Here’s how many calories you may burn standing at work versus sitting, strolling

Evidence of health benefits from standing desks still slim, but walking is always good.

(credit: Marco Arment)

With the rise of standing desks, office workers hope to brush off the health risks linked to prolonged sitting, including obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and early death. But they might do well to walk them off instead, a new study suggests.

In one of the few studies to carefully count the calories people burn while sitting at a desk, standing, or taking a leisurely stroll, researchers found little difference between being plopped down or upright. Standing for an hour might burn off an extra nine calories or so, about the amount in a single gummy bear. Slow walking, on the other hand, incinerated 2.4 to 2.7-fold more calories than standing or sitting, respectively. If office workers fit in an hour of strolling throughout each day—tallying trips to the bathroom, walks to the printer, or strides on a treadmill desk—they could easily burn through an extra 130 calories. That’s a little more than what previous research suggests could help people keep pounds off, the authors report in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health.

“If you’re looking for weight control or just solely at the energy expenditure, standing isn’t that much more beneficial than sitting,” Seth Creasy, an exercise physiologist at the University of Pittsburgh and lead author of the study, told Ars. Of course, calorie burning isn’t the only reason people might choose a standing desk. Being upright could be beneficial for productivity or posture, Creasy said. However, more research is needed to know if those benefits are real because the studies that have been done so far have come up with mixed or inconclusive results.

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Deals of the Day (6-24-2016)

Valve is offering deep discounts on thousands of video games as part of the annual Steam Summer Sale. It runs through July 4th, and a handful of games are on sale for as much as 90 percent off their usual price (although most discounts are a little mor…

Deals of the Day (6-24-2016)

Valve is offering deep discounts on thousands of video games as part of the annual Steam Summer Sale. It runs through July 4th, and a handful of games are on sale for as much as 90 percent off their usual price (although most discounts are a little more modest).

Valve is also continuing to offer the Steam Controller and Steam Link extender for $35 each, or about 30 percent off their normal price of $50.

Continue reading Deals of the Day (6-24-2016) at Liliputing.

Electric vehicles at altitude: Pikes Peak qualifying day

We get our first look at the electric vehicles that will race on America’s Mountain.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—Racing at Pikes Peak starts early, really early. At this point I'm no stranger to the fact that a day at the track means leaving the house before dawn. But here at the mountain, the road is reopened for two-way traffic at 8:30am—so 4am it is. We're here because Giti Tires and Team APEV with Monster Sport invited Cars Technica to embed with them as Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima attempts to become "King of the Mountain" for the eighth time.

Tajima-san runs in the Electric Modified class for purpose-built machines. On Thursday morning, we got our first look at his 1.1MW (1,500hp) Tajima Rimac E-Runner Concept_One as well as some of the cars from other classes. Acura is here with three NSXes. There's an almost-stock NSX in Time Attack 2 Production, a second NSX—minus its AC and some interior trim—running in Time Attack 1 and silhouette NSX with four electric motors and torque vectoring in Electric Modified. There's even a Tesla Model S that is being campaigned by Blake Fuller.

Later in the day, the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb inducted its 2016 Hall of Fame. On the way in we were greeted by Arrow's latest Project SAM—a Corvette Z06 that Sam Schmidt will drive on Sunday after the final race up to the top and back to lead the entire field back to the start line. Between this and Frédéric Sausset at Le Mans, it's inspiring how motorsports is using technology to make itself more accessible, particularly because it's leading to real-world applications.

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Piracy Phishing Scam Targets U.S. ISPs and Subscribers

An elaborate “piracy” phishing operation is targeting U.S. Internet providers and subscribers. Scammers are using the name of anti-piracy tracking company IP-Echelon and rightsholders such as Lionsgate, to send fake DMCA notices and settlement demands to ISPs. U.S. law enforcement has been notified and is currently investigating the matter.

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

scamFor more than a decade copyright holders have been monitoring unauthorized downloads. Traditionally this resulted in harmless takedown notices, but increasingly, these warnings are bundled with automated “fines.”

Rightscorp and CEG TEK are the best known anti-piracy outfits employing this tactic, and this week another party appeared to have joined.

TorrentFreak was alerted to a takedown notice Lionsgate purportedly sent to a Cox subscriber, for allegedly downloading a pirated copy of the movie Allegiant. Under threat of a lawsuit, the subscriber was asked to pay a $150 settlement fee.

This request is unique as neither Lionsgate nor its tracking company IP-Echelon are known to engage in this practice.

When we contacted IP-Echelon about Lionsgate’s supposed settlement offer, we heard to our surprise that these emails are part of a large phishing scam, which has at least one large ISPs fooled.

“The notices are fake and not sent by us. It’s a phishing scam,” IP-Echelon informed TorrentFreak.

For a phishing scam the fake DMCA notice does its job well. At first sight the email appears to be legit, and for Cox Communications it was real enough to forward it to their customers.

Fake takedown notice

IP-echelon-fake

If an ISP is fooled, the rest of the scam is even more convincing, since Cox then treats the email as a regular DMCA takedown notice. This means that they forward it to their customers from an official Cox address.

In reality, however, the ip-echelon.report domain isn’t owned by IP-Echelon and the settlement money goes directly to the phishers.

IP-Echelon and its clients are not happy with having their names exploited in this type of scam. They are aware of the issue and inform us that U.S. law enforcement is currently looking into the matter.

Meanwhile, they suggest that ISPs carefully check the PGP signature before forwarding any notices to their customers.

“The case is being investigated by US law enforcement. IPE notices are signed with PGP for ISPs to check authenticity,” IP-Echelon said.

One Cox subscriber who received a notice inquired about the matter in the ISP’s support forums. She says she didn’t download the movie in question, and wonders if it could be a scam.

“I know your email, if real, said not to contact you but I am not sure what to do. I don’t want to give into a scam or if real pay for something I didn’t do,” the subscriber writes.

In response, a Cox representative confirmed that the email is real and explained that it was forwarded by the network security team. Apparently, the phishing scam was good enough to have the security experts fooled.

TorrentFreak alerted Cox to the fake notices but at the time of writing we have yet to receive a response. Whether any other ISPs have fallen for the same scam is unknown at this point.

It’s ironic that Cox is getting caught up in this. The ISP previous refused to forward these type of notices, even legit ones, to its customers. However, this policy was reversed after they lost their court case against BMG late last year.

In any case, Internet subscribers who receive a settlement demand from IP-Echelon, whether it’s for Lionsgate or another copyright holder, should alert their ISPs to this phishing scam.

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

You can now livestream right from the YouTube app

Press capture, pick a thumbnail, and you’ll be live streaming to the world.

YouTube's live mode.

YouTube is finally ready to take on Periscope, Facebook Live, and other livestreaming mobile services, as the company is building live mobile video broadcasting right into the core YouTube app. Firing up a livestream seems pretty simple, according to the introductory blog post. "You won’t need to open anything else, just hit the big red capture button right there in the corner, take or select a photo to use as a thumbnail, and you can broadcast live to your fans and chat in near real time," YouTube says.

Like most existing YouTube livestreaming functions, the blog post says these live videos will "have all the features your regular videos have" including search, recommendations, and controls for who can view them. Live video alerts will be sent to your subscribers when they view your profile, and creators can enable a chat function if they want to hear from viewers. YouTube promises that because this is on YouTube, "it’ll be faster and more reliable than anything else out there."

The feature launched at "VidCon," a conference for online video producers. For now, live mobile broadcasting from the core app is only available to a few VIPs, but YouTube promises it will be "rolling out more widely soon."

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Google’s Nexus devices aren’t getting freeform multi-window support (yet)

Google’s Nexus devices aren’t getting freeform multi-window support (yet)

One of the biggest changes in Android N is native multi-window support. When you’re using an Android phone or tablet running the upcoming version of Android you’ll be able to view two apps in side-by-side windows and you’ll be able to resize those windows to make one app bigger and the other smaller.

Android N also includes support for “freeform” windows that let you position apps anywhere on the screen, much as you would with a desktop operating system like Windows, macOS, or most GNU/Linux-based operating systems.

Continue reading Google’s Nexus devices aren’t getting freeform multi-window support (yet) at Liliputing.

Google’s Nexus devices aren’t getting freeform multi-window support (yet)

One of the biggest changes in Android N is native multi-window support. When you’re using an Android phone or tablet running the upcoming version of Android you’ll be able to view two apps in side-by-side windows and you’ll be able to resize those windows to make one app bigger and the other smaller.

Android N also includes support for “freeform” windows that let you position apps anywhere on the screen, much as you would with a desktop operating system like Windows, macOS, or most GNU/Linux-based operating systems.

Continue reading Google’s Nexus devices aren’t getting freeform multi-window support (yet) at Liliputing.

Axanar: Paramount/CBS erlaubt Star-Trek-Fanfilme

Edel das Föderationsmitglied, unziemlichem Tun abhold – und nicht kommerziell: Das Filmunternehmen Paramount/CBS hat wie angekündigt Regeln für Fanfilme aus dem Star-Trek-Universum herausgegeben. Sie enthalten formale wie inhaltliche Vorgaben. (Star Trek, Urheberrecht)

Edel das Föderationsmitglied, unziemlichem Tun abhold - und nicht kommerziell: Das Filmunternehmen Paramount/CBS hat wie angekündigt Regeln für Fanfilme aus dem Star-Trek-Universum herausgegeben. Sie enthalten formale wie inhaltliche Vorgaben. (Star Trek, Urheberrecht)

Oculus reverses course, dumps its VR headset-checking DRM

News breaks not from official announcement, but from discovery by workaround dev.

Oculus has quietly dumped its unpopular checks for Oculus headsets, meaning HTC Vive owners can resume using the popular Revive hack without having to work around DRM. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

What a difference an Internet uproar can make.

The Oculus team has reversed course on one of its most unpopular decisions since launching the Rift VR headset in April: headset-specific DRM. After weeks of playing cat-and-mouse to block the "Revive" workaround that translated the VR calls of Oculus games to work smoothly and seamlessly inside of the rival HTC Vive, Oculus quietly updated its hardware-specific runtime on Friday and removed all traces of that controversial DRM.

What's more, Oculus didn't mention the change in its runtime update notes, which are curiously future-dated one day forward on Saturday, June 25. The news instead broke when Revive's head developer posted a note on the project's Github download page. "I've only just tested this and I'm still in disbelief," the unnamed LibreVR developer wrote. Accordingly, the Revive team has since removed the patch's DRM-disabling feature, which had later been implemented as an extreme measure to make Oculus games play on the HTC Vive.

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FTTH/FTTB: Oberirdische Glasfaser spart 85 Prozent der Kosten

Es lässt sich viel Geld sparen beim Bau von Fiber-To-The-Home-Netzen. Das ergab eine Studie und Expertenbefragung mit ausbauenden Unternehmen. Doch kurzfristig wird der Netzbetreiber nicht reich. (Glasfaser, Studie)

Es lässt sich viel Geld sparen beim Bau von Fiber-To-The-Home-Netzen. Das ergab eine Studie und Expertenbefragung mit ausbauenden Unternehmen. Doch kurzfristig wird der Netzbetreiber nicht reich. (Glasfaser, Studie)

Microsoft’s low-power Surface 3 tablet is on the way out

Microsoft’s low-power Surface 3 tablet is on the way out

The Microsoft Surface 3 is a 10.8 inch Windows tablet with an Intel Atom x7-Z8700 Cherry Trail processor, a 1920 x 1280 pixel display, and support for an optional Surface Pen and optional keyboard cover.

Microsoft sells the tablet for $499, but a little over a year after launching the Surface 3 it looks like stocks dwindling: most models are out of stock at the Microsoft Store, and the company tells Thurrott.com that it’ll stop producing the tablet by the end of the year.

Continue reading Microsoft’s low-power Surface 3 tablet is on the way out at Liliputing.

Microsoft’s low-power Surface 3 tablet is on the way out

The Microsoft Surface 3 is a 10.8 inch Windows tablet with an Intel Atom x7-Z8700 Cherry Trail processor, a 1920 x 1280 pixel display, and support for an optional Surface Pen and optional keyboard cover.

Microsoft sells the tablet for $499, but a little over a year after launching the Surface 3 it looks like stocks dwindling: most models are out of stock at the Microsoft Store, and the company tells Thurrott.com that it’ll stop producing the tablet by the end of the year.

Continue reading Microsoft’s low-power Surface 3 tablet is on the way out at Liliputing.