Category: Uncategorised

There are several devices sold under the "HD Fury" brand. But lawyers working for Warner Bros. and Digital Copy Protection say that only this device, the "Integral 4K60 4:4:4 600MHz," can break the HDCP 2.2 copy protection that protects 4k video. (credit: HD Fury)

The device shown above is a $199 video peripheral that Warner Brothers doesn't think should have been in anyone's Christmas stocking. Until just hours ago, it was available for online purchase.

The devices, sold by an organization called HD Fury, allowed HD video to be moved around and displayed on devices that wouldn't normally be equipped to handle the content. To do that, the devices stripped out the entertainment industry's copy protection, called HDCP. The "HD Fury Integral," pictured above, was able to strip out even the newest version, HDCP 2.2, which protects Ultra HD or "4K" video content.

Stripping out that copy protection is a brazen violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, according to lawyers for Warner Brothers and Digital Content Protection (DCP), the company that licenses HDCP. Warner and DCP filed a lawsuit (PDF) on December 31 against LegendSky, the owner of HD Fury. The plaintiffs' lawyers say LegendSky is "a business or an individual located in China."

Climate science attempts to answer a lot of questions, but Earth’s population probably cares about just one of them: what is the amount of global warming we should expect from a given amount of greenhouse gas emissions?

There are a variety of metrics researchers use to describe that variable, differing mainly in how long you give the climate system to equilibrate. One handy metric is called the “transient climate response to cumulative carbon emissions”—TCRE for short. Given a total amount of CO₂ emitted up until a point in time, this relationship tells you about how much warming will have already occurred.

It’s a straightforward and (nearly) linear relationship that was highlighted in the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Find your place on the graph by totaling up historical CO₂ emissions and you get an idea of how much of the “carbon budget” remains before you reach, say, 2°C warming.

On Monday, General Motors and ride-sharing company Lyft announced a new partnership to develop a network of driverless taxis. GM has invested $500 million in Lyft as part of a $1 billion funding round. The partnership includes a seat for GM on Lyft’s board of directors.

Neither Lyft nor GM mentioned how soon they expected to realize their driverless taxi dream. In a press release, GM said it would work with Lyft to "leverage GM’s deep knowledge of autonomous technology.” Lyft, for its part, promised "to build a network of on demand autonomous vehicles that will make getting around more affordable, accessible and enjoyable."

GM’s labs have been testing the waters with autonomous concept cars, even hinting in October that the company’s strategy in 2016 would be “aggressive” and would include a fleet of self driving Chevrolet Volts. Lyft declined to comment publicly on how a fleet of driverless taxis would impact current Lyft drivers.

The heirs to a poet who claim their mother wrote a poem popularized in the TV series The Big Bang Theory are suing CBS and others connected to the sitcom for allegedly using the "soft kitty" lyrics without their permission on at least eight episodes.

The lawsuit, filed last Wednesday in a New York federal court, claims that the lyrics beginning with "Soft kitty, warm kitty" were created by Edith Newlin some eight decades ago and published in 1937 in a book called Songs for the Nursery School. The suit says the book's copyright registration was renewed in 1964, which "served also to register and renew" Newlin's copyright.

"Defendants have used the Soft Kitty Lyrics without authorization in their entirety as an emblematic feature of The Big Bang Theory, contributing materially to the program's enormous success, and in promotion and advertising for the show," according to the suit (PDF). "Defendants have also used the Soft Kitty Lyrics in their entirety on a wide range of merchandise items, from t-shirts to air fresheners, as part of one of the largest global licensing and merchandising programs ever mounted for a live-action television series."

Enlarge / The Rift may finally be real. (credit: Oculus)

Oculus announced today that its long-awaited PC-based Rift virtual reality headset will be available for preorder starting this Wednesday, January 6, at 8am PST (11am EST). We still don't know precisely when the headset will be available or how much it will cost, but Rift pre-orders will include copies of VR-enabled games Eve: Valkyrie and Lucky's Tale.

The Rift itself is still officially on track for the same "Q1 2016" release window first announced back in May. The hand-tracking Oculus Touch controllers first demonstrated at last year's E3 were recently delayed to the second half of 2016, though; the Rift will initially ship with an Xbox One control pad.

The final price for the consumer unit is an even bigger mystery. Oculus said in October that the consumer edition will cost more than the $350 development kits but would remain "in that ballpark." Back in May, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe said that a Rift and a fully specced PC capable of powering it should cost $1,500 total.

Ford

Android Auto meets Ford.

3 more images in gallery

Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are both going to show up in new Fords this year. On the eve of CES, Ford announced that every 2017 model year car equipped with Sync 3 (its latest infotainment system) will have both smartphone connectivity platforms preinstalled. And if you have a 2016 Ford with Sync 3, there's no need to think any less of it—a software upgrade will be available later this year to bring your car up-to-date.

In addition to adding CarPlay and Android Auto, Sync 3 also supports native apps though a platform called AppLink. The first of these will also arrive this year. Apps include one from the American and Canadian Automobile Associations (AAA and CAA), as well as Glimpse. AppLink is built on an open source program called SmartDeviceLink, and the company also announced today that Toyota, QNX, and UIEvolution are adopting the technology.

SmartDeviceLink is a bridge that allows for easy voice control of smartphone apps, something car companies and regulators are extremely keen on compared to the alternative, where thousands of distracted drivers fumble for touchscreen controls while at the wheel. That it's being adopted by another extremely large OEM as well as the company behind a lot of OEM infotainment systems (QNX) may be a promising development. An infotainment system with true portability and platform agnosticism needs standards, preferably as few competing ones as possible.