pai's plan doesn't limit prices on intrastate calls, those in which the prisoner and the person on the other end of the line are in the same state.

Enlarge / Who needs the letter "B" when you can have a jolly roger? (credit: Brasil2 | Getty Images)

A federal appeals court has upheld a ruling that site hosts are not liable for copyright infringement committed by the sites they host, so long as they take the "simple measures" of forwarding claims to the site owner.

The ruling follows a legal battle between adult content company ALS Scan and site hosting service Steadfast. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2 to 1 on Friday (PDF) that even though ALS has a "whack-a-mole problem" with pirated content popping up on Imagebam, a site Steadfast hosts, the host did its part to prevent the piracy.

Working as intended

A copyright owner, such as ALS, can file a claim against a site, such as Imagebam, that is unlawfully sharing its copyrighted content. That often means sending notice to the site host—the entity you'd find listed in a whois search—about it. The host, in this case Steadfast, is then required to forward the notice along to the site owner and check that the site owner does in fact take the content down.